Cornell University Library 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 3 1924 089 865 178 
 
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 raajoRie ■ 
 
 DAW AND 
 oTHeRPfiopLe 
 
 THOAKSBTilLeY/ 
 \ KLDRICH A 
 

Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924089865178 
 
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 
 
 MARJORIE DAW 
 
 OTHER PEOPLE 
 
 Marjorle Saw 
 
 Miss Mehet&bel'a Son 
 
 A Hiverznoutli Homance 
 
 MademoiBelle Olympe ZabrlBkl 
 
 Fire Antoine 
 
 etc. 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1873 AND 190I, BY T. B. ALDRICH 
 COPYRIGHT, I915, BY MARY ELIZABETH ALDRICH 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Fagx 
 
 Mabjobib "DiM 7 
 
 a riveemouth romancb 65 
 
 Quite So 108 
 
 A ToTJNG Desperado ' 134 
 
 Miss Mehetabel's Son 148 
 
 A Struggle for Life 188 
 
 Hademoisblle Olympe Zabriski. . . . 209 
 
 Pebb Antoine's Date-Palm ..... 233 
 
MARJORIE DAW AND OTHER PEOPLE. 
 
MARJORIE DAW. 
 
 I. 
 
 Db. Dillon to Edwabd Delaney, Esq., at Thh 
 Pines, neak Eye, N. H. 
 
 August 8, 187-. 
 
 MY DEAE SiK : I am happy to assure you that 
 your anxiety is without reason. Flem- 
 ming will be confined to the sofa for three 
 or four weeks, and will have to be careful at 
 first how he uses his leg. A fracture of this 
 kind is always a tedious affair. Fortunately, 
 the bone was very skilfully set by the surgeon 
 who chanced to be in the drug-store where 
 Flemming was brought after his. fall, and I 
 apprehend no permanent inconvenience from 
 the accident. Flemming is doing perfectly well 
 physically ; but I must confess that the irritable 
 and morbid state of mind into which he has 
 
MAKJOEIE DAW. 
 
 fallen causes me a great deal of uneasiness. 
 He is the last man in the world who ought to 
 break his leg. You know how impetuous our 
 friend is ordinarily, what a soul of restlessness 
 and energy, never content unless he is rushing 
 at some object, like a sportive bull at a red 
 shawl ; but amiable withal. He is no longer 
 amiable. His temper has become something 
 frightful. Miss Fanny Flemming came up from 
 Newport, where the family are staying for the 
 summer, to nurse him ; but he packed her o£E 
 the next morning in tears. He has a complete 
 set of Balzac's works, twenty-seven volumes, 
 piled up near his sofa, to throw at Watkins 
 whenever that exemplary serving-man appears 
 with his meals. Yesterday I very innocently 
 brought Flemming a small basket of lemons. 
 You know it was a strip of lemon-peel on the 
 curbstone that caused our friend's mischance. 
 Well, he no sooner set his eyes upon these lem- 
 ons than he fell into such a rage as I cannot 
 adequately describe. This is only one of his 
 moods, and the least distressing. At other 
 times he sits with bowed head regarding his 
 eplintered limb, silent, sullen, despairing. When 
 
MAEJORIE DATV. 9 
 
 this fit is on him — and it sometimes lasts all 
 day — nothing can distract his melancholy. He 
 refuses to eat, does not even read the news- 
 papers ; books, except as projectiles for Wat- 
 kins, have no charms for him. His state is 
 truly pitiable. 
 
 Now, if he were a poor man, with a family 
 depending on his daily labor, this irritabihty and 
 despondency would be natural enough. But in 
 a young feUow of twenty-four, with plenty of 
 money and seemingly not a care in the world, 
 the thing is monstrous. If he continues to give 
 way to his vagaries in this manner, he will end 
 by bringing on an inflammation of the fibula. 
 It was the fibula he broke. I am at my wits' 
 end to know what to prescribe for him. I have 
 anaesthetics and lotions, to make people sleep and 
 to soothe pain ; but I Ve no medicine that will 
 make a man have a little common-sense. That 
 is beyond my skill, but maybe it is not beyond 
 yours. You are Flemming's intimate friend, his 
 fidus Achates. Write to him, write to him fre- 
 quently, distract his mind, cheer him up, and 
 prevent him from becoming a confirmed case 
 of melancholia. Perhaps he has some impor- 
 1* 
 
10 MAEJORIE DAW. 
 
 tant plans disarranged by his present confine- 
 ment. If he has you will know, and will know 
 how to advise him judiciously. I trust your 
 father finds the change beneficial ? I am, my 
 dear sir, with great respect, etc. 
 
MARJORIE DAW. H 
 
 n. 
 
 Edwaed Delaney to John Plemming, West 38th 
 Steeet, New Yoek. 
 
 August 9, — . 
 
 My dear Jack : I had a line from Dillon this 
 morning, and was rejoiced to learn that your 
 hurt is not so bad as reported. Like a certain 
 personage, you are not so black and blue as you 
 are painted. DiUon wiU put you on your pins 
 again in two or three weeks, if you will only 
 have patience and foUow his counsels. Did you 
 get my note of last Wednesday ? I was greatly 
 troubled when I heard of the accident. 
 
 I can imagine how tranquil and saintly you 
 are with your leg in a trough ! It is deuced 
 awkward, to be sure, just as we had promised 
 ourselves a glorious month together at the sea- 
 side; but we must make the best of it. It is 
 unfortunate, too, that my father's health renders 
 it impossible for me to leave him. I think he 
 bos much improved ; the sea air is his native 
 
12 MAEJORIE DAW. 
 
 element ; but he still needs my arm to lean upon 
 in his walks, and requires some one more care- 
 ful than a servant to look after him. I cannot 
 come to you, dear Jack, but I have hours of 
 unemployed time on hand, and I will write you 
 a whole post-office full of letters if that will 
 divert you. Heaven knows, I have n't any- 
 thing to write about. It is n't as if we were 
 living at one of the beach houses ; then I could 
 do you some character studies, and fiU your 
 imagination with groups of sea-goddesses, with 
 their (or somebody else's) raven and blond 
 manes hanging down their shoulders. You 
 should have Aphrodite in morning wrapper, in 
 evening costume, and in her prettiest bathing 
 suit. But we are far from all that here. We 
 have rooms in a farm-house, on a cross-road, 
 two miles from the hotels, and lead the quietest 
 of lives. 
 
 I wish I were a novelist. This old house, 
 with its sanded floors and high wainscots, and 
 its narrow windows looking out upon a cluster 
 of pines that turn themselves into asolian-harps 
 every time the wind blows, would be the place in 
 which to write a summer romance. It should be 
 
MARJOKIE DAW. 13 
 
 a story with the odors of the forest and the breath 
 of the sea in it. It should be a novel like one 
 of that Russian fellow's, — what 'a his name ? 
 .— Tourgu^nieff, Turguenef , Turgenif , Toorgu- 
 niff, Turgdnjew, — nobody knows how to speU 
 him. Yet I wonder if even a Liza or an Alex- 
 andra Paulovna could stir the heart of a man 
 who has constant twinges in his leg. I wonder 
 if one of our own Yankee girls of the best type, 
 haughty and spirituelle, would be of any comfort 
 to you in your present deplorable condition. If 
 I thought so, I would hasten down to the Surf 
 House and catch one for you ; or, better still, 
 I would find you one over the way. 
 
 Picture to yourself a large white house just 
 across the road, nearly opposite our cottage. It 
 is not a house, but a mansion, built, perhaps, in 
 the colonial period, with rambling extensions, and 
 gambrel roof, and a wide piazza on three sides, — 
 a self- possessed, high-bred piece of architecture, 
 with its nose in the air. It stands back from the 
 road, and has an obsequious retinue of fringed 
 elms and oaks and weeping willows. Sometimes 
 in the morning, and oftener in the afternoon, 
 when the sun has withdrawn from that part of 
 
14 MAKJOEIE DAW. 
 
 the mansion, a young woman appears on the 
 piazza with some mysterious Penelope web of 
 embroidery in her hand, or a book. There is a 
 hammock over there, — of pineapple fibre, it 
 looks from here. A hammock is very becoming 
 when one is eighteen, and has golden hair, and 
 dark eyes, and an emerald-colored illusion dress 
 looped up after the fashion of a Dresden china 
 shepherdess, and is chaussSe like a beUe of the 
 time of Louis Quatorze. All this splendor goes 
 into that hammock, and sways there like a pond- 
 lily in the golden afternoon. The window of 
 my bedroom looks down on that piazza, — and 
 80 do I. 
 
 But enough of this nonsense, which ill be- 
 comes a sedate young attorney taking his vaca- 
 tion with an invalid father. Drop me a line, 
 dear Jack, and teU me how you really are. State 
 your case. Write me a long, quiet letter. If 
 you are violent or abusive, I 'U take the law to 
 you. 
 
MAKJOIIIE DAW. 15 
 
 m. 
 
 John Flemming to Edwaed Delanbt. 
 
 Angust 11,— i 
 
 YouB letter, dear Ned, was a godsend. Fancy 
 what a fix I am in, — I, who never had a day's 
 sickness since I was born. My left leg weighs 
 three tons. It is embalmed in spices and smoth- 
 ered in layers of fine linen, like a mummy. I 
 can't move. I have n't moved for five thousand 
 years. I 'm of the time of Pharaoh. 
 
 I lie from morning till night on a lounge, star- 
 ing into the hot street. Everybody is out of 
 town enjoying himself. The brown-stone-front 
 houses across the street resemble a row of par- 
 ticularly ugly coffins set up on end. A green 
 mould is settling on the names of the deceased, 
 carved on the silver door-plates. Sardonic spi- 
 ders have sewed up the key-holes. All is silence 
 and dust and desolation. — I interrupt this a 
 moment, to take a shy at Watkins with the 
 second volume of C6sar Birotteau; Missed him ! 
 
16 maejorie daw. 
 
 I think I could bring him down with a copy of 
 Sainte-Beuve or the Dictionnaire Universel, if I 
 had it. These small Balzac books somehow 
 don't quite fit my hand; but I shall fetch him 
 yet. I 've an idea Watkins is tapping the old 
 gentleman's Chateau Yquem. Duplicate key of 
 the wine-cellar. Hibernian swarries in the front 
 basement. Young Cheops up stairs, smig in his 
 cerements. Watkins glides into my chamber, 
 with that colorless, hypocritical face of his 
 drawn out long like an accordion ; but I know 
 he grins all the way down stairs, and is glad I 
 have broken my leg. Was not my evil star in 
 the very zenith when I ran up to town to attend 
 that dinner at Dehnonico's ? I did n't come up 
 altogether for that. It was partly to buy Frank 
 Livingstone's roan mare Margot. And now T 
 Bhall not be able to sit in the saddle these two 
 months, I '11 send the mare down to you at The 
 Pines, — is that thp name of the place ? 
 
 Old Dillon fancies that I have something on 
 my mind. He drives me wild with lemons. 
 Lemons for a mind diseased! Nonsense. 1 
 am only as restless as the devil under this con- 
 finement, — a thing I 'm not used to. Take s 
 
MAEJORIE DaW. 17 
 
 man who lias never had so much as a headache 
 or a toothache in his hfe," strap one of his legs in 
 a section of water-spout, keep him in a room in 
 the city for weeks, with the hot weather turned 
 on, and then expect him to smile and purr and 
 be happy ! It is preposterous. I can't be cheer= 
 ful or calm. 
 
 Your letter is the first consoling thing I have 
 had since my disaster, ten days ago. It really 
 cheered me up for half an hour. Send me n 
 screed, Ned, as often as you can, if you love me. 
 Anything will do. Write me more about that 
 3ittle girl in the hammock. That was very 
 pretty, all that about the Dresden china shep- 
 herdess and the pond-lily ; the imagery a little 
 mixed, perhaps, but very pretty. I did n't sup 
 pose you had so much sentimental furniture in 
 your upper story. It shows how one may be 
 familiar for years with the reception-room of his 
 neighbor, and never suspect what is directly un- 
 der his mansard. I supposed your loft stuffed 
 with dry legal parchments, mortgages and affi- 
 davits ; you take down a package of manuscript, 
 and lo ! there are lyrics and sonnets and canzo- 
 nettas. You really have a graphic descriptive 
 
JS MARJOEIE DAT/f. 
 
 touch, Edward Delaney, and I suspect you of 
 anonymous love-tales in the magazines. 
 
 I shall be a bear until I hear from you again, 
 fell me all about your pretty incormue across the 
 road. What is her name ? Who is she ? Who 's 
 her father ? Where 's her mother ? Who 's her 
 lover ? You cannot imagine how this will oc- 
 cupy me. The more trifling the better. My 
 imprisonment has weakened me intellectually 
 to such a degree that I find your epistolary gifts 
 quite considerable. I am passing iato my second 
 childhood- In a week or two I shall take to 
 India-rubber rings and prongs of ooral. A silver 
 cup, with an appropriate inscription, would be a 
 delicate attention on your part. In the mean 
 time, write I 
 
IIABJOBIE DAW. 19 
 
 IV. 
 
 Edwaed Delaney to John Flemming. 
 
 August 12, — N 
 
 The sick pasha shall be amused. Bismillah ! 
 he wills it so. If the story-teller becomes prolix 
 and tedious, — the bow-string and the sack, and 
 two Nubians to drop him into the Piscataqua I 
 But, truly. Jack, I have a hard task. There ia 
 literally nothing here, — except the little girl 
 over the way. She is swinging in the hammock 
 at this moment. It is to me compensation foi 
 many of the ills of life to see her now and then 
 put out a small kid boot, which fits like a glove, 
 and set herself going. Who is she, and what is 
 her name ? Her name is Daw. Only daughter 
 of Mr. Richard W. Daw, ex-colonel and banker. 
 Mother dead. One brother at Harvard, elder 
 brother killed at the battle of Pair Oaks, nine 
 years ago. Old, rich family, the Daws. This is 
 the homestead, where father and daughter pass 
 
20 MAKJORIE DAW. 
 
 eight months of the twelve ; the rest ot the year in 
 Baltimore and Washington. The New England 
 winter too many for the old gentleman. The 
 daughter is called Marjorie, — Marjorie Daw. 
 Sounds odd at first, does n't it ? But after you 
 say it over to yourself half a dozen times, you 
 like it. There 's a pleasing quaintness to it, 
 something prim and violet-like. Must be a nice 
 sort of girl to be called Marjorie Daw. 
 
 I had mine host of The Pines in the witness- 
 box last night, and drew the foregoing testimony 
 from him. He has charge of Mr. Daw's vege- 
 table-garden, and has known the family these 
 thirty years. Of course I shall make the ac- 
 quaintance of my neighbors before many days. 
 It will be next to impossible for me not to meet 
 Mr. Daw or Miss Daw in some of my walks. 
 The young lady has a favoi'ite path to the sea- 
 beach. I shall intercept her some morning, and 
 touch my hat to her. Then the princess will 
 bend her fair head to me with courteous sur- 
 prise not unmixed with haughtiness. "Will snub 
 me, in fact. All this for thy sake, Pasha of 
 the Snapt Axle-tree ! . . . . How oddly things fall 
 out ! Ten minutes ago I was called down to the 
 
MAIUORIE DAW. 21 
 
 parlor, — you know the kind of parlors in farm- 
 houses on the coast, a sort of amphibious parlor, 
 with sea-shells on the mantel-piece and spruce 
 .branches in the chimney-place, — where I found 
 my father and Mr. Daw doing the antique polite 
 to each other. He had come to pay his respects 
 to his new neighbors. Mr. Daw is a tall, slim 
 gentleman of about fifty-five, with a florid face 
 and snow-white mustache and side-whiskers. 
 Looks like Mr. Dombey, or as Mr. Dombey 
 Would have looked if he had served a few years 
 in the British Army. Mr. Daw was a colonel in 
 the late war, commanding the regiment in which 
 his son was a lieutenant. Plucky old boy, back- 
 bone of New Hampshire granite. Before taking 
 his leave, the colonel delivered himself of an in- 
 vitation as if he were issuing a general order. 
 Miss Daw has a few friends coming, at 4 P. M., 
 to play croquet on the lawn (parade-ground) and 
 have tea (cold rations) on the piazza. Will we 
 honor them with our company ? (or be sent to 
 the guard-house.) My father declines on the 
 
 i 
 
 plea of ill-health. My father's son bows with as 
 much suavity as he knows, and accepts. 
 
 In my next I shall have something to tell you. 
 
33 MARJORIE DAW. 
 
 I shall have seen the little beauty face to face. I 
 have a presentiment, Jack, that this Daw is a 
 rara avis I Keep up your spirits, my boy, until 
 I write you another letter, — and send me along 
 word how 's your leg. 
 
MA&JOUi£ UAW. 2d 
 
 Edward Belaney to John Flemming. 
 
 Anguat 18, — ^ 
 
 The party, my dear Jack, was as dreary as 
 possible. A lieutenant of the navy, the rector 
 of the Episcopal church at Stillwater, and a so- 
 ciety swell from Nahant. The lieutenant looked 
 as if he had swallowed a couple of his buttons, 
 and found the bullion rather indigestible ; the 
 rector was a pensive youth, of the daffydowndilly 
 sort ; and the swell from Nahant was a very 
 weak tidal wave indeed. The women were much 
 better, as they always are ; the two Miss Kings- 
 burys of Philadelphia, staying at the Sea-shell 
 House, two bright and engaging girls. But 
 Marjorie Daw ! 
 
 The company broke up soon after tea, and I 
 remained to smoke a cigar with the colonel on 
 the piazza. It was like seeing a picture to see 
 Miss Marjorie hovering around tlie old soldier, 
 and doing a hundred gracious little things for 
 
24 MARJORIE DAW. 
 
 him. She brought the cigars and lighted the 
 tapers with her own delicate fingers, in the most 
 enchanting fashion. As we sat there, she came 
 and went in the summer twilight, and seemed,' 
 with her white dress and pale gold hair, lik^ 
 some lovely phantom that had sprung into exist 
 ence out of the smoke-wreaths. If she had melted 
 into air, like the statue of Galatea in the play, 
 I should have been more sorry than surprised. 
 
 It was easy to perceive that the old colonel 
 worshipped her, and she him. I tliink the rela- 
 tion between an elderly father and a daughter 
 just blooming into womanhood the most beau- 
 tiful possible. There is in it a subtile sentiment 
 that cannot exist in the case of mother and 
 daughter, or that of son and mother. But this 
 is getting into deep water. 
 
 I sat with the Daws until half past ten, and 
 saw the moon rise on the sea. The ocean, that 
 had stretched motionless and black against the 
 horizon, was changed by magic into a broken 
 field of glittering ice, interspersed with marvel- 
 lous silvery fjords. In the far distance the Isles 
 of Shoals loomed up like a group of huge bergs 
 drifting down on us. The Polar Regions in a 
 
MARJORIE DAW. 25 
 
 June thaw ! It was exceedingly fine. What did 
 we talk about ? We talked about the weather — > 
 and you! The weather has been disagreeable 
 for several days past, — and so have you. I 
 glided from one topic to the other very natu- 
 rally. I told my friends of your accident ; how 
 it had frustrated all our summer plans, and what 
 our plans were. I played quite a spirited solo on 
 the fibula. Then I described you ; or, rather, I 
 did n't. I spoke of your amiability, of your 
 patience under this severe affliction; of your 
 touching gratitude when Dillon brings you lit- 
 tle presents of fruit ; of your tenderness to your 
 sister Fanny, whom you would not allow to 
 stay in town to nurse you, and how you hero- 
 ically sent her back to Newport, preferring to 
 remain alone with Mary, the cook, and youi 
 man Watkins, to whom, by the way, you were 
 devotedly attached. If you had been there, 
 Jack, you would n't have known yourself. I 
 should have excelled as a criminal lawyer, if 
 I had not turned my attention to a different 
 branch of jurisprudence. 
 
 Miss Marjorie asked all manner of leading ques- 
 tions concerning you. It did not occur to me 
 
 2 
 
26 MAEJOEIE DAW. 
 
 then, but it struck me forcibly afterwards, that 
 she evinced a singular interest in the conversa- 
 tion. When I got back to my room, I recalled 
 how eagerly she leaned forward, with her full, 
 snowy throat in strong moonlight, listening to 
 what I said. Positively, I think I made her like 
 you! 
 
 Miss Daw is a girl whom you would like im- 
 mensely, I can tell you that. A beauty without 
 affectation, a high and tender nature, — if one 
 can read the soul in the face. And the old colo- 
 nel is a noble character, too. 
 
 I am glad the Daws are such pleasant people. 
 The Pines is an isolated spot, and my resources 
 are few. I fear I should have found life here 
 somewhat monotonous before long, with no other 
 society than that of my excellent sire. It is true, 
 I might have made a target of the defenceles? 
 invalid ; but I have n't a taste for artillery, moi. 
 
HAKJOSIE OAW. 27 
 
 VI. 
 
 John Plemming to Edwabd Delanet. 
 
 August 17, ^. 
 
 Fob a man who has n't a taste for artillery, it 
 occiirs to me, my friend, you are keeping up a 
 pretty lively fire on my inner works. But go on. 
 Cynicism is a small brass field-piece that eventu- 
 ally bursts and kills the artilleryman. 
 
 You may abuse me as much as you like, and 
 I '11 not complain ; for I don't know what I 
 should do without your letters. They are curing 
 me. I have n't hurled anything at Watkins since 
 last Sunday, partly because I have grown more 
 amiable under your teaching, and partly because 
 Watkins captured my ammunition one night, and 
 carried it off to the library. He is rapidly losing 
 the habit he had acquired of dodging whenever 
 I rub my ear, or make any slight motion with 
 my right arm. He is still suggestive of the wine- 
 eellar, however. You may break, you may shat- 
 
S8 MARJORTE DAW. 
 
 ter Watkins, if you will, but the scent of th« 
 Roederer will hang round him still. 
 
 Ned, that Miss Daw must be a charming per 
 son. I should certainly like her. I like her 
 already. When you spoke in your first letter 
 of seeing a young girl swinging in a hammock 
 under your chamber window, I was somehow 
 strangely drawn to her. I cannot account for it 
 in the least. What you have subsequently writ- 
 ten of Miss Daw has strengthened the impres- 
 sion. You seem to be describing a woman I 
 have known in some previous state of existence, 
 or dreamed of in this. Upon my word, if you 
 were to send me her photograph, I believe I 
 should recognize her at a glance. Her manner, 
 that listening attitude, her traits of character, aa 
 you indicate them, the light hair and the dark 
 eyes, — they are all familiar things to me. Asked 
 a lot of questions, did she ? Curious about me ? 
 That is strange. 
 
 You would laugh in your sleeve, you wretched 
 old cynic, if you knew how I lie awake nights, 
 with my gas turned down to a star, thinking of 
 The Pines and the house across the road. How 
 cool it must be down there ! I long for the salt 
 
MARJORIE DA.W. 29 
 
 smell in the air. I picture the colonel smoking 
 his cheroot on the piazza. I send you and Miss 
 Daw off on afternoon rambles along the beach 
 Sometimes I let you stroll with her under the 
 elms in the moonhght, for you are great friends 
 by this time, I take it, and see each other every 
 day. I know your ways and your manners ! 
 Then I fall into a truculent mood, and would 
 like to destroy somebody. Have you noticed 
 anything in the shape of a lover hanging around 
 the colonial Lares and Penates ? Does that lieu- 
 tenant of the horse-marines or that young Still- 
 water parson visit the house much ? Not that I 
 am pining for news of them, but any gossip of 
 the kind would be in order. I wonder, Ned, you 
 don't fall in love with Miss Daw. I am ripe to 
 do it myself. Speaking of photographs, could n't 
 you manage to slip one of her carte s-de-visite 
 from her album, — she must have an album, you 
 know, — and send it to me ? I wiU. return it 
 before it could be missed. That 's a good feUow ! 
 Did the mare arrive safe and sound ? It will be 
 a capital annual this autumn for Central Park. 
 
 — my leg? I forgot about my leg. It 's 
 better. 
 
so IIABJOKIE SAW. 
 
 vn. 
 
 Edwaed Delaney xo John Flemmivs. 
 
 August 20, — . 
 
 You are correct in your surmises. I am on 
 the most friendly terms with our neighbors. The 
 colonel and my father smoke their afternoon ci- 
 gar together in our sitting-room or on the piazza 
 opposite, and I pass an hour or two of the day or 
 the evening with the daughter. I am more and 
 more struck by the beauty, modesty, and intelli- 
 gence of Miss Daw. 
 
 You ask me why I do not fall in love with her. 
 I wiU be frank, Jack : I have thought of that. 
 She is young, rich, accomplished, uniting in her- 
 self more attractions, mental and personal, than 
 I can recall in any girl of my acquaintance ; but 
 she lacks the something that would be necessary 
 to inspire in me that kind of interest. Possess- 
 ing tliis unknown quantity, a woman neither 
 beautiful nor wealthy nor very young could bring 
 me to her feet. But not Miss Daw. If we were 
 
MABJOME DAW. 3J 
 
 shipwrecked together on an uninhabited island, 
 ■ — let me suggest a tropical island, for it costs no 
 more to oe picturesque, — I would build her a 
 bamboo hut, I would fetch her bread-fruit and 
 cocoanuts, I would fry yams for her, I would 
 lure the ingenuous turtle and make her nour- 
 ishing soups, but I would n't make love to her, 
 — not under eighteen months. I would like to 
 have her for a sister, that I might shield her and 
 counsel her, and spend half my income on thread- 
 laces and camel' s-hair shawls. (We are off the 
 island now.) If such were not my feeling, there 
 would still be an obstacle to my loving Miss 
 Daw. A greater misfortune could scarcely be- 
 fall me than to love her. Flemming, I am about 
 to make a revelation that will astonish you. I 
 may be all wrong in my premises and consequently 
 in my conclusions ; but you shall judge. 
 
 That night when I returned to my room after 
 the croquet party at the Daws', and was think- 
 ing over the trivial events of the evening, I was 
 suddenly impressed by the air of eager attention 
 with which Miss Daw had followed my account 
 of your accident. I think I mentioned this to 
 you. Well, the next morning, as I went to mail 
 
S2 MARJORIE DAW. 
 
 my letter, I overtook Miss Daw on the road t\j 
 Rye, where the post-office is, and accompanied 
 her thither and back, an hour's walk. The con^ 
 versation again turned on you, and again I re« 
 marked that inexplicable look of interest which 
 had lighted up her face the previous evening. 
 Since then, I have seen Miss Daw perhaps ten 
 times, perhaps oftener, and on each occasion I 
 found that when I was not speaking of you, or 
 your sister, or some person or place associated 
 with you, I was not holding her attention. She 
 would be absent-minded, her eyes would wander 
 away from me to the sea, or to some distant 
 object in the landscape ; her fingers would play 
 with the leaves of a book in a way that convinced 
 me she was not listening. At these momenta 
 if I abruptly changed the theme, — I did it sev- 
 eral times as an experiment, — and dropped some 
 remark about my friend Flemming, then the 
 sombre blue eyes would come back to me in- 
 stantly. 
 
 Now, is not this the oddest v^mg in the world ? 
 No, not the oddest. The effect which you tell 
 me was produced on you by my casual mention 
 of an unknown girl swinging in a hammock is 
 
MARJORIK DAW. 33 
 
 certainly as strange. You can conjecture how 
 fcliat passage in your letter of Friday startled me. 
 Is it possible, then, that two people who havt 
 never met, and who are hundreds of miles apart, 
 can exert a magnetic influence on each other? 
 I have read of such psychological phenomena, 
 but never credited them. I leave the solution 
 of the problem to you. As for myself, all other 
 tilings being favorable, it would be impossible for 
 me to fall in love with a woman who listens to 
 me only when I am talking of my friend! 
 
 I am not aware that any one is paying marked 
 attention to my fair neighbor. The lieutenant 
 of the navy — he is stationed at Rivermouth — 
 sometimes drops in of an evening, and some 
 times the rector from Stillwater ; the lieutenant 
 the oftener. He was there last night. I would 
 not be surprised if he had an eye to the heiress ; 
 but he is not formidable. Mistress Daw carries 
 a neat little spear of irony, and the honest lieu 
 tenant seems to have a particular facility foi; 
 impaling himself on the point of it. He is noi 
 dangerous, I should say ; though I have known 
 a woman to satirize a man for years, and marry 
 him after all. Decidedly, the lowly rector is not 
 
 2* c 
 
84 MARJOKIE DAW. 
 
 dangerous ; yet, again, who has not seen Cloth 
 of Frieze victorious in the lists where Cloth of 
 Gold went down? 
 
 As to the photograph. There is an exquisite 
 ivorytype of Marjorie, in passe-partout, on the 
 drawing-room mantel-piece. It would be missed 
 at once, if taken. I would do anything reason- 
 able for you, Jack ; but I 've no burning desire 
 to be hauled up before the local justice of the 
 peace, on a charge of petty larceny. 
 
 P. S. — Enclosed is a spray of mignonette, 
 which I advise you to treat tenderly. Yes, we 
 talked of you again last night, as usual. It is 
 becoming a little dreary fov me. 
 
UA.KJORIE UAW. 35 
 
 vm. 
 
 Edwaed Delaney to John PLEMimfs. 
 
 August 2% — . 
 
 Your letter in reply to my last has occupiecj 
 my thoughts all the morning. I do dot know 
 what to think. Do you mean to say that you 
 are seriously half in love with a woman whom 
 you have never seen, — with a shadow, a chi- 
 mera ? for what else can Miss Daw be to you ? 
 I do not understand it at all. i' understand 
 neither you nor her. You are a couple of ethe- 
 real beings moving in finer air than I can breathe 
 with my commonplace lungs. Sueh delicacy of 
 sentiment is something I admire without com- 
 prehending. I am bewildered. I am of the 
 Barth earthy, and I find myself in the incongru- 
 ous position of having to do with mere souls, 
 with natures so finely tempered that I run some 
 risk of shattering them in my awkwardness. I 
 am as Caliban among the spirits! 
 
 Reflecting on your letter, I am not sure it is 
 
8S MARJORIE DAW. 
 
 wise in me to continue this correspondence. But 
 no, Jack; I do wrong to doubt the good sense 
 iliat forms the basis of your character. You are 
 deeply interested in Miss Daw ; you feel that she 
 is a person whom you may perhaps greatly ad" 
 mire when you know her : at the same time you 
 bear in mind that the chances are ten to five 
 that, when you do come to know her, she will 
 iall far short of your ideal, and you will not care 
 for her in the least. Look at it in tliis sensible 
 light, and I will hold back nothing from you. 
 Yesterday afternoon my father and myself 
 rode over to Ri vermouth with the Daws. A 
 heavy rain in the morning had cooled the at- 
 mosphere and laid the dust. To Rivermouth is 
 a drive of eight miles, along a winding road 
 lined all the way with wild barberry-bushes. I 
 never saw anything more brilliant than these 
 bushes, the green of the foliage and the pink of 
 ^he coral berries intensified by the rain. The 
 colonel drove, with my father in front. Miss Daw 
 and I on the back seat. I resolved that for the 
 first five miles your name should not pass my 
 lips. I was amused by tlie artfui attempts she 
 made, at the start, to break through my reti- 
 
MAUJORIE DAW. 37 
 
 cence. Then a silence fell upon her ; and then 
 she became suddenly gay. That keenness which 
 I enjoyed so much when it was exercised on 
 the lieutenant was not so satisfactory directed 
 against myself. Miss Daw has great sweetness 
 of disposition, but she can be disagreeable. She 
 is like the young lady in the rhyme, with the 
 curl on her forehead, 
 
 " When she is good, 
 She is very, very good. 
 And when she is bad, she is horrid ! " 
 
 I kept to my resolution, however ; but on the 
 return home I relented, and talked of your mare ! 
 Miss Daw is going to try a side-saddle on Margot 
 some morning. The animal is a trifle too light 
 for my weight. By the by, I nearly forgot to 
 say Miss Daw sat for a picture yesterday to a 
 Rivermouth artist. If the negative turns out 
 well, I am to have a copy. So our ends will be 
 accomphshed without crime. I wish, though, I 
 could send you the ivorytype in the drawing- 
 room ; it is cleverly colored, and would give you 
 an idea of her hair and eyes, which of course 
 the other will net. 
 No, Jack, the spray of mignonette did not 
 
38 MAKJORIE DAW. 
 
 come from me. A man of twenty-eight does n't 
 enclose flowers in his letters — to another man. 
 But don't attach too much significance to the 
 circumstance. She gives sprays of mignonette 
 to the rector, sprays to the lieutenant. She has 
 even given a rose from her bosom to your slave. 
 It is her jocund nature to scatter flowers, like 
 Spring. 
 
 If my letters sometimes read disjointedly, you 
 must understand that I never finish one at a 
 sitting, but write at intervals, when the mood is 
 on me. 
 
 The mood is not on me now. 
 
UA£JOSI£ DAW. 39 
 
 IX. 
 
 Edwaed Delanet to John Flemmino. 
 
 August 23, — . 
 
 I HATE just returned from the strangest in- 
 terview vntli Marjorie. She has all but con- 
 fessed to me her interest in you. But wth 
 what modesty and dignity ! Her words elude 
 my pen as I attempt to put them on paper ; and, 
 indeed, it was not so much what she said as her 
 manner ; and that I cannot reproduce. Perhaps 
 it was of a piece with the strangeness of this 
 whole business, that she should tacitly acknowl- 
 edge to a third party the love she feels for a man 
 she has never beheld ! But I have lost, through 
 your aid, the faculty of being surprised. I ac- 
 cept things as people do in dreams. Now that 
 I am again in my room, it all appears like an 
 illusion, — the black massss of Eembrandtish 
 shadow under the trees, the fire-flies whirling 
 in Pyrrhic dances among the ahrubbery, the Ben 
 over there, Marjorie sitting on the hammock) 
 
40 MAEJORIE DAW. 
 
 It is past midnight, and I am too sleepy to 
 write more. 
 
 Thursday Morning. 
 
 My father has suddenly taken it into his head 
 to spend a few days at the Shoals. In the mean 
 while you will not hear from me. I see Marjorie 
 walking in the garden with the colonel. I wish 
 I could speak to her alone, but shall probably 
 not have an opportunity before we leave. 
 
UAKJO&Ifi DAW. 41 
 
 Edward Delaney to John Flemming. 
 
 August 38, — . 
 
 You were passing into your second childhood, 
 were you ? Your intellect was so reduced that 
 my epistolary gifts seemed quite considerable to 
 you, did they ? I rise superior to the sarcasm 
 in your favor of the 11th instant, when I notice 
 that five days' silence on my part is sufficient to 
 throw you into the depths of despondency. 
 
 We returned only this morning from Apple- 
 dore, that enchanted island, — at four dollars 
 per day. I find on my desk three letters from 
 you ! Evidently there is no lingering doubt in 
 your mind as to the pleasure I derive from your 
 correspondence. These letters are undated, but 
 in what I take to be the latest are two passages 
 that require my consideration. You will pardon 
 my candor, dear Flemming, but the conviction 
 forces itself upon me that as your leg grows 
 stronger your head becomes weaker. You ask 
 
42 MAKJORIE DAW. 
 
 my advice on a certain point. I will give it. In 
 my opinion you could do nothing more unwise 
 than to address a note to Miss Daw, thanking 
 her for the flower. It would, I am sure, offend 
 her delicacy beyond pardon. She knows you only 
 through me ; you are to her an abstraction, a 
 f gure in a dream, — a dream from which the 
 faintest shock would awaken her. Of course, if 
 you enclose a note to me and insist on its deliv- 
 ery, I shall deliver it ; but I advise you not to 
 do so. 
 
 You say you are able, with the aid of a cane, 
 to walk about your chamber, and that you pur- 
 pose to come to The Pines the instant Dillon 
 thinks you strong enough to stand the journey. 
 Again I advise you not to. Do you not see that, 
 every hour you remain away, Marjorie's glamour 
 deepens, and your influence over her increases ? 
 You will ruin everything by precipitancy. Wail, 
 until you are entirely recovered ; in any case, da 
 not come without giving me warning. I fear the 
 effect of your abrupt advent here — under the 
 circumstances. 
 
 ) Miss Daw was evidently glad to see us back 
 again, and gave me both hands in the frankest 
 
UARJORIE DAW. 43 
 
 ■way. She stopped at the door a moment, thia 
 afternoon, in the carriage; she had been over 
 to Eivermouth for her pictures. Unluckily the 
 photographer had spilt some acid on the plate, 
 and she was obliged to give him another sitting. 
 I have an intuition that something is troubling 
 Marjorie. She had an abstracted air not usual 
 with her. However, it may be only my fancy. 
 .... I end this, leaving several things unsaid, 
 to accompany my father on one of those long 
 walks which are now his chief medicine, — and 
 ininel 
 
a liAKJORIE DAW. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Edwakd Delaney to John Flemmino. 
 
 Angost 29, — . 
 
 I WRITE in great haste to tell you what has 
 taken place here since my letter of last night. 
 I am in the utmost perplexity. Only one thing 
 is plain, — you must not dream of coming to 
 The Pines. Marjorie has told her father every- 
 thing ! I saw her for a few minutes, an horn- 
 ago, in the garden ; and, as near as I could 
 gather from her confused statement, the facts 
 are these : Lieutenant Bradly — that 's the naval 
 officer stationed at Rivermouth — has been pay- 
 ing court to Miss Daw for some time past, but 
 not so much to her liking as to that of the col- 
 onel, who it seems is an old friend of the young 
 gentleman's father. Yesterday (I knew she was 
 in some twuble when she drove up to our gate) 
 the colonel spoke to Marjorie of Bradly, — urged 
 his suit, I infer. Marjorie expressed her dislike 
 for the lieutenant with characteristic frankness, 
 
MASJOBIE SAW. 45 
 
 and finally confessed to her father — well, I 
 really do not know what she confessed. It must 
 have been the vaguest of confessions, and must 
 have sufficiently puzzled the colonel. At any 
 rate, it exasperated him. I suppose I am im- 
 plicated in, the matter, and that the colonel feels 
 bitterly towards me. I do not see why : I have 
 carried no messages between you and Miss Daw ; 
 I have behaved with the greatest discretion. I 
 can find no flaw anywhere in my proceeding. I 
 do not see that anybody has done anything, — 
 except the colonel himself. 
 
 It is probable, nevertheless, that the friendly 
 relations between the two houses will be broken 
 off. " A plague o' both your houses," say you. 
 I will keep you informed, as well as I can, of 
 what occurs over the way. We shall remain 
 here until the second week in September. Stay 
 where you are, or, at all events, do not dream of 
 
 'joining me Colonel Daw is sitting on 
 
 the piazza looking rather wicked. I have not 
 seen Marjorie since I parted with her in the 
 garden. 
 
46 UAAJORIE CAW. 
 
 xn. 
 
 Edwaed Delaney to Thomas Dillon, M. D., Madi- 
 son SqTJAEE, New Yoek. 
 
 August 30, — . 
 
 Mt deab Doctor : If you have any influence 
 over Flemming, I beg of you to exert it to pre- 
 vent his coming to this place at present. There 
 are circumstances, which I will explain to you 
 before long, that make it of the first importance 
 that he should not come into this neighborhood. 
 His appearance here, I speak advisedly, would be 
 disastrous to him. In urging him to remain in 
 New York, or to go to some inland resort, you 
 will be doing him and me a real service. Of 
 course you will not mention my name in this 
 connection. You know me well enough, my 
 dear doctor, to be assured that, in begging yoUr 
 secret co-operation, I have reasons that will meet 
 your entire approval when they are made plain 
 to you. We shall return to town on the 15th 
 of next month, and my first duty will be to 
 
MABJOBIE DAW. 47 
 
 present myself at your hospitable door and sat- 
 isfy your curiosity, if I have excited it. My 
 father, I am glad to state, has so greatly im- 
 proved that he can no longer be regarded aa 
 an invalid. With great esteem, I am, etc., etc. 
 
18 UAKJORIB DAW. 
 
 xm. 
 
 Edwaed Delanet to John Flemming. 
 
 August 31, -^ 
 
 Tour letter, announcing your mad determina. 
 tion to come here, has just reached me. I be- 
 seech you to reflect a moment. The step would 
 be fatal to your interests and hers. You would 
 furnish just cause for irritation to R. W. D. ; 
 and, though he loves Marjorie tenderly, he is 
 capable of going to any lengths if opposed. You 
 would not like, I am convinced, to be the means 
 of causing him to treat her with severity. That 
 would be the result of your presence at The Pines 
 at this juncture. I am annoyed to be obliged to 
 point out these things to you. We are on very 
 delicate ground. Jack ; the situation is critical, 
 and the slightest mistake in a move would cost 
 us the game. If you consider it worth the 
 winning, be patient. Trust a little to my sa- 
 gacity. Wait and see what happens. More- 
 over, I understand from Dillon that you are in 
 
UASJOBIE DAW. 4S 
 
 no condition to take so long a journey. He 
 thinks the air of the coast would be the worst 
 thing possible for you ; that you ought to go 
 inland, if anywhere. Be advised by me. Be 
 advised by DiUon. 
 
 PROPERTY OF LIBRARY 
 
 NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL 
 INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR RELATIONS I860 
 
 COr^Ntri.L UNIVERSITY 
 
so MAKJOBIE SAVr. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Telegrams. 
 
 September 1, — . 
 1. — To Edward Delaney. 
 
 Letter received. Dillon be hanged. I think 
 
 I ought to be on the ground. 
 
 J. F. 
 
 2 To John Flemming. 
 
 Stay where you are. You would only com- 
 plicate matters. Do not move until you hear 
 
 from me. 
 
 E. D. 
 
 8. — To Edward Delaney. 
 My being at The Pines could be kept secret. 
 
 t must see her. 
 
 J. P. 
 
 4. — To John Flemming. 
 Do not think of it. It would be useless. 
 R. W. D. has locked M. in her room. You 
 would not be able to effect an interview. 
 
 E. D. 
 
HASJOBIE SAW. 51 
 
 5. — To Edward Delaney. 
 
 Locked her in her room. Good God. That 
 
 settles the question. I shall leave by the twelve' 
 
 fifteen express. i 
 
 J. F. 
 
53 UAEJOBIE SAW. 
 
 XV. 
 
 The AmiiVAL. 
 
 On the second of September, 187-, as the down 
 express due at 3.40 left the station at Hampton, 
 a young man, leaning on the shoulder of a ser- 
 vant, whom he addressed as Watkins, stepped 
 from the platform into a hack, and requested to 
 be driven to " The Pines." On arriving at the 
 gate of a modest farm-house, a few miles from 
 the station, the young man descended vrith diffi- 
 culty from the carriage, and, casting a hasty 
 glance across the road, seemed much impressed 
 by some peculiarity in the landscape. Again 
 leaning on the shoulder of the person Watkins, 
 he walked to the door of the farm-house and in- 
 quired for Mr. Edward Delaney. He was in- 
 formed by the aged man who answered his knock, 
 that Mr. Edward Delaney had gone to Boston the 
 day before, but that Mr. Jonas Delaney was with- 
 in. This information did not appear satisfactory 
 
MARJOUIE DAW. 53 
 
 to the stranger, who inquired if Mr. Edward De- 
 laney had left any message for Mr. John Flem- 
 ming. There was a letter for Mr. Flemming, if 
 he were that person. After a brief absence the 
 aged man reappeared with a Letter. 
 
fi4 UABJOfilE SAW. 
 
 XVI. 
 Edward Delaney to John Plbmming. 
 
 September 1, — . 
 
 I am horror-stricken at what I have done ! 
 When I began this correspondence I had no other 
 purpose than to relieve the tedium of your sick- 
 chamber. Dillon told me to cheer you up. I 
 tried to. I thought you entered into the spirit of 
 the thing. I had no idea, until within a few days, 
 that you were taking matters au sirieux. 
 
 What can I say ? I am in sackcloth and ashes. 
 I am a pariah, a dog of an outcast. I tried to 
 make a little romance to interest you, something 
 soothing and idyllic, and, by Jove ! I have done it 
 only too well ! My father does n't know a word 
 of this, so don't jar the old gentleman any more 
 than you can help. I fly from the wrath to come 
 — when you arrive ! For 0, dear Jack, there 
 is n't any colonial mansion on the other side of 
 the road, there is n't any piazza, there is n't any 
 hammock, — there is n't any Marjorie Daw ! I 
 
A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE: 
 
 I. 
 
 \ T five o'clock on the morning of the tenth 
 ■'^ of July, 1860, the front door of a certain 
 house on Anchor Street, in the ancient seaport 
 town of Bivermouth, might have been observed 
 to open with great caution. This door, as the 
 least imaginative reader may easily conjecture, 
 did not open itself. It was opened by Miss Mar- 
 garet CaUaghan, who immediately closed it softly 
 behind her, paused for a few seconds with an 
 embarrassed air on the stone step, and then, 
 throwing a furtive glance up at the second-story 
 windows, passed hastily down the street towards 
 the river, keeping close to the fences and garden 
 walls on her left. 
 
 There was a ghostlike stealthiness to Miss Mar- 
 garet's movements, though there was nothing 
 
56 •« P'VERMOUTH ROMANCE. 
 
 whatever of the ghost about Miss Margaret her- 
 self. She was a plump, short person, no longe" 
 young, with coal-black hair growing low on the 
 forehead, and a round face that would have 
 been nearly meaningless if the features had not 
 been emphasized — italicized, so to speak — by 
 the small-pox. Moreover, the brilliancy of her 
 toilet would have rendered any ghostly hypoth- 
 esis untenable. Mrs. Solomon — we refer to the 
 dressiest Mrs. Solomon, which ever one that was 
 — in all her glory was not arrayed like Miss 
 Margaret on that eventful summer morning. 
 She wore a light-green, shot-silk frock, a blaz- 
 ing red shawl, and a yellow crape bonnet pro- 
 fusely decorated with azure, orange, and magenta 
 artificial flowers. In her hand she carried a 
 wHte parasol. The newly risen sun, ricocheting 
 from the bosom of the river and striking point- 
 blank on the top-knot of Miss Margaret's gor 
 geousness, made her an imposing spectacle in 
 the quiet street of that Puritan village. But, in 
 spite of the bravery of her apparel, she stole 
 guiltily along by garden walls and fences until 
 she reached a small, dingy framehouse near the 
 wharves, in the darkened doorway of which she 
 
A EIVEEMOUTH ROMANCE. 57 
 
 quenched her burning splendor, if m bold a 
 figure is permissible. 
 
 Three quarters of an hour passed. Tlie sun- 
 shine moved slowly up Anchor Street, fingered 
 noiselessly the well-kept brass knockers on either 
 side, and drained the heeltaps of dew which had 
 been left from the revels of the fairies overnight 
 in the cups of the morning-glories. Not a soul 
 was stirring yet in this part of the town, though 
 the Rivermouthians are such early birds that not 
 a worm may be said to escape them. By and by 
 one of the brown Holland shades at one of the 
 upper windows of the Bilkins mansion — the 
 house from which Miss Margaret had emerged — 
 was drawn up, and old Mr. Bilkins in spiral 
 nightcap looked out on the sunny street. Not 
 a hving creature was to be seen, save the dissi- 
 pated family cat, — a very Lovelace of a cat that 
 Was not allowed a night-key, — who was sitting 
 on the curbstone opposite, waiting for the hall 
 door to be opened. Three quarters of an hour, 
 we repeat, had passed, when Mrs. Margaret 
 O'Rouke, nee Callaghan, issued from the small, 
 dingy house by the river, and regained the door- 
 step of the Bilkins mansion in the same stealthy 
 fashion in which she had left it. 
 
,68 A EIVEEMOUTH ROMANCE. 
 
 Not to prolong a mystery that must already 
 oppress the reader, Mr. Bilkins's cook had, after 
 the manner of her kind, stolen out of the prem- 
 ises before the family were up, and got herself 
 married, — ^surreptitiously and artfully married, 
 as if matrimony were an indictable offence. 
 
 And something of an offence it was in this 
 instance. In the first place, Margaret Callaghan 
 had lived nearly twenty years with the Bilkins 
 family, and the old people — there were no chil- 
 dren now — had rewarded this long service by 
 taking Margaret into their affections. It was 
 a piece of subtile ingratitude for her to marry 
 without admitting the worthy couple to her con- 
 fidence. In the next place, Margaret had mar- 
 ried a man some eighteen years younger thau 
 herself. That was the young man's lookout, you 
 say. We hold it was Margaret that was to 
 blame. What does a young blade of twenty-two 
 know ? Not half so much as he thinks he does. 
 His exhaustless ignorance at that age is a dis- 
 covery which is left for him to make in his 
 prime. 
 
 '■ Curly gold locks cover foolish brains, 
 Billing and cooing is all your cheer ; 
 3* 
 
A EIVERMOIITH ROMANCE. 59 
 
 Sighing and singing of midnight strains. 
 Under Bonnyhell's window panes, — 
 "Wait till you come to Forty Year ! " 
 
 In one sense Margaret's husband had come 
 to forty year, — she was forty to a day. 
 
 Mrs. Margaret O'Rouke, with the baddish cat 
 following closely at her heels, entered the Bilkins 
 mansion, reached her chamber in the attic with- 
 out being intercepted, and there laid aside her 
 finery. Two or three times, while arranging her 
 more humble attire, she paused to take a look at 
 the marriage certificate, which she had deposited 
 between the leaves of her Prayer-Book, and on 
 each occasion held that potent document upside 
 down ; for Margaret's literary culture was of the 
 severest order, and excluded the art of reading. 
 
 The breakfast was late that morning. As 
 Mrs. O'Rouke set the coffee-urn in front of Mrs. 
 Bilkins and flanked Mr. Bilkins with the broiled 
 mackerel and the buttered toast, Mrs. O'Rouke's 
 conscience smote her. She afterwards declared 
 that when she saw the two sitting there so inno- 
 cent-like, not dreaming of the comether she had 
 put upon them, she secretly and Tinbeknownt let a 
 few tears fall into the cream-pitcher. Whether or 
 
60 A RIVERMOUTH KOMA^'CE. 
 
 not it was this material expression of Margaret's 
 penitence that spoiled the coffee, does not admit 
 of inquiry ; but the coffee was bad. In fact, the 
 ^whole breakfast was a comedy of errors. 
 
 It was a blessed relief to Margaret when the 
 meal was ended. She retired in a cold perspira- 
 tion to the penetralia of the kitchen, and it wa8 
 remarked by both Mr. and Mrs. Bilkins that 
 those short flights of vocalism, — apropos of the 
 personal charms of one Kate Kearney who lived 
 on the banks of KUlamey, — which ordinarily 
 issued from the direction of the scullery, were 
 unheard that forenoon. 
 
 The town clock was striking eleven, and the 
 antiquated timepiece on the staircase (which 
 never spoke but it dropped pearls and crystals, 
 like the fairy in the story) was lisping the hour, 
 when there came three tremendous knocks at the 
 street door. Mrs. Bilkins, who was dusting the 
 brass-mounted chronometer in the haU, stood 
 transfixed with arm uplifted. The admirable old 
 lady had for years been carrying on a guerilla 
 warfare with itinerant vendors of furniture pol- 
 ish, and pain-kiUer, and crockery cement, and 
 the like. The effrontery of the triple knock con 
 
A BIVEKMOUTH ROMANCE. 61 
 
 vinced her the enemy was at her gates, — pos- 
 sibly that dissolute creature with twenty-four 
 sheets of note-paper and twenty-four envelopes 
 for fifteen cents. 
 
 Mrs. Bilkins swept across the haU, and opened 
 the door with a jerk. The suddenness of the 
 movement was apparently not anticipated by the 
 person outside, who, with one arm stretched fee- 
 bly towards the receding knocker, tilted gently 
 forward, and rested both hands on the threshold 
 in an attitude which was probably common 
 enough with our ancestors of the Simian period, 
 but could never have been considered graceful. 
 By an effort that testified to the excellent con- 
 dition of his muscles, the person instantly righted 
 himself, and stood swaying unsteadily on his toes 
 and heels, and smiling rather vaguely on Mrs. 
 Bilkins. 
 
 It was a slightly built, but well-knitted young 
 fellow in the not unpicturesque garb of our 
 marine service. His woollen cap, pitched for- 
 ward at an acute angle with his nose, showed 
 the back part of a head thatched with short, 
 yellow hair, which had broken into innumerable 
 curls of painful tightness. On his ruddy cheeks 
 
62 A mVERMOCTH ROMANCE. 
 
 a sparse sandy beard was making a timid debut. 
 Add to this a ■weak, good-natured mouth, a pair 
 of devU-may-care blue eyes, and the fact that the 
 man was very drunk, and you have a pre-Eapha- 
 ehte portrait — we may as well say it at once — 
 of Mr. Larry O'Rouke of Ballyshanty, County 
 Connaught, and late of the U. S. sloop-of-war 
 Santee. 
 
 The man was a total stranger to Mrs. Bilkins ; 
 but the instant she caught sight of the double 
 white anchors embroidered on the lapels of his 
 jacket, she unhesitatingly threw back the door, 
 which, with great presence of mind, she had 
 partly closed. 
 
 A drunken sailor standing on the step of the 
 Bilkins mansion was no novelty. The street, as 
 we have stated, led down to the wharves, and 
 sailors were constantly passing. The house 
 abutted directly on the street ; the granite door- 
 step was almost flush with the sidewalk, and the 
 huge old-fashioned brass knocker — seemingly a 
 brazen hand that had been cut off at the wrist, 
 and nailed against the oak as a warning to male- 
 factors — extended itself in a kind of grim ap- 
 peal to everybody. It seemed to possess strange 
 
A EIVEKMOUTH ROMANCE. 63 
 
 fascinations for all seafaring folk ; and when 
 there was a man-of-war in port the rat-tat-tat of 
 that knocker would frequently startle the quiet 
 neighborhood long after midnight. There ap- 
 peared to be an occult understanding between it 
 and the blue-jackets. Years ago there was a 
 young Bilkins, one Pendexter Bilkins, — a sad 
 losel, we fear, — who ran away to try his for- 
 tunes before the mast, and fell overboard in a 
 gale off Hatteras. " Lost at sea," says the chubby 
 marble slab in the Old South Burying-Ground, 
 " CBtat 18." Perhaps that is why no blue-jacket, 
 sober or drunk, was ever repulsed from the door 
 of the Bilkins .mansion. 
 
 Of course Mrs. Bilkins had her taste in the 
 matter pnd preferred them sober. But as this 
 could not always be, she tempered her wind, so 
 to speak, to the shorn lamb. The flushed, pre- 
 maturely old face that now looked up at her 
 moved the good lady's pity. 
 
 " What do you want ? " she asked kindly. 
 
 " Me wife." 
 
 " There 's no wife for you here," said Mrs. 
 Bilkins, somewhat taken aback. " His wife ! " 
 she thought ; " it 's a mother the poor boy stands 
 in need of." 
 
64 A KIVERMOUTH EOMANCE. 
 
 " Me wife," repeated Mr. O'Rouke, " for b; b 
 ther or for worse." 
 
 " You had better go away," said Mrs. Bilkins, 
 bridling up, " or it will be the worse for you." 
 
 " To have and to howld," continued Mr. 
 O'Rouke, wandering retrospectively in the mazes 
 of the marriage service, " to have and to howld, 
 till death — bad luck to him ! — takes one or the 
 ither of us." 
 
 " You 're a blasphemous creature," said Mrs. 
 Bilkins, severely. 
 
 " Thim 's the words his riverince spake this 
 mornin', standin' foreninst us," explained Mr. 
 O'Rouke. " I stood here, see, and me jew'l 
 stood there, and the howly chaplain beyont." 
 
 And Mr. O'Rouke with a wavering forefinger 
 drew a diagram of the interesting situation on 
 the doorstep. 
 
 " Well," returned Mrs. Bilkins, " if you 're a 
 married man, all I have to say is, there 's a pair 
 of fools instead of one. You had better be off { 
 the person you want does n't live here." 
 
 " Bedad, thin, but she does." 
 
 " Lives here ? " 
 
 " Sorra a place else." 
 
A RIVEHMOUTH BOMANCE. 65 
 
 " The man 's crazy," said Mrs. Bilkins to 
 herself. 
 
 While she thought him simply drunk she was 
 not in the least afraid ; but the idea that she 
 was conversing with a madman sent a chiU ovei 
 her. She reached back her hand preparatory to 
 shutting the door, when Mr. O'Rouke, with an 
 agility that might have been expected from his 
 previous gymnastics, set one foot on the thresh- 
 old and frustrated the design. 
 
 " I want me wife," he said sternly. 
 
 Unfortunately Mr. Bilkins had gone up town, 
 and there was no one in the house except Mar- 
 garet, whose pluck was not to be depended on. 
 The case was urgent. With the energy of de 
 spair Mrs. Bilkins suddenly placed the toe of hei 
 boot against Mr. O'Rouke's invading foot, and 
 pushed it away. The effect of this attack wa? 
 to cause Mr. O'Rouke to describe a complete 
 circle on one leg, and then sit down heavily on 
 the threshold. The lady retreated to the hat- 
 stand, and rested her hand mechanically on the 
 handle of a blue cotton umbrella. Mr. O'Rouke 
 partly turned his head and smUed upon her with 
 conscious superiority. At this juncture a third 
 
66 A BIVERMOUTH KOMANCE. 
 
 actor appeared on the scene, evidently a friend 
 of Mr. O'Rouke, for he addressed that gentleman 
 as " a sapleen," and told him to go home. 
 
 " Divil an inch," replied the sapleen ; but he 
 got himself off the threshold, and resumed his 
 position on the step. 
 
 " It 's only Larry, mum," said the man, touch- 
 ing his forelock politely ; " as dacent a lad as 
 iver lived, when he 's not in liquor ; an' I 've 
 known him to be sober for days togither," he 
 added reflectively. " He don't mane a hap'orth 
 a' harum, but jist now he 's not quite in his 
 right moind." 
 
 " I should think not," said Mrs. Bilkins, turn- 
 ing from the speaker to Mr. O'Rouke, who had 
 seated himself gravely on the scraper, and was 
 weeping. " Has n't the man any friends ? " 
 
 " Too many of 'em, mum, an' it 's along wid 
 dhrinkin' toasts wid 'em that Larry got throwed. 
 The punch that sapleen has dhrunk this day 
 would amaze ye. He give us the slip awhiles 
 ago, bad 'cess to him, an' come up here. Did 
 n't I tell ye, Larry, not to be afther ringin' at 
 the owld gintlemai^'s Ijnocker ? Ain't ye got no 
 Binse at all ? '' 
 
A EIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 67 
 
 " Misther Donnehugh," said Mr. O'Rouke with 
 
 great dignity, " ye 're dhrunk agin." 
 
 Mr. Donnehugh, who had not taken more than 
 
 thirteen ladles of rum-punch, disdained to reply 
 
 directly. 
 "He's a dacent lad enough," — this to Mrs. 
 
 Bilkins, — "hut his head is wake. Whin he 's 
 
 had two sups o' whiskey he belaves he 's dhrank 
 
 a bar'l full. A giU o' wather out of a jimmy- 
 
 john 'd fuddle him, mum." 
 " Is n't there anybody to look after him ? " 
 " No, mum, he 's an orphan ; his father and 
 
 mother live in the owld counthry, an' a fine hale 
 
 owld couple they are." 
 " Has n't he any family in the town — " 
 " Sure, mum, he has a family ; was n't h*" 
 
 married this blessed mornin' ? " 
 " He said so." 
 
 "Indade, thin, he was, — the pore diviiP' 
 " And the — the person ? " inquired Mrs 
 
 Bilkins. 
 " Is it the wife ye mane ? " 
 " Yes, the wife : where is she ? " 
 " Well thin, mum," said Mr. Donnehugn, 
 
 * it *s yerself that can answer that." 
 
68 A KIVEEMOUTH EOMANCB. 
 
 " I ? " exclaimed Mrs. Bilkins. " Good heav- 
 ens ! this man 's as crazy as the other ! " 
 
 " Begorra, if anybody 's crazy it 's Larry, for 
 It 's Larry has married Margaret." 
 
 " What Margaret ? " cried Mrs. Bilkins with 
 A start. 
 
 " Margaret CaUaghan, sure." 
 
 " Our Margaret? Do you mean to say that 
 lUR Margaret has married that — that good-for- 
 xothing, inebriated wretch ! " 
 
 " It 's a civil tongue the owld lady has, any- 
 way," remarked Mr. O'Eouke, critically, from 
 the scraper. 
 
 Mrs. Bilkins's voice during the latter part of 
 the coUoquy had been pitched in a high key ; 
 it rung through the haU and penetrated to the 
 kitchen, where Margaret was thoughtfully wiping 
 the breakfast things. She paused with a half- 
 dried saucer in her hand, and listened. In a 
 moment more she stood, with bloodless face and 
 limp figure, leaning against the banister, behind 
 Mrs. Bilkins. 
 
 " Is it there ye are, me jew'l ! " cries Mr. 
 O'Rouke, discovering her. 
 
 Mrs. Bilkins wheeled upon Margaret. 
 
A EIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 69 
 
 "Margaret Callaghan, is that thing your 
 husband?'; 
 
 "Ye-yes, mum," faltered Mrs. O'Rouke, with 
 a woful lacls of spirit. 
 
 "Then take it away! " cried Mrs. Bilkins. 
 
 Margaret, with a slight flush on either cheeky 
 glided past Mrs. Bilkins, and the heavy oak door 
 closed with a bang, as the gates of Paradise 
 must have closed of old upon Adam and Eve. 
 
 "Come!" said Margaret, taking Mr. O'Rouke 
 by the hand; and the two wandered forth upon 
 their wedding-journey down Anchor Street, with 
 all the world before them where to choose. They 
 chose to halt at the small, shabby tenement-house 
 by the river, through the doorway of which the 
 bridal pair disappeared with a reeling, eccentric 
 gait; for Mr. O'Rouke's intoxication seemed to 
 have run down his elbow, and communicated 
 itself to Margaret. 
 
 O Hymen! who burnest precious gums and 
 scented woods in thy torch at the melting of 
 aristocratic hearts, with what a pitiful penny-dip 
 thou hast lighted up our matter-of-fact romance I 
 
70 A KIVERMOUTH KOMANCE. 
 
 n. 
 
 It had been no part of Margaret's plan to 
 acknowledge the marriage so soon. Though on 
 pleasure bent, she had a frugal mmd. She had 
 invested in a husband with a view of laying him 
 away for a rainy day, that is to say, for such time 
 as her master and mistress should cease to need 
 her services ; for she had promised on more than 
 one occasion to remain with the old people as 
 long as they lived. And, indeed, if Mr. O'Rouke 
 had come to her and said in so many words, 
 " The day you marry me you must leave the Bil- 
 kins family," there is very little doubt but Mar- 
 garet would have let that young sea-monster slip 
 back unmated, so far as she was concerned, into his 
 native element. The contingency never entered 
 into her calculations. She intended that the ship 
 which had brought Ulysses to her island should 
 take him off again after a decent interval of hon- 
 eymoon ; then she would confess all to Mrs. Bil- 
 kins, and be forgiven, and Mr. Bilkins would not 
 
A KIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 71 
 
 cancel that clause supposed to exist in his will 
 bequeathing two first-mortgage bonds of the 
 Squedunk R. R. Co. to a certain faithful servant. 
 In the mean while she would add each month to 
 her store in the coffers of the Rivermouth Sav- 
 ings Bank ; for Calypso had a neat sum to her 
 credit on the books of that provident institution. 
 
 But this could not be now. The volatile bride- 
 groom had upset the wisely conceived plan, and 
 " aU the fat was in the fire," as Margaret philo- 
 sophically put it. Mr. O'Rouke had been fully 
 instructed in the part he was to play, and, to do 
 him justice, had honestly intended to play it; 
 but destiny was against him. It may be observed 
 that destiny and Mr. O'Rouke were not on very 
 friendly terms. 
 
 After the ceremony had been performed and 
 Margaret had stolen back to the Bilkins mansion, 
 as related, Mr. O'Rouke with his own skilful 
 hands had brewed a noble punch for the wedding 
 guests. Standing at the head of the table and 
 stirring the pungent mixture in a small wash-tub 
 purchased for the occasion, Mr. O'Rouke came 
 out in fuU flower. His flow of wit, as he replen- 
 ished the glasses, was as racy and seemingly as 
 
73 A mVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 
 
 inexhaustible as the punch itseK. When Mrs. 
 McLaughlin held out her glass, inadvertently up- 
 side down, for her sixth ladleful, Mr. O'Rouke 
 gallantly declared it should be filled if he had to 
 stand on his head to do it. The elder Miss 
 O'Leary whispered to Mrs. Connally that Mr. 
 O'Rouke was " a perfic gintleman," and the men 
 in a body pronounced him a bit of the raal sham- 
 rock. If Mr. O'Rouke was happy in brewing a 
 punch, he was happier in dispensing it, and hap- 
 piest of all in drinking a great deal of it himself. 
 He toasted Mrs. Pinnigan, the landlady, and the 
 late lamented Finnigan, the father, whom he had 
 never seen, and Miss Biddy Pinnigan, the daugh- 
 ter, and a young toddling Pinnigan, who was at 
 large in shockingly scant raiment. He drank to 
 the company individually and collectively, drank 
 to the absent, drank to a tin-pedler who chanced 
 to pass the window, and indeed was in that pro- 
 pitiatory mood when he would have drunk to the 
 health of each separate animal that came out of 
 the Ark. It was in the midst of the confusion 
 and applause which followed his song, " The 
 Wearing of the Grane." that Mr. O'Rouke, the 
 punch being all gone, withdrew unobserved and 
 
A. RIVEKMOUTH KOMANCE. 73 
 
 went in quest of Mrs. O'Rouke, — with what suc- 
 cess the reader knows. 
 
 According to the love-idyl of the period, when 
 Laura and Charles Henry, after unheard-of ob- 
 stacles, are finally united, all cares and tribula- 
 tions and responsibilities slip from their sleek 
 backs like Christian's burden. The idea is a 
 pretty one, theoretically, but, like some of those 
 models in the Patent Office at Washington, it 
 does n't work. Charles Henry does not go on 
 sitting at Laura's feet and reading Timothy Tit- 
 comb to her forever : the rent of the cottage by 
 the sea falls due with prosaic regularity; there 
 are bakers, and butchers, and babies, and tax-col- 
 lectors, and doctors, and undertakers, and some- 
 times gentlemen of the jury to be attended to. 
 Wedded . life is not one long amatory poem with 
 recurrent rhymes of love and dove, and kiss and 
 bliss. Yet when the average sentimental novel- 
 ist has supplied his hero and heroine with their 
 bridal outfit and attended to that little matter of 
 the marriage certificate, he usually turns off the 
 gas, puts up his shutters, and saunters off with 
 his hands in his pockets, as if the day's business 
 
74 A BIVEBMODTH ROMANCE. 
 
 were over. But we, who are honest dealers in leal 
 life and disdain to give short weight, know better. 
 The business is by no means over : it is just be- 
 gun. It is not Christian throwing off his paok for 
 good and all, but Christian taking up a load heav- 
 ier and more difficult than any he has carried. 
 
 If Margaret Callaghan, when she meditated, 
 matrimony, indulged in any roseate dreams, they 
 were quickly put to flight. She suddenly found 
 herself dispossessed of a quiet, comfortable home, 
 and face to face with the fact that she had a white 
 elephant on her hands. It is not likely that Mr. 
 O'Rouke assumed precisely the shape of a white 
 elephant to her mental vision ; but he was as use- 
 less and cumbersome and unmanageable as one. 
 
 Margaret and Larry's wedding-tour did not 
 extend beyond Mrs. Finnigan's establishment, 
 where they took two or three rooms and set up 
 housekeeping in a humble way. Margaret, who 
 was a tidy housewife, kept the floor of her apart- 
 ments as white as your hand, the tin plates on 
 the dresser as bright as your lady-love's eyes, and 
 the cooking-stove as neat as the machinery on a 
 Sound steamer. When she was not rubbing the 
 stove with lamp-black she was cooking upon it 
 
A KIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 75 
 
 some savory dish to tempt the palate of her ma. 
 riue monster. Naturally of a hopeful tempera- 
 ment, she went about her work singing softly to 
 herself at times, and would have been very happy 
 that first week if Mr. O'Rouke had known a sober 
 moment. But Mr. O'Rouke showed an exasper- 
 ating disposition to keep up festivities. At the 
 end of ten days, however, he toned down, and at 
 Margaret's suggestion that he had better be look- 
 ing about for some employment, he rigged him- 
 self up a fishing-pole and set out with an injured 
 air for the wharf at the foot of the street, where 
 he fished for the rest of the day. To sit for 
 hours blinking in the sun, waiting for a cunner 
 to come along and take his hook, was as exhaust- 
 ive a kind of labor as he cared to engage in. 
 Though Mr. O'Rouke had recently returned from 
 a long cruise, he had not a cent to show. Dur- 
 ing his first three days ashore he had dissipated 
 his three years' pay. The housekeeping expenses 
 began eating a hole in Margaret's little fund, the 
 existence of which was no sooner known to Mr. 
 O'Rouke than he stood up his fishing-rod in one 
 corner of the room, and thenceforth it caught 
 nothing but cobwebs. 
 
76 A KIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 
 
 " Divil a sthroke o' -work I '11 do," said Mi 
 O'Rouke, " -whin we can live at aise on oul 
 earr^'s. Who 'd be afther frettin' hisself, wid 
 money in the bank ? How much is it, Peggy 
 darlint ? " r 
 
 And divil a stroke more of work did he do. 
 He lounged down on the wharves, and, with his 
 short clay pipe stuck between his lips and his 
 hands in his pockets, stared off at the sail-boats 
 on the river. He sat on the doorstep of the 
 Finnigan domicile, and plentifully chaffed the 
 passers-by. Now and then, when he could whee- 
 dle some fractional currency out of Margaret, he 
 spent it like a crown-prince at The Wee Drop 
 around the corner. With that fine magnetism 
 which draws together birds of a feather, he 
 shortly drew about him all the ne'er-do-weels of 
 Rivermouth. It was really wonderful what an 
 unsuspected lot of them there was. From all the 
 frowzy purlieus of the town they crept forth into 
 the sunlight to array themselves under the ban- 
 ner of the prince of scaUawags. It was edifying 
 of a summer afternoon to see a dozen of then? 
 sitting in a row, hke turtles, OE. the string-piece 
 of Jedfidiah Rand's wharf, with their twenty- 
 
A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 77 
 
 four feet dangling over the water, assisting Mr. 
 O'Rouke in contemplating the islands in the 
 harbor, and upholding the scenery, as it were. 
 I The rascal had one accomplishment, he had a 
 heavenly voice, quite in the rough, to be sure, 
 and he played on the violin like an angel. He did 
 not know one note from another, but he played 
 in a sweet natural way, just as Orpheus must 
 have played, by ear. The drunker he was the 
 more pathos and humor he wrung from the old 
 violin, his sole piece of personal property. He 
 had a singular fancy for getting up at two or 
 three o'clock in the morning, and playing by an 
 open casement. All the dogs in the immediate 
 neighborhood and innumerable dogs in the dis- 
 tance would join to swell the chorus on a scale 
 that would have satisfied Mr. Gilmore himself. 
 Unfortunately Mr. O'Rouke's Mtises were not 
 always of so innocent a complexion. On one or 
 two occasions, through an excess of animal and 
 ather spirits, he took to breaking windows in 
 the town. Among his nocturnal feats he accom- 
 plished the demolition of the glass in the door 
 of The Wee Drop. Now, breaking windows in 
 Rivennouth is an amusement not wholly discoir.- 
 
J8 A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 
 
 iaected with an interior view of the police-station 
 (bridewell is the local term) ; so it happened 
 that Mr. O'Rouke woke up one fine morning and 
 found himself snug and tight in one of the cells 
 in the rear of the Brick Market. His plea that 
 the buU's-eye in the glass door of The Wee Drop 
 winked at him in an insultin' manner as he was 
 passing by did not prevent Justice Hackett from 
 fining the delinquent ten dollars and costs, which 
 made sad havoc with the poor wife's bank ac- 
 count. So Margaret's married life wore on, and 
 all went merry as a funeral knell. 
 
 After Mrs. Bilkins, with a brow as severe as 
 one of the Parcae, had closed the door upon the 
 O'Roukes that summer morning, she sat down 
 on the stairs, and, sinking the indignant goddess 
 in the woman, burst into tears. She was stiU 
 very wroth with Margaret Callaghan, as she 
 persisted in calling her ; very merciless and un- 
 forgiving, as the gentler sex are apt to be — to 
 the gentler sex. Mr. Bilkins, however, after the 
 first vexation, missed Margaret from the house- 
 hold ; missed her singing, which was in itself as 
 helpful as a second girl ; missed her hand in the 
 preparation pf those hundred and one nameless 
 
A BIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 79 
 
 comforts which are necessities to the old, and 
 wished in his soul that he had her back again. 
 Who could make a gruel, when he was ill, or 
 cook a steak, when he was well, like Margaret ? 
 So, meeting her one morning at the fish-market, 
 — for Mr. O'Rouke had long since given over 
 the onerous labor of catching cunners, — he 
 spoke to her kindly, and asked her how she liked 
 the change in her life, and if Mr. O'Rouke was 
 good to her. 
 
 " Troth, thin, sur," said Margaret, with a 
 short dry laugh, " he 's the divil's own ! " 
 
 Margaret was thin and careworn, and her 
 laugh had the mild gayety of champagne not 
 properly corked. ITiese things were apparent 
 even to Mr. Bilkins, who was not a shrewd ob- 
 server. With a duplicity quite foreign to his 
 nature, he gradually drew from her the true 
 state of affairs. Mr. O'Rouke was a very bad 
 case indeed; he did nothing towards her sup- 
 port ; he was almost constantly drunk ; the little 
 money she had laid by was melting away, and 
 would not last until winter. Mr. O'Rouke was 
 perpetually coming home with a sprained ankle, 
 Of a bruised shouJder, or a broken head. HiS 
 
so A BIVEBMODTH EOMANCE. 
 
 had broken most of the furniture in his festive 
 hours, including the cooking-stove. " In short," 
 as Mr. Bilkins said in relating the matter after- 
 wards to Mrs. Bilkins, " he had broken all those 
 things which he should n't have broken, and 
 failed to break the one thing he ought to have 
 broken long ago, — his neck, namely." 
 
 The revelation which startled Mr. Bilkins 
 most was this : in spite of all, Margaret loved 
 Larry with the whole of her warm Irish heart. 
 Further than keeping the poor creature up wait- 
 ing for him until ever so much o'clock at night, 
 it did not appear that he treated her with per- 
 sonal cruelty. If he had beaten her, she would 
 have worshipped him ; as it was, she merely 
 loved the ground he trod upon. 
 
 Revolving Margaret's troubles in his thoughts 
 as he walked homeward, Mr. Bilkins struck upon 
 a plan by which he could help her. When this 
 plan was laid before Mrs. Bilkins, she opposed it 
 with a vehemence that convinced him she had 
 made up her mind to adopt it. 
 
 " Never, never will I have that ungrateful 
 woman under this roof ! " cried Mrs. Bilkins : 
 and accordingly the next day Mr. and Mrs. 
 
A RIVKRMOUTH KOMANCE, 81 
 
 O'Rouke took up their abode in the Bilking 
 mansion, — Margaret as cook, and Larry aa 
 gardener. 
 
 " I'm convanient if the owld gintleman is," 
 had been Mr. O'Rouke's remark, when the prop- 
 osition was submitted to him. Not that Mr. 
 O'Rouke had the faintest itiea of gardening. He 
 did n't know a tulip from a tomato. He was 
 one of those sanguine people who never hesitate 
 to undertake anything, and are never abashed by 
 their herculean inability. 
 
 Mr. Bilkins did not look to Margaret's hus- 
 band for any great botanical knowledge ; but he 
 was rather surprised one day when Mr. O'Rouke 
 pointed to the triangular bed of lilies-of-the-val- 
 ley, then out of flower, and remarked, " Thim 's 
 a nate lot o' purtaties ye 've got there, sur." 
 Mr. Bilkins, we repeat, did not expect much 
 from Mr. O'Rouke's skill in gardening ; his pur- 
 pose was to reform the fellow if possible, and in 
 any case to make Margaret's lot easier. 
 
 Re-established in her old home, Margaret 
 broke into song again, and Mr. O'Rouke himself 
 promised to do very well ; morally, we mean, not 
 agriculturally. His ignorance of the simplest 
 
 4* s 
 
82 A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 
 
 laws of nature, if nature has any simple laws, 
 and his dense stupidity on every other subject 
 were heavy trials to Mr. Bilkins. HappUy Mr. 
 Bilkins was not without a sense of humor, else 
 he would have found Mr. O'Rouke insupportable. 
 Just when the old gentleman's patience was 
 about exhausted, the gardener would commit 
 some atrocity so perfectly comical that his master 
 all but loved him for the moment. 
 
 " Larry," said Mr. Bilkins, one breathless af- 
 ternoon in the middle of September, " just see 
 how the thermometer on the back porch stands." 
 
 Mr. O'Rouke disappeared, and after a pro- 
 longed absence returned with the monstrous an- 
 nouncement that the thermometer stood at 820 ! 
 
 Mr. Bilkins looked at the man closely. He 
 was unmistakably sober. 
 
 " Eight hundred and twenty what ? " cried Mr. 
 Bilkins, feeling very warm, as he naturally would 
 in so high a temperature. 
 
 " Eight hundthred an' twinty degrays, I sup- 
 pose, sur." 
 
 " Larry, you 're an idiot." 
 
 This was obviously not to Mr. O'Rouke's taste ; 
 for he went out and brought the thermometer, 
 
A RIVEEMOUTH KOMANCE. 83 
 
 and, pointing triumphantly to the line of numer 
 als running parallel with the glass tuhe, ex- 
 claimed, " Add 'em up yerseK, thin ! " 
 
 Perhaps this would not have been amusing \i 
 Mr. Bilkins had not spent the greater part of the 
 previous forenoon in initiating Mr. O'Rouke in 
 to the mysteries of the thermometer. Nothing 
 could make amusing Mr. O'Rouke's method of 
 setting out crocus bulbs. Mr. Bilkins had re- 
 ceived a lot of a very choice variety from Boston, 
 and having a headache that morning, turned over 
 to Mr. O'Rouke the duty of planting them. 
 Though he had never seen a bulb in his life, 
 Larry unblushingly asserted that he had set out 
 thousands for Sir Lucius O'Grady, of O'Grady 
 Castle, " an Ulegant place intirely, wid tin miles 
 o' garden-walks," added Mr. O'Rouke, crushing 
 Mr. Bilkins, who boasted only of a few humble 
 flower-beds. 
 
 The following day he stepped into the garden 
 to see how Larry had done his work. There 
 stood the parched bulbs, carefully arranged in 
 circles and squares on top of the soil. 
 
 " Did n't I tell you to set out these bulbs ? " 
 cried Mr. Bilkins, wrathfuUy. 
 
84 A KIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 
 
 " An' did n't I set 'em out ? " expostulated 
 Mr. O'Rouke. " An' ain't they a settin' there 
 beautiful ? " 
 
 " But you should have put them into the 
 ground, stupid ! " 
 
 " Is it bury 'em, ye mane ? Be jabbers ! how 
 tould they iver git out agin ? Give the little 
 jokers a fair show, Misther Bilkins ! " 
 
 For two weeks Mr. O'Rouke conducted him- 
 «elf with comparative propriety ; that is to say, 
 he rendered himself useless about the place, ap- 
 peared regularly at his meals, and kept sober. 
 Perhaps the hilarious strains of music which 
 sometimes issued at midnight from the upper 
 window of the north gable were not just what 
 a quiet, unostentatious family would desire ; but 
 on the whole there was not much to complain of. 
 
 The third week witnessed a falling off. Though 
 always promptly on hand at the serving out of 
 rations, Mr. O'Rouke did not even make a pr& 
 tence of working in the garden. He would disap- 
 pear mysteriously immediately after breakfast and 
 reappear with supernatural abruptness at dinner. 
 Nobody knew what he did with himself in the 
 interval, until one day he was observed to fall 
 
A EIVERMOUTH KOMANCE. 85 
 
 ont of an apple-tree near the stable. His retreat 
 discovered, he took to the wharves and the alleys 
 in the distant part of the town. It soon became 
 Evident that his ways were not the ways of tem- 
 perance, and that all his paths led to The Wee 
 Drop. 
 
 Of course, Margaret tried to keep this from 
 the family. Being a woman, she made excuses 
 for him in her heart. It was a dull life for the 
 lad anyway, and it was worse than him that was 
 leading Larry astray. Hours and hours after 
 the old people had gone to bed, she would sit 
 without a light in the lonely kitchen, listening 
 for that shuffling step along the gravel-walk, 
 f^ig-ht after night she never closed her eyes, and 
 went about the house the next day with that 
 smooth, impenetrable face behind which women 
 hide their care. 
 
 One morning found Margaret sitting pale and 
 anxious by the kitchen stove. O'Rouke had not 
 come home at all. Noon came and night, but 
 not Larry. Whenever Mrs. Bilkins approached 
 her that day, Margaret was humming " Kate 
 Kearney" quite merrily. But when her work 
 was done, she stole out at the back gate and 
 
86 A RIVEHMOUTH HOMANCE. 
 
 went in search of him. She scoured the neigh- 
 borhood like a madwoman. O'Rouke had not 
 been at the Finnigans'. He had not been at 
 The Wee Drop since Monday, and this was 
 Wednesday night. Her heart sunk within her 
 when she failed to find him in the police station. 
 Some dreadful thing had happened to him. She 
 came back to the house with one hand pressed 
 wearily against her cheek. The dawn struggled 
 through the kitchen windows, and fell upon Mar- 
 garet crouched by the stove. 
 
 She could no longer wear her mask. When 
 Mr. Bilkins came down she confessed that Larry 
 had taken to drinking again, and had not been 
 home for two nights. 
 
 " Mayhap he 's drownded hisself," suggested 
 Margaret, wringing her hands. 
 
 " Not he," said Mr. Bilkins ; " he does n't like 
 the taste of water well enough." 
 
 " Troth, thin, he does n't," reflected Margaret ; 
 and the reflection comforted her. 
 
 " At any rate, I '11 go and look him up after 
 breakfast," said Mr. Bilkins. And after break- 
 fast, accordingly, Mr. Bilkins sallied forth with 
 the depressing expectation of finding Mr. O'Rouka 
 
A SIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 87 
 
 without much difficulty. " Come to think of it," 
 said the old gentleman to himself, drawing on 
 his white cotton gloves as he walked up Anchor 
 Street, " / don't want to find him." 
 
88 A KIVEKMOUTH EOMANCB. 
 
 rir. 
 
 But Mr. O'Rouke was not to be found. With 
 amiable cynicism Mr. Bilkins directed his steps 
 in the first instance to the police station, qviite 
 confident that a bird of Mr. O'Rouke's plumage 
 would be brought to perch in such a cage. But 
 not so much as a feather of him was discover- 
 able. The Wee Drop was not the only bacchsr 
 nalian resort in Rivermouth ; there were five 
 or six other low drinking-shops scattered about 
 town, and through these Mr. Bilkins went con- 
 scientiously. He then explored various blind 
 alleys, known haunts of the missing man, and 
 took a careful survey of the wharves along the 
 river on his way home. He even shook the ap- 
 ple-tree near the stable with a vague hope of 
 bringing down Mr. O'Rouke, but brought down 
 nothing except a few winter apples, which, being 
 both unripe and unsound, were not perhaps bad 
 representatives of the object of his search. 
 
 That evening a small boy stopped at the door 
 
A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 8& 
 
 of the Bilkins mansion with a straw hat, at onca 
 identified as Mr. O'Rouke's, which had heen 
 found on Neal's Wharf. This would liave told 
 against another man ; but O'Rouke was always 
 leaving his hat on a wharf. Margaret's distress 
 is not to be pictured. She fell back upon and 
 clung to the idea that Larry had drowned him- 
 self, not intentionally, maybe ; possibly he had 
 fallen overboard while intoxicated-. 
 
 The late Mr. Buckle has informed us that 
 death by drowning is regulated by laws as invio- 
 lable and beautiful as those of the solar system ; 
 that a certain percentage of the earth's popula- 
 tion is bound to drown itself annually, whether 
 it wants to or not. It may be presumed, then, 
 that Rivermouth's proper quota of dead bodies 
 was washed ashore during the ensuing two 
 months. There had been gales off the coast and 
 pleasure parties on the river, and between them 
 they had managed to do a ghastly business. But 
 Mr. O'Rouke failed to appear among the flotsam 
 and jetsam which the receding tides left tangled 
 in the piles of the Rivermouth wharves. This 
 convinced Margaret that Larry had proved a too 
 tempting morsel to some buccaneering shark, or 
 
90 A EIVERMOUTH EOMANCE. 
 
 had fallen a victim to one of those inamense 
 schools of fish which seem to have a yearly 
 appointment with the fishermen on this coast. 
 Prom that day Margaret never saw a cod or a 
 mackerel brought into the house without an in- 
 voluntary shudder. She averted her head in 
 making up the fish-balls, as if she half dreaded 
 to detect a faint aroma of whiskey about them. 
 And, indeed, why might not a man faU into the 
 sea, be eaten, say, by a halibut, and reappear on 
 the scene of his earthly trivmiphs and defeats in 
 the non-committal form of hashed fish ? 
 
 "Imperial Csesar, dead, and tum'd to clay. 
 Might stop a hole to keep the wind away." 
 
 But, perhaps, as the conservative Horatio sug- 
 gests, 'twere to consider too curiously to con- 
 sider so. 
 
 Mr. Bilkins had come to adopt Margaret's ex- 
 planation of O'Rouke's disappearance. He was 
 undoubtedly drowned, had most likely drowned 
 himseK. The hat picked up on the wharf was 
 strong circumstantial evidence in that direction. 
 But one feature of the case staggered Mr. Bil- 
 kins. O'Rouke's violin had also disappeared. 
 Now, it required no great effort to imagine a man 
 
A RIVERMOUTH HOMANCE. 91 
 
 throwing himseM overboard under the influence 
 »f mama a potu ; but it was difficult to conceive 
 id a man committing violinicide ! If the fellow 
 went to drown himself, why did he take his fid- 
 dle with him ? He might as well have taken an 
 \imbrella or a German student-lamp. This ques- 
 tion troubled Mr. Bilkins a good deal first and 
 last. But one thing was indisputable : the man 
 was gone, — and had evidently gone by water. 
 
 It was now that Margaret invested her hus- 
 band with charms of mind and person not calcu- 
 lated to make him recognizable by any one who 
 had ever had the privilege of knowing him in the 
 faulty flesh. She ehminated all his bad quali- 
 ties, and projected from her imagination a Mr. 
 O'Rouke as he ought to have been, — a species 
 of seraphic being mixed up in some way with a 
 violin ; and to this ideal she erected a headstone 
 in the suburban cemetery. If Mr. O'Rouke could 
 have read the inscription, he would never have 
 suspected his own complicity in the matter. 
 
 But there the marble stood, sacred to his 
 memory ; and soon the snow came down from 
 the gray sky and covered it, and the invisible 
 Bnow of weeks and months drifted down ou 
 
93 A EIVEKMOUTH ROMANCE. 
 
 Margaret's heart, and filled up its fissures, and 
 Bmootlied off the sharp angles of its grief ; and 
 there was peace upon it. 
 
 Not but she sorrowed for Larry at times. But 
 life had a relish to it again ; she was free, though 
 she did not look at it in that light ; she was hap- 
 pier in a quiet fashion than she had ever been, 
 though she would not have acknowledged it to 
 herself. She wondered that she had the heart to 
 laugh when the ice-man made love to her. Per- 
 haps she was conscious of something comically 
 incongruous in the warmth of a gentleman who 
 spent aU winter in cutting ice, and aU summer 
 in dealing it out to his customers. She had not 
 the same excuse for laughing at the baker ; yet 
 she laughed still more merrily at him when he 
 pressed her hand over the steaming loaf of brown- 
 bread, delivered every Saturday morning at the 
 scullery door. Both these gentlemen had known 
 Margaret many years, yet neither of them had 
 valued her very highly until another man came 
 along and married her. A widow, it woxild ap- 
 pear, is esteemed in some sort as a warrantee, 
 article, being stamped with the maker's name. 
 
 There was eye^ a third lover in prospect ; foi 
 
A RIVERMOUTH BOMANCE. 93 
 
 Recording to the gossip of the town, Mr. Donne- 
 hugh was frequently to be seen of a Sunday 
 afternoon standing in the cemetery and regard- 
 ing Mr. O'Rouke's headstone with unrestrained 
 satisfaction. 
 
 A year had passed away, and certain bits of 
 color blossoming among Margaret's weeds in- 
 dicated that the winter of her mourning was 
 over. The ice-man and the baker were hating 
 each other cordially, and Mrs. Bilkins was daily 
 expecting it would be discovered before night 
 that Margaret had married one or both of them. 
 But to do Margaret justice, she was faithful ia 
 thought and deed to the memory of O'Rouke, 
 ■ — not the O'Rouke who disappeared so strange- 
 ly, but the O'Rouke who never existed. 
 
 " D' ye think, mum," she said one day to Mrs. 
 Bilkins, as that lady was adroitly sounding her 
 on the ice question, — "d'ye think I'd conde- 
 Bcind to take up wid the likes o' him, or the hakes 
 either, afther sich a man as Larry?" 
 
 The rectified and clarified O'Rouke was a per- 
 manent wonder to Mr. Bilkins, who bore up 
 nnder the bereavement with remarkable resig- 
 nation. 
 
94- A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 
 
 " Peggy is right," said the old gentleman, 
 who was superintending the burning out of the 
 fcitchen flue. " She won't find another man 
 like Larry O'Rouke, in a hurry." 
 
 " Thrue for ye, Mr. Bilkins," answered Mar- 
 garet. " Maybe there 's as good fish in the say 
 fcs iver was caught, but I don't belave it aU the 
 Bame." 
 
 As good fish in the sea ! The words recalled 
 to Margaret the nature of her loss, and she went 
 on with her work in silence. 
 
 "What — what is it, Ezra?" cried Mrs. Bil- 
 kins, changing color, and rising hastily from 
 the breakfast-table. Her first thought was apo- 
 plexy. 
 
 There sat Mr. Bilkins, with his wig pushed 
 back from his forehead, and his eyes fixed va- 
 cantly on The Weekly Chronicle, which he held 
 out at arm's length before him. 
 
 " Good heavens, Ezra ! what is the matter ? " 
 
 Mr. Bilkins turned his eyes upon her mechani- 
 cally, as if he were a great wax-doll, and some- 
 body had pulled his wire. 
 
 " Can't you speak, Ezra ? " 
 
A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 95 
 
 His lips opened, and moved inarticulately', 
 then he pointed a rigid finger, in the manner of 
 a guide-board, at a paragraph in the paper, which 
 he held up for Mrs. Bilkins to read over his 
 shoulder. When she had read it she sunk back 
 into her chair without a word, and the two sat 
 contemplating each other as if they had never 
 met before in this world, and were not over- 
 pleased at meeting. 
 
 The paragraph which produced this singular 
 effect on the aged couple occurred at the end of 
 a column of telegraph despatches giving the de- 
 tails of an unimportant engagement that had just 
 taken place between one of the blockading squad- 
 ron and a Confederate cruiser. The engagement 
 itself does not concern us, but this item from the 
 list of casualties on the Union side has a direct 
 bearing on our narative : — 
 
 " Larry O'Rouke, seaman, splinter wound in 
 tke leg. Not serious." 
 
 That splinter flew far. It glanced from Mr. 
 U'Rouke's leg, went plumb through the Bilkins 
 toansion, and knocked over a small marble slab 
 ix the Old South Burying-Ground. 
 
 If a ghost had dropped in familiarly to break- 
 
96 A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 
 
 fast, the constraint and consternation of the 3% 
 kins family could not have been greater. Hot* 
 was the astounding intelligence to be broken to 
 Margaret ? Her explosive Irish nature made the 
 task one of extreme delicacy. Mrs. Bilkins flatly 
 declared herself incapable of undertai-mg it. Mr. 
 Bilkins, with many misgivings as to Ms fitness, 
 assimied the duty ; for it would nrver do to have 
 the news sprung upon Margaret suddenly by 
 people outside. 
 
 As Mrs. O'Rouke was clearing away the break- 
 fast things, Mr. Bilkins, who had lingered near 
 the window with the newspaper in his hand, 
 coughed once or twice in an unnatural way to 
 show that he was not embarrassed, and began to 
 think that maybe it would be best to tell Mar- 
 garet after dinner. Mrs. Bilkins fathomed his 
 thought with that intuition which renders women 
 terrible, and sent across the room an eye-tele- 
 gram to this effect, " Now is your time." 
 
 " There 's been another battle down South, 
 Margaret," said the old gentleman presently, 
 folding up the paper and putting it in his pocket. 
 " A sea-iight this time." 
 
 " Sure, an' they 're alius fightin' down there." 
 
A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 97 
 
 " But not always with so little damage. Therfl 
 was only one man wounded on our side." 
 
 " Pore man ! It 's sorry we oughter be for hife 
 wife an' childer, if he 's got any." 
 
 "Not badly wounded, you wiU understan(^ 
 Margaret ; not at all seriously wounded ; only a 
 splinter in the leg." 
 
 " Faith, thin, a splinter in the leg is no pleas- 
 ant thing in itself." 
 
 " A mere scratch," said Mr. Bilkins lightly, as 
 if he were constantly in the habit of going about 
 Vith a splinter in his own leg, and found it rather 
 agreeable. " The odd part of the matter is the 
 man's first name. His first name was Larry." 
 
 Margaret nodded, as one should say, There 's 
 a many Larrys in the world. 
 
 "But the oddest part of it," continued Mr. 
 Bilkins, in a carelessly sepulchral Toice, " is the 
 man's last name." 
 
 Something in the tone of his voice made Mar- 
 garet look at him, and something in the expres- 
 sion of his face caused the blood to fly from Mar- 
 garet's cheek. 
 
 " The man's last name," she repeated, won- 
 deriugly. 
 
98 A ElVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 
 
 " Yes, his last name, — O'Rouke." 
 
 "D'ye mane it?" shrieked Margaret, — " d' 
 ye mane it ? Glory to God ! worra ! worra ! " 
 
 "Well, Ezra," said Mrs. Bilkins, in one of 
 those spasms of base ingratitude to which even 
 the most perfect women are liable, " you 're made 
 nice work of it. You might as well have knocked 
 her down with an axe ! " 
 
 " But, my dear — " 
 
 " bother ! — my smelling-bottle, quick ! — 
 second bureau drawer, — left-hand side." 
 
 Joy never kills ; it is a celestial kind of hy- 
 drogen of which it seems impossible to get too 
 much at one inhalation. In an hour Margaret 
 was able to converse with comparative calmness 
 on the resuscitation of Larry O'Rouke, whom 
 the firing of a cannon had brought to the sur- 
 face as if he had been in reality a drowned 
 body. 
 
 Now that the whole town was aware of Mr. 
 O'Rouke's fate, his friend Mr. Donnehugh came 
 forward with a statement that woidd have been 
 of some interest at an earlier period, but was of 
 no service as matters stood, except so far as it 
 assisted in removing from Mr. Bilkins's mind a 
 
A RIVEBMOUTH ROMANCE. 99 
 
 passing doubt as to whether the Larry O'Rouke 
 of the telegraphic reports was Margaret's scape- 
 grace of a husband. Mr. Donnehugh had known 
 all along that O'Rouke had absconded to Boston 
 by a night train and enlisted in the navy. It 
 was the possession of this knowledge that had 
 made it impossible for Mr. Donnehugh to look at 
 Mr. O'Rouke's graTestone without grinning. 
 
 At Margaret's request, and in Margaret's 
 name, Mr. Bilkins wrote three or four letters to 
 O'Rouke, and finally succeeded in extorting an 
 epistle from that gentleman, in which he told 
 Margaret to cheer up, that his fortune was as 
 good as made, and that the day would come 
 when she should ride through the town in her 
 own coach, and no thanks to old flint-head, who 
 pretended to be so fond of her. Mr. Bilkins tried 
 to conjecture who was meant by old flint-head, 
 but was obliged to give it up. Mr. O'Rouke 
 furthermore informed Margaret that he had three 
 hundred dollars prize-money coming to him, and 
 broadly intimated that when he got home he 
 intended to have one of the most extensive blow- 
 outs ever witnessed in Rivermouth. 
 
 " Oche ! " laughed Margaret, " that 's jist Larry 
 
100 A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 
 
 over agin. The pore lad was alius full of his 
 nonsense an' spirits." 
 
 " That he was," said Mr. Bilkins, dryly. 
 
 Content with the fact that her husband was in 
 the land of the living, Margaret gave herself 
 no trouble over the separation. O'Eouke had 
 shipped for three years ; one third of his term xrf 
 service was past, and two years more, God will- 
 ing, would see him home again. This was Mar- 
 garet's view of it. Mr. Bilkins's view of it was 
 not so cheerful. The prospect of Mr. O'Rouke's 
 ultimate return was anything but enchanting. 
 Mr. Bilkins was by no means disposed to kill the 
 fatted calf. He would much rather have killed 
 the Prodigal Son. However, there was always 
 this chance : he might never come back. 
 
 The tides rose and fell at the Rivermouth 
 wharves ; the summer moonlight and the winter 
 snow, in turn, bleached its quiet streets ; and 
 the two years had nearly gone by. In the 
 mean time nothing had been heard of O'Rouke. 
 If he ever received the five or six letters sent 
 to him, he did not fatigue himself by answering 
 them. 
 
 " Larry 's all right," said hopeful Margaret. 
 
A EIVEKMOUTH UOMANCE. 101 
 
 " If any harum had come to the gossoon, we 'd 
 have knowed it. It 's the bad news that travels 
 fast." 
 
 Mr. Bilkins was not so positive about that. It 
 had taken a whole year to find out that O'Rouke 
 had not drowned himself. 
 
 The period of Mr. O'Rouke's enlistment had 
 come to an end. Two months slipped, by, and 
 he had neglected to brighten Rivermouth with 
 his presence. There were many things that 
 might have detained him, difficulties in getting 
 his prize-papers or in drawing his pay ; but there 
 was no reason why he might not have written. 
 The days were beginning to grow long to Mar- 
 garet, and vague forebodings of misfortune pos- 
 sessed her. 
 
 Perhaps we had better look up Mr. O'Rouke. 
 
 He had seen some rough times, during those 
 three years, and some harder work than catching 
 cunners at the foot of Anchor Street, or setting 
 out crocuses in Mr. Bilkins's back garden. He 
 had seen battles and shipwreck, and death in 
 many guises ; but they had taught him nothing, 
 as the sequel will show. With his active career 
 in the navy we shall not trouble ourselves ; w« 
 
102 A. RIVEKMOUTH ROMANCB. 
 
 take him up at a date a little prior to the close 
 of Ms term of service. 
 
 Several montlis before, he had been transferred 
 from the blockading squadron to a gun-boat at- 
 tached to the fleet operating against the forts de- 
 fending New Orleans. The forts had fallen, the 
 fleet had passed on to the city, and Mr. O'Kouke's 
 ship lay off in the stream, binding up her -wounds. 
 In three days he would receive his discharge, and 
 the papers entitling him to a handsome amount 
 of prize-money in addition to his pay. With 
 noble contempt for so much good fortune, Mr. 
 O'Rouke dropped over the bows of the gun-boat 
 one evening and managed to reach the levee. 
 In the city he fell in with some soldiers, and, 
 being of a convivial nature, caroused with them 
 that night, and next day enlisted in a cavalry 
 regiment. 
 
 Desertion in the face of the enemy — ■ for 
 though the city lay under Federal guns, it was 
 still hostile enough — involved the heaviest pen- 
 alties. O'Rouke was speedily arrested with other 
 deserters, tried by court-martial, and sentenced 
 to death. 
 
 The intelligence burst like a shell upon tho 
 
A. KIVERMOUTH ROMANCE, 103 
 
 quiet household in Anchor Street, listening daily 
 for the sound of Larry O'Rouke's footstep on the 
 threshold. It was a heavy load for Margaret to 
 bear, after all those years of patient vigil. But 
 the load was to be lightened for her. In consid- 
 eration of O'Rouke's long service, and in view 
 of the fact that his desertion so near the expira- 
 tion of his time was an absurdity, the Good Pres- 
 ident commuted his sentence to imprisonment 
 for life, with loss of prize-money and back pay. 
 Mr. O'Rouke was despatched North, and placed 
 in Moyamensing Prison. 
 
 If joy could kill, Margaret would have been a 
 dead woman the day these tidings reached River- 
 mouth ; and Mr. Bilkins himself would have been 
 in a critical condition, for, though he did not 
 want O'Rouke shot or hanged, he was delighted 
 to have him permanently shelved. 
 
 After the excitement was over, and this is 
 always the trying time, Margaret accepted the 
 situation philosophically. 
 
 "The pore lad 's out o' harum's rache, any 
 way," she reflected. " He can't be gittin' into 
 hot wather now, and that ^s a fact. And may- 
 be after awhiles they '11 let him go agin. They 
 
104 A RIVEEMOUTH ROMANCE. 
 
 let oat murtherers and thaves and sich like, and 
 Larry 's done no hurt to nobody but hisself." 
 
 Margaret was inclined to be rather severe on 
 President Lincoln for taking away Larry's prize- 
 money. The impression was strong on her 
 mind that the money went into Mr. Lincoln's 
 private exchequer. 
 
 " I would n't wonder if Misthress Lincoln had 
 a new silk gownd or two tins fall," Margaret 
 would remark, sarcastically. 
 
 The prison rules permitted Mr. O'Rouke to re- 
 ceive periodical communications from his friends 
 outside. Once every quarter Mr. Bilkins wrote 
 him a letter, and in the interim Margai'et kept 
 him supplied with those doleful popular ballads, 
 printed on broadsides, which one sees pinned up 
 for sale on the iron railings of city churchyards, 
 and seldom anywhere else. They seem the nat- 
 ural exhalations of the mould and pathos of 
 such places, but we have a suspicion that they 
 are written by sentimental young undertakers. 
 Though these songs must have been a solace to 
 Mr. O'Rouke in his captivity, he never so far 
 forgot himself as to acknowledge their receipt. 
 It was only through the kindly chaplain of the 
 
A HIVERMOUTH HOMANCB, 105 
 
 prison that Margaret was now and then advised 
 of the well-being of her husband. 
 
 Towards the close of that year the great 
 D'Rouke himself did condescend to write one 
 letter. As this letter has never been printed, 
 and as it is the only specimen extant of Mr. 
 O'Rouke's epistolary manner, we lay it before 
 the reader verbatim et lileralim : — 
 
 febuary. 1864 
 mi belovid wife 
 
 fur the luv of God sind mee pop gose 
 
 the wezeL yours till deth 
 
 larry O rouka 
 
 " Pop goes the "Weasel " was sent to him, and 
 Mr. Bilkins ingeniously slipped into the same 
 envelope '" Beware of the Bowl," and " The 
 Drunkard's Death," two spirited compositions 
 well calculated to exert a salutaiy influence over 
 a man imprisoned for hfe. 
 
 There is nothing in tliis earthly existence so 
 uncertain as what seems to be a certainty. To 
 all appearances, the world outside of Moyamen- 
 sing Prison was forever a closed book to O'Rouke. 
 But the Southern Confederacy collapsed, the Gen- 
 eral Amnesty Proclamation was issued, cell doors 
 were thrown open ; and one afternoon Mr. Larry 
 
 5» 
 
106 A RIVEKMOUTH ROMANCE. 
 
 O'Rouke, with his head neatly shaved, walked 
 into the Bilkins kitchen and frightened Margaret 
 nearly out of her sKin. 
 
 Mr. O'Rouke's summing up of his case was 
 characteristic : " I 've bin kilt in battle, hanged 
 by the coort-martial, put into the lock-up for life, 
 and here I am, bedad, not a ha'p'orth the worse 
 for it." 
 
 None the worse for it, certainly, and none the 
 better. By no stretch of magical fiction can we 
 make an angel of liim. He is not at all the 
 material for an apotheosis. It was not for him 
 to reform and settle down, and become a respect- 
 able, oppressed tax-payer. His conduct in River- 
 mouth, after his return, was a repetition of his 
 old ways. Margaret all but broke down under 
 the tests to which he put her affections, and 
 came at last to wish that Larry had never got 
 out of Moyamensing Prison. 
 
 If any change had taken place in Mr. O'Rouke, 
 it showed itself in occasional fits of suUenness 
 towards Margaret. It was in one of these moods 
 that he slouched his hat over his brows, and told 
 her she need n't wait dinner for him. 
 
 It will be a cold dinner, if Margaret has kept 
 
A F.IVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 107 
 
 it waiting ; for two years have gone by since that 
 day, and O'Rouke has not come home. 
 
 Possibly he is off on a whaling voyage ; pos^ 
 eibly the svrif t maelstrom has dragged him down ; 
 perhaps he is lifting his hand to knock at the 
 door of the Bilkins mansion as we pen these 
 words. But Margaret does not watch for him 
 impatiently any more. There are strands of gray 
 in ber Uack hair. She has had her romance. 
 
QUITE SO. 
 
 f\P course that was not his name. Even in 
 ^ the State of Maine, where it is stUl a cus- 
 tom to maim a child for life by christening him 
 Arioch or Shadrach or Ephraim, nobody would 
 dream of calling a boy " Quite So." It was 
 merely a nickname which we gave him in camp ; 
 but it stuck to him with such bur-like tenacity, 
 and is so inseparable from my memory of him, 
 that I do not think I could write definitely of 
 John Bladburn if I were to call him anything 
 but " Quite So." 
 
 It was one night shortly after the first battle 
 of Bull Run. The Army of the Potomac, shat 
 tered, stunned, and forlorn, was back in its old 
 quarters behind the earth-works. The melan- 
 eholy line of ambulances bearing our wounded 
 
QUITE SO. 109 
 
 to Washington was not done creeping over Long 
 Bridge ; the blue smocks and the gray still lay 
 in windrows on the field of Manassas ; and the 
 gloom that weighed down our hearts was like 
 the fog that stretched along the bosom of the 
 Potomac, and infolded the valley of the Shenan- 
 doah. A drizzling rain had set in at twilight. 
 and, growing bolder with the darkness, was beat» 
 ing a dismal tattoo on the tent, — the tent of 
 Mess 6, Company A, -th Regiment N. Y. Vol- 
 unteers. Our mess, consisting originally of eight 
 men, was reduced to four. Little Billy, as one 
 of the boys grimly remarked, had concluded to 
 remain at Manassas ; Corporal Steele we had to 
 leave at Fairfax Court-House, shot through the 
 hip ; Hunter and Suydam we had said good by 
 to that afternoon. " Tell Johnny Reb," says 
 Hunter, lifting up the leather side-piece of the 
 ambulance, " that I '11 be back again as soon as 
 I get a new leg." But Suydam said nothing; 
 he only unclosed his eyes languidly and smiled 
 farewell to us. 
 
 The four of us who were left alive and unhurt 
 that shameful July day sat gloomily smoking our 
 brier-wood pipes, thinking our thoughts, and lis- 
 
110 (iUITE SO. 
 
 tening to the rain pattering against the canvas. 
 That, and the occasional whine of a hungry cur, 
 foraging on the outskirts of the camp for a stray 
 bone, alone broke the silence, save when a vi- 
 cious drop of rain detached itself meditatively 
 from the ridge-pole of the tent, and fell upon 
 the wick of our tallow candle, making it " cuss," 
 as Ned Strong described it. The candle was in 
 the midst of one of its most profane fits when 
 Blakely, knocking the ashes from his pipe and ad- 
 dressing no one in particular, but giving breath, 
 unconsciously as it were, to the result of his cogi- 
 tations, observed that " it was considerable of a 
 fizzle." 
 
 " The ' on to Richmond ' business ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I wonder what they '11 do about it over yon- 
 der," said Curtis, pointing over his right shoul- 
 der. By " over yonder " he meant the North in 
 general and Massachusetts especially. Curtis 
 was a Boston boy, and his sense of locality was 
 so strong that, during all his wanderings in Vir- 
 ginia, I do not believe there was a moment, day 
 or night, when he could not have made a bee-lina 
 for Faneuil Hall. 
 
QUITE SO. Ill 
 
 « Do about it ? " cried Strong. " They '11 
 make about two hundred thousand blue flannel 
 trousers and send them along, each pair with a 
 man in it, — all the short men in the long trous- 
 ers, and all the tall men in the short ones," he 
 added, ruefully contemplating his own leg-gear, 
 which scarcely reached to his ankles. 
 
 " That 's so," said Blakely. " Just how, when 
 I was tackling the commissary for an extra 
 candle, I saw a crowd of new fellows drawing 
 blankets." 
 
 " I say there, drop that ! " cried Strong. " All 
 right, sir, did n't know it was you," he added 
 hastUy, seeing it was Lieutenant Haines who had 
 thrown back the flap of the tent, and let in a 
 gust of wind and rain that threatened the most 
 serious bronchial consequences to our discon- 
 tented tallow dip. 
 
 " You 're to bunk in here," said the lieuten- 
 ant, speaking to some one outside. The some 
 one stepped in, and Haines vanished in the dark- 
 ness. 
 
 When Strong had succeeded in restoring the 
 candle to consciousness, the light fell upon a tall, 
 ehy-looking man of about thirty-five, with long, 
 
113 QUITE SO. 
 
 hay-colored beard and mustache, upon which the 
 rain-drops stood in clusters, like the night-dew 
 on patches of cobweb in a meadow. It was an 
 honest face, with unworldly sort of blue eyes, 
 that looked out from under the broad visor of the 
 infantry cap. With a deferential glance towards 
 us, the new-comer unstrapped his knapsack, 
 spread his blanket over it, and sat down im- 
 obtrusively. 
 
 " Rather damp night out," remarked Blakely, 
 whose strong hand was supposed to be conver- 
 sation. 
 
 " Quite so," replied the stranger, not curtly, 
 but pleasantly, and with an air as if he had said 
 all there was to be said about it. 
 
 " Come from the North recently ? " inquired 
 Blakely, after a pause. 
 
 » Yes." 
 
 " From any place in particular ? " 
 
 " Maine." 
 
 " People considerably stirred up down there ? " 
 continued Blakely, determined not to give up. 
 
 " Quite so." 
 
 Blakely threw a puzzled look over the tent, 
 and seeing Ned Strong on the broad grin, frowned 
 
quiTE so. lis 
 
 eeverely. Strong instantly assumed an abstracted 
 air, and began humming softly, 
 
 " I wish 1 was in Dixie." 
 
 " The State of Maine," observed Blakely, with 
 a certain defiance of manner not at all necessary 
 in discussing a geographical question, " is a 
 pleasant State." 
 
 *' In summer," suggested the stranger. 
 
 " In summer, I mean," returned Blakely with 
 animation, thinking he had broken the ice. 
 " Cold as blazes in winter, though, — is n't it ? " 
 
 The new recruit merely nodded. 
 
 Blakely eyed the man homicidally for a mo- 
 ment, and then, smiling one of those smiles of 
 simulated gayety which the novelists inform us» 
 are more tragic than tears, turned upon him with 
 withering irony. 
 
 " Trust you left the old folks pretty comfort- 
 able ? " 
 
 " Dead." 
 
 " The old folks dead ! " 
 
 " Quite so." 
 
 Blakely made a sudden dive for his blanket, 
 tucked it around him with painful precision, and 
 was heard no more. 
 
114 QUITE SO. 
 
 Just then the bugle sounded " lights out," — ■ 
 bugle answering bugle in far-off camps. When 
 our not elaborate night-toilets were complete, 
 Strong threw somebody else's old boot at the 
 candle with infallible aim, and darkness took 
 possession of the tent. Ned, who lay on my 
 left, presently reached over to me, and whis- 
 pered, " I say, our friend ' quite so ' is a garru- 
 lous old boy ! He '11 talk himself to death some 
 of these odd times, if he is n't careful. How he 
 did run on ! " 
 
 The next morning, when I opened my eyes, the 
 new member of Mess 6 was sitting on his knap- 
 sack, combing his blond beard with a horn comb. 
 He nodded pleasantly to me, and to each of the 
 boys as they woke up, one by one. Blakely did 
 not appear disposed to renew the animated con- 
 versation of the previous night ; but while he 
 was gone to make a requisition for what was in 
 pure sarcasm called coffee, Curtis ventured to 
 ask the man his name. 
 
 " Bladburn, John," was the reply. 
 
 " That 's rather an unwieldy name for every- 
 day use," put in Strong. " If it would n't hurt 
 your feelings, I'd like to call you Quite So,— » 
 
quiTE so. 115 
 
 for short. Don't say no, if you don't like it. la 
 it agreeable ? " 
 
 Bladburn gave a little laugh, all to himself, 
 seemingly, and was about to say, " Quite so," 
 when he caught at the words, blushed like a girl, 
 and nodded a sunny assent to Strong. Prom that 
 day until the end, the sobriquet clung to him. 
 
 The disaster at Bull Run was followed, as the 
 reader knows, by a long period of masterly in- 
 activity, so far as the Army of the Potomac was 
 concerned. McDowell, a good soldier but un- 
 lucky, retired to Arlington Heights, and Mc- 
 Clellan, who had distinguished himself in Western 
 Virginia, took command of the forces in front of 
 Washington, and bent his energies to reorganiz- 
 ing the demoralized troops. It was a dreary 
 time to the people of the North, who looked 
 fatuously from week to week for " the fall of 
 Riclimond " ; and it was a dreary time to the 
 denizens of that vast city of tents and forts 
 which stretched in a semicircle before the be- 
 leaguered Capitol, — so tedious and soul-wearing 
 a time that the hardships of forced marches and 
 the horrors of battle became desirable things to 
 them. 
 
116 QUITE SO. 
 
 Roll-call morning and evening, guard-duty, 
 dress-parades, an occasional reconnoissance, dom- 
 inos, wrestling-matches, and such rude games 
 9,s could be carried on in camp made up the sum 
 of our lives. The arrival of the mail with letters 
 and papers from home was the event of the day. 
 We noticed that Bladburn neither wrote nor 
 received any letters. When the rest of the boys 
 were scribbling away for dear life, with drvmi- 
 heads and knapsacks and cracker-boxes for 
 writing-desks, he would sit serenely smoking his 
 pipe, but looking out on us through rings of smoke 
 with a face expressive of the tenderest interest. 
 
 " Look here. Quite So," Strong would say, 
 " the mail-bag closes in half an hour. Ain't you 
 going to write ? " 
 
 " I believe not to-day," Bladburn would reply, 
 as if he had written yesterday, or would write to- 
 morrow : but he never wrote. 
 
 He had become a great favorite with us, and 
 with all the oiBcers of the regiment. He talked 
 less than any man I ever knew, but there was 
 nothing sinister or sullen in his reticence. It 
 was sunshine, — warmth and brightness, but no 
 voice. Unassuming and modest to the verge of 
 
QUITE SO. 117 
 
 shyness, he impressed every one as a man of 
 singular pluck and nerve. 
 
 " Do you know," said Curtis to me one day, 
 " that that fellow Quite So is clear grit, and 
 when we come to close quarters with our Pal- 
 metto brethren over yonder, he '11 do something 
 devilish ? " 
 
 " What makes you think so ? " 
 
 " Well, nothing quite explainable ; the exas- 
 perating coolness of the man, as much as any- 
 thing. This morning the boys were teasing 
 Muffin Fan " [a small mulatto girl who used to 
 bring muffins into camp three times a week, — at 
 the peril of her life !] " and Jemmy Blunt of 
 Company K — you know him — was rather rough 
 on the girl, when Quite So, who had been reading 
 under a tree, shut one finger in his book, walked 
 over to where the boys were skylarking, and with 
 the smile of a juvenile angel on his face lifted 
 Jemmy out of that and set him down gently in 
 front of his own tent. There Blunt sat speech- 
 less, staring at Quite So, who was back again' 
 under the tree, pegging away at his little Latin 
 grammar." 
 
 That Latin grammar ! He always had it about 
 
118 QUITE SO. 
 
 him, reading it or turning over its dog's-eared 
 pages at odd intervals and in out-of-the-way 
 places. Half a dozen times a day he would draw 
 it out from the bosom of his blouse, which had 
 taken the shape of the book just over the left 
 breast, look at it as if to assure himself it was all 
 right, and then put the thing back. At night 
 the volume lay beneath his pillow. The first 
 thing in the morning, before he was well awake, 
 his hand would go groping instinctively under 
 his knapsack in search of it. 
 
 A devastating curiosity seized upon us boys 
 concerning that Latin grammar, for we had dis- 
 covered the nature of the book. Strong wanted 
 to steal it one night, but concluded not to. " In 
 the first place," reflected Strong, " I have n't the 
 heart to do it, and in the next place I have n't 
 the moral courage. Quite So would placidly break 
 every bone in my body." And I believe Strong 
 was not far out of the way. ' 
 
 Sometimes I was vexed with myseK for allow- 
 ing this tall, simple-hearted country fellow to 
 puzzle me so much. And yet, was he a simple- 
 hearted country fellow ? City bred he certainly 
 was not ; but his manner, in spite of his awkward- 
 
QUITE SO. 119 
 
 ness, had an indescribable air of refinement. Now 
 and then, too, he dropped a word or a phrase that 
 showed his familiarity with unexpected lines of 
 reading. " The other day," said Curtis, with the 
 slightest elevation of eyebrow, " he had the cheek 
 to correct my Latin for me." In short, Quite So 
 was a daily problem to the members of Mess 6. 
 Whenever he was absent, and Blakely and Curtis 
 and Strong and I got together in the tent, we 
 discussed him, evolving various theories to explain 
 why he never wrote to anybody and why nobody 
 ever wrote to him. Had the man committed 
 some terrible crime, and fled to the army to hide 
 his guilt ? Blakely suggested that he must have 
 murdered " the old folks." What did he mean 
 by eternally conning that tattered Latin gram- 
 mar ? And was his name Bladburn, anyhow ? 
 Even his imperturbable amiability became suspi- 
 cious. And then his frightful reticence ! If he 
 was the victim of any deep grief or crtidhing 
 calamity, why did n't he seem unhappy ? What 
 business had he to be cheerful ? 
 
 " It 's my opinion," said Strong, " that he 's a 
 rival Wandering Jew ; the original Jacobs, you 
 know, was a dark fellow." 
 
120 quiTB so. 
 
 Blakely inferred from something Bladburn had 
 Bald, or something he had not said, — which was 
 more likely, — that he had been a schoolmaster 
 at some period of his life. 
 
 " Schoolmaster be hanged ! " was Strong's 
 comment. " Can you fancy a schoolmaster going 
 about conjugating baby verbs out of a dratted 
 little spelling-book ? No, Quite So has evidently 
 been a — a — Blest if I can imagine what he 's 
 been ! " 
 
 Whatever John Bladburn had been, he was a 
 lonely man. Whenever I want a type of perfect 
 human isolation, I shall think of him, as he was 
 in those days, moving remote, self-contained, and 
 alone in the midst of two hundred thousand 
 men. 
 
QUITE SO. 121 
 
 n. 
 
 The Indian summer, with its infinite beauty 
 and tenderness, came like a reproach that year 
 to Virginia. The foliage, touched here and there 
 with prismatic tints, drooped motionless in the 
 golden haze. The delicate Virginia creeper was 
 almost minded to put forth its scarlet buds 
 again. No wonder the lovely phantom — this 
 dusky Southern sister of the pale Northern June 
 — lingered not long with us, but, filling the once 
 peaceful glens and valleys with her pathos, stole 
 away rebukefuUy before the savage enginery of 
 man. 
 
 The preparations that had been going on for 
 months in arsenals and foundries at the North 
 were nearly completed. For weeks past the air 
 had been filled with rumors of an advance ; but 
 the rumor of to-day refuted the rumor of yester- 
 day, and the Grand Army did not move. Heint- 
 zelman's corps was constantly folding its tents, 
 like the Arabs, and as silently stealing away ; 
 
 6 
 
123 quiTE so. 
 
 but somehow^ it was always in the same place the 
 next morning. One day, at length, orders came 
 down for our brigade to move. 
 
 " "We 're going to Richmond, boys ! " shouted 
 Strong, thrusting his head in at the tent; and 
 we all cheered and waved our caps like mad. 
 You see, Big Bethel and Bull Run and Ball's 
 Bluff (the bloody B's, as we used to call them,) 
 had n't taught us any better sense. 
 
 Rising abruptly from the plateau, to the left 
 of our encampment, was a taU hill covered with 
 a stunted growth of red-oak, persimmon, and 
 chestnut. The night before we struck tents I 
 climbed up to the crest to take a parting look at 
 a spectacle which custom had not been able to 
 rob of its enchantment. There, at my feet, and 
 extending miles and miles away, lay the camps 
 of the Grand Army, with its camp-fires reflected 
 luridly against the sky. Thousands of lights 
 were twinkling in every direction, some nestling 
 in the valley, some like fire-flies beating their 
 wings and palpitating among the trees, and 
 others stretching in parallel hues and curves, like 
 the street-lamps of a city. Somewhere, far off, 
 a band (vas playing, at intervals it seemed ; and 
 
QUITE SO. 123 
 
 now and then, nearer to, a silvery strain from a 
 bugle shot sharply up through the night, and 
 seemed to lose itself like a rocket among the 
 stars, — the patient, untroubled stars. Suddenly 
 a hand was laid upon my arm. 
 
 " I 'd like to say a word to you," said Blad- 
 burn. 
 
 With a little start of surprise, I made room 
 for him on the fallen tree where I was seated. 
 
 " I may n't get another chance," he said. 
 " You and the boys have been very kind to me, 
 kinder than I deserve ; but sometimes I 've 
 fancied that my not saying anything about my- 
 self had given you the idea that all was not right 
 in my past. I want to say that I came down to 
 Virginia with a clean record." 
 
 " We never really doubted it, Bladburn." 
 
 " If I did n't write home," he continued, " it 
 was because I had n't any home, neither kith 
 nor kin. When I said the old folks were dead, 
 I said it. Am I boring you ? If I thought I 
 was — " 
 
 " No, Bladburn. I have often wanted you to 
 talk to me about yourself, not from idle curiosity, 
 I trust, but because I liked you that rainy night 
 
124 QUITE SO. 
 
 when you came to camp, and have gone on likmg 
 yon ever since. This is n't too much to say, 
 when Heaven only knows how soon I may be 
 past saying it or you listening to it." 
 
 " That 's it," said Bladburn, hurriedly, " that 's 
 why I want to talk with you. I 've a fancy that 
 I sha' n't come out of our first battle." 
 
 The words gave me a queer start, for I had 
 been trying several days to throw off a similar 
 presentiment concerning him, — a foolish pre- 
 sentiment that grew out of a dream. 
 
 " In case anything of that kind turns up," he 
 continued, " I 'd like you to have my Latin gram- 
 mar here, — you 've seen me reading it. You 
 might stick it away in a bookcase, for the sake 
 of old times. It goes against me to think of it 
 falling into rough hands or being kicked about 
 camp and trampled under foot." 
 
 He was drumming softly with his fingers on 
 the volume in the bosom of his blouse. 
 
 " I did n't intend to speak of this to a living 
 soul," he went on, motioning me not to answer 
 him ; " but something took hold of me to-night 
 and made me follow you up here. Perhaps if I 
 told you all, you would be the more willing to 
 
quiTE so. 125 
 
 look after the little book in case it goes ill with 
 me. When the war broke out I was teaching 
 school down in Maine, in the same village where 
 my father was schoolmaster before me. The old 
 man when he died left me quite alone. I lived 
 pretty much by myself, having no interests out- 
 side of the district school, wliich seemed in a 
 manner my personal property. Eight years ago 
 last spring a new pupil was brought to the 
 school, a slight slip of a girl, with a sad kind 
 of face and quiet ways. Perhaps it was because 
 she was n't very strong, and perhaps because she 
 was n't used over well by those who had charge 
 of her, or perhaps it was because my life was 
 lonely, that my heart warmed to the child. It 
 all seems like a dream now, since that April 
 morning when little Mary stood in front of my 
 desk with her pretty eyes looking down bashfully 
 and her soft hair falling over her face. Op-j day 
 I look up, and six years have gone by, — as they 
 go by in dreams, — and among the scholars is a 
 tall girl of sixteen, with serious, womanly eyes 
 wliich I cannot trust myself to look upon. The 
 old life has come to an end. The child has be- 
 come a woman and can teach the master now. 
 
126 QUITE SO. 
 
 So help me Heaven, I did n't know that I loved 
 her until that day ! 
 
 " Long after the children had gone home I sat 
 in the school-room with my face resting on my 
 hands. There was her desk, the afternoon shad- 
 ows falling across it. It never looked empty and 
 cheerless before. I went and stood by the low 
 chair, as I had stood hundreds of times. On the 
 desk was a pile of books, ready to be taken away, 
 and among the rest a small Latin grammar which 
 we had studied together. What little despairs 
 and triumphs and happy hours were associated 
 with it ! I took it up curiously, as if it were 
 some gentle dead thing, and turned over the 
 pages, and could hardly see them. Turning the 
 pages, idly so, I came to a leaf on which some- 
 thing was written with ink, in the familiar girl- 
 ish hand. It was only the words ' Dear John,' 
 through which she had drawn two hasty pencil 
 lines — I wish she had n't drawn those lines ! " 
 added Bladburn, under his breath. 
 
 He was silent for a minute or two, looking off 
 towards the camps, where the lights were fading 
 out one by one. 
 
 " I had no right to go and love Mary. I was 
 
QUITE SO. 127 
 
 twice her age, an awkward, unsocial man, that 
 would have blighted her youth. I was as wrong 
 as wrong can be. But I never meant to tell her. 
 I locked the grammar in my desk and the secret 
 in my heart for a year. I could n't bear to meet 
 her in the village, and kept away from every 
 place where she was likely to be. Then she came 
 to me, and sat down at my feet penitently, just 
 as she used to do when she was a child, and 
 asked what she had done to anger me ; and then. 
 Heaven forgive me ! I told her all, and asked her 
 if she could say with her lips the words she had 
 written, and she nestled in my arms all a trem- 
 bling like a bird, and said them over and over 
 again. 
 
 " When Mary's family heard of our engage- 
 ment, there was trouble. They looked higher 
 for Mary than a middle-aged schoolmaster. No 
 blame to them. They forbade me the house, her 
 uncles ; but we met in the village and at the 
 neighbors' houses, and I was happy, knowing she 
 loved me. Matters were in this state when the 
 war came on. I had a strong call to look after 
 the old flag, and I hung my head that day when 
 the company raised in our village marched by 
 
128 QUITE SO. 
 
 the school-house to the railroad station; but I 
 could n't tear myself away. About this time the 
 minister's son, -who had been away to college, 
 came to the village. He met Mary here and 
 there, and they became great friends. He was 
 a likely fellow, near her own age, and it was 
 natural they should like one another. Sometimes 
 I winced at seeing him made free of the home 
 from which I was shut out ; then I would open 
 the grammar at the leaf where ' Dear John ' was 
 written up in the corner, and my trouble was 
 gone. Mary was sorrowful and pale these days, 
 and I think her people were worrying her. 
 
 " It was one evening two or three days before 
 we got the news of Bull Run. I had gone down 
 to the burying-ground to trim the spruce hedge 
 set round the old man's lot, and was just step- 
 ping into the enclosure, when I heard voices 
 from the opposite side. One was Mary's, and 
 the other I knew to be young Marston's, the 
 minister's son. I did n't mean to listen, but 
 what Mary was saying struck me dumb. We 
 must never meet again, she was saying in a wild 
 way. We must say good by here, forever, — 
 good by, good by I And I could hear her sob- 
 
quiTE so. 129 
 
 bing. Then, presently, she said, hurriedly, No, 
 no ; my hand, not my lips ! Than it seemed he 
 kissed her hands, and the two parted, one going 
 towards the parsonage, and the other out by the 
 gate near where I stood. 
 
 " I don't know how long I stood there, but the 
 night-dews had wet me to the bone when I stole 
 out of the graveyard and across the road to the 
 school-house. 1 unlocked the door, and took the 
 Latin grammar from the desk and hid it in my 
 bosom. There was not a sound or a light any- 
 where as I walked out of the village. And now," 
 said Bladburn, rising suddenly from the tree- 
 trunk, " if the little book ever falls in your way, 
 won't you see that it comes to no harm, for my 
 sake, and for the sake of the little woman who 
 was true to me and did n't love me ? Wher- 
 ever she i« to-night, God bless her ! " 
 
 As we descended to camp with our arms rest- 
 ing on each other's shoulder, the watch-fires were 
 burning low in the valleys and along the hill- 
 sides, and as far as the eye could reach the sUeni 
 tents lay bleaching in the moonlight. 
 
 6» I 
 
130 QUITE SO. 
 
 m. 
 
 "We imagined that the throwing forward of our 
 brigade was the initial movement of a general 
 advance of the army ; but that, as the reader 
 will remember, did not take place until the follow- 
 ing March. The Confederates had fallen back to 
 Centreville without firing a shot, and the National 
 troops were in possession of Lewinsville, Vienna, 
 and Fairfax Court-House. Our new position was 
 nearly identical with that which we had occupied 
 on the night previous to the battle of Bull Run, 
 — on the old turnpike road to Manassas, where 
 the enemy was supposed to be in great force. 
 With a field-glass we could see the Rebel pickets 
 moving in a belt of woodland on our right, and 
 morning and evening we heard the spiteful roU 
 of their snare-drums. 
 
 Those pickets soon became a nuisance to us. 
 Hardly a night passed but they fired upon our 
 outposts, so far with no harmful result ; but after 
 a while it grew |;o be a serious matter. The 
 
QUITE SO. 131 
 
 Rebels would crawl out on all-fours from the 
 wood into a field covered with underbrush, and 
 lie there in the dark for hours, waiting for a shot. 
 Then our men took to the rifle-pits, — pits ten or 
 twelve feet long by four or five deep, with the 
 loose earth banked up a few inches high on the 
 exposed sides. All the pits bore names, more or 
 less felicitous, by which they were known to their 
 transient tenants. One was called " The Pepper- 
 Box," another " Uncle Sam's Well," another 
 " The Reb-Trap," and another, I am constrained 
 to say, was named after a not to be mentioned 
 tropical locality. Though this rude sort of 
 nomenclature predominated, there was no lack 
 of softer titles, such as " Fortress Matilda " and 
 " Castle Mary," and one had, though unintention- 
 ally, a literary flavor to it, " Blair's Grave," 
 which was not popularly considered as reflecting 
 unpleasantly on Nat Blair, who had assisted in 
 making the excavation. 
 
 Some of the regiment had discovered a field of 
 late corn in the neighborhood, and used to boil a 
 few ears every day, while it lasted, for the boys 
 detailed on the night-picket. The corn-cobs were 
 always scrupulously preserved and mounted on 
 
J.32 quiTE so. 
 
 the parapets of the pits. Whenever a Hebel shot 
 carried away one of these barbette guns, there 
 was swearing in that particular trench. Strong, 
 who was very sensitive to this kind of disaster, 
 was complaining bitterly one morning, because 
 he had lost three " pieces " the night before. 
 
 " There 's Quite So, now," said Strong, " when 
 a Minie-ball comes ping.' and knocks one of his 
 guns to flinders, he merely smiles, and does n't 
 at all see the degradation of the thing." 
 
 Poor Bladburn ! As I watched him day by 
 day going about his duties, in his shy, cheery 
 way, with a smile for every one and not an extra 
 word for anybody, it was hard to believe he was 
 the same man who, that night before we broke 
 camp by the Potomac, had poured out to me the 
 story of his love and sorrow in words that burned 
 in my memory. 
 
 While Strong was speaking, Blakely lifted 
 aside the flap of the tent and looked in on us. 
 
 " Boys, Quite So was hurt last night," he 
 said, with a white tremor to his lip. 
 
 " What ! " 
 
 " Shot on picket." 
 
 " Why, he was in the pit next to mine," cried 
 Strong. 
 
quiTE so. 133 
 
 "Badly hurt?" 
 
 " Badly hurt." 
 
 I knew he was ; I need not have asked the 
 question. He never meant to go back to New 
 England ! 
 
 Bladburn was lying on the stretcher in the 
 hospital-tent. The surgeon had knelt down by 
 him, and was carefully cutting away the bosom 
 of his blouse. The Latin grammar, stained and 
 torn, slipped, and fell to the floor. Bladburn 
 gave me a quick glance. I picked up the book, 
 and as I placed it in his hand, the icy fingers 
 closed softly over mine. He was sinking fast. 
 In a few minutes the surgeon finished his exami- 
 nation. "When he rose to his feet there were 
 tears on the weather-beaten cheeks. He was a 
 rough outside, but a tender heart. 
 
 " My poor lad," he blurted out, " it 's no use. 
 If you 've anything to say, say it now, for you 've 
 nearly done with this world." 
 
 Then Bladburn hfted his eyes slowly to the 
 surgeon, and the old smile flitted over his face as 
 he murmured, 
 
 " Quite so." 
 
A YOUNG DESPERADO. 
 
 \ X THEN Johnny is all snugly curled up in 
 ' ' bed, with his rosy cheek resting on one 
 of his scratched and grimy little hands, forming 
 altogether a faultless picture of peace and inno- 
 cence, it is hard to realize what a busy, restive, 
 pugnacious, badly ingenious little wretch he is ! 
 There is something so comical in those pygmy 
 shoes and stockings sprawling on the floor, — 
 they look as if they could jump up and run oi¥, 
 if they wanted to, — there is something so laugh- 
 able about those little trousers, which appear to 
 be making futile attempts to climb up into the 
 easy-chair, — the said trousers still retaining the 
 shape of Johnny's active legs, and refusing to go 
 to sleep, — there is something, I say, about these 
 things, and about Johnny himself, which makes 
 it difficult for me to remember that, when Johnny 
 is awake, he possesses the cunning of Machiavel 
 and the sang-froid of the Capitaine Fracasse. 
 
A YOUNG DESPERADO. 135 
 
 I am sure I do not know liow he came by such 
 unpleasant traits. I am myself the least diplo- 
 matic and audacious of men. Of course, I do 
 not mean to imply that Johnny inherited his dis- 
 position from his mother. She is the gentlest of 
 women. But when you come to Johnny, — he 's 
 the terror of the whole neighborhood. 
 
 He was meek enough at first, — that is to say, 
 for the first six or seven days of his existence. 
 But I verily believe he was not more than eleven 
 days old and twenty-two inches long when he 
 showed a degree of temper that would have been 
 respectable in an aged giant. On that occasion 
 he turned very red in the face, — he was super- 
 fluously red before, — doubled up his ridiculous 
 hands in the most threatening manner, and 
 finally, in the impotency of rage, punched him- 
 self in the eye. When I think of the life he led 
 his mother and Susan during the first eighteen 
 months after his arrival, I shrink from the re- 
 sponsibility of allowing Johnny to call me father. 
 , Johnny's aggressive disposition was not more 
 early developed than his duplicity. By the time 
 he was two years of age I had got the following 
 bitter maxim by heart : " Whenever J. is par- 
 
136 A YOUNG DESPERADO. 
 
 ticularly quiet, look out for squalls." He was 
 sure to be in some mischief. And I must say 
 there was a novelty, an unexpectedness, an in- 
 genuity, in his badness that constantly astonished 
 me. The crimes he conunitted could be arranged 
 alphabetically. He never repeated himself. His' 
 evil resources were inexhaustible. He never did 
 the thing I expected he would. He never failed 
 to do the thing I was unprepared for. I am not 
 thinking so much of the time when he painted 
 my writing-desk with raspberry jam as of the 
 occasion when he perpetrated an act of original 
 cruelty on Mopsey, a favorite kitten in the house- 
 hold. We were sitting in the library. Johnny 
 was playing in the front hall. In view of the 
 supernatural stiUness that reigned, I remarked, 
 suspiciously, " Johnny is very quiet, my dear." 
 At that moment a series of pathetic mews was 
 heard in the entry, followed by a violent scratch- 
 ing on the oil-cloth. Then Mopsey bounded into 
 the room with three empty spools strung upon 
 her tail. The spools were removed with great 
 difficulty, especially the last one, which fitted 
 remarkably tight. After that, Mopsey never saw 
 a work-basket without arching her tortoise-shell 
 
A YOUNG DESPERADO. 137 
 
 back, and distending her tail to three times its 
 natural thickness. Another child would have 
 squeezed the kitten, or stuck a pin in her, or 
 twisted the tail ; it was reserved for the superior 
 genius of Johnny to string rather small spools 
 upon it. He heightened expectation by never 
 doing the obvious thing. 
 
 It was this fertility and happiness, if I may say 
 so, of invention that prevented me from being 
 entirely dejected over my son's behavior at this 
 period. Sometimes the temptation to seize him 
 and shake him was too strong for poor human 
 nature. But I always regretted it afterwards. 
 When I saw him asleep in his tiny bed, with one 
 tear dried on his plump, velvety cheek and two 
 little mice-teeth visible through the parted lips, I 
 could not help thinking what a little bit of a 
 feUow he was, with his funny little fingers and 
 his funny little nails ; and it did not seem to me 
 that he was the sort of person to be pitched into 
 by a great strong man like me. 
 
 " When Johnny grows older," I used to say to 
 his mother, " I '11 reason with him." 
 
 Now I do not know when Johnny wiU grow 
 old enough to be reasoned with. When I reflect 
 
138 A YOUNG DESPERADO. 
 
 how hard it is to reason with wise grown-up 
 people, if they happen to be unwiUing to accept 
 your view of matters, I am inclined to be very 
 patient with Johnny, whose experience is rather 
 limited, after all, though he is six years and a 
 half old, and naturally wants to know why and 
 wherefore. Somebody says something about the 
 duty of " blind obedience." I cannot expect 
 Johnny to have more wisdom than Solomon, and 
 to be more philosophic than the philosophers. 
 
 At times, indeed, I have been led to expect 
 this from him. He has shown a depth of mind 
 that warranted me in looking for anything. At 
 times he seems as if he were a hundred years 
 old. He has a quaint, bird-like way of cocking 
 his head on one side, and asking a question that 
 appears to be the result of years of study. If I 
 could answer some of those questions, I should 
 solve the darkest mysteries of life and death. 
 His inquiries, however, generally have a grotesque 
 flavor. One night, when the mosquitoes were 
 making sprightly raids on his person, he appealed 
 to me, suddenly : " How does the moon feel 
 when a skeeter bites it ? " To his meditative 
 mind, the broad, smooth surface of the moon 
 
A YOUNG DESPERADO. l;-!6 
 
 presented a temptation not to be resisted by any 
 wandering bird of prey. 
 
 I freely confess that Johnny is now and then 
 too much for me. I wish I could read him as 
 cleverly as he reads me. He knows all my weak 
 points ; he sees right through me, and makes me 
 feel that I am a helpless infant in his adroit 
 hands. He has an argumentative, oracular air, 
 when things have gone wrong, which always 
 upsets my dignity. Yet how cunningly he uses 
 his power ! It is only in the last extremity that 
 he crosses his legs, puts his hands into his 
 trousers-pockets, and argues the case with me. 
 One day last week he was very near coming to 
 grief. By my directions, kindling-wood and coal 
 are placed every morning in the library grate, in 
 order that I may have a fire the moment I return 
 at night. Master Johnny must needs apply a 
 lighted match to this arrangement early in the 
 forenoon. The fire was not discovered until the 
 blower was one mass of incandescent iron, and 
 the wooden mantel-shelf was smoking with the 
 intense heat. 
 
 When I came home, Johnny was led from the 
 store-room, where he had been imprisoned from 
 
140 A YOUNG DESPERADO. 
 
 an early period, and where he had employed him- 
 self in eating about two dollars' worth of pre- 
 served pears. 
 
 " Johnny," said I, in as severe a tone as one 
 could use in addressing a person whose forehead 
 ghstened with syrup, — " Johnny, don't you 
 remember that I have always told you never to 
 meddle with matches ? " 
 
 It was something delicious to see Johnny try- 
 ing to remember. He cast one eye meditatively 
 up to the ceiling, then he fixed it abstractedly on 
 the canary-bird, then he rubbed his ruffled brows 
 with a sticky hand ; but really, for the life of 
 him, he could n't recall any injunctions concern- 
 ing matches. 
 
 " I can't, papa, truly," said Johnny at length. 
 " I guess I must have forgot it." 
 
 " Well, Johnny, in order that you may not 
 forget it in future — " 
 
 Here Johnny was seized with an idea. He 
 interrupted me. 
 
 " I '11 teU you what you do, papa, — you jeA 
 put it down in writin\" 
 
 With the air of a man who has settled a ques< 
 tion definitely, but at the same time is wUhng to 
 
A YOUNG DESPERADO. 141 
 
 listen politely to any crude suggestions that you 
 may have to throw out, Johnny crossed his legs, 
 and thrust his hands into those wonderful 
 trousers-pockets. I turned my face aside, for I 
 felt a certain weakness creeping into the corners 
 of my mouth. I was lost. In an instant the 
 little head, covered all over with brown curls, 
 was laid upon my knee, and Johnny was crying, 
 " I 'm so very, very sorry ! " 
 
 I have said that Johnny is the terror of the 
 neighborhood. I think I have not done the young 
 gentleman an injustice. If there is a window 
 broken witliin the radius of two miles from our 
 house, Johnny's ball, or a stone known to have 
 come from his dexterous hand, is almost certain 
 to be found in the battered premises. I never 
 hear the musical jingling of splintered glass but 
 my porte-monnaie gives a convulsive throb in my 
 breast-pocket. There is not a doorstep in our 
 street that has not borne evidences in red chalk 
 of his artistic ability ; there is not a bell that he 
 has n't rung and run away from at least three 
 hundred times. Scarcely a day passes but he 
 falls out of something, or over something, or 
 into something. A ladder running up to the 
 
143 A YOUNG DESPERADO. 
 
 dizzy roof of an unfinished building is no more 
 to be resisted by him than the back platform of 
 a horse-car, when the conductor is collecting his 
 fare in front. 
 
 I should not like to enumerate the battles that 
 Johnny has fought during the past eight months. 
 It is a physical impossibility, I should judge, for 
 him to refuse a challenge. He picks his enemies 
 impartially out of all ranks of society. He has 
 fought the ash-man's boy, the grocer's boy, the 
 plumber's boy, (I was glad of that!) the rich 
 boys over the way, and any number of miscella- 
 neous boys who chanced to stray into our street. 
 
 I cannot say that this young desperado is al- 
 ways victorious. I have known the tip of his 
 nose to be in a state of unpleasant redness for 
 (reeks together. I have known him to come 
 home frequently with no brim to his hat ; once 
 he presented himself with only one shoe, on 
 which occasion his jacket was split up the back 
 in a manner that gave him the appearance of an 
 over-ripe chestnut bursting out of its bur. How 
 he will fight ! But this I can say, — if Johnny 
 is as cruel as Caligula, he is every inch as brave 
 as Agamemnon. 
 
A YODNG DESPERADO. 143 
 
 At present the General, as I sometimes call 
 him, is in hospital. He was seriously wounded 
 at the battle of The Little Go-Cart, on the 9th 
 instant. On returning from my oiiice yesterday 
 evening, I found that scarred veteran stretched 
 upon a sofa in the sitting-room, with a patch of 
 brown paper stuck over his left eye, and a con- 
 victing smell of vinegar about him. 
 
 " Yes," said his mother, dolefuUy, " Johnny 's 
 been fighting again. That horrid Barnabee boy 
 (who is eight years old, if he is a day) won't let 
 the child alone." 
 
 " Well," said I, " I hope Johnny gave that 
 Barnabee boy a thrashing." 
 
 " Did n't I, though ? " cries Johnny, from the 
 sofa. " You bet ! " 
 
 " Johnny ! " remonstrates his mother. 
 
 Now, several days previous to this, I had ad- 
 dressed the Geheral in the following terms : — 
 
 " Johnny, if I ever catch you in another fight 
 of your own seeking, I shall cane you." 
 
 In consequence of this declaration, it became 
 my duty to look into the circumstances of the 
 present affair, which will be known in history as 
 the battle of The Little Go-Cart. After going 
 
144 A YOUNG DESPEBADO. 
 
 over the ground very carefully, I foimd the fol 
 lowing to be the state of the case. 
 
 It seems that the Barnabee Boy — I speak of 
 him as if he were the Benicia Boy — is the oldest 
 pupil in the Primary Military School (I think it 
 must be a military school) of which Johnny is a 
 recent member. This Barnabee, having whipped 
 every one of his companions, was sighing for 
 new boys to conquer, when Johnny joined the 
 institution. He at once made friendly overtures 
 of battle to Johnny, who, oddly enough, seemed 
 indisposed to encourage his advances. Then 
 Barnabee began a series of petty persecutions, 
 which had continued up to the day of the fight. 
 
 On the morning of that eventful day the Bar- 
 nabee Boy appeared in the school-yard with a 
 small go-cart. After running down on Johnny 
 several times with this useful vehicle, he captured 
 Johnny's cap, filled it with sand, and dragged 
 it up and down the yard triumphantly in the 
 go-cart. This made the General very indignant, 
 of course, and he took an early opportunity of 
 kicking over the triimiphal car, in doing which 
 he kicked one of the wheels so far into space 
 that it has not been seen since. 
 
A YOUNG DESPEKADO. 145 
 
 Tliis brought matters to a crisis. The battle 
 would have taken place then and there ; but at 
 that moment the school-bell rang, and the gladia- 
 tors were obliged to give their attention to Smith's 
 Speller. But a gloom hung over the morning's 
 exercises, — a gloom that was not dispelled in 
 the back row, when the Barnabee Boy stealthily 
 held up to Johnny's vision a slate, whereon was 
 inscribed this fearful message : — 
 
 Johnny got it " put down in writin' " that 
 time ! 
 
 After a hasty glance at the slate, the General 
 went on with his studies composedly enough. 
 SHeven o'clock came, and with it came recess, 
 and with recess the inevitable battle. 
 
 Now I do not intend to describe the details of 
 this brilliant action, for the sufBcient reason thatj 
 though there were seven young gentlemen (con- 
 7 ' 
 
146 A YOUNG DESPERADO. 
 
 nected with the Primary School) on the field as 
 ■war correspondents, their accounts of the engage- 
 ment are so contradictory as to be utterly worth- 
 less. On one point they all agree, — that the 
 contest was sharp, short, and decisive. The 
 truth is, the General is a quick, wiry, experienced 
 old hero ; and it did not take him long to rout 
 the Barnabee Boy, who is in reality a coward, as 
 all bullies and tyrants have ever been, and al- 
 ways will be. 
 
 I do not approve of boys fighting; I do not 
 defend Johnny ; but if the General wants an 
 extra ration or two of preserved pear, he shall 
 have it! 
 
 I am thoroughly aware that, socially speaking, 
 Johnny is a Black Sheep. I know that I have 
 brought him up badly, and that there is not an 
 unmarried man or woman in the United States 
 who would n't have brought him up " very dif- 
 ferently." It is a great pity that the only peo- 
 ple who know how to manage children never 
 have any. At the same time, Johnny is not a 
 black sheep all over. He has some white spots. 
 His sins — r£ wiser folks had no greater ! — are 
 
A YOUNG DESPERADO. 147 
 
 the result of too much animal life. They belong 
 to his evanescent youth, and will pass away ; but 
 his honesty, his generosity, his bravery, belong 
 to his character, and are enduring qualities. The 
 quickly crowding years wiU tame him. An ex- 
 pensive pane of glass, or a protrusive bell-knob, 
 ceases in time to have attractions for the most 
 susceptible temperament. And I am confident 
 that Johnny will be a great statesman, or a val- 
 orous soldier, or, at all events, a good citizen, 
 after he has got over being A Young Desperado^ 
 
MISS MEHETABEL'S SON. 
 
 I. 
 
 The old Tavekn at Bayley's Foua-CoENEES. 
 
 ■\7'0U ■will not find Greenton, or Bayley's Four- 
 ■^ Corners as it is more usually designated, on 
 any map of New England that I know of. It is 
 not a town ; it is not even a village ; it is merely 
 an absurd hotel. The almost indescribable place 
 called Greenton is at the intersection of four 
 roads, in the heart of New Hampshire, twenty 
 miles from the nearest settlement of note, and 
 ten miles from any railway station. A good 
 location for a hotel, you will say. Precisely ; 
 but there has always been a hotel there, and for 
 the last dozen years it has been pretty well pat- 
 ronized — by one boarder. Not to trifle with an 
 intelligent public, I will state at once that, in the 
 early part of this century, Greenton was a point 
 at which the mail-coach, on the Great Northern 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 149 
 
 Route, stopped to change horses and allow the 
 passengers to dine. People in the county, wish- 
 ing to take the early mail Portsmouth-ward, put 
 up overnight at the old tavern, famous for its 
 irreproachable larder and soft feather-beds. The 
 tavern at that time was kept by Jonathan Bay- 
 ley, who rivalled his wallet in growing corpulent, 
 and in due time passed away. At his death the 
 establisliment, which included a farm, fell into 
 the hands of a son-in-law. Now, though Bayley 
 left his son-in-law a hotel, — which sounds hand- 
 some, — he left him no guests ; for at about the 
 period of the old man's death the old stage-coach 
 died also. Apoplexy carried off one, and steam 
 the other. Thus, by a sudden swerve in the tide 
 of progress, the tavern at the Corners found 
 itself high and dry, like a wreck on a sand-bank. 
 Shortly after this event, or maybe contempora- 
 neously, there was some attempt to build a town 
 at Greenton ; but it apparently failed, if eleven 
 cellars choked up with dSbris and overgrown 
 with burdocks are any indication of failure. The 
 farm, however, was a good farm, as things go in 
 New Hampshire ; and Tobias Sewell, the son-in- 
 law, could afford to snap his fingers at the trav- 
 
150 MISS MEHETABEL'S SON. 
 
 elling public if they came near enough, — which 
 they never did. 
 
 The hotel remains to-day pretty much the same 
 as when Jonathan Bayley handed in his accounts 
 in 1840, except that Sewell has from time to time 
 sold the furniture of some of the upper chambers 
 to bridal couples in the neighborhood. The bar 
 is still open, and the parlor door says Parlour 
 in tall black letters. Now and then a passing 
 drover looks in at that lonely bar-room, where a 
 high-shouldered bottle of Santa Cruz rum ogles 
 with a peculiarly knowing air a shrivelled lemon 
 on a shelf ; now and then a farmer comes across 
 country to talk crops and stock and take a friendly 
 glass with Tobias ; and now and then a circus 
 caravan with speckled ponies, or a menagerie with 
 a soggy elephant, halts under the swinging sign, 
 ou which there is a dim mail-coach with four 
 phantomish horses driven by a portly gentleman 
 whose head has been washed off by the rain. 
 Other customers there are none, except that one 
 regular boarder whom I have mentioned. 
 
 If misery makes a man acquainted with strange 
 bedfellows, it is equally certain that the profession 
 of surveyor and civil engineer often takes ono 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 151 
 
 into undreamed-of localities. I had never heard of 
 Greenton until my duties sent me there, and kept 
 me there two weeks in the dreariest season of the 
 year. I do not think I would, of my own voli- 
 tion, have selected Greenton for a fortnight's 
 sojourn at any time ; but now the business is 
 over, I shall never regret the circumstances that 
 made me the guest of Tobias Sewell and brought 
 me into intimate relations with Miss Mehetabel's 
 Son. 
 
 It was a black October night in the year of 
 grace 1872, that discovered me standing in front 
 of the old tavern at the Corners. Though the 
 
 ten miles' ride from K had been depressing, 
 
 especially the last five miles, on account of the 
 cold autumnal rain that had set in, I felt a pang 
 of regret on hearing the rickety open wagon turn 
 round in the road and roll off in the darkness. 
 There were no lights visible anywhere, and only 
 for the big, shapeless mass of something in front 
 of me, which the driver had said was the hotel, I 
 should have fancied that I had been set down by 
 the roadside. I was wet to the skin and in no 
 amiable humor; and not being able to find bell-puU 
 or knocker, or even a door, I belabored the side 
 
153 MISS mehetabel's son. 
 
 of the house with my heavy -walking-stick. In a 
 minute or two I saw a light flickering somewhere 
 aloft, then I heard the sound of a window open- 
 ing, followed by an exclamation of disgust as a 
 blast of wind extinguished the candle which had 
 given me an instantaneous picture en silhouette 
 of a man leaning out of a casement. 
 
 " I say, what do you want, down there ? " said 
 an unprepossessing voice. 
 
 " I want to come in, I want a supper, and a 
 bed, and numberless things." 
 
 " This is n't no time of night to go rousing 
 honest folks out of their sleep. Who are you, 
 anyway ? " 
 
 The question, superficially considered, was a 
 very simple one, and I, of all people in the world, 
 ought to have been able to answer it off-hand ; 
 but it staggered me. Strangely enough, there 
 came drifting across my memory the lettermg on 
 the back of a metaphysical work which I had 
 seen years before on a shelf in the Astor Library. 
 Owing to an unpremeditatedly funny collocation 
 of title and author, the lettering read as follows : 
 "Who Am I? Jones." Evidently it had puz- 
 «led Jones to know who he was, or he would n't 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 153 
 
 have written a book about it, and come to so 
 lame and impotent a conclusion. It certainly 
 puzzled me at that instant to define my identity. 
 " Thirty years ago," I reflected, " I was noth- 
 ing ; fifty years hence I shall be nothing again, 
 humanly speaking. In the mean time, who am 
 I, sure enough ? " It had never occurred to me 
 before what an indefinite article I was. I wish 
 it had not occurred to me then. Standing there 
 in the rain and darkness, I wrestled vainly with 
 the problem, and was constrained to fall back 
 upon a Yankee expedient. 
 
 " Is n't this a hotel ? " I asked finally. 
 
 " Well, it is a sort of hotel," said the voice, 
 doubtfully. My hesitation and prevarication had 
 apparently not inspired my interlocutor with con- 
 fidence in me. 
 
 " Then let me in. I have just driven over 
 
 from K in this infernal rain. I am wet 
 
 through and through." 
 
 " But what do you want here, at the Corners ? 
 What 's your business ? People don't come here, 
 least ways in the middle of the night." 
 
 " It is n't in the middle of the night," I re- 
 turned, incensed. " I come on business connected 
 7* 
 
154i MISS mehetabel's son. 
 
 ■with the new road. I 'm the superintendent of 
 the works." 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 " And if you don't open the door at once, I 'II 
 raise the whole neighborhood, — and then go to 
 the other hotel." 
 
 When I said that, I supposed Greenton was a 
 village with three or four thousand population at 
 least, and was wondering vaguely at the absence 
 of lights and other signs of human habitation. 
 Surely, I thought, all the people cannot be abed 
 and asleep at half past ten o'clock : perhaps I am 
 in the business section of the town, among the 
 shops. 
 
 " You jest wait," said the voice above. 
 
 This request was not devoid of a certain ac- 
 cent of menace, and I braced myself for a sor- 
 tie on the part of the besieged, if he had any 
 such hostile intent. Presently a door opened 
 at the very place where I least expected a door, 
 at the farther end of the building, in fact, and 
 a man in his shirt-sleeves, shielding a candle 
 with his left hand, appeared on the thresh- 
 old. I passed quickly into the house with Mr. 
 Tobias Sewell Cfor this was Mr. Sewell) at my 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 15b 
 
 heels, and found myself in a long, low-studded 
 bar-room. 
 
 There were two chairs drawn up before the 
 hearth, on which a huge hemlock backlog was 
 still smouldering, and on the unpainted deal 
 counter contiguous stood two cloudy glasses with 
 bits of lemon-peel in the bottom, hinting at re- 
 cent libations. Against the discolored wall over 
 the bar hung a yellowed handbill, in a warped 
 frame, announcing that " the Next Annual N. H. 
 Agricultural Fair " would take place on the 10th 
 of September, 1841. There was no other furni- 
 ture or decoration in this dismal apartment, ex- 
 cept the cobwebs which festooned the ceiling, 
 hanging down here and there like stalactites. 
 
 Mr. Sewell set the candlestick on the mantel- 
 shelf, and threw some pine-knots on the fire, 
 which immediately broke into a blaze, and showed 
 him to be a lank, narrow-chested man, past sixty, 
 with sparse, steel-gray hair, and small, deep-set 
 eyes, perfectly round, like a carp's, and of no 
 particular color. His chief personal character- 
 istics seemed to be too much feet and not enough 
 teeth. His sharply cut, but rather simple face, 
 as he turned it towards me, wore a look of inter- 
 
156 MISS mehetabel's son. 
 
 rogation. I replied to his mute inquiry by tak- 
 ing out my pocket-book and handing him my 
 business-card, wliich he held up to the candle and 
 perused with great deliberation. 
 
 " You 're a civil engineer, are you ? " he said, 
 displaying his gums, which gave his countenance 
 an expression of almost infantile innocence. He 
 ^ade no further audible remark, but mumbled 
 between his thin lips something which an imagi, 
 native person might have construed into, " If 
 you 're a civil engineer, I '11 be blessed if I woulcj 
 n't like to see an uncivil one ! " 
 
 Mr. Sewell's growl, however, was worse than 
 his bite, — owing to his lack of teeth probably, 
 — for he very good-naturedly set himself to work 
 preparing supper for me. After a slice of cold 
 ham, and a warm punch, to which my chilled 
 condition gave a grateful flavor, I went to bed in 
 a distant chamber in a most amiable mood, feeL 
 ing satisfied that Jones was a donkey to bother 
 himself about his identity. 
 
 When I awoke the sun was several hours high. 
 My bed faced a window, and by raising myself 
 on one elbow I could look out on what I ex 
 pected would be the maiii street. To my astonish 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 157 
 
 ment I beheld a lonely country road winding up 
 a sterile hill and disappearing over the ridge. 
 In a cornfield at the right of the road was a 
 small private graveyard enclosed by a crumbling 
 stone-wall with a red gate. The only thing sug- 
 gestive of life was this little corner lot occupied 
 by death. I got out of bed and went to the 
 other window. There I had an uninterrupted 
 view of twelve miles of open landscape, with 
 Mount Agamenticus in the purple distance. Not 
 a house or a spire in sight. " Well," I exclaimed, 
 " Greenton does n't appear to be a very closely 
 packed metropolis ! " That rival hotel with 
 which I had threatened Mr. Sewell overnight was 
 not a deadly weapon, looking at it by daylight. 
 " By Jove ! " I reflected, " maybe I 'm in the 
 wrong place." But there, tacked against a panel 
 of the bedroom door, was a faded time-table 
 dated Greenton, August 1, 1839. 
 
 I smiled all the time I was dressing, and went 
 smiling down stairs, where I found Mr. Sewell, 
 assisted by one of the fair sex in the first bloom' 
 of her eightieth year, serving breakfast for me 
 on a small table — in the bar-room ! 
 
 " I overslept myself this morning," I re- 
 
(58 MISS mehetabel's son. 
 
 marked apologetically, " and I see that I am put- 
 ting you to some trouble. In future, if you will 
 have me called, I will take my meals at the usual 
 table-d'hote." 
 
 " At the what ? " said Mr. Sewell. 
 
 " I mean with the other boarders." 
 
 Mr. Sewell paused in the act of lifting a chop 
 from the fire, and, resting the point of his fork 
 against the woodwork of the mantel-piece, grinned 
 from ear to ear. 
 
 " Bless you ! there is n't any other boarders. 
 There has n't been anybody put up here sence — 
 let me see — sence father-in-law died, and that 
 was in the fall of '40. To be sure, there 's Silas ; 
 he 's a regular boarder ; but I don't count him." 
 
 Mr. Sewell then explained how the tavern had 
 lost its custom when the old stage line was 
 toroken up by the railroad. The introduction of 
 steam was, in Mr. Sewell's estimation, a fata] 
 error. " Jest killed. local business. Carried it 
 off I 'm darned if I know where. The whole 
 country has been sort o' retrograding ever sence 
 steam was invented." 
 
 " You spoke of having one boarder," I said. 
 
 " Silas ? Yes ; he came here the summer 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 159 
 
 'Tilda died, — she that was 'Tilda Bayley, — 
 and he 's here yet, going on thirteen year. He 
 could n't live any longer with the old man. Be- 
 tween you and I, old Clem Jaffrey, Silas's father, 
 was a hard nut. Yes," said Mr. Sewell, crook- 
 ing his elbow in inimitable pantomime, " alto- 
 gether too often. Found dead in the road hug- 
 ging a three-gallon demijohn. Habeas corpus 
 in the barn," added Mr. Sewell, intending, I 
 presume, to intimate that a post-mortem exami- 
 nation had been deemed necessary. " Silas," he 
 resumed, in that respectful tone which one should 
 always adopt when speaking of capital, " is a 
 man of considerable property ; lives on his in- 
 terest, and keeps a boss and shay. He 's a great 
 scholar, too, Silas ; takes all the pe-ri-odicals and 
 the Police Gazette regular." 
 
 Mr. Sewell was turning over a third chop, 
 when the door opened and a stoutish, middle- 
 aged little gentleman, clad in deep black, stepped 
 into the room. 
 
 " Silas Jaffrey," said Mr. Sewell, with a com- 
 prehensive sweep of his arm, picking up me and 
 the new-comer on one fork, so to speak. " Be 
 acquainted ! " 
 
160 MISS mehetabel's son. 
 
 Mr. Jaffrey advanced briskly, and gave me hi? 
 hand with unlooked-for cordiality. He was a 
 dapper little man, with a head as round and 
 nearly as bald as an orange, and not unlike an 
 orange in complexion, either ; he had twinkling 
 gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the 
 numerous freckles upon which were deepened by 
 his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He re- 
 minded me of AKred de Musset's blackbird, 
 which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage, 
 looked like an undertaker eating an omelet. 
 
 " Silas will take care of you," said Mr. Sewell, 
 taking down his hat from a peg behind the door. 
 " I 've got the cattle to look after. Tell him, if 
 you want anything." 
 
 While I ate my breakfast, Mr. Jaffrey hopped 
 up and down the narrow bar-room and chirped 
 away as blithely as a bird on a cherry-bough, 
 occasionally ruffling with his fingers a slight 
 fringe of auburn hair wliich stood up pertly 
 round his head and seemed to possess a luminous 
 quality of its own. 
 
 " Don't I find it a little slow up here at tht 
 Corners? Not at all, my dear sir. I am in 
 the thick of life up here. So many interest- 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 161 
 
 ing things going on all over the world, — in- 
 ventions, discoveries, spirits, railroad disasters, 
 mysterious homicides. Poets, murderers, musi- 
 cians, statesmen, distinguished travellers, prodi- 
 gies of all kinds turning up everywhere. Very 
 few events or persons escape me. I take six 
 daily city papers, thirteen weekly journals, all 
 the monthly magazines, and two quarterlies. I 
 could not get along with less. I could n't if you 
 asked me. I never feel lonely. How can I, 
 being on intimate terms, as it were, with thou- 
 sands and thousands of people ? There 's that 
 young woman out West. What an entertaining 
 creature she is ! — now in Missouri, now in In- 
 diana, and now in Minnesota, always on the go, 
 and all the time shedding needles from various 
 parts of her body as if she really enjoyed it ! 
 Then there 's that versatile patriarch who walks 
 hundreds of miles and saws thousands of feet of 
 wood, before breakfast, and shows no signs of 
 giving out. Then there 's that remarkable, one 
 may say that historical colored woman who knew 
 Benjamin Franklin, and fought at the battle of 
 Bunk — no, it is the old negro man who fought 
 at Bunker Hill, a mere infant, of course, at that 
 
162 MISS mehetabel's son. 
 
 period. Really, now, it is quite curious to ob- 
 serve how that venerable female slave — for- 
 merly an African princess — is repeatedly dying 
 in her hundred and eleventh year, and coming to 
 life again punctually every six months in the 
 small-type paragraphs. Are you aware, sir, that 
 within the last twelve years no fewer than two 
 hundred and eighty-seven of General Washing- 
 ton's colored coachmen have died ? " 
 
 For the soul of me I could n't tell whether this 
 quaint little gentleman was chaffing me or not. 
 I laid down my knife and fork, and stared at 
 him. 
 
 " Then there are the mathematicians ! " he 
 cried vivaciously, without waiting for a reply. 
 " I take great interest in them. Hear this ! " 
 and Mr. Jaffrey drew a newspaper from a pocket 
 in the tail of his coat, and read as follows : " It 
 has been estimated that if all the candles manto- 
 factured by this eminent firm (^Stearine Sf Co.') 
 were placed end to end, they would reach 2 and 
 I times around the globe. Of course," continued 
 Mr. Jaffrey, folding up the journal reflectively, 
 " abstruse calculations of this kind are not, per- 
 haps, of vital importanae, but they indicate the 
 
MISS mehetabel'8 son. 163 
 
 intellectual activity of the age. Seriously, now," 
 he said, halting in front of the table, " what with 
 books and papers and drives about the country, I 
 do not find the days too long, though I seldom 
 
 see any one, except when I go over to K for 
 
 my mail. Existence may be very full to a man 
 who stands a little aside from the tumult and 
 watches it with philosophic eye. Possibly he 
 may see more of the battle than those who are 
 in the midst of the action. Once I was strug- 
 gling with the crowd, as eager and undaunted as 
 the best ; perhaps I should have been struggling 
 stiU. Indeed, I know my life would have been 
 very different now if I had married Mehetabel,— 
 if I had married Mehetabel." 
 
 His vivacity was gone, a sudden cloud had 
 come over his bright face, his figure seemed to 
 have collapsed, the light seemed to have faded 
 out of his hair. With a shuffling step, the very 
 antithesis of his brisk, elastic tread, he turned 
 to the door and passed into the road. 
 
 " Well," I said to myself, " if Greenton had 
 forty thousand inhabitants, it could n't turn out 
 a more astonishing old party than that ! " 
 
164 MISS mehetabel's son. 
 
 n. 
 
 The Case of Silas Jaffeet. 
 
 A MAN with a passion for bric-d-brac va always 
 stumbling over antique bronzes, intaglios, mO' 
 eaics, and daggers of the time of Benvenuto 
 Cellini ; the bibliophile finds creamy vellum folios 
 and rare Alduses and Elzevirs waiting for him at 
 unsuspected bookstalls ; the numismatist has but 
 to stretch forth his palm to have priceless coins 
 drop into it. My own weakness is odd people, 
 and I am constantly encountering them. It was 
 plain I had unearthed a couple of very queer 
 specimens at Bayley's Four-Corners. I saw that 
 a fortnight aiTorded me too brief an opportunity 
 to develop the richness of both, and I resolved to 
 devote my spare time to Mr. Jaffrey alone, in- 
 stinctively recognizing in him an unfamiliar 
 species. My professional work in the vicinity 
 of Greenton left my evenings and occasionally 
 an afternoon unoccupied ; these intervals I pur- 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 165 
 
 posed to employ in studying and classifying my 
 fellow-boarder. It was necessary, as a prelimi- 
 nary step, to learn something of liis previous 
 history, and to this end I addressed myself to 
 Mr. Sewell that same night. 
 
 " I do not want to seem inquisitive," I said 
 to the landlord, as he was fastening up the 
 bar, which, by the way, was the salle d manger 
 and general sitting-room, — "I do not want to 
 seem inquisitive, but your friend Mr. Jaffrey 
 dropped a remark this morning at breakfast 
 which — which was not altogether clear to 
 me." 
 
 " About Mehetabel ? " asked Mr. Sewell, un- 
 easily. 
 
 « Yes." 
 
 « Well, I wish he would n't ! " 
 
 " He was friendly enough in the course of 
 conversation to hint to me that he had not 
 married the young woman, and seemed to re- 
 gret it." 
 
 " No, he did n't marry Mehetabel." 
 
 " May I inquire why he did n't marry Me- 
 hetabel ? " 
 
 " Never asked her. Might have married the 
 
166 MISS mehetabel's son. 
 
 girl forty times. Old Elkins's daughter, over at 
 
 K . She 'd have had him quick enough. 
 
 Seven years, off and on, he kept company with 
 Mehetabel, and then she died." 
 
 " And he never asked her ? " 
 
 " He shilly-shallied. Perhaps he did n't think 
 of it. When she was dead and gone, then Silas 
 was struck all of a heap, — and that 's all about 
 it." 
 
 Obviously Mr. Sewell did not intend to tell me 
 anything more, and obviously there was more to 
 tell. The topic was plainly disagreeable to him 
 for some reason or other, and that unknown 
 reason of course piqued my curiosity. 
 
 As I was absent from dinner and supper 
 that day, I did not meet Mr. Jaffrey again 
 until the following morning at breakfast. He 
 had recovered his bird-like manner, and was 
 full of a mysterious assassination that had 
 just taken place in New York, all the thrilling 
 details of which were at his fingers' ends. It 
 was at once comical and sad to see this harm- 
 less old gentleman, with his naive, benevolent 
 countenance, and his thin hair flaming up in 
 a semicii'cle, like the foot-lights at a theatre, rev- 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 167 
 
 elling in the intricacies of the unmentionable 
 deed. 
 
 " You come up to my room to-night," he cried, 
 with horrid glee, " and I '11 give you my theory 
 of the murder. I '11 make it as clear as day to 
 you that it was the detective himself who fired 
 the three pistol-shots." 
 
 It was not so much the desire to have this 
 point elucidated as to make a closer study of Mr. 
 Jaffrey that led me to accept his invitation. Mr. 
 Jaffrey's bedroom was in an L of the building, 
 and was in no way noticeable except for the 
 numerous files of newspapers neatly arranged 
 against the blank spaces of the walls, and a huge 
 pile of old magazines which stood in one corner, 
 reaching nearly up to the ceiling, and threaten- 
 ing to topple over each instant, like the Leaning 
 Tower at Pisa. There were green paper shades 
 at the windows, some faded chintz vaiances about 
 the bed, and two or three easy-chairs covered 
 with chintz. On a black-walnut uhelf between 
 the windows lay a choice collection of meer- 
 schaum and brierwood pipes. 
 
 Filling one of the chocolate-colored bowls for 
 me and another for liimself, Mr. Jaffrey began 
 
168 MISS mehetabel's son. 
 
 prattling ; but not about the murder, wliich ap- 
 peared to have flown out of his mind. In fact, I 
 do not remember that the topic was even touched 
 upon, either then or afterwards. 
 
 " Cosey nest this," said Mr. Jaffrey, glancing 
 complacently over the apartment. " What is 
 more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than 
 an open wood-fire ? Do you hear those little 
 chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of 
 apple-wood ? Those are the ghosts of the robins 
 and bluebirds that sang upon the bough when it 
 was in blossom last spring. In summer whole 
 flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit- 
 trees under the window : so I have singing birds 
 all the year round. I take it very easy here, I 
 can tell you, summer and winter. Not much 
 society. Tobias is not, perhaps, what one would 
 term a great intellectual force, but he means 
 well. He 's a realist, — believes in coming down 
 to what he calls ' the hard pan ' ; but his heart is 
 in the right place, and he 's very kind to me. 
 The wisest thing I ever did in my life was to sell 
 
 out my grain business over at K , thirteen 
 
 years ago, and settle down at the Corners. Wlien 
 a man has made a competency, what does he 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 169 
 
 want more ? Besides, at that time an event oc- 
 curred which destroyed any ambition I may have 
 ^ad. Mehetabel died." 
 
 " The lady you were engaged to ? " 
 
 " N-o, not precisely engaged. I think it was 
 quite understood between us, though nothing had 
 been said on the subject. Typhoid," added Mr. 
 Jaffrey, in a low voice. 
 
 For several minutes he smoked in silence, a 
 vague, troubled look playing over his counte- 
 nance. Presently this passed away, and he fixed 
 his gray eyes speculatively upon my face. 
 
 " If I had married Mehetabel," said Mr. Jef- 
 frey, slowly, and then he hesitated. I blew a ring 
 of smoke into the air, and, resting my pipe on my 
 knee, dropped into an attitude of attention. " If 
 I had married Mehetabel, you know, we should 
 have had — ahem ! — a family." 
 
 " Very likely," I assented, vastly amused at 
 this imexpected turn. 
 
 " A Boy ! " exclaimed Mr. Jaffrey, explosively. 
 
 " By aU means, certainly, a son." 
 
 " Great trouble about naming the boy. Mehet- 
 abel's family want him named Elkanah Elkins, 
 after her grandfather; I want him named An- 
 
170 MISS mehetabel's son. 
 
 drew Jackson. We compromise by christening 
 him Elkanah Elkins Andrew Jackson Jaffrey. 
 Rather a long name for such a short little fel- 
 low," said Mr. Jaffrey, musingly. 
 
 " Andy is n't a bad nickname," I suggested. 
 
 " Not at all. We call him Andy, in the family. 
 Somewhat fractious at first, — colic and things. 
 I suppose it is right, or it would n't be so ; but 
 the usefulness of measles, mumps, croup, whoop- 
 ing-cough, scarlatina, and fits is not visible to 
 the naked eye. I wish Andy would be a model 
 infant, and dodge the whole lot." 
 
 This supposititious child, born within the last 
 few minutes, was clearly assimaing the propor- 
 tions of a reality to Mr. Jaffrey. I began to feel 
 a little uncomfortable. I am, as I have said, a 
 civil engineer, and it is not strictly in my hue to 
 assist at the births of infants, imaginary or other- 
 wise. I pulled away vigorously at the pipe, and 
 said nothing. 
 
 " What large blue eyes he has," resumed Mr. 
 Jaffrey, after a pause ; " just like Hetty's ; and 
 the fair hair, too, like hers. How oddly certain 
 distinctive features are handed down in families ! 
 Sometimes a mouth, sometimes a turn of the eye- 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 171 
 
 brow. Wicked little boys, over at K , have 
 
 now and then derisively advised me to follow my 
 nose. It would be an interesting thing to do. I 
 should find my nose flying about the world, turn- 
 ing up unexpectedly here and there, dodging this 
 branch of the family and reappearing in that, 
 now jumping over one great-grandchild to fasten 
 itself upon another, and never losing its indi- 
 viduality. Look at Andy. There 's Elkanah El- 
 kins's chin to the life. Andy's chin is probably 
 older than the Pyramids. Poor little thing," he 
 cried, with sudden indescribable tenderness, " to 
 lose his mother so early ! " And Mr. Jaffrey's 
 head sunk upon his breast, and his shoulders 
 slanted forward, as if he were actually bending 
 over the cradle of the child. The whole gesture 
 and attitude was so natural that it startled me. 
 The pipe slipped from my fingers and fell to the 
 floor. 
 
 " Hush ! " whispered Mr. Jaffrey, with a 
 deprecating motion of his hand. " Andy 's 
 asleep ! " 
 
 He rose softly from the chair and, walking 
 across the room on tiptoe, drew down the shade 
 at the window through which the moonhght was 
 
173 MTSs mehetabel's son. 
 
 streaming. Then he returned to his seat, and 
 remained gazing with half-closed eyes into the 
 dropping embers. 
 
 I refilled my pipe and smoked in profound 
 silence, wondering what would come next. But 
 nothing came next. Mr. Jaffrey had fallen in- 
 to so brown a study that, a quarter of an hour 
 afterwards, when I wished him good night 
 and withdrew, I do not think he noticed my 
 departure. 
 
 I am not what is called a man of imagination ; 
 it is my habit to exclude most things not capable 
 of mathematical demonstration ; but I am not 
 without a certain psychological insight, and I 
 think I understood Mr. Jaffrey's case. I could 
 easily understand how a man with an unhealthy, 
 sensitive nature, overwhelmed by sudden calam- 
 ity, might take refuge in some forlorn place like 
 this old tavern, and dream his life away. To 
 such a man — brooding forever on what might 
 have been and dwelling wholly in the realm of 
 his fancies — the actual world might indeed be- 
 come as a dream, and nothing seem real but his 
 illusions. I dare say that thirteen years of Bay- 
 ley's Four-Corners would have its effect upon 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 173 
 
 me; though instead of conjuring up golden-haired 
 children of the Madonna, I should probably see 
 gnomes and kobolds, and goblins engaged in 
 hoisting false signals and misplacing switches for 
 midnight express trains. 
 
 " No doubt," I said to myself that night, as I 
 lay in bed, thinking over the matter, " this once 
 possible but now impossible child is a great com- 
 fort to the old gentleman, — a greater comfort, 
 perhaps, than a real son would be. May be 
 Andy will vanish with the shades and mists of 
 night, he 's such an unsubstantial infant ; but if 
 he does n't, and Mr. Jaffrey finds pleasure in 
 talking to me about his son, I shall humor the 
 old fellow. It would n't be a Christian act to 
 knock over his harmless fancy." 
 
 I was very impatient to see if Mr. Jaffrey's 
 illusion would stand the test of daylight. It did. 
 Elkanah Elkins Andrew Jackson Jaffrey was, so 
 . to speak, alive and kicking the next morning. 
 On taking his seat at the breakfast-table, Mr. 
 Jaffrey whispered to me that Andy had had a 
 comfortable night. 
 
 " Silas ! " said Mr. Sewell, sharply, " what are 
 you whispering about ? " 
 
174 MISS mehetabel's son. 
 
 Mr. Sewell was in an ill-humor ; perhaps he 
 was jealous because I had passed the evening in 
 Mr. Jaffrey's room ; but surely Mr. Sewell could 
 not expect liis boarders to go to bed at eight 
 o'clock every night, as he did. From time to 
 time during the meal Mr. Sewell regarded me 
 unkindly out of the corner of his eye, and in 
 helping me to the parsnips he poniarded them 
 with quite a suggestive air. All this, however, 
 did not prevent me from repairing to the door of 
 Mr. Jaffrey's snuggery when night came. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Jaffrey, how 's Andy this even- 
 ing ? " 
 
 " Got a tooth ! " cried Mr. Jaffrey, vivaciously. 
 
 "No!" 
 
 " Yes, he has ! Just through. Gave the nurse 
 a silver dollar. Standing reward for first tooth." 
 
 It was on the tip of my tongue to express sur- 
 prise that an infant a day old should cut a tooth, 
 when I suddenly recollected that Richard III. 
 was born with teeth. Feeling myself to be on 
 unfamiliar ground, I suppressed my criticism. It 
 was well I did so, for in the next breath I was 
 advised that half a year had elapsed since the 
 previous evening. 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 173 
 
 " Andy 's had a hard six months of it," said 
 Mr. Jaffrey, with the well-known narrative air 
 of fathers. " We 've brought him up by hand. 
 His grandfather, by the way, was brought up by', 
 the bottle " — and brought down by it, too, I 
 added mentally, recalling Mr. Sewell's account 
 of the old gentleman's tragic end- 
 Mr. Jaffrey then went on to give me a history 
 of Andy's first six months, omitting no detail 
 however insignificant or irrelevant. This history 
 I would, in turn, inflict upon the reader, if I were 
 only certain that he is one of those dreadful 
 parents who, under the aegis of friendship, bore 
 you at a street-corner with that remarkable thing 
 which Freddy said the other day, and insist on 
 singing to you, at an evening party, the Iliad of 
 Tommy's woes. 
 
 But to inflict this enfantillage upon the un- 
 married reader would be an act of wanton cru- 
 elty. So I pass over that part of Andy's biog- 
 raphy, and, for the same reason, make no record 
 of the next four or five interviews I had with 
 Mr. Jaffrey. It will be sufficient to state that 
 Andy glided from extreme infancy to early youth 
 with astonishing celerity, — at the rate of one 
 
^6 MISS mehetabel's son. 
 
 year per uiglit, if I remember correctly ; and -^ 
 must I confess it ? — before the week came to 
 an end, this invisible hobgoblin of a boy was 
 only little less of a reality to me than to Mr. 
 Jaffrey. 
 
 At first I had lent myself to the old dreamer's 
 whim with a keen perception of the humor of the 
 thing ; but by and by I found I was talking and 
 thinking of Miss Mehetabel's son as though he 
 were a veritable personage. Mr. Jaffrey spoke 
 of the child with such an air of conviction ! — as 
 if Andy were playing among his toys in the next 
 room, or making mud-pies down in the yard. In 
 these conversations, it should be observed, the 
 child was never supposed to be present, except 
 on that single occasion when Mr. Jaffrey leaned 
 over the cradle. After one of our sSances I 
 would lie awake until the small hours, thinking 
 of the boy, and then fall asleep only to have in- 
 digestible dreams about him. Through the day, 
 and sometimes in the midst of complicated calcu- 
 lations, I would catch myself wondering what 
 Andy was up to now ! There was no shaking 
 him off ; he became an inseparable nightmare to 
 me ; and I felt that if I remained much longer 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 177 
 
 at Bayley's Four-Corners I should turn into jusi 
 Buch another bald-headed, mild-eyed visionary at 
 Silas Jaffrey. 
 
 Then the tavern was a grewsome old shell any 
 •way, full of unaccountable noises after dark, — 
 rustlings of garments along unfrequented pas- 
 sages, and stealthy footfalls in unoccupied cham- 
 bers overhead. I never knew of an old house 
 without these mysterious noises. Next to my 
 bedroom was a musty, dismantled apartment, in 
 one corner of which, leaning against the wain- 
 scot, was a crippled mangle, with its iron crank 
 tilted in the air like the elbow of the late Mr. 
 Clem Jaffrey. Sometimes, 
 
 " In the dead vast and middle of the night," 
 
 I used to hear sounds as if some one were turn- 
 ing that rusty crank on the sly. This occurred 
 only on particularly cold nights, and I conceived 
 the uncomfortable idea that it was the thin family 
 ghosts, from the neglected graveyard in the corn- 
 field, keeping themselves warm by running each 
 other through the mangle. There was a haunted 
 air about the whole place that made it easy for 
 me to believe in the existence of a phantasm like 
 
 8» L 
 
178 MISS mehetabel's son. 
 
 Miss Mehetabel's son, who, after all, was less 
 unearthly than Mr. Jaffrey liimself , and seemed 
 more properly an inhabitant of this globe than 
 the toothless ogre who kept the inn, not to men- 
 tion the silent Witch of Endor that cooked our 
 meals for us over the bar-room fire. 
 
 In spite of the scowls and winks bestowed 
 upon me by Mr. SeweU, who let slip no oppor- 
 tunity to testify his disapprobation of the intima/- 
 cy, Mr. Jaffrey and I spent all our evenings to- 
 gether, — those long autumnal evenings, through 
 the length of which he talked about the boy, lay- 
 ing out his path in life and hedging the path with 
 roses. He should be sent to the High School at 
 Portsmouth, and then to college ; he should be 
 educated like a gentleman, Andy. 
 
 " When the old man dies," said Mr. Jaffrey, 
 rubbing his hands gleefully, as if it were a great 
 joke, " Andy will find that the old man has left 
 him a pretty plum." 
 
 " What do you think of having Andy enter 
 West Point, when he 's old enough ? " said Mr. 
 Jaffrey on another occasion. " He need n't neces- 
 sarily go into the army when he graduates ; he 
 can become a civil engineer." 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 17? 
 
 This was a stroke of flattery so delicate and 
 indirect that I could accept it without immod- 
 esty. 
 
 There had lately sprung up on the corner of 
 Mr. Jaffrey's bureau a small tin house, Gothic in 
 architecture, and pink in color, with a slit in the 
 roof, and the word Bank painted on one fa§ade. 
 Several times in the course of an evening Mr. 
 Jaffrey would rise from his chair without inter- 
 rupting the conversation, and gravely drop a 
 nickel into the scuttle of the bank. It was pleas- 
 ant to observe the solemnity of his countenance 
 as he approached the edifice, and the air of 
 triumph with which he resumed his seat by the 
 fireplace. One night I missed the tin bank. It 
 had disappeared, deposits and all. Evidently 
 there had been a defalcation on rather a large 
 scale. I strongly suspected that Mr. Sewell was 
 at the bottom of it ; but my suspicion was not 
 shared by Mr. Jaffrey, who, remarking my glance 
 at the bureau, became suddenly depressed. " I 'm 
 afraid," he said, " that I have failed to instil into 
 Andrew those principles of integrity which — 
 which — " and the old gentleman quite broke 
 down. 
 
180 MISS mehetabel's son. 
 
 Andy was now eight or nine years old, and for 
 some time past, if the truth must be told, had 
 given Mr. Jaffrey no inconsiderable trouble ; 
 what with his impishness and his illnesses, the 
 boy led the pair of us a lively dance. I shall not 
 Boon forget the anxiety of Mr. JafPrey the night 
 Andy had the scarlet-fever, — an anxiety which 
 so infected me that I actually returned to the 
 tavern the following afternoon earlier than usual, 
 dreading to hear the little spectre was dead, and 
 greatly relieved on meeting Mr. Jaffrey at the 
 door-step with his face wreathed in smiles. 
 When I spoke to him of Andy, I was made aware 
 that I was inquiring into a case of scarlet-fever 
 that had occurred the year before ! 
 
 It was at this time, towards the end of my 
 second week at Greenton, that I noticed what 
 was probably not a new trait, — Mr. Jaffrey's 
 curious sensitiveness to atmospherical changes. 
 He was as sensitive as a barometer. The 
 approach of a storm sent his mercury down 
 instantly. When the weather was fair, he was 
 hopeful and sunny, and Andy's prospects were 
 brilliant. When the weather was overcast and 
 threatening,, he grew restless, and despondent. 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 181 
 
 and was afraid the boy was n't going to turn out 
 well. 
 
 On the Saturday previous to my departure, 
 which had been fixed for Monday, it rained heav- 
 ily all the afternoon, and that night Mr. Jaffrey 
 was in an unusually excitable and unhappy frame 
 of mind. His mercury was very low indeed. 
 
 " That boy is going to the dogs just as fast as 
 he can go," said Mr. Jaffrey, with a woful face. 
 " I can't do anything with him." 
 
 " He '11 come out all right, Mr. Jaffrey. Boys 
 will be boys. I would not give a snap for a lad 
 without animal spirits." 
 
 " But animal spirits," said Mr. Jaffrey senten- 
 tiously, " should n't saw off the legs of the piano 
 in Tobias's best parlor. I don't know what To- 
 bias will say when he finds it out." 
 
 " What ! has Andy sawed off the legs of the old 
 spinet ? " I returned, laughing. 
 
 " Worse than that." 
 
 " Played upon it, then ! " 
 
 " No, sir. He has lied to me ! " 
 
 " I can't believe that of Andy." 
 
 " Lied to me, sir," repeated Mr. Jaffrey, severe^ 
 ly. " He pledged me his word of honor that he 
 
182 MISS MEHETABEL S SOK. 
 
 would give over his climbing. The way tliat boy 
 climbs sends a chill down my spine. This morn- 
 ing, notwithstanding his solemn promise, he 
 shinned up the lightning-rod attached to the 
 extension and sat astride the ridge-pole. I saw 
 him, and he denied it ! When a boy you have 
 caressed and indulged, and lavished pocket-money 
 on, lies to you and will climb, then there 's 
 nothing more to be said. He 's a lost child." 
 
 " You take too dark a view of it, Mr. Jaffrey. 
 Training and education are bound to tell in the 
 end, and he has been well brought up." 
 
 " But I did n't bring him up on a lightning- 
 rod, did I ? If he is ever going to know how to 
 behave, he ought to know now. To-morrow he 
 will be eleven years old." 
 
 The reflection came to me that if Andy had 
 not been brought up by the rod, he had certainly 
 been brought up by the lightning. He was eleven 
 years old in two weeks ! 
 
 I essayed, with that perspicacious wisdom 
 which seems to be the peculiar property of 
 bachelors and elderly maiden ladies, to tran- 
 quillize Mr. Jaffrey's mind, and to give him 
 some practical hints on the management of youtb-. 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 183 
 
 " Spank him," I suggested at length. 
 
 " I will ! " said the old gentleman. 
 
 " And you 'd better do it at once ! " I added, 
 as it flashed upon me that in six months Andy 
 would be a hundred and forty-three years old ! — 
 an age at which parental discipline would have 
 to be relaxed. 
 
 The next morning, Sunday, the rain came 
 down as if determined to drive the quicksilver 
 entirely out of my poor friend. Mr. Jaffrey sat 
 ' bolt upright at the breakfast-table, looking as 
 woe-begone as a bust of Dante, and retired to 
 his chamber the moment the meal was finished. 
 As the day advanced, the wind veered round to 
 the northeast, and settled itself down to work. 
 It was not pleasant to think, and I tried not to 
 think, what Mr. Jaffrey's condition would be if 
 the weather did not mend its manners by noon ; 
 but so far from clearing off at noon, the storm 
 increased in violence, and as night set in, the 
 wind whistled in a spiteful falsetto key, and the 
 rain lashed the old tavern as if it were a balky 
 horse that refused to move on. The windows 
 rattled in the worm-eaten frames, and the doors 
 of remote rooms, where nobody ever went, 
 
184 MISS mehetabel's 30>f. 
 
 slammed to in the maddest way. Now and then 
 the tornado, sweeping down the side of Mount 
 Agamenticus, bowled across the open country, 
 and struck the ancient hostelry point-blank. 
 
 Mr. Jaffrey did not appear at supper. I knew 
 he was expecting me to come to his room as 
 usual, and I turned over in my mind a dozen 
 plans to evade seeing him that night. The land- 
 lord sat at the opposite side of the chimney-place, 
 with his eye upon me. I fancy he was aware of 
 the effect of this storm on his other boarder, for 
 at intervals, as the wind hurled itself against the 
 exposed gable,threatening to burst in the windows, 
 Mr. Sewell tipped me an atrocious wink, and 
 displayed his gums in a way he had not done 
 since the morning after my arrival at Greentou. 
 I wondered if he suspected anything about Andy. 
 There had been odd times during the past week 
 when I felt convinced that the existence of Miss 
 Mehetabel's son was no secret to Mr. Sewell. 
 
 In deference to the gale, the landlord sat up 
 half an hour later than was his custom. At half 
 past eight he went to bed, remarking that he 
 thought the old pile would stand till morning. 
 
 jHe had been absent only a few minutes when 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 185 
 
 I heard a rustling at the door. I looked up, and 
 beheld Mr. Jaffrey standing on the threshold, 
 with his dress in disorder, his scant hair flying, 
 and the wildest expression on his face. 
 
 " He 's gone ! " cried Mr. Jaffrey. 
 
 "Who? Sewell? Yes, he just went to bed." 
 
 " No, not Tobias, — the boy ! " 
 
 " What, run away ? " 
 
 " No, — he is dead ! He has fallen off of a 
 step-ladder in the red chamber and broken his 
 neck ! " 
 
 Mr. Jaffrey threw up his hands with a gesture 
 of despair, and disappeared. I followed him 
 through the hall, saw him go into his own apart- 
 ment, and heard the bolt of the door drawn to. 
 Then I returned to the bar-room, and sat for an 
 hour or two in the ruddy glow of the fire, brood- 
 ing over the strange experience of the last fort- 
 night. 
 
 On my way to bed I paused at Mr. Jaffrey's 
 door, and, in a lull of the storm, the measured 
 respiration within told me that the old gentleman 
 was sleeping peacefully. 
 
 Slumber was coy with me that night. I lay 
 listening to the soughing of the wind, and think- 
 
186 Bliss mehetabel's son. 
 
 ing of Mr. Jaffrey's illusion. It had amused me 
 at first with its grotesqueness ; but now the poor 
 little phantom was dead, I was conscious that 
 there had been something pathetic in it all along. 
 Shortly after midnight the wind sunk down, com- 
 ing and going fainter and fainter, floating around 
 the eaves of the tavern with a gentle, murmurous 
 sound, as if it were tm-ning itself into soft wings 
 to bear away the spirit of a little child. 
 
 Perhaps nothing that happened during my stay 
 at Bayley's Four-Corners took me so completely 
 by surprise as Mr. Jaffrey's radiant countenance 
 the next morning. The morning itself was not 
 fresher or sunnier. His round face literally 
 shone with geniaUty and happiness. His eyes 
 twinkled like diamonds, and the magnetic light 
 of his hair was turned on fuU. He came into 
 my room while I was packing my valise. He 
 chirped, and prattled, and carolled, and was sorry 
 I was going away, — but never a word about 
 Andy. However, the boy had probably been dead 
 several years then ! 
 
 The open wagon that was to carry me to the 
 station stood at the door ; Mr. Sewell was placing 
 
MISS mehetabel's son. 187 
 
 my case of instruments under the seat, and Mr. 
 Jaffrey had gone up to his room to get me a cer- 
 tain newspaper containing an account of a re- 
 markable shipwreck on the Auckland Islands- I 
 took the opportunity to thank Mr. Sewell for his 
 courtesies to me, and to express my regret at 
 leaving him and Mr. Jaffrey. 
 
 " I have become very much attached to Mr. 
 Jaffrey," I said ; " he is a most interesting per- 
 son ; but that hypothetical boy of his, that son 
 of Miss Mehetabel's — " 
 
 •' Yes, I know ! " interrupted Mr. Sewell, test- 
 ily. " Fell off a step-ladder and broke his dratted 
 neck. Eleven year old, was n't he ? Always 
 does, jest at that point. Next week Silas will 
 begin the whole thing over again, if he can get 
 anybody to listen to him." 
 
 " I see. Our amiable friend is a little queer 
 on that subject." 
 
 Mr. SeweU glanced cautiously over his shoul- 
 der, and, tapping himself significantly on the 
 forehead, said in a low voice, 
 
 " Room To Let — Unfurnished ! " 
 
A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 
 
 /^NB morning as I was passing through Boston 
 ^ Common, which lies between my home and 
 my office, I met a gentleman lounging along The 
 Mall. I am generally preoccupied when walking, 
 and often thrid my way through crowded streets 
 without distinctly observing any one. But this 
 man's face forced itself upon me, and a singular 
 face it was. His eyes were faded, and his hair, 
 which he wore long, was flecked with gray. His 
 hair and eyes, if I may say so, were sixty 
 years old, the rest of him not thirty. The youth- 
 fulness of his figure, the elasticity of his gait, and 
 the venerable appearance of his head were incon- 
 gruities that drew more than one pair of curiou? 
 eyes towards him. He excited in me the painful 
 suspicion that he had either got somebody else's 
 head or somebody else's body. He was evident 
 ly an American, at least so far as the upper part 
 
A STRUGGLE fOH LIFE. 189 
 
 of him was concerned, — the New England cut 
 of countenance is unmistakable, — evidently &. 
 man who had seen something of the world, 
 but strangely young and old. 
 
 Before reaching the Park Street gate, I had 
 taken up the thread of thought which he had un- 
 consciously broken ; yet throughout the day this 
 old young man, with his unwrinkled brow and 
 silvered locks, gUded in like a phantom between 
 me and my duties. 
 
 The next morning I again encountered him on 
 The MaU. He was resting lazily on the green 
 rails, watching two little sloops in distress, which 
 two ragged ship-owners had consigned to the 
 mimic perils of the Pond. The vessels lay be- 
 calmed in the middle of the ocean, displaying 
 a tantalizing lack of sympathy with the frantic 
 helplessness of the owners on shore. As the 
 gentleman observed their dilemma, a light came 
 into his faded eyes, then died out, leaving them 
 drearier than before. I wondered if he, too, 
 in his time, had sent out ships that drifted and! 
 drifted and never came to port ; and if these poor 
 toys were to him types erf his own losses. 
 
 " That man has a story, and I should like to 
 
190 A STEUGGLE FOE LIFE. 
 
 know it," I said, half aloud, halting in one, ot 
 those winding paths "which branch off from the 
 pastoral quietness of the Pond, and end in the 
 rush and tumult of Tremont Street. 
 
 " Would you ? " exclaimed a voice at my side. 
 
 I turned and faced Mr. H , a neighbor of' 
 
 mine, who laughed heartily at finding me talking 
 to myself. " Well," he added, reflectingly, " 1 
 can tell you this man's story; and if you will 
 match the narrative with anything as curious, I 
 shall be glad to hear it." 
 
 " You know him then ? " 
 
 " Yes and no. That is to say, I do not know 
 him personally; but I know a singular passage 
 in his life. I happened to be in Paris when 
 he was buried." 
 
 " Buried ! " 
 
 " Well, strictly speaking, not buried ; but some- 
 thing quite like it. If you 've a spare half-hour," 
 
 continued my friend H , " we 'U sit on this 
 
 bench, and I will tell you all I know of an affair 
 that made some noise in Paris a couple of years 
 ago. The gentleman himself, standing yonder, 
 will serve as a sort of frontispiece to the romance, 
 ' — a full-page illustration, as it were." 
 
A STRUGGLE FOE LIFE. 191 
 
 The following pages contain the story which 
 
 Mr. H related to me. While he was telling 
 
 it, a gentle wind arose ; the miniature sloops 
 drifted feebly about the ocean ; the wretched 
 owners flew from point to point, as the deceptive 
 breeze promised to waft the barks to either shore ; 
 the early robins trilled now and then from the 
 newly fringed elms ; and the old young man 
 leaned on the rail in the sunshine, little dream- 
 ing that two gossips were discussing his affairs 
 within twenty yards of him. 
 
 Three persons were sitting in a chamber whose 
 oAe large window overlooked the Place VendSme. 
 M. Dorine, with his back half turned on the 
 other two occupants of the apartment, was read- 
 ing the Journal des D^bats in an alcove, pausing 
 from time to time to wipe his glasses, and taking 
 scrupulous pains not to glance towards the lounge 
 at his right, on which were seated Mile. Dorine 
 and a young American gentleman, whose hand- 
 some face rather frankly told his position in the 
 family. There was not a happier man in Paris 
 that afternoon than Philip Wentworth. Life 
 had become so delicious to him that he shrunk 
 
193 A STRUGGLE FOB LIFE. 
 
 from looking beyond to-day. What could th^ 
 future add to his full heart ? what might it not 
 take away ? The deepest joy has always some- 
 thing of melancholy in it, — a presentiment, a 
 fleeting sadness, a feeling without a name. Went- 
 worth was conscious of this subtile shadow that 
 night, when he rose from the lounge and thought- 
 fully held Julie's hand to his lip for a moment 
 before parting. A careless observer would not 
 have thought him, as he was, the happiest man 
 in Paris. 
 
 M. Dorine laid down his paper, and came for- 
 ward. " If the house," he said, " is such as 
 M. Cherbonneau describes it, I advise you to 
 close with him at once. I would accompany 
 you, Philip, but the truth is, I am too sad at 
 losing this little bird to assist you in selecting 
 a cage for her. Remember, the last train for 
 town leaves at five. Be sure not to miss it ; 
 for we have seats for Sardou's new comedy 
 to-morrow night. By to-morrow night," he 
 added laughingly, " little Julie here will be an 
 old lady, — 't is such an age from now until 
 then." 
 
 The next morning the train bore Philip to one 
 
A STRUGGLE FOB LIFE. 193 
 
 of the loveliest spots within thirty miles of Paris. 
 An hour's walk through green lanes brought him 
 to M. Cherbonneau's estate. In a kind of dream 
 the young man wandered from room to room, in- 
 spected the conservatory, the stables, the lawns, 
 the strip of woodland through which a merry 
 brook sang to itself continually ; and, after din^ 
 ing with M. Cherbonneau, completed the pur- 
 chase, and turned his steps towards the station 
 just in time to catch the express train. 
 
 As Paris stretched out before him, with its 
 lights twinkling in the early dusk, and its spires 
 and domes melting into the evening air, it 
 seemed to Philip as if years had elapsed since 
 he left the city. On reaching Paris he drove to 
 his h8tel, where he found several letters lying on 
 the table. He did not trouble himself even to 
 glance at their superscriptions as he threw 
 aside his travelling surtout for a more appropriate 
 dress. 
 
 If, in his impatience to return to Mile. Dorine. 
 the cars had appeared to walk, the fiacre which 
 he had secured at the station appeared to creep. 
 At last it turned into the Place YendSme, and 
 drew up before M. Dorine's h6tel. The door 
 
194 A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 
 
 opened as Philip's foot touched the first step. 
 The servant silently took his cloak and hat, with 
 a special deference, Philip thought ; but was he 
 not now one of the family ? 
 
 " M. Dorine," said the servant slowly, " is un- 
 able to see Monsieur at present. He wishes 
 Monsieur to be shown up to the salon." 
 
 " Is Mademoiselle — " 
 
 " Yes, Monsieur." 
 
 " Alone ? " 
 
 " Alone, Monsieur," repeated the man, looking 
 curiously at Philip, who could scarcely repress an 
 exclamation of pleasure. 
 
 It was the first time that such a privilege had 
 been accorded him. His interviews with Julie 
 had always taken place in the presence of M. 
 Dorine, or some member of the household. A 
 well-bred Parisian girl has but a formal acquaint- 
 ance with her lover. 
 
 Philip did not linger on the staircase ; with 
 a light heart, he went up the steps, two at a 
 time, hastened through the softly lighted hall, 
 in which he detected the faint scent of her fa- 
 vorite flowers, and stealthily opened the door of 
 the salon. 
 
A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 195 
 
 The room was darkened. Underneath the 
 chandelier stood a slim black casket on trestles. 
 A lighted candle, a crucifix, and some white 
 flowers were on a table near by. Julie Dorine 
 was dead. 
 
 When M. Dorine heard the sudden cry that 
 rang through the silent house, he hurried from 
 the library, and found Philip standing like a 
 ghost in the middle of the chamber. 
 
 It was not until long afterwards that Went- 
 worth learned the details of the calamity that 
 had befallen him. On the previous night Mile. 
 Dorine had retired to her room in seemingly per- 
 fect health, and had dismissed her maid with a 
 request to be awakened early the next morning. 
 At the appointed hour the girl entered the cham- 
 ber. Mile. Dorine was sitting in an arm-chair, 
 apparently asleep. The candle in the bougeoir 
 had burnt down to the socket ; a book lay half 
 open on the carpet at her feet. The girl started 
 when she saw that the bed had not been oc- 
 cupied, and that her mistress still wore an even- 
 ing dress. She rushed to Mile. Dorine's side. 
 It was not slumber; it was death. 
 
 Two messages were at once despatched to 
 
196 A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 
 
 Philip, one to the station at G , the other to 
 
 his hStel. The first missed him on the road, the 
 second he had neglected to open. On his ar- 
 rival at M. Dorine's house, the valet, under the 
 supposition that Wentworth had been advised 
 of Mile. Dorine's death, broke the intelligence 
 with awkward cruelty, by showing him directly 
 to the salon. 
 
 Mile. Dorine's wealth, her beauty, the sudden- 
 ness of her death, and the romance that had in 
 some way attached itself to her love for the 
 young American, drew crowds to witness the 
 funeral ceremonies, which took place in the 
 church in the rue d'Aguesseau. The body was 
 to be laid in M. Dorine's tomb, in the cemetery 
 of Montmartre. 
 
 This tomb requires a few words of description. 
 First there was a grating of filigraned iron; 
 through this you looked into a small vestibule 
 or hall, at the end of which was a massive door 
 of oak opening upon a short flight of stone steps 
 descending into the tomb. The vault was fifteen 
 or twenty feet square, ingeniously ventilated from 
 the ceiling, but unlighted. It contained two sar- 
 cophagi: the first held tlie remains of Madame 
 
A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 197 
 
 Dorine, long since dead ; the other was new, and 
 bore on one side the letters J. D., in monogram, 
 interwoven with fleurs-de-lis. 
 
 The funeral train stopped at the gate of the 
 small garden that enclosed the place of burial, 
 only the immediate relatives following the bearers 
 into the tomb. A slender wax candle, such as 
 is used in Catholic churches, burnt at the foot of 
 the uncovered sarcophagus, casting a dim glow 
 over the centre of the apartment, and deepening 
 the shadows which seemed to huddle together in 
 the corners. By this flickering light the coffin 
 was placed in its granite shell, the heavy slab 
 laid over it reverently, and the oaken door re- 
 volved on its rusty hinges, shutting out the 
 uncertain ray of .sunshine that had ventured to 
 peep in on the darkness. 
 
 M. Dorine, muffled in his cloak, threw himself 
 on the back seat of the landau, too abstracted in 
 his grief to observe that he was the only occu- 
 pant of the vehicle. There was a sound of 
 wheels grating on the gravelled avenue, and then 
 aU was silence again in tlie cemetery of Mont- 
 martre. At tlie main entrance the carriages 
 parted company, dashing off into various si»'eeta 
 
198 A STRUGBLE FOR LIFE. 
 
 at a pace that seemed to express a sense of 
 relief. 
 
 The rattle of wheels had died out of the air 
 when Philip opened his eyes, bewildered, like a 
 man abruptly roused from slumber. He raised 
 himself on one arm and stared into the surround- 
 ing blackness. Where was he ? In a second 
 the truth flashed upon him. He had been left 
 in the tomb ! WhUe kneeling on the farther 
 side of the stone box, perhaps he had fainted, 
 and during the last solemn rites his absence 
 had been unnoticed. 
 
 His first emotion was one of natural terror. 
 But this passed as quickly as it came. Life had 
 ceased to be so very precious to him ; and if it 
 were his fate to die at Julie's side, was not 
 that the fulfilment of the desire which he had ex- 
 pressed to himself a hundred times that morning ? 
 What did it matter, a few years sooner or later ? 
 He must lay down the burden at last. Why not 
 then? A pang of self-reproach followed the 
 thought. Could he so lightly throw aside the 
 love that had bent over his cradle ? The sacred 
 name of mother rose involuntarily to his lips. 
 Was it not cowardly to yield up without a strug- 
 
A STRUGGLE tOK Llt'E. 199 
 
 gle the life which he should guard for her sake ? 
 Was it not his duty to the living and the dead to 
 face the difficulties of his position, and overcome 
 them if it were within human power ? 
 
 With an organization as delicate as a woman's, 
 he had that spirit which, however sluggish in 
 repose, leaps with a kind of exultation to meas- 
 ure its strength with disaster. The vague fear 
 of the supernatural, that would affect most men 
 in a similar situation, found no room in his 
 heart. He was simply shut in a chamber from 
 which it was necessary that he should obtain 
 release within a given period. That this chamber 
 contained the body of the woman he loved, so far 
 from adding to the terror of the case, was a 
 circumstance from which he drew consolation. 
 She was a beautiful white statue now. Her soul 
 was far hence; and if that pure spirit could 
 return, would it not be to shield him with her 
 love? It was impossible that the place should 
 not engender some thought of the kind. He did 
 not put the thought entirely from him as he rose 
 to his feet and stretched out his hands in the 
 darkness ; but his mind was too healthy and 
 practical to indulge long in such speculations. 
 
200 A STKUGGLE FOR LIFE. 
 
 Philip, being a smoker, chanced to have in his 
 pocket a box of allumettes. After several in- 
 effectual essays, he succeeded in igniting one 
 against the dank wall, and by its momentary 
 glare perceived that the candle had been left 
 in the tomb. Thi& would serve him in examining 
 the fastenings of the vault. If he could force the 
 inner door by any means, and reach the grating, 
 of which he had an indistinct recollection, he 
 might hope to make himself heard. But the 
 oaken door was immovable, as sohd as the wall 
 itself, into which it fitted air-tight. Even if he 
 had had the requisite tools, there were no fasten- 
 ings to be removed ; the hinges were set on the 
 outside. 
 
 Having ascertained this, Philip replaced the 
 candle on the floor, and leaned against the wall 
 thoughtfully, watching the blue fan of flame that 
 wavered to and fro, threatening to detach itseK 
 from the wick. " At all events," he thought, 
 " the place is ventilated." Suddenly he sprang 
 forward and extinguished the light. 
 
 His existence depended on that candle ! 
 
 He had read somewhere, in some account 
 of shipwreck, how the survivors had lived for 
 
A STRUGGLE FOE LIFE. 201 
 
 days upon a few candles which one of the pas- 
 sengers had insanely thrown into the long-boat. 
 And here he had been burning away his very 
 life! 
 
 By the transient illumination of one of the 
 tapers, he looked at his watch. It had stopped at 
 eleven, — but eleven that day, or the preceding 
 night? The funeral, he knew, had left the 
 church at ten. How many hours had passed 
 since then ? Of what duration had been his 
 swoon ? Alas ! it was no longer possible for 
 him to measure those hours which crawl like 
 snails by the wretched, and fly like swallows over 
 the happy. 
 
 He picked up the candle, and seated himseU 
 on the stone steps. He was a sanguine man, 
 but, as he weighed the chances of escape, the 
 prospect appalled him. Of course he would 
 be missed. His disappearance under the cir- 
 cumstances would surely alarm his friends ; they 
 would instigate a search for him ; but who would 
 think of searching for a live man in the cemetery 
 of Montmartre ? The pr^fet of police would set 
 a hundred intelligences at work to find him ; the 
 Seine might be dragged, les misSrables turned 
 
 9» 
 
203 A STRUGGLE FOE LIFE. 
 
 over at the Morgue ; a minute description of liim 
 would be in every detective's pocket ; and lie — 
 in M. Dorine's family tomb ! 
 
 Yet, on the other hand, it was here he was last 
 seen ; from this point a keen detective would 
 naturally work up the case. Then might not the 
 undertaker return for the candlestick, probably 
 not left by design? Or, again, might not M. 
 Dorine send fresh wreaths of flowers, to take the 
 place of those which now diffused a pungent, 
 aromatic odor throughout the chamber ? Ah ! 
 what unlikely chances ! But if one of these 
 things did not happen speedily, it had better 
 never happen. How long could he keep life in 
 himself ? 
 
 "With his pocket-knife Wentworth cut the 
 half -burned candle into four equal parts. " To- 
 night," he meditated, " I will eat the first of 
 these pieces ; to-morrow, the second ; to-morrow 
 evening, the third ; the next day, the fourth ; 
 and then — then I '11 wait ! " 
 
 He had taken no breakfast that morning, un- 
 less a cup of coffee can be called a breakfast- 
 He had never been very hungry before. He was. 
 ravenously hungry now. But he postponed the 
 
4 STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 203 
 
 meal as long as practicable. It must have been 
 near midnight, according to his calculation, when 
 he determined to try the first of his four singular 
 repasts. The bit of white-wax was tasteless ; but 
 it served its purpose. 
 
 His appetite for the time appeased, he found a 
 new discomfort. The humidity of the walls, and 
 the wind that crept through the unseen venti- 
 lator, chilled him to the bone. To keep walking 
 was his only resource. A kind of drowsiness, 
 too, occasionally came over him. It took all his 
 wiU to fight it off. To sleep, he felt, was to die ; 
 and he had made up his mind to live. 
 
 The strangest fancies flitted through his head 
 as he groped up and down the stone floor of 
 the dungeon, feeling his way along the wall 
 to avoid the sepulchres. Voices that had long 
 been silent spoke words that had long been for- 
 gotten ; faces he had known in childhood grew 
 palpable against the dark. His whole life in de- 
 tail was unrolled before him like a panorama ; the 
 changes of a year, with its burden of love and 
 death, its sweets and its bitternesses, were epit- 
 omized in a single second. The desire to sleep 
 had left liim, but the keen hunger came again. 
 
204 A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 
 
 It must be near morning now, he mused ; per. 
 haps the sun is just gilding the pinnacles and 
 domes of the city ; or, may be, a dull, drizzling 
 rain is beating on Paris, sobbing on these mounds 
 above me. Paris ! it seems like a dream. Did 
 I ever walk in its gay boulevards in the golden 
 air ? the delight and pain and passion of that 
 sweet human life ! 
 
 Philip became conscious that the gloom, the 
 silence, and the cold were gradually conquering 
 him. The feverish activity of his brain brought 
 on a reaction. He grew lethargic, he sunk down 
 on the steps, and thought of nothing. His hand 
 fell by chance on one of the pieces of candle ; he 
 grasped it and devoured it mechanically. This 
 revived him. " How strange," he thought, " that 
 I am not tliirsty. Is it possible that the damp- 
 ness of the walls, which I must inhale with every 
 breath, has supplied the need of water ? Not a 
 drop has passed my lips for two days, and still I 
 experience no thirst. That drowsiness, thank 
 Heaven, has gone. I think I was never wide 
 awake until this hour. It would be an anodyne 
 like poison that could weigh down my eyelids. 
 No doubt the dread of sleep has something to do 
 with this." 
 
A STRUGGLE FOB IIFE. 205 
 
 The minutes were like hours. Now he walked 
 as briskly as he dared up and down the tomb ; 
 now he rested against the door. More than once 
 he was tempted to throw himself upon the stone 
 coffin that held Julie, and make no further strusr- 
 gle for his life. 
 
 Only one piece of candle remained. He had 
 eaten the third portion, not to satisfy hunger, 
 but from a precautionary motive. He had taken 
 it as a man takes some disagreeable drug upon 
 the result of which hangs safety. The time was 
 rapidly approaching when even this poor substi- 
 tute for nourishment would be exhausted. He 
 delayed that moment. He gave himself a long 
 fast this time. The half-inch of candle which he 
 held in his hand was a sacred thing to him. It 
 was his last defence against death. 
 
 At length, with such a sinking at heart as he 
 had not known before, he raised it to his lips. 
 Then he paused, then he hurled the fragment 
 across the tomb, then the oaken door was flung 
 open, and Philip, with dazzled eyes, saw M. 
 Dorine's form sharply defined against the blue 
 sky. 
 
 When they led him out, half blinded, into the 
 
206 A STRUGGLE FOE LIFE. 
 
 broad daylight, M. Dorine noticed that Pliilip's 
 hair, which a short time since was as black as a 
 crow's wing, had actually turned gray in places. 
 The man's eyes, too, had faded; the darkness 
 had diuimed their lustre. 
 
 " And how long was he really confined in the 
 
 tomb?" I asked, as Mr. H concluded the 
 
 story. 
 
 " Just one hour and tioenty minutes ! " replied 
 Mr. H , smiling blandly. 
 
 As he spoke, the Lilliputian sloops, with their 
 sails all blown out like white roses, came floating 
 bravely into port, and Philip Wentworth lounged 
 by us, wearily, in the pleasant April sunshine. 
 
 Mr. H 's narrative haunted me. Here was 
 
 a man who had undergone a strange ordeal. 
 Here was a man whose suffering'* were unique. 
 His was no threadbare experience. Eighty min- 
 utes had seemed like two days to him ! If he had 
 really been immured two days in the tomb, the 
 story, from my point of view, would have lost its 
 tragic element. 
 
 After this it was but natural I should regard 
 
A STRUGGLE FOE LIFE. 207 
 
 Mr. Wentworth with deepened curiosity. As 
 I met him from day to day, passing through 
 tlie Common with tliat same introspective air, 
 there was something in his lonehness wliich 
 touched me. I wondered that I had not read 
 before in his pale, meditative face some such sad 
 
 history as Mr. H had confided to me. I 
 
 formed tlie resolution of speaking to him, though 
 with no very lucid purpose. One morning we 
 came face to face at the intersection of two 
 paths. He halted courteously to allow me the 
 precedence. 
 
 " Mr. Wentworth," I began, " I — " 
 
 He interrupted me. 
 
 " My name, sir," he said, in an off-hand man- 
 ner, " is Jones." 
 
 " Jo- Jo- Jones ! " I gasped. 
 
 " No, not Joseph Jones," he returned, with a 
 glacial air, " Frederick." 
 
 A dim light, in which the perfidy of my friend 
 
 H was becoming discernible, began to break 
 
 upon my mind. 
 
 It will probably be a standing wonder to Mr. 
 Frederick Jones why a strange man accosted him 
 one morning on the Common as "Mr. Went- 
 
308 A STEUGGLE FOE LIFE. 
 
 worth," and then dashed madly down the nearest 
 foot-path and disappeared in the crowd. 
 
 The fact is, I had been duped by Mr. H , 
 
 who is a gentleman of literary proclivities, and 
 has, it is whispered, become somewhat demented 
 in brooding over the Great American Novel, — 
 not yet hatched. He had actually tried the effect 
 of one of his chapters on me ! 
 
 My hero, as I subsequently learned, is a com- 
 monplace young person who had some connec- 
 tion, I do not know what, with the building of 
 that graceful granite bridge which spans the 
 crooked silver lake in the Public Garden. 
 
 When I think of the readiness with which Mr. 
 
 H built up his airy fabric on my credulity, I 
 
 feel half inclined to laugh, though I am deeply 
 mortified at having been the unresisting victim 
 of his Black Art. 
 
MLLE. OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 
 
 I. 
 
 TTTE are accustomed to speak with a certaiu 
 ' ' light irony of the tendency which women 
 have to gossip, as if the sin itself, if it is a sin, 
 were of the gentler sex, and could by no chance 
 be a masculine peccadillo. So far as my observa- 
 tion goes, men are as much given to small talk 
 as women, and it is undeniable that we have 
 produced the highest type of gossiper extant. 
 Where will you find, in or out of literature, such 
 another droll, delightful, chatty busybody as 
 Samuel Pepys, Esq., Secretary to the Admiralty 
 in the reigns of those fortunate gentlemen 
 Charles II. and James II. of England ? He is 
 the king of tattlers, as Shakespeare is the king 
 of poets. 
 
 If it came to a matter of pure gossip, I would 
 back Our Club against the Sorosis or any women's 
 
210 MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 
 
 club in existence. Whenever you see in our 
 drawing-room four or five young fellows lounging 
 in easy-chairs, cigar in hand, and now and then 
 bringing their heads together over the small 
 round Japanese table which is always the pivot 
 of these social circles, you may be sure they are 
 discussing Tom's engagement, or Dick's extrava- 
 gance, or Harry's hopeless passion for the 
 younger Miss Fleurdelys. It is here that old 
 Tippleton gets execrated for that everlasting bon 
 mot of his which was quite a success at dinner- 
 parties forty years ago ; it is here the belle of the 
 season passes under the scalpels of merciless 
 young surgeons ; it is here B's financial con- 
 dition is handled in a way that would make B's 
 hair stand on end ; it is here, in short, that every^ 
 thing is canvassed, — everything that happens in 
 our set, I mean, much that never happens, and a 
 great deal that could not possibly happen. It 
 was at Our Club that I learned the particulars 
 of the Van Twiller affair. / 
 
 It was great entertainment to Our Club, the 
 Van TwiUer affair, though it was rather a joyless 
 thing, I fancy, for Van Twiller. To understand 
 the case fuUy, it should be understood that Ralph 
 
MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZAJJB.ISKI. 211 
 
 Van Twiller is one of the proudest and most 
 sensitive men living. He is a lineal descendant 
 of Wouter Van Twiller, the famous old Dutch 
 governor of New York, — Nieuw Amsterdam, 
 as it was then ; his ancestors have always been 
 burgomasters or admirals or generals, and his 
 mother is the Mrs. Vanrensselaer Vanzandt 
 Van Twiller whose magnificent place will be 
 pointed out to you on the right bank of the 
 Hudson, as you pass up the historic river towards 
 Idlewild. Ralph is about twenty-five years old. 
 Birth made him a gentleman, and the rise of 
 real estate — some of it in the family since 
 the old governor's time — made him a miUion- 
 naire. It was a kindly fairy that stepped in and 
 made him a good feilow also. Fortune, I take it, 
 was in her most jocund mood when she heaped 
 her gifts in this fashion on Van Twiller, who was, 
 and will be again, when this cloud blows over, 
 the flower of Our Club. 
 
 About a year ago there came a whisper — if 
 the word " whisper " is not too harsh a term to 
 apply to what seemed a mere breath floating 
 gently through the atmosphere of the billiard- 
 room — imparting the intelligence that Van 
 
212 MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 
 
 Twiller was in some kind of trouble. Just as 
 everybody suddenly takes to wearing square-toed 
 boots, or to drawing his neckscarf through a 
 Tiag, so it became all at once the fasliion, without 
 any preconcerted agreement, for everybody to 
 speak of Van Twiller as a man in some way 
 under a cloud. But what the cloud was, and 
 how he got under it, and why he did not get 
 away from it, were points that lifted themselves 
 into the realm of pure conjecture. There was 
 no man in the club with strong enough wing 
 to his imagination to soar to the supposition that 
 Van Twiller was embarrassed in money matters. 
 "Was he in love ? That appeared nearly as 
 improbable ; for if he had been in love all the 
 world — that is, perhaps a hundred first families 
 — would have known all about it instantly. 
 
 " He has the symptoms," said Delaney, laugh- 
 ing. " I remember once when Jack Plem- 
 ming — " 
 
 " Ned ! " cried Flamming, " I protest against 
 any allusion to that business." 
 
 This was one night when Van Twiller had 
 wandered into the club, turned over the maga- 
 zines absently in the reading-room, and wandered 
 11 p 
 
MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 213 
 
 out again without speaking ten words. The 
 naost careless eye would have remarked the great 
 change that had come over Van Twiller. Now 
 and then he would play a game of billiards with 
 Bret Harte or John Hay, or stop to chat a mo- 
 ment in the vestibule with Whitelaw Reid ; but 
 he was an altered man. When at the club, he 
 was usually to be found in the small smoking- 
 room up stairs, seated on a fauteuil fast asleep, 
 with the last number of The Nation in his hand. 
 Once if you went to two or three places of an 
 evening, you were certain to meet Van Twiller at 
 them all. You seldom met him in society now. 
 
 By and by came whisper number two, a 
 whisper more emphatic than number one, but 
 still untraceable to any tangible mouth-piece. 
 This time the whisper said Van Twiller was 
 in love. But with whom ? The list of possible 
 Mrs. Van Twillers was carefully examined by 
 experienced hands, and a check placed against a 
 fine old Knickerbocker name here and there, but 
 nothing satisfactory arrived at. Then that same 
 still small voice of rumor, but now with an easily 
 detected staccato sharpness to it, said that Van 
 Twiller was in love — with an actress! Van 
 
214 MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABKISKI. 
 
 Twiller, whom it had taken all these years and 
 all this waste of raw material in the way of 
 ancestors to bring to perfection, — Ralph Van 
 Twiller, the net result and flower of his race, 
 the descendant of Wouter, the son of Mrs. 
 Vanrensselaer Vanzandt Van Twiller, — in love 
 with an actress ! That was too ridiculous to 
 be believed, — and so everybody believed it. 
 
 Six or seven members of the club abruptly 
 discovered in themselves an unsuspected latent 
 passion for the histrionic art. In squads of two 
 or three they stormed successively all the theatres 
 in town, — Booth's, Wallack's, Daly's Fifth Ave- 
 nue (not burnt down then), and the Grand Opera 
 House. Even the shabby homes of the drama 
 over in the Bowery, where the Germanic Thes- 
 pis has not taken out his naturalization papers, 
 underwent rigid exploration. But no clew was 
 found to Van Twiller' s mysterious attachment. 
 The opira bouffe, which promised the widest 
 field for investigation, produced absolutely noth- 
 ing, not even a crop of suspicions. One night, 
 after several weeks of this, Delaney and I 
 fancied we caught a glimpse of Van Twiller 
 in the private box of an up-town theatre, where 
 
MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 215 
 
 some thrilling trapeze performance was going on, 
 which we did not care to sit through ; but we 
 concluded afterwards it was only somebody that 
 looked like him. Delaney, by the way, was 
 unusually active in this search. I dare say he 
 never quite forgave Van Twiller for calling 
 him Muslin Delaney. Ned is fond of ladies' 
 society and that 's a fact. 
 
 The Cinunerian darkness which surrounded 
 Van Twiller's inamorata left us free to indulge 
 in the wUdest conjectures. Whether she was 
 black-tressed Melpomene, with bowl and dagger, 
 or Thalia, with the fair hair and the laughing 
 face, was only to be guessed at. It was popularly 
 conceded, however, that Van Twiller was on the 
 point of forming a dreadful mesalliance. 
 
 Up to this period he had visited the club 
 regularly. Suddenly he ceased to appear. He 
 was not to be seen on Broadway, or in the 
 Central Park, or at the houses he generally 
 frequented. His chambers — and mighty com- 
 fortable ones they were — on Thirty-fourth Street 
 were deserted. He had dropped out of the world, 
 shot Hke a bright particular star from his orbit 
 in the heaven of the best society. 
 
216 MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABEISKI. 
 
 " Where 's Van Twiller ? " 
 
 " Who 's seen Van TwHler ? " 
 
 " What has become of Van Twiller ? " 
 
 Delaney picked up the Evening Post, and read, 
 — with a solemnity that betrayed young Firkina 
 into exclaiming, " By Jove now ! " — 
 
 " Married, on the 10th instant, by the Rev. 
 Friar Laurence, at the residence of the bride's 
 uncle, Montague Capulet, Esq., Miss Adrienne Le 
 Couvreur to Mr. Ralph Van Twiller, both of this 
 city. No cards." 
 
 " It strikes me," said Frank Livingstone, who 
 had been ruffling the leaves of a magazine at the 
 other end of the table, " that you fellows are in a 
 great fever about Van Twiller." 
 
 " So we are." 
 
 " Well, he has simply gone out of town." 
 
 " Where ? " 
 
 " Up to the old homestead on the Hudson." 
 
 "It 's an odd time of year for a fellow to go 
 into the country." 
 
 " He has gone to visit his mother," said Living- 
 stone. 
 
 " In February ? " 
 
 " I did n't know, Delaney, there was any stat* 
 
MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 217 
 
 ute in force prohibiting a man from visiting his 
 mother in February if he wants to." 
 
 Delaney made some light remark about the 
 pleasure of communing with Nature with a cold 
 in her head, and the topic was dropped. 
 
 Livingstone was hand in glove with Van Twii- 
 ler, and if any man shared his confidence it was 
 Livingstone. He was aware of the gossip and 
 speculation that had been rife in the club, but he 
 either was not at liberty or did not think it worth 
 wliile to relieve our curiosity. In the course of a 
 week or two it was reported that Van Twiller 
 was going to Europe ; and go he did. A dozen 
 of us went down to the Scotia to see him off. It 
 was refreshing to have something as positive as 
 the fact that Van Twiller had sailed. 
 
216 UAD£MOIS£LL£ OLYMPE ZABSISKI. 
 
 n. 
 
 Shortly after Van Twiller's departure the 
 whole thing came out. Whether Livingstone 
 found the secret too heavy a burden, or whether 
 it transpired through some indiscretion on the 
 part of Mrs. Vanrensselaer Vanzandt Van Twil- 
 ler, I cannot say ; but one evening the entire 
 story was in the possession of tlie club. 
 
 Van Twiller had actually been very deeply in- 
 terested — not in an actress, for the legitimate 
 drama was not her humble walk in life, but — in 
 Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, whose really per- 
 ilous feats on the trapeze had astonished New 
 York the year before, though they had failed to 
 attract Delaney and me the night we wandered 
 into the up-town theatre on the trail of Van 
 Twiller's mystery. 
 
 That a man like Van Twiller should be fas- 
 cinated for an instant by a common circus-girl 
 seems incredible ; but it is always the incredi- 
 ble thing that happens. Besides, Mademoiselle 
 
MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 219 
 
 piympe was not a common circus-girl ; she was 
 a most daring and startling gymnaste, with a 
 beauty and a grace of movement that gave to 
 her audacious performance almost an air of 
 prudery. Watching her wondrous dexterity and 
 pliant strength, both exercised without apparent 
 effort, it seemed the most natural proceeding in 
 the world that she should do those unpardonable 
 things. She had a way of melting from one 
 graceful posture into another, like the dissolving 
 figures thrown from a stereopticon. She was a 
 lithe, radiant shape out of the Grecian mythology, 
 now poised up there above the gas-lights, and 
 now gleaming through the air like a slender gilt 
 arrow. 
 
 I am describing Mademoiselle Olympe as she 
 appeared to Van Twiller on the first occasion 
 when he strolled into the theatre where she was 
 performing. To me she was a girl of eighteen 
 or twenty years of age (maybe she was much 
 older, for pearl-powdor and distance keep these 
 people perpetually young), slightly but exqui- 
 sitely built, with sinews of silver wire ; rather 
 pretty, perhaps, after a manner, but showing 
 plainly the effects of the exhaustive drafts she 
 
120 MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABEISKI. 
 
 was making on her physical vitality. Now, Vatf 
 T wilier was an enthusiast on the subject of calis 
 thenics. " If I had a daughter," Van Twiller used 
 to say, " I would n't send her to a boarding- 
 school, or a nunnery ; I 'd send her to a gym- 
 nasium for the first five years. Our American 
 women have no physique. They are lUies, pallid, 
 pretty, — and perishable. You marry an Amer- 
 ican woman, and what do you marry ? A head- 
 ache. Look at English girls. They are at least 
 roses, and last the season through." 
 
 Walking home from the theatre that first 
 night, it flitted through Van Twiller's mind 
 that if he could give this girl's set of nerves 
 and muscles to any one of the two hundred high- 
 bred women he knew, he would marry her on the 
 spot and worship her forever. 
 
 The following evening he went to see Made- 
 moiselle Olympe again. " Olympe Zabriski," he 
 thought, as he sauntered through the lobby, 
 " what a queer name ! Olympe is French, and 
 Zabriski is Polish. It is her nom de guerre, of 
 course ; her real name is probably Sarah Jones. 
 What kind of creature can she be in private life, 
 \ wonder ? I wonder if she wears that costume 
 n* 
 
MADEMOISELLE OlYMPE ZABEISKI. 221 
 
 all the time, and if she springs to her meals 
 from a horizontal bar. Of course she rocks 
 the baby to sleep on the trapeze." And Van 
 Twiller went on making comical domestic tableaux 
 of Mademoiselle Zabriski, like the clever, satirical 
 dog he was, until the curtain rose. 
 
 Tliis was on a Friday. There was a matinee 
 the next day, and he attended that, though he 
 had secured a seat for the usual evening en- 
 tertainment. Then it became a habit of Van 
 Twiller's to drop into the theatre for half an 
 hour or so every night, to assist at the interlude^ 
 in which she appeared. He cared only for her 
 part of the programme, and timed his visits 
 accordingly. It was a surprise to himself when 
 he reflected, one morning, that he had not missed 
 a single performance of Mademoiselle Olympe for 
 two weeks. 
 
 " This will never do," said Van TwiUer. 
 " Olympe " -^ he called her Olympe, as if she 
 were an old acquaintance, and so she might have 
 been considered by that time — "is a wonderful 
 creature ; but this will never do. Van, my boy, 
 you must reform this altogether." 
 
 But half past nine that night saw him in his 
 
222 MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABBISKI. 
 
 accustomed orchestra chair, and so on for another 
 week. A habit leads a man so gently in the 
 beginning that he does not perceive he is led, — 
 with what silken threads and down what pleasant 
 avenues it leads him ! By and by the soft silk 
 threads become iron chains, and the pleasant 
 avenues Avernus ! 
 
 Quite a new element had lately entered 
 into Van Twiller's enjoyment of Mademoiselle 
 Olympe's ingenious feats, — a vaguely born ap- 
 prehension that she might slip from that swing- 
 ing bar, that one of the thin cords supporting it 
 might snap, and let her go headlong from the 
 dizzy height. Now and then, for a terrible in- 
 stant, he would imagine her lying a glittering, 
 palpitating heap at the foot-lights, with no color 
 in her lips ! Sometimes it seemed as if the girl 
 were tempting this kind of fate. It was a hard, 
 bitter life, and nothing but poverty and sordid 
 misery at home could have driven her to it. 
 What if she should end it all some night, by just 
 nnclasping that little hand ? It looked so small 
 and white from where Yan Twiller sat ! 
 
 This frightful idea fascinated while it chilled 
 him, and helped to make it nearly impossible 
 
MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABKISKI. 223 
 
 for him to keep away from the theatre. In the 
 beginning his attendance had not interfered with 
 his social duties or pleasures ; but now he came 
 to find it distasteful after dinner to do anything 
 but read, or walk the streets aimlessly, until 
 it was time to go to the play. When that was over; 
 he was in no mood to go anywhere but to his 
 rooms. So he dropped away by insensible degrees 
 from his habitual haunts, was missed, and began 
 to be talked about at the club. Catching some 
 intimation of this, he ventured no more in the 
 orchestra stalls, but shrouded himself behind 
 the draperies of the private box in which Delaney 
 and I thought we saw him on one occasion. 
 
 Now, I find it very perplexing to explain what 
 Van Twiller was wholly unable to explain to 
 himself. He was not in love with Mademoiselle 
 Olympe. He bad no wish to speak to her, or 
 to hear her speak. Nothing could have been 
 easier, and nothing further from his desire,' 
 than to know her personally. A Van Twiller 
 personally acquainted with a strolling female 
 acrobat ! Good heavens ! That was something 
 possible only with the discovery of perpetual 
 motion. Taken from her theatrical setting, 
 
224 MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKl. 
 
 from her lofty perch, so to say, on the trapeze- 
 bar, Olympe Zabriski would hare shocked every 
 aristocratic fibre in Van Twiller's body. He was 
 simply fascinated by her marvellous grace and 
 Slan, and the magnetic recklessness of the girl. 
 It was very young in him and very weak, and 
 no member of the Sorosis, or all the Sorosisters 
 together, could have been more severe on Van 
 TwiUer than he was on himself. To be weak, 
 and to know it, is something of a punishment 
 for a proud man. Van TwiUer took his punish- 
 ment, and went to the theatre, regularly. 
 
 " When her engagement comes to an end," 
 he meditated, " that will finish the business." 
 
 Mademoiselle Olympe' s engagement finally did 
 eome to an end, and she departed. But her 
 engagement had been highly beneficial to the 
 treasury-chest of the up-town theatre, and before 
 Van TwiUer could get over missing her she 
 had returned from a short Western tour, and her 
 immediate reappearance was underlined on the 
 play-bills. 
 
 On a dead-wall opposite the windows of 
 Van Twiller's sleeping-room there appeared, 
 as if by necromancy, an aggressive poster with 
 
MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 225 
 
 Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski on it in letters 
 at least a foot high. This thing stared hiiu 
 in the face when he woke up, one morning. 
 It gave him a sensation as if she had called 
 on him overnight, and left her card. 
 
 Prom time to time through the day he regarded 
 that poster with a sardonic eye. He had pitiless- 
 ly resolved not to repeat the folly of the previous 
 month. To say that this moral victory cost 
 him nothing would be to deprive it of merit. 
 It cost hun many internal struggles. It is a fine 
 thing to see a man seizing his temptation by the 
 throat, and wrestling with it, and trampling 
 it under foot like St. Anthony. This was the 
 spectacle Van Twiller was exhibiting to the 
 angels. 
 
 The evening Mademoiselle Olympe was to 
 make her reappearance, Van Twiller, having 
 dined at the club and feeling more like himself 
 than he had felt for weeks, returned to his 
 chamber, and putting on dressing-gown and 
 slippers, piled up the greater portion of his 
 library about him, and fell to reading assiduously. 
 There is nothing like a quiet evening at home 
 with some slight intellectual occupation, after 
 
226 MADEMOISELLE OLYMPK ZABRISKI. 
 
 one's feathers have been stroked the wrong 
 way. 
 
 When the lively French clock on the mantel- 
 piece, — a base of malachite surmounted by a 
 flying bronze Mercury with its arms spread grace- 
 fully on the air, and not remotely suggestive 
 of Mademoiselle Olympe in the act of executing 
 her grand flight from the trapeze, — when the 
 clock, I repeat, struck nine, Van Twiller paid no 
 attention to it. That was certainly a triumph. 
 I am anxious to render Van Twiller all the 
 justice I can, at this point of the narrative, 
 inasmuch as when the half-hour sounded musical- 
 ly, like a crystal ball dropping into a silver bowl, 
 he rose from the chair automatically, thrust 
 his feet into his walking-shoes, threw his over- 
 coat across his arm, and strode out of the room. 
 
 To be weak and to scorn your weakness, 
 and not to be able to conquer it, is, as has 
 been said, a hard thing; and I suspect it was 
 not with unalloyed satisfaction that Van Twiller 
 found himself taking his seat in the back part of 
 the private box night after night during the 
 second engagement of Mademoisel^ Olympe. It 
 was so easy not to stay away ! 
 
MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 22? 
 
 In this second edition of Van TwUler's fatuity, 
 his case was even worse than before. He not 
 only thought of Olympe quite a number of times 
 between breakfast and dinner, he not only at- 
 tended the interlude regularly, but he began, in 
 spite of himself, to occupy his leisure hours at 
 night by dreaming of her. This was too much 
 of a good thing, and Van Twiller regarded it so. 
 Besides, the dream was always the same, — a 
 harrowing dream, a dream singularly adapted to 
 shattering the nerves of a man like Van Twiller. 
 He would imagine himself seated at the theatre 
 (with all the members of Our Club in the par- 
 quette), watching Mademoiselle Olympe as usual, 
 when suddenly that young lady would launch 
 herself desperately from the trapeze, and come 
 flying through the air like a firebrand hurled at 
 his private box. Then the unfortunate man 
 would wake up with cold drops standing on his 
 forehead. 
 
 There is one redeeming feature in tliis infatua- 
 tion of Van Twiller's which the sober moralist 
 will love to look upon, — the serene unconscious- 
 ness of the person who caused it. She went 
 through her rdle with admirable aplomb, drew 
 
228 MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 
 
 her salary, it may be assumed, punctually, and 
 appears from first to last to have been ignorant 
 that there was a miserable slave wearing her 
 chains nightly in the left-hand proscenium-box. 
 
 That Van Twiller, haunting the theatre with 
 the persistency of an ex-actor, conducted himself 
 60 discreetly as not to draw the fire of Mademoi- 
 selle Olympe's blue eyes shows that Van TwU- 
 ier, however deeply under a spell, was not in 
 love. I say this, though I think if Van Twiller 
 had not been Van Twiller, if he had been a man 
 of no family and no position and no money, if 
 New York had been Paris, and Thirty-fourth 
 Street a street in the Latin Quarter — but it is 
 useless to speculate on what might have hap- 
 pened. What did happen is sufficient. 
 
 It happened, then, in the second week of 
 Queen Olympe's second unconscious reign, that 
 an appalling Whisper floated up the Hudson, 
 effected a landing at a point between Spuyten 
 Duyvel Creek and Cold Spring, and sought out 
 a stately mansion of Dutch architecture standing 
 on the bank of the river. The Whisper straight- 
 way informed the lady dwelling in this mansion 
 that all was not well with the last of the Van 
 
MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 22? 
 
 Twillers, that he was gradually estranging him- 
 self from his peers, and wasting his nights in a 
 play-house watching a misguided young woman 
 turning unmaidenly summersaults on a piece of 
 wood attached to two ropes. 
 
 Mrs. Vanrensselaer Vanzandt Van Twiller 
 came down to town by the next train to look 
 into this little matter. 
 
 She found the flower of the family taking an 
 early breakfast, at 11 A. M., in his cosey apart- 
 ments on Thirty-fourth Street. With the least 
 possible circumlocution she confronted him with 
 what rumor had reported of his pursuits, and 
 was pleased, but not too much pleased, when he 
 gave her an exact account of his relations with 
 Mademoiselle Zabriski, neither conceaUng nor 
 qualifying anything. As a confession, it was 
 unique, and might have been a great deal less 
 entertaining. Two or three times, in the course 
 of the narrative, the matron had some difficulty 
 in preserving the gravity of her countenance. 
 After meditating a few minutes, she tapped Van 
 Twiller softly on the arm with the tip of her 
 parasol, and invited him to return with her the 
 next day up the Hudson and make a brief visit 
 
230 MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABEISKI. 
 
 at the home of his ancestors. He accepted the 
 inyitation with outward alacrity and inward 
 disgust. 
 
 When this was settled, and the worthy lady 
 had withdrawn, Van Twiller went directly to 
 the establishment of Messrs Ball, Black, and 
 Company and selected, with imerring taste, the 
 finest diamond bracelet procurable. For his 
 mother? Dear me, no! She had the family 
 jewels. 
 
 I would not like to state the enormous sum 
 Van Twiller paid for this bracelet. It was such 
 a clasp of diamonds as would have hastened the 
 pulsation of a patrician wrist. It was such a 
 bracelet as Prince Camaralzaman might have 
 sent to the Princess Badoura, and the Princess 
 Badoura — might have been very glad to get. 
 
 In the fragrant Levant morocco case, where 
 these happy jewels lived when they were at home. 
 Van Twiller thoughtfully placed his card, on the 
 back of which he had written a line begging 
 Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski to accept the ac- 
 companying trifle from one who had witnessed her 
 graceful performances with interest and pleasure. 
 This was not done inconsiderately. " Of course 
 
MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 231 
 
 I must enclose my card, as I would to any lady," 
 Van Twiller had said to himself ; " a Van Twil- 
 ler can neither write an anonymous letter nor 
 make an anonymous present." Blood entails its 
 duties as well as its privileges. 
 
 The casket despatched to its destination. Van 
 Twiller felt easier in his mind. He was under 
 obligations to the girl for many an agreeable hour 
 that might otherwise have passed heavily. He 
 had paid the debt, and he had paid it en prince, 
 as became a Van Twiller. He spent the rest of 
 the day in looking at some pictures at Goupil's, 
 and at the club, and in making a few purchases 
 for his trip up the Hudson. A consciousness 
 that this trip up the Hudson was a disorderly re- 
 treat came over him unpleasantly at intervals. 
 
 When he returned to his rooms late at night, 
 he found a note lying on the writing-table. He 
 started as his eye caught the words " Thea- 
 tre " stamped in carmine letters on one corner of 
 the envelope. Van Twiller broke the seal with 
 trembling fingers. 
 
 Now, this note some time afterwards fell into 
 the hands of Livingtsone, who showed it to Stuy- 
 vesant, who showed it to Delaney, who showed 
 
g32 MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABKISKI. 
 
 it to me, and I copied it as a literary curiosity. 
 The note ran as follows : — 
 
 Mh Van Twilleb Deab Sir — i am verry great- 
 full to you for that Bracelett. it come just in the nie 
 of time for me. The Mademoiselle Zabriski dodg is 
 about plaid out. My heard is getting to much for me. 
 i shall have to grow a mustash and take to some other 
 line of busyness, i dont no what now, but wiU let 
 you no. You wont feel bad if i seU. that Bracelett. j 
 have seen Abrahams Moss and he says he will do tlie 
 square thing. Pleas accep my thanks for youie Beau- 
 tiful! and Unexpected present. 
 
 Youre respectfull servent, 
 
 Charles Montmoebnci Walters. 
 
 The next day Van Twiller neither expressed 
 nor felt any unwillingness to spend a few weeks 
 with his mother at the old homestead. 
 
 And then he went abroad. 
 
PERE ANTOINE'S DATE-PALM. 
 
 "VTEAR the Levee, and not far from the old 
 ■'• " French Cathedral in the Place d'Armes, at 
 New Orleans, stands a fine date-palm, thirty feet 
 in height, spreading its broad leaves in the alien 
 air as hardily as if its sinuous roots were sucking 
 strength from their native earth. 
 
 Sir Charles tyell, in his " Second Visit to. the 
 United States," mentions this exotic : " The tree 
 is seventy or eighty years old ; for P^re Antoine, 
 a Roman Catholic priest, who died about twenty 
 years ago, told Mr. Bringier that he planted it him- 
 self, when he was young. In his will he provid- 
 ed that they who succeeded to this lot of ground 
 should forfeit it if they cut down the palm." 
 
 Wishing to learn something of P^re Antoine's 
 history, Sir Charles Lyell made inquiries among 
 the ancient creole inhabitants of the faubourg. 
 That the old priest, in his last days, became very 
 
234 PEKE antoine's date-palm. 
 
 much emaciated, that he walked about the streets 
 like a mummy, that he gradually dried up, and fi- 
 nally blew away, was the meagre and unsatisfac- 
 tory result of the tourist's investigations. This 
 is all that is generally told of Pdre Antoine. 
 
 In the summer of 1861, while New Orleans 
 was yet occupied by the Rebel forces, I met at 
 Alexandria, in Virginia, a lady from Louisiana, 
 — Miss Blondeau by name, — who gave me the 
 substance of the following legend touching Pdre 
 Antoine and his wonderful date-palm. If it 
 should appear tame to the reader, it will be be- 
 cause I am not habited in a black ribbed-silk 
 dress, with a strip of point-lace around my throat, 
 like Miss Blondeau ; it will be because I lack her 
 eyes and lips and Southern music to tell it with. 
 
 When P§re Antoine was a very young man, he 
 had a friend whom he loved as he loved his life. 
 Emile Jardin returned his passion, and the two, 
 on account of their friendship, became the marvel 
 of the city where they dwelt. One was never 
 seen without the other ; for they studied, walked, 
 ate, and slept together. 
 
 Thus began Miss Blondeau, with the air of 
 
PERE ANTOINE S DATE-PALM. 235 
 
 Fiammetta telling her prettiest story to the Mors 
 entines in the garden of Boccaccio. 
 
 Antoine and Emile were preparing to enter 
 the Church ; indeed, they had taken the prelimi- 
 nary steps, when a circumstance occurred which 
 changed the color of their lives. A foreign lady, 
 from some nameless island in the Pacific, had a 
 few months before moved into their neighbor- 
 hood. The lady died suddenly, leaving a girl of 
 sixteen or seventeen, entirely friendless and un- 
 provided for. The young men had been kind to 
 the woman during her illness, and at her death 
 > — melting with pity at the forlorn situation of 
 Anglice, the daughter — swore between them- 
 selves to love and watch over her as if she were 
 their sister. 
 
 Now Anglice had a wild, strange beauty that 
 made other women seem tame beside her ; and in 
 the course of time the young men found them- 
 selves regarding their ward not so much like 
 brothers as at first. In brief, they found them- 
 selves in love with her. 
 
 They struggled with their hopeless passion 
 month after month, neither betraying his secret 
 to the other; for the austCTe orders which they 
 
236 r^RE antoine's date-palm. 
 
 •were about to assume precluded the idea of 
 love and marriage. Until then they had dwelt 
 in the calm air of religious meditations, unmoved 
 except by that pious fervor which in other ages 
 taught men to brave the tortures of the rack and 
 to smile amid the flames. But a blond girl, 
 with great eyes and a voice like the soft notes of 
 a vesper hymn, had come in between them and 
 their ascetic dreams of heaven. The ties that 
 had bound the young men together snapped silent- 
 ly one by one. At length each read in the pale 
 face of the other the story of his own despair. 
 
 And she? If Anglice shared their trouble, 
 her face told no story. It was like the face of a 
 saint on a cathedral window. Once, however, as 
 she came suddenly upon the two men and over- 
 heard words that seemed to burn like fire on the 
 lip of the speaker, her eyes grew luminous for an 
 instant. Then she passed on, her face as im- 
 mobile as before in its setting of wavy gold hair. 
 " Enti'e or et roux Dieu fit ses longs cheveux." 
 
 One night ErnQe and Anglice were missing. 
 They had flown, — but whither, nobody knew, 
 and nobody, save Antoine, cared. It was a heavy 
 blow to Antoine, — for he had himself half 
 
 12 
 
PEBE ANTOINE's DATE-PALM. 23* 
 
 resolved to confess his love to Anglice and urge 
 her to fly with him. 
 
 A strip of paper slipped from a volume on 
 Antoine's prie-dieu, and fluttered to his feet. 
 
 "Z)o not be angry" said the bit of paper, 
 piteously ; '■'■forgive us, for we love." 
 
 Three years went by wearily enough. An- 
 toine had entered the Church, and was already 
 looked upon as a rising man ; but his face was 
 pale and his heart leaden, for there was no 
 sweetness in life for him. 
 
 Four years had elapsed, when a letter, covered 
 with outlandish postmarks, was brought to the 
 young priest, — a letter from Anglice. She was 
 dying ; — would he forgive her ? Emile, the year 
 previous, had fallen a victim to the fever that 
 raged on the island ; and their child, Anglice, 
 was likely to follow him. In pitiful terms she 
 begged Antoine to take charge of the child until 
 she was old enough to enter the convent of 
 the Sacr^-Coeur. The epistle was finished has- 
 tily by another hand, informing Antoine of 
 Madame Jardin's death ; it also told him that 
 Anglice had been placed on board a vessel short- 
 ly to leave the island for some Western port. 
 
238 PERE antoine's date-palm. 
 
 The letter, delayed by storm and shipwreck, 
 was hardly read and wept over when little 
 Anglice arrived. 
 
 On beholding her, Antoine uttered a cry of joy 
 and surprise, — she was so like the woman he 
 had worshipped. 
 
 The passion that had been crowded down in his 
 heart broke out and lavished its richness on this 
 child, who was to him not only the Anglice of 
 years ago, but his friend Emile Jardin also. 
 
 Anglice possessed the wild, strange beauty 
 of her mother, — the bending, willowy form, the 
 rich tint of skin, the large tropical eyes, that had 
 almost made Antoine's sacred robes a mockery 
 to him. 
 
 For a month or two Anglice was wildly unhap- 
 py in her new home. She talked continually of 
 the bright country where she was born, the fruits 
 and flowers and blue skies, the tall, fan-like trees, 
 and the streams that went murmuring tlirough 
 them to the sea. Antoine could not pacify her. 
 
 By and by she ceased to weep, and went about 
 the cottage in a weary, disconsolate way that cut 
 Antoine to the heart. A long-tailed paroquet 
 which she had brought with her in the ship 
 
PEEE ANTOINE's DATE-PALM. 23S 
 
 walked solemnly behind her from room to room, 
 mutely pining, it seemed, for those heavy orient 
 airs that used to ruffle its briUiant plumage. 
 
 Before the year ended, he noticed that the 
 ruddy tinge had faded from her cheek, that 
 her eyes had grown languid, and her slight 
 figure more willowy than ever. 
 
 A physician was consulted. He could discover 
 nothing wrong with the child, except this fading 
 and drooping. He failed to account for that. 
 It was some vague disease of the mind, he said, 
 beyond his skiU. 
 
 So Anglice faded day after day. She seldom 
 left the room now. At last Antoine could noil 
 shut out the fact that the child was passing away. 
 He had learned to love her so ! 
 
 " Dear heart," he said once, " what is 't ails 
 thee ? " 
 
 " Nothing, mon p^re," for so she called him. 
 
 The winter passed, the balmy spring had 
 come with its magnolia blooms and orange 
 blossoms, and Anglice seemed to revive. In her 
 small bamboo chair, on the porch, she swayed 
 to and fro in the fragrant breeze, with a peculiar 
 undulating motion, like a graceful tree. 
 
240 PEEE antoine's date-palm. 
 
 At times something seemed to weigh upon her 
 mind. Antoine observed it, and waited. At 
 length she spoke. 
 
 " Near our house," said little AngUce, — 
 " near our house, on the island, the palm-trees 
 are waving under the blue sky. how beauti- 
 ful ! I seem to lie beneath them aU day long. I 
 am very, very happy. I yearned for them so 
 much that I grew sick, — don't you think it was 
 so, mon pere ? " 
 
 " H^las, yes ! " exclaimed Antoine, suddenly. 
 " Let us hasten to those pleasant islands where 
 the palms are waving." 
 
 Anglice smiled. 
 
 " I am going there, mon p^re." 
 
 A week from that evening the wax candles 
 burned at her feet and forehead, lighting her on 
 the journey. 
 
 AU was over. Now was Antoine's heart 
 empty. Death, like another Emile, had stolen 
 his new Anglice. He had nothing to do but to 
 lay the blighted flower away. 
 
 P^re Antoine made a shallow grave in his 
 garden, and heaped the fresh brown mould over 
 his idol. 
 
PEKE ANTOINE S DATE-PALM. 241 
 
 In the tranquil spring evenings, the priest was 
 seen sitting by the mound, his finger closed in 
 the unread breviary. 
 
 The summer broke on that sunny land ; and 
 in the cool morning twihght, and after nightfall 
 Antoine lingered by the grave. He could never 
 be with it enough. 
 
 One morning he observed a delicate stem, with 
 two curiously shaped emerald leaves, springing 
 up from the centre of the mound. At first he 
 merely noticed it casually ; but at length the 
 plant grew so tall, and was so strangely unlike 
 anything he had ever seen before, that he exam- 
 ined it with care. 
 
 How straight and graceful and exquisite it 
 was ! When it swung to and fro with the summer 
 wind, in the twilight, it seemed to Antoine as if 
 little Anglice were standing there in the garden. 
 
 The days stole by, and Antoine tended the 
 fragile shoot, wondering what manner of blossom 
 it would unfold, white, or scarlet, or golden. 
 One Sunday, a stranger, with a bronzed, weather- 
 beaten face like a sailor's, leaned over the garden 
 rail, and said to him, " What a fine young date- 
 palm you have there, sir ! " 
 
842 PERE antoine's date-palm. 
 
 " Mon Dieu ! " cried FSre Antoine, " and is it 
 a palm? " 
 
 " Yes, indeed," returned the man. " I didn't 
 reckon the tree would ilourish in this latitude." 
 
 " Ah, mon Dieu ! " was all the priest could 
 say aloud ; but he murmured to himself, " C'est 
 le bon Dieu qui m' a donn^ cela." 
 
 If Pdre Antoine loved the tree before, he wor- 
 shipped it now. He watered it, and nurtured it, 
 and could have clasped it in his arms. Here 
 were fimile and Anglice and the child, aU in 
 one ! 
 
 The years glided away, and the date-palm and 
 the priest grew together, — only one became vig- 
 orous and the other feeble. Pere Antoine had 
 long passed the meridian of life. The tree was 
 in its youth. It no longer stood in an isolated 
 garden ; for pretentious brick and stucco houses 
 had clustered about Antoine's cottage. They 
 looked down scowling on the humble thatched 
 Toof. The city was edging up, trying to crowd 
 Mm off his land. But he clung to it like lichen 
 and refused to sell. 
 
 ' Speculators piled gold on his doorsteps, and he 
 laughed at them. Sometimes he was hungry, 
 
PERE ANTOINE's DATE-PALM. 243 
 
 and cold, and thinly clad ; but he laughed none 
 the less. 
 
 " Get thee behind me, Satan ! " said the old 
 priest's smile. 
 
 P^re Antoine was very old now, scarcely able 
 to walk ; but he could sit under the pliant, ca- 
 ressing leaves of his palm, loving it like an Arab ; 
 and there he sat till the grimmest of speculators 
 came to him. But even in death Pdre Antoine 
 was faithful to his trust. 
 
 The owner of that land loses it, if he harm the 
 date-tree. 
 
 And there it stands in the narrow, dingy 
 street, a beautiful, dreamy stranger, an exquisite 
 foreign lady whose grace is a joy to the eye, the ' 
 incense of whose breath makes the air enamoured. 
 May the hand wither that touches her ungently ! 
 
 " Because it grew from the heart of little Artr 
 glice" said Miss Blondeau, tenderly. 
 
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