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Mother is well enough, Aunt Susan is well enough; but these, like the poor, I have with me always.hiOn so grim a day as this, one needs a new interest, a fresh element, to whet the dull edge of captivity.89That was very neatly said, but it doesn't mean anything.TUOne doesn't want the edge of captivity sharpened up, you know, but just the reverse.#-.He glanced at his pretty French mantel-clock.7That clock's wrong again.'wxThat clock hardly ever knows what time it is; and when it does know, it lies about it--which amounts to the same thing.2Alfred!" There was no answer.H Alfred!.$,-Good servant, but as uncertain as the clock.34Alonzo touched an electric bell button in the wall.!qrHe waited a moment, then touched it again; waited a few moments more, and said: "Battery out of order, no doubt.=>But now that I have started, I will find out what time it is.ijHe stepped to a speaking-tube in the wall, blew its whistle, and called, "Mother!" and repeated it twice.<Well, that's no use.*&'Mother's battery is out of order, too.!/0Can't raise anybody down-stairs--that is plain.gHe sat down at a rosewood desk, leaned his chin on the left-hand edge of it and spoke, as if to the floor: "Aunt Susan!" A low, pleasant voice answered, "Is that you, Alonzo?' "Yes.hiI'm too lazy and comfortable to go downstairs; I am in extremity, and I can't seem to scare up any help.EDear me, what is the matter?" "Matter enough, I can tell you!" "Oh, don't keep me in suspense, dear! What is it?" "I want to know what time it is.RSYou abominable boy, what a turn you did give me! Is that all?" "All--on my honor.BCalm yourself.&*+Tell me the time, and receive my blessing.3Just five minutes after nine.2No charge--keep your blessing.IThanks.efIt wouldn't have impoverished me, aunty, nor so enriched you that you could live without other means.JKHe got up, murmuring, "Just five minutes after nine," and faced his clock.!/0Ah," said he, "you are doing better than usual.)'(You are only thirty-four minutes wrong.E Let me see.E let me see.abThirty-three and twenty-one are fifty-four; four times fifty-four are two hundred and thirty-six.$,-One off, leaves two hundred and thirty-five.C That's right.He turned the hands of his clock forward till they marked twenty-five minutes to one, and said, "Now see if you can't keep right for a while--else I'll raffle you!" He sat down at the desk again, and said, "Aunt Susan!" "Yes, dear.%+,Had breakfast?" "Yes, indeed, an hour ago.5Busy?" "No--except sewing. DEWhy?" "Got any company?" "No, but I expect some at half past nine.C I wish I did.C I'm lonesome.5I want to talk to somebody.:Very well, talk to me.7But this is very private.>?Don't be afraid--talk right along, there's nobody here but me.7I hardly know whether to venture or not, but--" "But what? Oh, don't stop there! You know you can trust me, Alonzo--you know, you can.&*+I feel it, aunt, but this is very serious.HIIt affects me deeply--me, and all the family---even the whole community.78Oh, Alonzo, tell me! I will never breathe a word of it. YZWhat is it?" "Aunt, if I might dare--" "Oh, please go on! I love you, and feel for you.D Tell me all.BConfide in me.#stWhat is it?" "The weather!" "Plague take the weather! I don't see how you can have the heart to serve me so, Lon.78There, there, aunty dear, I'm sorry; I am, on my honor.<I won't do it again. [\Do you forgive me?" "Yes, since you seem so sincere about it, though I know I oughtn't to.=>You will fool me again as soon as I have forgotten this time.6No, I won't, honor bright.TUBut such weather, oh, such weather! You've got to keep your spirits up artificially."rsIt is snowy, and blowy, and gusty, and bitter cold! How is the weather with you?" "Warm and rainy and melancholy.ghThe mourners go about the streets with their umbrellas running streams from the end of every whalebone.opThere's an elevated double pavement of umbrellas, stretching down the sides of the streets as far as I can see. DEI've got a fire for cheerfulness, and the windows open to keep cool.abBut it is vain, it is useless: nothing comes in but the balmy breath of December, with its burden of mocking odors from the flowers that possess the realm outside, and rejoice in their lawless profusion whilst the spirit of man is low, and flaunt their gaudy splendors in his face while his soul is clothed in sackcloth and ashes and his heart breaketh.BAlonzo opened his lips to say, "You ought to print that, and get it framed," but checked himself, for he heard his aunt speaking to some one else.HIHe went and stood at the window and looked out upon the wintry prospect.SThe storm was driving the snow before it more furiously than ever; window-shutters were slamming and banging; a forlorn dog, with bowed head and tail withdrawn from service, was pressing his quaking body against a windward wall for shelter and protection; a young girl was plowing knee-deep through the drifts, with her face turned from the blast, and the cape of her waterproof blowing straight rearward over her head.xAlonzo shuddered, and said with a sigh, "Better the slop, and the sultry rain, and even the insolent flowers, than this!" He turned from the window, moved a step, and stopped in a listening attitude.9:The faint, sweet notes of a familiar song caught his ear.6He remained there, with his head unconsciously bent forward, drinking in the melody, stirring neither hand nor foot, hardly breathing.mnThere was a blemish in the execution of the song, but to Alonzo it seemed an added charm instead of a defect.8This blemish consisted of a marked flatting of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh notes of the refrain or chorus of the piece.,-When the music ended, Alonzo drew a deep breath, and said, "Ah, I never have heard 'In the Sweet By-and-by' sung like that before!" He stepped quickly to the desk, listened a moment, and said in a guarded, confidential voice, "Aunty, who is this divine singer?" "She is the company I was expecting.3Stays with me a month or two.;I will introduce you.(xyMiss--" "For goodness' sake, wait a moment, Aunt Susan! You never stop to think what you are about!" He flew to his bedchamber, and returned in a moment perceptibly changed in his outward appearance, and remarking, snappishly: "Hang it, she would have introduced me to this angel in that sky-blue dressing-gown with red-hot lapels! Women never think, when they get a-going.XHe hastened and stood by the desk, and said eagerly, "Now, Aunty, I am ready," and fell to smiling and bowing with all the persuasiveness and elegance that were in him.F Very well. GHMiss Rosannah Ethelton, let me introduce to you my favorite nephew, Mr.;Alonzo Fitz Clarence./There! You are both good people, and I like you; so I am going to trust you together while I attend to a few household affairs.+%&Sit down, Rosannah; sit down, Alonzo.0 !Good-by; I sha'n't be gone long.KAlonzo had been bowing and smiling all the while, and motioning imaginary young ladies to sit down in imaginary chairs, but now he took a seat himself, mentally saying, "Oh, this is luck! Let the winds blow now, and the snow drive, and the heavens frown! Little I care!" While these young people chat themselves into an acquaintanceship, let us take the liberty of inspecting the sweeter and fairer of the two.fShe sat alone, at her graceful ease, in a richly furnished apartment which was manifestly the private parlor of a refined and sensible lady, if signs and symbols may go for anything.For instance, by a low, comfortable chair stood a dainty, top-heavy workstand, whose summit was a fancifully embroidered shallow basket, with varicolored crewels, and other strings and odds and ends protruding from under the gaping lid and hanging down in negligent profusion._On the floor lay bright shreds of Turkey red, Prussian blue, and kindred fabrics, bits of ribbon, a spool or two, a pair of scissors, and a roll or so of tinted silken stuffs.78On a luxurious sofa, upholstered with some sort of soft Indian goods wrought in black and gold threads interwebbed with other threads not so pronounced in color, lay a great square of coarse white stuff, upon whose surface a rich bouquet of flowers was growing, under the deft cultivation of the crochet-needle.12The household cat was asleep on this work of art. pqIn a bay-window stood an easel with an unfinished picture on it, and a palette and brushes on a chair beside it.There were books everywhere: Robertson's Sermons, Tennyson, Moody and Sankey, Hawthorne, Rab and His Friends, cook-books, prayer-books, pattern-books--and books about all kinds of odious and exasperating pottery, of course. CDThere was a piano, with a deck-load of music, and more in a tender.There was a great plenty of pictures on the walls, on the shelves of the mantelpiece, and around generally; where coigns of vantage offered were statuettes, and quaint and pretty gimcracks, and rare and costly specimens of peculiarly devilish china.ijThe bay-window gave upon a garden that was ablaze with foreign and domestic flowers and flowering shrubs.DEBut the sweet young girl was the daintiest thing these premises, within or without, could offer for contemplation: delicately chiseled features, of Grecian cast; her complexion the pure snow of a japonica that is receiving a faint reflected enrichment from some scarlet neighbor of the garden; great, soft blue eyes fringed with long, curving lashes; an expression made up of the trustfulness of a child and the gentleness of a fawn; a beautiful head crowned with its own prodigal gold; a lithe and rounded figure, whose every attitude and movement was instinct with native grace..~Her dress and adornment were marked by that exquisite harmony that can come only of a fine natural taste perfected by culture.iHer gown was of a simple magenta tulle, cut bias, traversed by three rows of light-blue flounces, with the selvage edges turned up with ashes-of-roses chenille; overdress of dark bay tarlatan with scarlet satin lambrequins; corn-colored polonaise, en zanier, looped with mother-of-pearl buttons and silver cord, and hauled aft and made fast by buff velvet lashings; basque of lavender reps, picked out with valenciennes; low neck, short sleeves; maroon velvet necktie edged with delicate pink silk; inside handkerchief of some simple three-ply ingrain fabric of a soft saffron tint; coral bracelets and locket-chain; coiffure of forget-me-nots and lilies-of-the-valley massed around a noble calla.IJThis was all; yet even in this subdued attire she was divinely beautiful.OThen what must she have been when adorned for the festival or the ball? All this time she had been busily chatting with Alonzo, unconscious of our inspection.#-.The minutes still sped, and still she talked.9:But by and by she happened to look up, and saw the clock.`aA crimson blush sent its rich flood through her cheeks, and she exclaimed: "There, good-by, Mr.2Fitz Clarence; I must go now!" She sprang from her chair with such haste that she hardly heard the young man's answering good-by.VWShe stood radiant, graceful, beautiful, and gazed, wondering, upon the accusing clock.Presently her pouting lips parted, and she said: "Five minutes after eleven! Nearly two hours, and it did not seem twenty minutes! Oh, dear, what will he think of me!" At the self-same moment Alonzo was staring at his clock.}And presently he said: "Twenty-five minutes to three! Nearly two hours, and I didn't believe it was two minutes! Is it possible that this clock is humbugging again? Miss Ethelton! Just one moment, please.>?Are you there yet?" "Yes, but be quick; I'm going right away.Would you be so kind as to tell me what time it is?" The girl blushed again, murmured to herself, "It's right down cruel of him to ask me!" and then spoke up and answered with admirably counterfeited unconcern, "Five minutes after eleven.;<Oh, thank you! You have to go, now, have you?" "I'm sorry.G No reply.UVMiss Ethelton!" "Well?" "You you're there yet, ain't you?" "Yes; but please hurry.BCWhat did you want to say?" "Well, I--well, nothing in particular.8It's very lonesome here.\It's asking a great deal, I know, but would you mind talking with me again by and by--that is, if it will not trouble you too much?" "I don't know but I'll think about it.G I'll try.5Oh, thanks! Miss Ethelton!..~Ah, me, she's gone, and here are the black clouds and the whirling snow and the raging winds come again! But she said good-by. 01She didn't say good morning, she said good-by! .1 The clock was right, after all.12What a lightning-winged two hours it was!" He sat down, and gazed dreamily into his fire for a while, then heaved a sigh and said: "How wonderful it is! Two little hours ago I was a free man, and now my heart's in San Francisco!" About that time Rosannah Ethelton, propped in the window-seat of her bedchamber, book in hand, was gazing vacantly out over the rainy seas that washed the Golden Gate, and whispering to herself, "How different he is from poor Burley, with his empty head and his single little antic talent of mimicry!" II Four weeks later Mr.Sidney Algernon Burley was entertaining a gay luncheon company, in a sumptuous drawing-room on Telegraph Hill, with some capital imitations of the voices and gestures of certain popular actors and San Franciscan literary people and Bonanza grandees. \]He was elegantly upholstered, and was a handsome fellow, barring a trifling cast in his eye.noHe seemed very jovial, but nevertheless he kept his eye on the door with an expectant and uneasy watchfulness. pqBy and by a nobby lackey appeared, and delivered a message to the mistress, who nodded her head understandingly.)'(That seemed to settle the thing for Mr.;Burley; his vivacity decreased little by little, and a dejected look began to creep into one of his eyes and a sinister one into the other.9The rest of the company departed in due time, leaving him with the mistress, to whom he said: "There is no longer any question about it.BShe avoids me.0 !She continually excuses herself.5If I could see her, if I could speak to her only a moment, but this suspense--" "Perhaps her seeming avoidance is mere accident, Mr.IBurley. CDGo to the small drawing-room up-stairs and amuse yourself a moment.UVI will despatch a household order that is on my mind, and then I will go to her room.!/0Without doubt she will be persuaded to see you.MMr.Burley went up-stairs, intending to go to the small drawing-room, but as he was passing "Aunt Susan's" private parlor, the door of which stood slightly ajar, he heard a joyous laugh which he recognized; so without knock or announcement he stepped confidently in.-}~But before he could make his presence known he heard words that harrowed up his soul and chilled his young blood, he heard a voice say: "Darling, it has come!" Then he heard Rosannah Ethelton, whose back was toward him, say: "So has yours, dearest!" He saw her bowed form bend lower; he heard her kiss something--not merely once, but again and again! His soul raged within him.sThe heartbreaking conversation went on: "Rosannah, I knew you must be beautiful, but this is dazzling, this is blinding, this is intoxicating!" "Alonzo, it is such happiness to hear you say it.tI know it is not true, but I am so grateful to have you think it is, nevertheless! I knew you must have a noble face, but the grace and majesty of the reality beggar the poor creation of my fancy.23Burley heard that rattling shower of kisses again.efThank you, my Rosannah! The photograph flatters me, but you must not allow yourself to think of that.5Sweetheart?" "Yes, Alonzo.8I am so happy, Rosannah.'wxOh, Alonzo, none that have gone before me knew what love was, none that come after me will ever know what happiness is.I float in a gorgeous cloud land, a boundless firmament of enchanted and bewildering ecstasy!" "Oh, my Rosannah! for you are mine, are you not?" "Wholly, oh, wholly yours, Alonzo, now and forever! All the day long, and all through my nightly dreams, one song sings itself, and its sweet burden is, 'Alonzo Fitz Clarence, Alonzo Fitz Clarence, Eastport, state of Maine!'" "Curse him, I've got his address, anyway!" roared Burley, inwardly, and rushed from the place.OPJust behind the unconscious Alonzo stood his mother, a picture of astonishment.ghShe was so muffled from head to heel in furs that nothing of herself was visible but her eyes and nose.KLShe was a good allegory of winter, for she was powdered all over with snow.TUBehind the unconscious Rosannah stood "Aunt Susan," another picture of astonishment.0She was a good allegory of summer, for she was lightly clad, and was vigorously cooling the perspiration on her face with a fan.34Both of these women had tears of joy in their eyes.;Soho!" exclaimed Mrs.efFitz Clarence, "this explains why nobody has been able to drag you out of your room for six weeks, Alonzo!" "So ho!" exclaimed Aunt Susan, "this explains why you have been a hermit for the past six weeks, Rosannah!" The young couple were on their feet in an instant, abashed, and standing like detected dealers in stolen goods awaiting judge Lynch's doom. 01Bless you, my son! I am happy in your happiness.Come to your mother's arms, Alonzo!" "Bless you, Rosannah, for my dear nephew's sake! Come to my arms!" Then was there a mingling of hearts and of tears of rejoicing on Telegraph Hill and in Eastport Square.34Servants were called by the elders, in both places.lmUnto one was given the order, "Pile this fire high, with hickory wood, and bring me a roasting-hot lemonade.#stUnto the other was given the order, "Put out this fire, and bring me two palm-leaf fans and a pitcher of ice-water.)yzThen the young people were dismissed, and the elders sat down to talk the sweet surprise over and make the wedding plans.4Some minutes before this Mr.cdBurley rushed from the mansion on Telegraph Hill without meeting or taking formal leave of anybody.  He hissed through his teeth, in unconscious imitation of a popular favorite in melodrama, "Him shall she never wed! I have sworn it! Ere great Nature shall have doffed her winter's ermine to don the emerald gauds of spring, she shall be mine!" III Two weeks later.@Every few hours, during same three or four days, a very prim and devout-looking Episcopal clergyman, with a cast in his eye, had visited Alonzo.*&'According to his card, he was the Rev.1 Melton Hargrave, of Cincinnati.BCHe said he had retired from the ministry on account of his health.&vwIf he had said on account of ill-health, he would probably have erred, to judge by his wholesome looks and firm build.&vwHe was the inventor of an improvement in telephones, and hoped to make his bread by selling the privilege of using it.At present," he continued, "a man may go and tap a telegraph wire which is conveying a song or a concert from one state to another, and he can attach his private telephone and steal a hearing of that music as it passes along.0 !My invention will stop all that.@Well," answered Alonzo, "if the owner of the music could not miss what was stolen, why should he care?" "He shouldn't care," said the Reverend.0 !Well?" said Alonzo, inquiringly.Suppose," replied the Reverend, "suppose that, instead of music that was passing along and being stolen, the burden of the wire was loving endearments of the most private and sacred nature?" Alonzo shuddered from head to heel.HISir, it is a priceless invention," said he; "I must have it at any cost.XYBut the invention was delayed somewhere on the road from Cincinnati, most unaccountably.)'(The impatient Alonzo could hardly wait.deThe thought of Rosannah's sweet words being shared with him by some ribald thief was galling to him.jkThe Reverend came frequently and lamented the delay, and told of measures he had taken to hurry things up.)'(This was some little comfort to Alonzo.KLOne forenoon the Reverend ascended the stairs and knocked at Alonzo's door.:There was no response.VWHe entered, glanced eagerly around, closed the door softly, then ran to the telephone.fgThe exquisitely soft and remote strains of the "Sweet By-and-by" came floating through the instrument.VWThe singer was flatting, as usual, the five notes that follow the first two in the chorus, when the Reverend interrupted her with this word, in a voice which was an exact imitation of Alonzo's, with just the faintest flavor of impatience added: "Sweetheart?" "Yes, Alonzo?" "Please don't sing that any more this week--try something modern.gThe agile step that goes with a happy heart was heard on the stairs, and the Reverend, smiling diabolically, sought sudden refuge behind the heavy folds of the velvet window-curtains.')*Alonzo entered and flew to the telephone.(xySaid he: "Rosannah, dear, shall we sing something together?" "Something modern?" asked she, with sarcastic bitterness.=Yes, if you prefer.TUSing it yourself, if you like!" This snappishness amazed and wounded the young man.%+,He said: "Rosannah, that was not like you.JKI suppose it becomes me as much as your very polite speech became you, Mr.BFitz Clarence.KLMister Fitz Clarence! Rosannah, there was nothing impolite about my speech.AOh, indeed! Of course, then, I misunderstood you, and I most humbly beg your pardon, ha-ha-ha! No doubt you said, 'Don't sing it any more to-day.8Sing what any more to-day?" "The song you mentioned, of course, How very obtuse we are, all of a sudden!" "I never mentioned any song.JKOh, you didn't?" "No, I didn't!" "I am compelled to remark that you did.$,-And I am obliged to reiterate that I didn't.%+,A second rudeness! That is sufficient, sir.7I will never forgive you.9All is over between us.,$%Then came a muffled sound of crying.%uvAlonzo hastened to say: "Oh, Rosannah, unsay those words! There is some dreadful mystery here, some hideous mistake.QRI am utterly earnest and sincere when I say I never said anything about any song.')*I would not hurt you for the whole world.GRosannah, dear speak to me, won't you?" There was a pause; then Alonzo heard the girl's sobbings retreating, and knew she had gone from the telephone.HHe rose with a heavy sigh, and hastened from the room, saying to himself, "I will ransack the charity missions and the haunts of the poor for my mother.67She will persuade her that I never meant to wound her.jkA minute later the Reverend was crouching over the telephone like a cat that knoweth the ways of the prey.+%&He had not very many minutes to wait.WXA soft, repentant voice, tremulous with tears, said: "Alonzo, dear, I have been wrong.')*You could not have said so cruel a thing.HIIt must have been some one who imitated your voice in malice or in jest. YZThe Reverend coldly answered, in Alonzo's tones: "You have said all was over between us.C So let it be.XI spurn your proffered repentance, and despise it!" Then he departed, radiant with fiendish triumph, to return no more with his imaginary telephonic invention forever.abFour hours afterward Alonzo arrived with his mother from her favorite haunts of poverty and vice.BCThey summoned the San Francisco household; but there was no reply.ABThey waited, and continued to wait, upon the voiceless telephone.uAt length, when it was sunset in San Francisco, and three hours and a half after dark in Eastport, an answer to the oft-repeated cry of "Rosannah!" But, alas, it was Aunt Susan's voice that spake.12She said: "I have been out all day; just got in.9I will go and find her.;<The watchers waited two minutes--five minutes--ten minutes. [\Then came these fatal words, in a frightened tone: "She is gone, and her baggage with her.!/0To visit another friend, she told the servants.!/0But I found this note on the table in her room. ]^Listen: 'I am gone; seek not to trace me out; my heart is broken; you will never see me more.+{|Tell him I shall always think of him when I sing my poor "Sweet By-and-by," but never of the unkind words he said about it.?That is her note.bcAlonzo, Alonzo, what does it mean? What has happened?" But Alonzo sat white and cold as the dead.>?His mother threw back the velvet curtains and opened a window.KLThe cold air refreshed the sufferer, and he told his aunt his dismal story.$tuMeantime his mother was inspecting a card which had disclosed itself upon the floor when she cast the curtains back.C It read, "Mr.*&'Sidney Algernon Burley, San Francisco.QRThe miscreant!" shouted Alonzo, and rushed forth to seek the false Reverend and destroy him; for the card explained everything, since in the course of the lovers' mutual confessions they had told each other all about all the sweethearts they had ever had, and thrown no end of mud at their failings and foibles for lovers always do that.>?It has a fascination that ranks next after billing and cooing.45IV During the next two months many things happened.It had early transpired that Rosannah, poor suffering orphan, had neither returned to her grandmother in Portland, Oregon, nor sent any word to her save a duplicate of the woeful note she had left in the mansion on Telegraph Hill.WWhosoever was sheltering her--if she was still alive--had been persuaded not to betray her whereabouts, without doubt; for all efforts to find trace of her had failed.1 Did Alonzo give her up? Not he.UVHe said to himself, "She will sing that sweet song when she is sad; I shall find her.;So he took his carpet-sack and a portable telephone, and shook the snow of his native city from his arctics, and went forth into the world.$,-He wandered far and wide and in many states.Time and again, strangers were astounded to see a wasted, pale, and woe-worn man laboriously climb a telegraph-pole in wintry and lonely places, perch sadly there an hour, with his ear at a little box, then come sighing down, and wander wearily away.XYSometimes they shot at him, as peasants do at aeronauts, thinking him mad and dangerous.STThus his clothes were much shredded by bullets and his person grievously lacerated.3But he bore it all patiently._`In the beginning of his pilgrimage he used often to say, "Ah, if I could but hear the 'Sweet By-and-by'!" But toward the end of it he used to shed tears of anguish and say, "Ah, if I could but hear something else!" Thus a month and three weeks drifted by, and at last some humane people seized him and confined him in a private mad-house in New York.STHe made no moan, for his strength was all gone, and with it all heart and all hope.0The superintendent, in pity, gave up his own comfortable parlor and bedchamber to him and nursed him with affectionate devotion.NOAt the end of a week the patient was able to leave his bed for the first time.He was lying, comfortably pillowed, on a sofa, listening to the plaintive Miserere of the bleak March winds and the muffled sound of tramping feet in the street below for it was about six in the evening, and New York was going home from work. FGHe had a bright fire and the added cheer of a couple of student-lamps.fSo it was warm and snug within, though bleak and raw without; it was light and bright within, though outside it was as dark and dreary as if the world had been lit with Hartford gas. Alonzo smiled feebly to think how his loving vagaries had made him a maniac in the eyes of the world, and was proceeding to pursue his line of thought further, when a faint, sweet strain, the very ghost of sound, so remote and attenuated it seemed, struck upon his ear. FGHis pulses stood still; he listened with parted lips and bated breath.ghThe song flowed on--he waiting, listening, rising slowly and unconsciously from his recumbent position.oAt last he exclaimed: "It is! it is she! Oh, the divine hated notes!" He dragged himself eagerly to the corner whence the sounds proceeded, tore aside a curtain, and discovered a telephone.-}~He bent over, and as the last note died away he burst forthwith the exclamation: "Oh, thank Heaven, found at last! Speak tome, Rosannah, dearest! The cruel mystery has been unraveled; it was the villain Burley who mimicked my voice and wounded you with insolent speech!" There was a breathless pause, a waiting age to Alonzo; then a faint sound came, framing itself into language: "Oh, say those precious words again, Alonzo!" "They are the truth, the veritable truth, my Rosannah, and you shall have the proof, ample and abundant proof!" "Oh; Alonzo, stay by me! Leave me not for a moment! Let me feel that you are near me! Tell me we shall never be parted more! Oh, this happy hour, this blessed hour, this memorable hour!" "We will make record of it, my Rosannah; every year, as this dear hour chimes from the clock, we will celebrate it with thanksgivings, all the years of our life.We will, we will, Alonzo!" "Four minutes after six, in the evening, my Rosannah, shall henceforth--" "Twenty-three minutes after twelve, afternoon shall--" "Why; Rosannah, darling, where are you?" "In Honolulu, Sandwich Islands.<=And where are you? Stay by me; do not leave me for a moment.?I cannot bear it.PQAre you at home?" "No, dear, I am in New York--a patient in the doctor's hands.8An agonizing shriek came buzzing to Alonzo's ear, like the sharp buzzing of a hurt gnat; it lost power in traveling five thousand miles.23Alonzo hastened to say: "Calm yourself, my child.BIt is nothing. CDAlready I am getting well under the sweet healing of your presence.;<Rosannah?" "Yes, Alonzo? Oh, how you terrified me! Say on.9:Name the happy day, Rosannah!" There was a little pause.^_Then a diffident small voice replied, "I blush--but it is with pleasure, it is with happiness.deWould--would you like to have it soon?" "This very night, Rosannah! Oh, let us risk no more delays.Let it be now!--this very night, this very moment!" "Oh, you impatient creature! I have nobody here but my good old uncle, a missionary for a generation, and now retired from service--nobody but him and his wife.mnI would so dearly like it if your mother and your Aunt Susan--" "Our mother and our Aunt Susan, my Rosannah.'wxYes, our mother and our Aunt Susan--I am content to word it so if it pleases you; I would so like to have them present.E So would I./!"Suppose you telegraph Aunt Susan. [\How long would it take her to come?" "The steamer leaves San Francisco day after tomorrow.6The passage is eight days.,$%She would be here the 31st of March.!/0Then name the 1st of April; do, Rosannah, dear.zMercy, it would make us April fools, Alonzo!" "So we be the happiest ones that that day's suit looks down upon in the whole broad expanse of the globe, why need we care? Call it the 1st of April, dear.efThen the 1st of April at shall be, with all my heart!" "Oh, happiness! Name the hour, too, Rosannah.,$%I like the morning, it is so blithe.deWill eight in the morning do, Alonzo?" "The loveliest hour in the day--since it will make you mine.There was a feeble but frantic sound for some little time, as if wool-upped, disembodied spirits were exchanging kisses; then Rosannah said, "Excuse me just a moment, dear; I have an appointment, and am called to meet it.lmThe young girl sought a large parlor and took her place at a window which looked out upon a beautiful scene.To the left one could view the charming Nuuana Valley, fringed with its ruddy flush of tropical flowers and its plumed and graceful cocoa palms; its rising foothills clothed in the shining green of lemon, citron, and orange groves; its storied precipice beyond, where the first Kamehameha drove his defeated foes over to their destruction, a spot that had forgotten its grim history, no doubt, for now it was smiling, as almost always at noonday, under the glowing arches of a succession of rainbows.In front of the window one could see the quaint town, and here and there a picturesque group of dusky natives, enjoying the blistering weather; and far to the right lay the restless ocean, tossing its white mane in the sunshine._`Rosannah stood there, in her filmy white raiment, fanning her flushed and heated face, waiting.A Kanaka boy, clothed in a damaged blue necktie and part of a silk hat, thrust his head in at the door, and announced, "'Frisco haole!" "Show him in," said the girl, straightening herself up and assuming a meaning dignity.4Sidney Algernon Burley entered, clad from head to heel in dazzling snow--that is to say, in the lightest and whitest of Irish linen.efHe moved eagerly forward, but the girl made a gesture and gave him a look which checked him suddenly.$,-She said, coldly, "I am here, as I promised. \]I believed your assertions, I yielded to your importune lies, and said I would name the day."./I name the 1st of April--eight in the morning.JKNOW GO!" "Oh, my dearest, if the gratitude of a lifetime--" "Not a word. GHSpare me all sight of you, all communication with you, until that hour.(()No--no supplications; I will have it so.*z{When he was gone, she sank exhausted in a chair, for the long siege of troubles she had undergone had wasted her strength. [\Presently she said, "What a narrow escape! If the hour appointed had been an hour earlier--Oh, horror, what an escape I have made! And to think I had come to imagine I was loving this beguiling, this truthless, this treacherous monster! Oh, he shall repent his villainy!" Let us now draw this history to a close, for little more needs to be told. ]^On the 2d of the ensuing April, the Honolulu Advertiser contained this notice: MARRIED.NOIn this city, by telephone, yesterday morning,--at eight o'clock, by Rev.3Nathan Hays, assisted by Rev.*&'Nathaniel Davis, of New York, Mr.$,-Alonzo Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, U.89and Miss Rosannah Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon, U.LMrs.noSusan Howland, of San Francisco, a friend of the bride, was present, she being the guest of the Rev. 01Hays and wife, uncle and aunt of the bride.MMr.4Sidney Algernon Burley, of San Francisco, was also present but did not remain till the conclusion of the marriage service.hCaptain Hawthorne's beautiful yacht, tastefully decorated, was in waiting, and the happy bride and her friends immediately departed on a bridal trip to Lahaina and Haleakala.JKThe New York papers of the same date contained this notice: MARRIED.TUIn this city, yesterday, by telephone, at half-past two in the morning, by Rev./!"Nathaniel Davis, assisted by Rev.."#Nathan Hays, of Honolulu, Mr._`Alonzo Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, and Miss Rosannah Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon.The parents and several friends of the bridegroom were present, and enjoyed a sumptuous breakfast and much festivity until nearly sunrise, and then departed on a bridal trip to the Aquarium, the bridegroom's state of health not admitting of a more extended journey.&*+Toward the close of that memorable day Mr.H and Mrs.sAlonzo Fitz Clarence were buried in sweet converse concerning the pleasures of their several bridal tours, when suddenly the young wife exclaimed: "Oh, Lonny, I forgot! I did what I said I would.0 !Did you, dear?" "Indeed, I did.I made him the April fool! And I told him so, too! Ah, it was a charming surprise! There he stood, sweltering in a black dress-suit, with the mercury leaking out of the top of the thermometer, waiting to be married. EFYou should have seen the look he gave when I whispered it in his ear.deAh, his wickedness cost me many a heartache and many a tear, but the score was all squared up, then. pqSo the vengeful feeling went right out of my heart, and I begged him to stay, and said I forgave him everything.@But he wouldn't.PQHe said he would live to be avenged; said he would make our lives a curse to us.But he can't, can he, dear?" "Never in this world, my Rosannah!" Aunt Susan, the Oregonian grandmother, and the young couple and their Eastport parents, are all happy at this writing, and likely to remain so.Aunt Susan brought the bride from the islands, accompanied her across our continent, and had the happiness of witnessing the rapturous meeting between an adoring husband and wife who had never seen each other until that moment.EA word about the wretched Burley, whose wicked machinations came so near wrecking the hearts and lives of our poor young friends, will be sufficient.rIn a murderous attempt to seize a crippled and helpless artisan who he fancied had done him some small offense, he fell into a caldron of boiling oil and expired before he could be extinguished.WON THE DECAY OF THE ART OF LYING ESSAY, FOR DISCUSSION, READ AT A MEETING OF THE HISTORICAL AND ANTIQUARIAN CLUB OF HARTFORD, AND OFFERED FOR THE THIRTY-DOLLAR PRIZE.<NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.'wxDid not take the prize] Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered any decay or interruption--no, for the Lie, as a Virtue, a Principle, is eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this Club remains.;<My complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying.TNo high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted.MIn this veteran presence I naturally enter upon this scheme with diffidence; it is like an old maid trying to teach nursery matters to the mothers in Israel.It would not become me to criticize you, gentlemen, who are nearly all my elders--and my superiors, in this thing--and so, if I should here and there seem to do it, I trust it will in most cases be more in a spirit of admiration than of fault-finding; indeed, if this finest of the fine arts had everywhere received the attention, encouragement, and conscientious practice and development which this Club has devoted to it I should not need to utter this lament or shed a single tear.XYI do not say this to flatter: I say it in a spirit of just and appreciative recognition.yIt had been my intention, at this point, to mention names and give illustrative specimens, but indications observable about me admonished me to beware of particulars and confine myself to generalities.CNo fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity of our circumstances--the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes without saying.No virtue can reach its highest usefulness without careful and diligent cultivation--therefore, it goes without saying that this one ought to be taught in the public schools--at the fireside--even in the newspapers.klWhat chance has the ignorant, uncultivated liar against the educated expert? What chance have I against Mr.@APer-- against a lawyer? Judicious lying is what the world needs. \]I sometimes think it were even better and safer not to lie at all than to lie injudiciously.BCAn awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth.')*Now let us see what the philosophers say. GHNote that venerable proverb: Children and fools always speak the truth.?@The deduction is plain--adults and wise persons never speak it.^_Parkman, the historian, says, "The principle of truth may itself be carried into an absurdity.In another place in the same chapter he says, "The saying is old that truth should not be spoken at all times; and those whom a sick conscience worries into habitual violation of the maxim are imbeciles and nuisances.0 !It is strong language, but true. \]None of us could live with an habitual truth-teller; but, thank goodness, none of us has to.cdAn habitual truth-teller is simply an impossible creature; he does not exist; he never has existed.JOf course there are people who think they never lie, but it is not so--and this ignorance is one of the very things that shame our so-called civilization.Everybody lies--every day; every hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his mourning; if he keeps his tongue still, his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude, will convey deception--and purposely.')*Even in sermons--but that is a platitude.In a far country where I once lived the ladies used to go around paying calls, under the humane and kindly pretense of wanting to see each other; and when they returned home, they would cry out with a glad voice, saying, "We made sixteen calls and found fourteen of them out"--not meaning that they found out anything against the fourteen--no, that was only a colloquial phrase to signify that they were not at home--and their manner of saying it--expressed their lively satisfaction in that fact.Now, their pretense of wanting to see the fourteen--and the other two whom they had been less lucky with--was that commonest and mildest form of lying which is sufficiently described as a deflection from the truth.."#Is it justifiable? Most certainly.mnIt is beautiful, it is noble; for its object is, not to reap profit, but to convey a pleasure to the sixteen.eThe iron-souled truth-monger would plainly manifest, or even utter the fact, that he didn't want to see those people--and he would be an ass, and inflict a totally unnecessary pain.And next, those ladies in that far country--but never mind, they had a thousand pleasant ways of lying, that grew out of gentle impulses, and were a credit to their intelligence and at honor to their hearts.9Let the particulars go.23The men in that far country were liars; every one.bcTheir mere howdy-do was a lie, because they didn't care how you did, except they were undertakers.NTo the ordinary inquirer you lied in return; for you made no conscientious diagnosis of your case, but answered at random, and usually missed it considerably.<You lied to the undertaker, and said your health was failing--a wholly commendable lie, since it cost you nothing and pleased the other man.pIf a stranger called and interrupted you, you said with your hearty tongue, "I'm glad to see you," and said with your heartier soul, "I wish you were with the cannibals and it was dinner-time.When he went, you said regretfully, "Must you go?" and followed it with a "Call again"; but you did no harm, for you did not deceive anybody nor inflict any hurt, whereas the truth would have made you both unhappy. Z[I think that all this courteous lying is a sweet and loving art, and should be cultivated.SThe highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.<=What I bemoan is the growing prevalence of the brutal truth.*&'Let us do what we can to eradicate it.67An injurious truth has no merit over an injurious lie.1 Neither should ever be uttered.KThe man who speaks an injurious truth, lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving.The man who tells a lie to help a poor devil out of trouble is one of whom the angels doubtless say, "Lo, here is an heroic soul who casts his own welfare into jeopardy to succor his neighbor's; let us exalt this magnanimous liar.HAn injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth--a fact which is recognized by the law of libel.2Among other common lies, we have the silent lie, the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth.#stMany obstinate truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak no lie, they lie not at all.IIn that far country where I once lived, there was a lovely spirit, a lady whose impulses were always high and pure, and whose character answered to them.UVOne day I was there at dinner, and remarked, in a general way, that we are all liars.She was amazed, and said, "Not all!" It was before "Pinafore's" time so I did not make the response which would naturally follow in our day, but frankly said, "Yes, all--we are all liars; there are no exceptions.)yzShe looked almost offended, and said, "Why, do you include me?" "Certainly," I said, "I think you even rank as an expert.DShe said, "'Sh!--'sh! the children!" So the subject was changed in deference to the children's presence, and we went on talking about other things.But as soon as the young people were out of the way, the lady came warmly back to the matter and said, "I have made it the rule of my life to never tell a lie; and I have never departed from it in a single instance.0I said, "I don't mean the least harm or disrespect, but really you have been lying like smoke ever since I've been sitting here.BCIt has caused me a good deal of pain, because I am not used to it.78She required of me an instance--just a single instance.So I said: "Well, here is the unfilled duplicate of the blank which the Oakland hospital people sent to you by the hand of the sick-nurse when she came here to nurse your little nephew through his dangerous illness.bThis blank asks all manner of questions as to the conduct of that sick-nurse: 'Did she ever sleep on her watch? Did she ever forget to give the medicine?' and so forth and so on.aYou are warned to be very careful and explicit in your answers, for the welfare of the service requires that the nurses be promptly fined or otherwise punished for derelictions.You told me you were perfectly delighted with that nurse--that she had a thousand perfections and only one fault: you found you never could depend on her wrapping Johnny up half sufficiently while he waited in a chilly chair for her to rearrange the warm bed.efYou filled up the duplicate of this paper, and sent it back to the hospital by the hand of the nurse.  How did you answer this question--'Was the nurse at any time guilty of a negligence which was likely to result in the patient's taking cold?' Come--everything is decided by a bet here in California: ten dollars to ten cents you lied when you answered that question.JShe said, "I didn't; I left it blank!" "Just so--you have told a silent lie; you have left it to be inferred that you had no fault to find in that matter.(xyShe said, "Oh, was that a lie? And how could I mention her one single fault, and she so good?--it would have been cruel.HI said, "One ought always to lie when one can do good by it; your impulse was right, but, your judgment was crude; this comes of unintelligent practice.<=Now observe the result of this inexpert deflection of yours.D You know Mr.RSJones's Willie is lying very low with scarlet fever; well, your recommendation was so enthusiastic that that girl is there nursing him, and the worn-out family have all been trustingly sound asleep for the last fourteen hours, leaving their darling with full confidence in those fatal hands, because you, like young George Washington, have a reputa--However, if you are not going to have anything to do, I will come around to-morrow and we'll attend the funeral together, for, of course, you'll naturally feel a peculiar interest in Willie's case--as personal a one, in fact, as the undertaker.:But that was all lost.jBefore I was half-way through she was in a carriage and making thirty miles an hour toward the Jones mansion to save what was left of Willie and tell all she knew about the deadly nurse.MNAll of which was unnecessary, as Willie wasn't sick; I had been lying myself.QBut that same day, all the same, she sent a line to the hospital which filled up the neglected blank, and stated the facts, too, in the squarest possible manner.RSNow, you see, this lady's fault was not in lying, but only in lying injudiciously.*z{She should have told the truth there, and made it up to the nurse with a fraudulent compliment further along in the paper.jkShe could have said, "In one respect the sick-nurse is perfection--when she is on watch, she never snores.(xyAlmost any little pleasant lie would have taken the sting out of that troublesome but necessary expression of the truth.34Lying is universal we all do it; we all must do it.Therefore, the wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as being ashamed of our high calling.Then shall we be rid of the rank and pestilent truth that is rotting the land; then shall we be great and good and beautiful, and worthy dwellers in a world where even benign Nature habitually lies, except when she promises execrable weather._`Then--but I am but a new and feeble student in this gracious art; I can not instruct this Club.5Joking aside, I think there is much need of wise examination into what sorts of lies are best and wholesomest to be indulged, seeing we must all lie and do all lie, and what sorts it may be best to avoid--and this is a thing which I feel I can confidently put into the hands of this experienced Club--a ripe body, who may be termed, in this regard, and without undue flattery, Old Masters.ABOUT MAGNANIMOUS-INCIDENT LITERATURE All my life, from boyhood up, I have had the habit of reading a certain set of anecdotes, written in the quaint vein of The World's ingenious Fabulist, for the lesson they taught me and the pleasure they gave me. They lay always convenient to my hand, and whenever I thought meanly of my kind I turned to them, and they banished that sentiment; whenever I felt myself to be selfish, sordid, and ignoble I turned to them, and they told me what to do to win back my self-respect._Many times I wished that the charming anecdotes had not stopped with their happy climaxes, but had continued the pleasing history of the several benefactors and beneficiaries.9This wish rose in my breast so persistently that at last I determined to satisfy it by seeking out the sequels of those anecdotes myself.STSo I set about it, and after great labor and tedious research accomplished my task.DI will lay the result before you, giving you each anecdote in its turn, and following it with its sequel as I gathered it through my investigations./0THE GRATEFUL POODLE One day a benevolent physician (who had read the books) having found a stray poodle suffering from a broken leg, conveyed the poor creature to his home, and after setting and bandaging the injured limb gave the little outcast its liberty again, and thought no more about the matter.But how great was his surprise, upon opening his door one morning, some days later, to find the grateful poodle patiently waiting there, and in its company another stray dog, one of whose legs, by some accident, had been broken.The kind physician at once relieved the distressed animal, nor did he forget to admire the inscrutable goodness and mercy of God, who had been willing to use so humble an instrument as the poor outcast poodle for the inculcating of, etc.Letc.Letc.ISEQUEL The next morning the benevolent physician found the two dogs, beaming with gratitude, waiting at his door, and with them two other dogs-cripples.9The cripples were speedily healed, and the four went their way, leaving the benevolent physician more overcome by pious wonder than ever./!"The day passed, the morning came.jkThere at the door sat now the four reconstructed dogs, and with them four others requiring reconstruction.LThis day also passed, and another morning came; and now sixteen dogs, eight of them newly crippled, occupied the sidewalk, and the people were going around.@By noon the broken legs were all set, but the pious wonder in the good physician's breast was beginning to get mixed with involuntary profanity.jThe sun rose once more, and exhibited thirty-two dogs, sixteen of them with broken legs, occupying the sidewalk and half of the street; the human spectators took up the rest of the room.`The cries of the wounded, the songs of the healed brutes, and the comments of the onlooking citizens made great and inspiring cheer, but traffic was interrupted in that street.The good physician hired a couple of assistant surgeons and got through his benevolent work before dark, first taking the precaution to cancel his church-membership, so that he might express himself with the latitude which the case required.."#But some things have their limits.When once more the morning dawned, and the good physician looked out upon a massed and far-reaching multitude of clamorous and beseeching dogs, he said, "I might as well acknowledge it, I have been fooled by the books; they only tell the pretty part of the story, and then stop.;<Fetch me the shotgun; this thing has gone along far enough.+{|He issued forth with his weapon, and chanced to step upon the tail of the original poodle, who promptly bit him in the leg.cNow the great and good work which this poodle had been engaged in had engendered in him such a mighty and augmenting enthusiasm as to turn his weak head at last and drive him mad.NA month later, when the benevolent physician lay in the death-throes of hydrophobia, he called his weeping friends about him, and said: "Beware of the books.0 !They tell but half of the story._Whenever a poor wretch asks you for help, and you feel a doubt as to what result may flow from your benevolence, give yourself the benefit of the doubt and kill the applicant. CDAnd so saying he turned his face to the wall and gave up the ghost.lmTHE BENEVOLENT AUTHOR A poor and young literary beginner had tried in vain to get his manuscripts accepted.MAt last, when the horrors of starvation were staring him in the face, he laid his sad case before a celebrated author, beseeching his counsel and assistance. pqThis generous man immediately put aside his own matters and proceeded to peruse one of the despised manuscripts.CHaving completed his kindly task, he shook the poor young man cordially by the hand, saying, "I perceive merit in this; come again to me on Monday.;At the time specified, the celebrated author, with a sweet smile, but saying nothing, spread open a magazine which was damp from the press. ]^What was the poor young man's astonishment to discover upon the printed page his own article.How can I ever," said he, falling upon his knees and bursting into tears, "testify my gratitude for this noble conduct!" The celebrated author was the renowned Snodgrass; the poor young beginner thus rescued from obscurity and starvation was the afterward equally renowned Snagsby.`aLet this pleasing incident admonish us to turn a charitable ear to all beginners that need help. FGSEQUEL The next week Snagsby was back with five rejected manuscripts.+{|The celebrated author was a little surprised, because in the books the young struggler had needed but one lift, apparently.`However, he plowed through these papers, removing unnecessary flowers and digging up some acres of adjective stumps, and then succeeded in getting two of the articles accepted.MNA week or so drifted by, and the grateful Snagsby arrived with another cargo.RSThe celebrated author had felt a mighty glow of satisfaction within himself the first time he had successfully befriended the poor young struggler, and had compared himself with the generous people in the books with high gratification; but he was beginning to suspect now that he had struck upon something fresh in the noble-episode line.4His enthusiasm took a chill.0Still, he could not bear to repulse this struggling young author, who clung to him with such pretty simplicity and trustfulness.5Well, the upshot of it all was that the celebrated author presently found himself permanently freighted with the poor young beginner.;<All his mild efforts to unload this cargo went for nothing.QHe had to give daily counsel, daily encouragement; he had to keep on procuring magazine acceptances, and then revamping the manuscripts to make them presentable. !When the young aspirant got a start at last, he rode into sudden fame by describing the celebrated author's private life with such a caustic humor and such minuteness of blistering detail that the book sold a prodigious edition, and broke the celebrated author's heart with mortification. ]^With his latest gasp he said, "Alas, the books deceived me; they do not tell the whole story.23Beware of the struggling young author, my friends.RSWhom God sees fit to starve, let not man presumptuously rescue to his own undoing.THE GRATEFUL HUSBAND One day a lady was driving through the principal street of a great city with her little boy, when the horses took fright and dashed madly away, hurling the coachman from his box and leaving the occupants of the carnage paralyzed with terror.MBut a brave youth who was driving a grocery-wagon threw himself before the plunging animals, and succeeded in arresting their flight at the peril of his own.4This is probably a misprint.NOThe grateful lady took his number, and upon arriving at her home she related the heroic act to her husband (who had read the books), who listened with streaming eyes to the moving recital, and who, after returning thanks, in conjunction with his restored loved ones, to Him who suffereth not even a sparrow to fall to the ground unnoticed, sent for the brave young person, and, placing a check for five hundred dollars in his hand, said, "Take this as a reward for your noble act, William Ferguson, and if ever you shall need a friend, remember that Thompson McSpadden has a grateful heart.bcLet us learn from this that a good deed cannot fail to benefit the doer, however humble he may be.;<SEQUEL William Ferguson called the next week and asked Mr.1McSpadden to use his influence to get him a higher employment, he feeling capable of better things than driving a grocer's wagon.56McSpadden got him an underclerkship at a good salary. ]^Presently William Ferguson's mother fell sick, and William--Well, to cut the story short, Mr.!/0McSpadden consented to take her into his house.7Before long she yearned for the society of her younger children; so Mary and Julia were admitted also, and little Jimmy, their brother.Jimmy had a pocket knife, and he wandered into the drawing-room with it one day, alone, and reduced ten thousand dollars' worth of furniture to an indeterminable value in rather less than three-quarters of an hour.;A day or two later he fell down-stairs and broke his neck, and seventeen of his family's relatives came to the house to attend the funeral.~This made them acquainted, and they kept the kitchen occupied after that, and likewise kept the McSpaddens busy hunting-up situations of various sorts for them, and hunting up more when they wore these out.The old woman drank a good deal and swore a good deal; but the grateful McSpaddens knew it was their duty to reform her, considering what her son had done for them, so they clave nobly to their generous task.^William came often and got decreasing sums of money, and asked for higher and more lucrative employments--which the grateful McSpadden more or less promptly procured for him.McSpadden consented also, after some demur, to fit William for college; but when the first vacation came and the hero requested to be sent to Europe for his health, the persecuted McSpadden rose against the tyrant and revolted.0 !He plainly and squarely refused.-}~William Ferguson's mother was so astounded that she let her gin-bottle drop, and her profane lips refused to do their office.When she recovered she said in a half-gasp, "Is this your gratitude? Where would your wife and boy be now, but for my son?" William said, "Is this your gratitude? Did I save your wife's life or not? Tell me that!" Seven relations swarmed in from the kitchen and each said, "And this is his gratitude!" William's sisters stared, bewildered, and said, "And this is his grat--" but were interrupted by their mother, who burst into tears and exclaimed, "To think that my sainted little Jimmy threw away his life in the service of such a reptile!" Then the pluck of the revolutionary McSpadden rose to the occasion, and he replied with fervor, "Out of my house, the whole beggarly tribe of you! I was beguiled by the books, but shall never be beguiled again--once is sufficient for me.And turning to William he shouted, "Yes, you did save my wife's life, and the next man that does it shall die in his tracks!" Not being a clergyman, I place my text at the end of my sermon instead of at the beginning.<Here it is, from Mr.OPNoah Brooks's Recollections of President Lincoln in Scribners Monthly: J.;<Hackett, in his part of Falstaff, was an actor who gave Mr.:Lincoln great delight.LMWith his usual desire to signify to others his sense of obligation, Mr.klLincoln wrote a genial little note to the actor expressing his pleasure at witnessing his performance.MMr. [\Hackett, in reply, sent a book of some sort; perhaps it was one of his own authorship.23He also wrote several notes to the President.)yzOne night, quite late, when the episode had passed out of my mind, I went to the white House in answer to a message.3Passing into the President's office, I noticed, to my surprise, Hackett sitting in the anteroom as if waiting for an audience.34The President asked me if any one was outside.%uvOn being told, he said, half sadly, "Oh, I can't see him, I can't see him; I was in hopes he had gone away..~Then he added, "Now this just illustrates the difficulty of having pleasant friends and acquaintances in this place.NOYou know how I liked Hackett as an actor, and how I wrote to tell him so. DEHe sent me that book, and there I thought the matter would end.|He is a master of his place in the profession, I suppose, and well fixed in it; but just because we had a little friendly correspondence, such as any two men might have, he wants something.?@What do you suppose he wants?" I could not guess, and Mr.67Lincoln added, "well, he wants to be consul to London.Oh, dear!" I will observe, in conclusion, that the William Ferguson incident occurred, and within my personal knowledge--though I have changed the nature of the details, to keep William from recognizing himself in it.0All the readers of this article have in some sweet and gushing hour of their lives played the role of Magnanimous-Incident hero.GI wish I knew how many there are among them who are willing to talk about that episode and like to be reminded of the consequences that flowed from it.qPUNCH, BROTHERS, PUNCH Will the reader please to cast his eye over the following lines, and see if he can discover anything harmful in them? Conductor, when you receive a fare, Punch in the presence of the passenjare! A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, A pink trip slip for a three-cent fare, Punch in the presence of the passenjare! CHORUS Punch, brothers! punch with care! Punch in the presence of the passenjare! I came across these jingling rhymes in a newspaper, a little while ago, and read them a couple of times."./They took instant and entire possession of me.JAll through breakfast they went waltzing through my brain; and when, at last, I rolled up my napkin, I could not tell whether I had eaten anything or not.ijI had carefully laid out my day's work the day before--thrilling tragedy in the novel which I am writing.%+,I went to my den to begin my deed of blood.^_I took up my pen, but all I could get it to say was, "Punch in the presence of the passenjare."./I fought hard for an hour, but it was useless.EMy head kept humming, "A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a six-cent fare," and so on and so on, without peace or respite.;<The day's work was ruined--I could see that plainly enough.#stI gave up and drifted down-town, and presently discovered that my feet were keeping time to that relentless jingle.23When I could stand it no longer I altered my step.!qrBut it did no good; those rhymes accommodated themselves to the new step and went on harassing me just as before.>I returned home, and suffered all the afternoon; suffered all through an unconscious and unrefreshing dinner; suffered, and cried, and jingled all through the evening; went to bed and rolled, tossed, and jingled right along, the same as ever; got up at midnight frantic, and tried to read; but there was nothing visible upon the whirling page except "Punch! punch in the presence of the passenjare.45By sunrise I was out of my mind, and everybody marveled and was distressed at the idiotic burden of my ravings--"Punch! oh, punch! punch in the presence of the passenjare!" Two days later, on Saturday morning, I arose, a tottering wreck, and went forth to fulfil an engagement with a valued friend, the Rev. 01to walk to the Talcott Tower, ten miles distant.(()He stared at me, but asked no questions.E We started.*&'talked, talked, talked as is his wont.0 !I said nothing; I heard nothing.7At the end of a mile, Mr.WXsaid "Mark, are you sick? I never saw a man look so haggard and worn and absent-minded.Say something, do!" Drearily, without enthusiasm, I said: "Punch brothers, punch with care! Punch in the presence of the passenjare!" My friend eyed me blankly, looked perplexed, they said: "I do not think I get your drift, Mark.gThen does not seem to be any relevancy in what you have said, certainly nothing sad; and yet--maybe it was the way you said the words--I never heard anything that sounded so pathetic.0 !What is--" But I heard no more.I was already far away with my pitiless, heartbreaking "blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, pink trip slip for a three-cent fare; punch in the presence of the passenjare.89I do not know what occurred during the other nine miles.4However, all of a sudden Mr.vlaid his hand on my shoulder and shouted: "Oh, wake up! wake up! wake up! Don't sleep all day! Here we are at the Tower, man! I have talked myself deaf and dumb and blind, and never got a response.LJust look at this magnificent autumn landscape! Look at it! look at it! Feast your eye on it! You have traveled; you have seen boaster landscapes elsewhere.+%&Come, now, deliver an honest opinion.cWhat do you say to this?" I sighed wearily; and murmured: "A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-cent fare, punch in the presence of the passenjare.LRev.Jstood there, very grave, full of concern, apparently, and looked long at me; then he said: "Mark, there is something about this that I cannot understand.AThose are about the same words you said before; there does not seem to be anything in them, and yet they nearly break my heart when you say them.WXPunch in the--how is it they go?" I began at the beginning and repeated all the lines.)'(My friend's face lighted with interest. DEHe said: "Why, what a captivating jingle it is! It is almost music.7It flows along so nicely.)'(I have nearly caught the rhymes myself.<=Say them over just once more, and then I'll have them, sure.?I said them over.H Then Mr.F said them."./He made one little mistake, which I corrected.#-.The next time and the next he got them right.67Now a great burden seemed to tumble from my shoulders.ijThat torturing jingle departed out of my brain, and a grateful sense of rest and peace descended upon me.!qrI was light-hearted enough to sing; and I did sing for half an hour, straight along, as we went jogging homeward.opThen my freed tongue found blessed speech again, and the pent talk of many a weary hour began to gush and flow.PQIt flowed on and on, joyously, jubilantly, until the fountain was empty and dry.>As I wrung my friend's hand at parting, I said: "Haven't we had a royal good time! But now I remember, you haven't said a word for two hours.&*+Come, come, out with something!" The Rev.turned a lack-luster eye upon me, drew a deep sigh, and said, without animation, without apparent consciousness: "Punch, brothers, punch with care! Punch in the presence of the passenjare!" A pang shot through me as I said to myself, "Poor fellow, poor fellow! he has got it, now.?I did not see Mr./!"for two or three days after that.XYThen, on Tuesday evening, he staggered into my presence and sank dejectedly into a seat.."#He was pale, worn; he was a wreck.,|}He lifted his faded eyes to my face and said: "Ah, Mark, it was a ruinous investment that I made in those heartless rhymes. Z[They have ridden me like a nightmare, day and night, hour after hour, to this very moment.9:Since I saw you I have suffered the torments of the lost.XYSaturday evening I had a sudden call, by telegraph, and took the night train for Boston.lmThe occasion was the death of a valued old friend who had requested that I should preach his funeral sermon. CDI took my seat in the cars and set myself to framing the discourse.But I never got beyond the opening paragraph; for then the train started and the car-wheels began their 'clack, clack-clack-clack-clack! clack-clack!--clack-clack-clack!' and right away those odious rhymes fitted themselves to that accompaniment.$tuFor an hour I sat there and set a syllable of those rhymes to every separate and distinct clack the car-wheels made. GHWhy, I was as fagged out, then, as if I had been chopping wood all day.+%&My skull was splitting with headache. ]^It seemed to me that I must go mad if I sat there any longer; so I undressed and went to bed.LMI stretched myself out in my berth, and--well, you know what the result was.&*+The thing went right along, just the same.-.Clack-clack clack, a blue trip slip, clack-clack-clack, for an eight cent fare; clack-clack-clack, a buff trip slip, clack clack-clack, for a six-cent fare, and so on, and so on, and so on punch in the presence of the passenjare!' Sleep? Not a single wink! I was almost a lunatic when I got to Boston.1 Don't ask me about the funeral.iI did the best I could, but every solemn individual sentence was meshed and tangled and woven in and out with 'Punch, brothers, punch with care, punch in the presence of the passenjare.And the most distressing thing was that my delivery dropped into the undulating rhythm of those pulsing rhymes, and I could actually catch absent-minded people nodding time to the swing of it with their stupid heads.WAnd, Mark, you may believe it or not, but before I got through the entire assemblage were placidly bobbing their heads in solemn unison, mourners, undertaker, and all.QRThe moment I had finished, I fled to the anteroom in a state bordering on frenzy.OOf course it would be my luck to find a sorrowing and aged maiden aunt of the deceased there, who had arrived from Springfield too late to get into the church.RSShe began to sob, and said: "'Oh, oh, he is gone, he is gone, and I didn't see him before he died!' "'Yes!' I said, 'he is gone, he is gone, he is gone--oh, will this suffering never cease!' "'You loved him, then! Oh, you too loved him!' "'Loved him! Loved who?' "'Why, my poor George! my poor nephew!' "'Oh--him! Yes--oh, yes, yes.;Certainly--certainly.3Punch--punch--oh, this misery will kill me!' "'Bless you! bless you, sir, for these sweet words! I, too, suffer in this dear loss.23Were you present during his last moments?' "'Yes.1 I--whose last moments?' "'His.<The dear departed's.Yes! Oh, yes--yes--yes! I suppose so, I think so, I don't know! Oh, certainly--I was there I was there!' "'Oh, what a privilege! what a precious privilege! And his last words--oh, tell me, tell me his last words! What did he say?' "'He said--he said--oh, my head, my head, my head! He said--he said--he never said anything but Punch, punch, punch in the presence of the passenjare! Oh, leave me, madam! In the name of all that is generous, leave me to my madness, my misery, my despair!--a buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-cent fare--endu--rance can no fur--ther go!--PUNCH in the presence of the passenjare!" My friend's hopeless eyes rested upon mine a pregnant minute, and then he said impressively: "Mark, you do not say anything.3You do not offer me any hope.34But, ah me, it is just as well--it is just as well.3You could not do me any good.67The time has long gone by when words could comfort me.deSomething tells me that my tongue is doomed to wag forever to the jigger of that remorseless jingle.There--there it is coming on me again: a blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a--" Thus murmuring faint and fainter, my friend sank into a peaceful trance and forgot his sufferings in a blessed respite.sHow did I finally save him from an asylum? I took him to a neighboring university and made him discharge the burden of his persecuting rhymes into the eager ears of the poor, unthinking students.89How is it with them, now? The result is too sad to tell.IJWhy did I write this article? It was for a worthy, even a noble, purpose.2It was to warn you, reader, if you should came across those merciless rhymes, to avoid them--avoid them as you would a pestilence.NOTHE GREAT REVOLUTION IN PITCAIRN Let me refresh the reader's memory a little.fNearly a hundred years ago the crew of the British ship Bounty mutinied, set the captain and his officers adrift upon the open sea, took possession of the ship, and sailed southward.  They procured wives for themselves among the natives of Tahiti, then proceeded to a lonely little rock in mid-Pacific, called Pitcairn's Island, wrecked the vessel, stripped her of everything that might be useful to a new colony, and established themselves on shore.#stPitcairn's is so far removed from the track of commerce that it was many years before another vessel touched there.\It had always been considered an uninhabited island; so when a ship did at last drop its anchor there, in 1808, the captain was greatly surprised to find the place peopled.Although the mutineers had fought among themselves, and gradually killed each other off until only two or three of the original stock remained, these tragedies had not occurred before a number of children had been born; so in 1808 the island had a population of twenty-seven persons.'wxJohn Adams, the chief mutineer, still survived, and was to live many years yet, as governor and patriarch of the flock.NFrom being mutineer and homicide, he had turned Christian and teacher, and his nation of twenty-seven persons was now the purest and devoutest in Christendom.hiAdams had long ago hoisted the British flag and constituted his island an appanage of the British crown.To-day the population numbers ninety persons--sixteen men, nineteen women, twenty-five boys, and thirty girls--all descendants of the mutineers, all bearing the family names of those mutineers, and all speaking English, and English only. DEThe island stands high up out of the sea, and has precipitous walls.XYIt is about three-quarters of a mile long, and in places is as much as half a mile wide.lmSuch arable land as it affords is held by the several families, according to a division made many years ago. ]^There is some live stock--goats, pigs, chickens, and cats; but no dogs, and no large animals. YZThere is one church-building used also as a capitol, a schoolhouse, and a public library.EThe title of the governor has been, for a generation or two, "Magistrate and Chief Ruler, in subordination to her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain.>?It was his province to make the laws, as well as execute them.`aHis office was elective; everybody over seventeen years old had a vote--no matter about the sex.ghThe sole occupations of the people were farming and fishing; their sole recreation, religious services.9:There has never been a shop in the island, nor any money.bcThe habits and dress of the people have always been primitive, and their laws simple to puerility.They have lived in a deep Sabbath tranquillity, far from the world and its ambitions and vexations, and neither knowing nor caring what was going on in the mighty empires that lie beyond their limitless ocean solitudes.EFOnce in three or four years a ship touched there, moved them with aged news of bloody battles, devastating epidemics, fallen thrones, and ruined dynasties, then traded them some soap and flannel for some yams and breadfruit, and sailed away, leaving them to retire into their peaceful dreams and pious dissipations once more.^_On the 8th of last September, Admiral de Horsey, commander-in-chief of the British fleet in the Pacific, visited Pitcairn's Island, and speaks as follows in his official report to the admiralty: They have beans, carrots, turnips, cabbages, and a little maize; pineapples, fig trees, custard-apples, and oranges; lemons, and cocoanuts.OPClothing is obtained alone from passing ships, in barter for refreshments.bThere are no springs on the island, but as it rains generally once a month they have plenty of water, although at times in former years they have suffered from drought.cdNo alcoholic liquors, except for medicinal purposes, are used, and a drunkard is unknown.pThe necessary articles required by the islanders are best shown by those we furnished in barter for refreshments: namely, flannel, serge, drill, half-boots, combs, tobacco, and soap.&vwThey also stand much in need of maps and slates for their school, and tools of any kind are most acceptable.XI caused them to be supplied from the public stores with a Union jack: for display on the arrival of ships, and a pit-saw, of which they were greatly in need.>?This, I trust, will meet the approval of their lordships.CIf the munificent people of England were only aware of the wants of this most deserving little colony, they would not long go unsupplied.&*+Divine service is held every Sunday at 10.NA.E and at 3 P.VWin the house built and used by John Adams for that purpose until he died in 1829. ]^It is conducted strictly in accordance with the liturgy of the Church of England, by Mr.?@Simon Young, their selected pastor, who is much respected.QRA Bible class is held every Wednesday, when all who conveniently can attend.STThere is also a general meeting for prayer on the first Friday in every month.qFamily prayers are said in every house the first thing in the morning and the last thing in the evening, and no food is partaken of without asking God's blessing before and afterward. YZOf these islanders' religious attributes no one can speak without deep respect.A people whose greatest pleasure and privilege is to commune in prayer with their God, and to join in hymns of praise, and who are, moreover, cheerful, diligent, and probably freer from vice than any other community, need no priest among them.@Now I come to a sentence in the admiral's report which he dropped carelessly from his pen, no doubt, and never gave the matter a second thought.\He little imagined what a freight of tragic prophecy it bore! This is the sentence: One stranger, an American, has settled on the island--a doubtful acquisition.A doubtful acquisition, indeed! Captain Ormsby, in the American ship Hornet, touched at Pitcairn's nearly four months after the admiral's visit, and from the facts which he gathered there we now know all about that American.34Let us put these facts together in historical form.$,-The American's name was Butterworth Stavely.aAs soon as he had become well acquainted with all the people--and this took but a few days, of course--he began to ingratiate himself with them by all the arts he could command.ZHe became exceedingly popular, and much looked up to; for one of the first things he did was to forsake his worldly way of life, and throw all his energies into religion.STHe was always reading his Bible, or praying, or singing hymns, or asking blessings.QRIn prayer, no one had such "liberty" as he, no one could pray so long or so well.#stAt last, when he considered the time to be ripe, he began secretly to sow the seeds of discontent among the people./It was his deliberate purpose, from the beginning, to subvert the government, but of course he kept that to himself for a time.23He used different arts with different individuals.pHe awakened dissatisfaction in one quarter by calling attention to the shortness of the Sunday services; he argued that there should be three three-hour services on Sunday instead of only two.mnMany had secretly held this opinion before; they now privately banded themselves into a party to work for it.1He showed certain of the women that they were not allowed sufficient voice in the prayer-meetings; thus another party was formed.aNo weapon was beneath his notice; he even descended to the children, and awoke discontent in their breasts because--as he discovered for them--they had not enough Sunday-school.5This created a third party. Z[Now, as the chief of these parties, he found himself the strongest power in the community.PSo he proceeded to his next move--a no less important one than the impeachment of the chief magistrate, James Russell Nickoy; a man of character and ability, and possessed of great wealth, he being the owner of a house with a parlor to it, three acres and a half of yam-land, and the only boat in Pitcairn's, a whaleboat; and, most unfortunately, a pretext for this impeachment offered itself at just the right time.VWOne of the earliest and most precious laws of the island was the law against trespass. \]It was held in great reverence, and was regarded as the palladium of the people's liberties.jkAbout thirty years ago an important case came before the courts under this law, in this wise: a chicken belonging to Elizabeth Young (aged, at that time, fifty-eight, a daughter of John Mills, one of the mutineers of the Bounty) trespassed upon the grounds of Thursday October Christian (aged twenty-nine, a grandson of Fletcher Christian, one of the mutineers).3Christian killed the chicken.According to the law, Christian could keep the chicken; or, if he preferred, he could restore its remains to the owner and receive damages in "produce" to an amount equivalent to the waste and injury wrought by the trespasser.tThe court records set forth that "the said Christian aforesaid did deliver the aforesaid remains to the said Eliza beth Young, and did demand one bushel of yams in satisfaction of the damage done.2But Elizabeth Young considered the demand exorbitant; the parties could not agree; therefore Christian brought suit in the courts.LHe lost his case in the justice's court; at least, he was awarded only a half-peck of yams, which he considered insufficient, and in the nature of a defeat.D He appealed.The case lingered several years in an ascending grade of courts, and always resulted in decrees sustaining the original verdict; and finally the thing got into the supreme court, and there it stuck for twenty years.PQBut last summer, even the supreme court managed to arrive at a decision at last.#-.Once more the original verdict was sustained.Christian then said he was satisfied; but Stavely was present, and whispered to him and to his lawyer, suggesting, "as a mere form," that the original law be exhibited, in order to make sure that it still existed.$,-It seemed an odd idea, but an ingenious one.9So the demand was made.=A messenger was sent to the magistrate's house; he presently returned with the tidings that it had disappeared from among the state archives."rsThe court now pronounced its late decision void, since it had been made under a law which had no actual existence.,$%Great excitement ensued immediately.-}~The news swept abroad over the whole island that the palladium of the public liberties was lost--maybe treasonably destroyed.bcWithin thirty minutes almost the entire nation were in the court-room--that is to say, the church.HIThe impeachment of the chief magistrate followed, upon Stavely's motion.NOThe accused met his misfortune with the dignity which became his great office./0He did not plead, or even argue; he offered the simple defense that he had not meddled with the missing law; that he had kept the state archives in the same candle-box that had been used as their depository from the beginning; and that he was innocent of the removal or destruction of the lost document.=But nothing could save him; he was found guilty of misprision of treason, and degraded from his office, and all his property was confiscated.The lamest part of the whole shameful matter was the reason suggested by his enemies for his destruction of the law, to wit: that he did it to favor Christian, because Christian was his cousin! Whereas Stavely was the only individual in the entire nation who was not his cousin.GHThe reader must remember that all these people are the descendants of half a dozen men; that the first children intermarried together and bore grandchildren to the mutineers; that these grandchildren intermarried; after them, great and great-great-grandchildren intermarried; so that to-day everybody is blood kin to everybody. YZMoreover, the relationships are wonderfully, even astoundingly, mixed up and complicated.4A stranger, for instance, says to an islander: "You speak of that young woman as your cousin; a while ago you called her your aunt.')*Well, she is my aunt, and my cousin, too.oAnd also my stepsister, my niece, my fourth cousin, my thirty-third cousin, my forty-second cousin, my great-aunt, my grandmother, my widowed sister-in-law--and next week she will be my wife.@ASo the charge of nepotism against the chief magistrate was weak.12But no matter; weak or strong, it suited Stavely.)yzStavely was immediately elected to the vacant magistracy, and, oozing reform from every pore, he went vigorously to work. DEIn no long time religious services raged everywhere and unceasingly.WXBy command, the second prayer of the Sunday morning service, which had customarily endured some thirty-five or forty minutes, and had pleaded for the world, first by continent and then by national and tribal detail, was extended to an hour and a half, and made to include supplications in behalf of the possible peoples in the several planets.MNEverybody was pleased with this; everybody said, "Now this is something like.@ABy command, the usual three-hour sermons were doubled in length.KLThe nation came in a body to testify their gratitude to the new magistrate.^_The old law forbidding cooking on the Sabbath was extended to the prohibition of eating, also. FGBy command, Sunday-school was privileged to spread over into the week.,$%The joy of all classes was complete. pqIn one short month the new magistrate had become the people's idol! The time was ripe for this man's next move.IJHe began, cautiously at first, to poison the public mind against England.TUHe took the chief citizens aside, one by one, and conversed with them on this topic.(()Presently he grew bolder, and spoke out.;He said the nation owed it to itself, to its honor, to its great traditions, to rise in its might and throw off "this galling English yoke. GHBut the simple islanders answered: "We had not noticed that it galled.How does it gall? England sends a ship once in three or four years to give us soap and clothing, and things which we sorely need and gratefully receive; but she never troubles us; she lets us go our own way.HShe lets you go your own way! So slaves have felt and spoken in all the ages! This speech shows how fallen you are, how base, how brutalized you have become, under this grinding tyranny! What! has all manly pride forsaken you? Is liberty nothing? Are you content to be a mere appendage to a foreign and hateful sovereignty, when you might rise up and take your rightful place in the august family of nations, great, free, enlightened, independent, the minion of no sceptered master, but the arbiter of your own destiny, and a voice and a power in decreeing the destinies of your sister-sovereignties of the world?" Speeches like this produced an effect by and by.ECitizens began to feel the English yoke; they did not know exactly how or whereabouts they felt it, but they were perfectly certain they did feel it.fgThey got to grumbling a good deal, and chafing under their chains, and longing for relief and release.efThey presently fell to hating the English flag, that sign and symbol of their nation's degradation; they ceased to glance up at it as they passed the capitol, but averted their eyes and grated their teeth; and one morning, when it was found trampled into the mud at the foot of the staff, they left it there, and no man put his hand to it to hoist it again. FGA certain thing which was sure to happen sooner or later happened now.#stSome of the chief citizens went to the magistrate by night, and said: "We can endure this hated tyranny no longer.$,-How can we cast it off?" "By a coup d'etat.:How?" "A coup d'etat.It is like this: everything is got ready, and at the appointed moment I, as the official head of the nation, publicly and solemnly proclaim its independence, and absolve it from allegiance to any and all other powers whatsoever.4That sounds simple and easy.6We can do that right away.Then what will be the next thing to do?" "Seize all the defenses and public properties of all kinds, establish martial law, put the army and navy on a war footing, and proclaim the empire!" This fine program dazzled these innocents.VWThey said: "This is grand--this is splendid; but will not England resist?" "Let her.7This rock is a Gibraltar.KTrue.hiBut about the empire? Do we need an empire and an emperor?" "What you need, my friends, is unification.1 Look at Germany; look at Italy.?They are unified.7Unification is the thing.;It makes living dear.6That constitutes progress.(()We must have a standing army and a navy.,$%Taxes follow, as a matter of course.')*All these things summed up make grandeur.ijWith unification and grandeur, what more can you want? Very well--only the empire can confer these boons.So on the 8th day of December Pitcairn's Island was proclaimed a free and independent nation; and on the same day the solemn coronation of Butterworth I, Emperor of Pitcairn's Island, took place, amid great rejoicings and festivities.The entire nation, with the exception of fourteen persons, mainly little children, marched past the throne in single file, with banners and music, the procession being upward of ninety feet long; and some said it was as much as three-quarters of a minute passing a given point. GHNothing like it had ever been seen in the history of the island before.."#Public enthusiasm was measureless.)'(Now straightway imperial reforms began.-#$Orders of nobility were instituted.KLA minister of the navy was appointed, and the whale-boat put in commission.deA minister of war was created, and ordered to proceed at once with the formation of a standing army.fA first lord of the treasury was named, and commanded to get up a taxation scheme, and also open negotiations for treaties, offensive, defensive, and commercial, with foreign powers./Some generals and admirals were appointed; also some chamberlains, some equerries in waiting, and some lords of the bedchamber.%+,At this point all the material was used up.The Grand Duke of Galilee, minister of war, complained that all the sixteen grown men in the empire had been given great offices, and consequently would not consent to serve in the ranks; wherefore his standing army was at a standstill. FGThe Marquis of Ararat, minister of the navy, made a similar complaint. ]^He said he was willing to steer the whale-boat himself, but he must have somebody to man her. The emperor did the best he could in the circumstances: he took all the boys above the age of ten years away from their mothers, and pressed them into the army, thus constructing a corps of seventeen privates, officered by one lieutenant-general and two major-generals.This pleased the minister of war, but procured the enmity of all the mothers in the land; for they said their precious ones must now find bloody graves in the fields of war, and he would be answerable for it.@Some of the more heartbroken and unappeasable among them lay constantly wait for the emperor and threw yams at him, unmindful of the body-guard.On account of the extreme scarcity of material, it was found necessary to require the Duke of Bethany postmaster-general, to pull stroke-oar in the navy and thus sit in the rear of a noble of lower degree namely, Viscount Canaan, lord justice of the common pleas.?This turned the Duke of Bethany into tolerably open malcontent and a secret conspirator--a thing which the emperor foresaw, but could not help.2Things went from bad to worse.The emperor raised Nancy Peters to the peerage on one day, and married her the next, notwithstanding, for reasons of state, the cabinet had strenuously advised him to marry Emmeline, eldest daughter of the Archbishop of Bethlehem.67This caused trouble in a powerful quarter--the church.The new empress secured the support and friendship of two-thirds of the thirty-six grown women in the nation by absorbing them into her court as maids of honor; but this made deadly enemies of the remaining twelve.ghThe families of the maids of honor soon began to rebel, because there was nobody at home to keep house.The twelve snubbed women refused to enter the imperial kitchen as servants; so the empress had to require the Countess of Jericho and other great court dames to fetch water, sweep the palace, and perform other menial and equally distasteful services.)'(This made bad blood in that department.{Everybody fell to complaining that the taxes levied for the support of the army, the navy, and the rest of the imperial establishment were intolerably burdensome, and were reducing the nation to beggary.;<The emperor's reply--"Look--Look at Germany; look at Italy.OPAre you better than they? and haven't you unification?"---did not satisfy them.>?They said, "People can't eat unification, and we are starving.9Agriculture has ceased.Everybody is in the army, everybody is in the navy, everybody is in the public service, standing around in a uniform, with nothing whatever to do, nothing to eat, and nobody to till the fields--" "Look at Germany; look at Italy.;It is the same there.4Such is unification, and there's no other way to get it--no other way to keep it after you've got it," said the poor emperor always.OPBut the grumblers only replied, "We can't stand the taxes--we can't stand them.INow right on top of this the cabinet reported a national debt amounting to upward of forty-five dollars--half a dollar to every individual in the nation.,$%And they proposed to fund something.=>They had heard that this was always done in such emergencies.12They proposed duties on exports; also on imports.abAnd they wanted to issue bonds; also paper money, redeemable in yams and cabbages in fifty years.They said the pay of the army and of the navy and of the whole governmental machine was far in arrears, and unless something was done, and done immediately, national bankruptcy must ensue, and possibly insurrection and revolution.(xyThe emperor at once resolved upon a high-handed measure, and one of a nature never before heard of in Pitcairn's Island.@He went in state to the church on Sunday morning, with the army at his back, and commanded the minister of the treasury to take up a collection.12That was the feather that broke the camel's back.eFirst one citizen, and then another, rose and refused to submit to this unheard-of outrage--and each refusal was followed by the immediate confiscation of the malcontent's property.efThis vigor soon stopped the refusals, and the collection proceeded amid a sullen and ominous silence.WXAs the emperor withdrew with the troops, he said, "I will teach you who is master here.=Several persons shouted, "Down with unification!" They were at once arrested and torn from the arms of their weeping friends by the soldiery._`But in the mean time, as any prophet might have foreseen, a Social Democrat had been developed.As the emperor stepped into the gilded imperial wheelbarrow at the church door, the social democrat stabbed at him fifteen or sixteen times with a harpoon, but fortunately with such a peculiarly social democratic unprecision of aim as to do no damage.,$%That very night the convulsion came. Z[The nation rose as one man--though forty-nine of the revolutionists were of the other sex.UThe infantry threw down their pitchforks; the artillery cast aside their cocoanuts; the navy revolted; the emperor was seized, and bound hand and foot in his palace.5He was very much depressed.He said: "I freed you from a grinding tyranny; I lifted you up out of your degradation, and made you a nation among nations; I gave you a strong, compact, centralized government; and, more than all, I gave you the blessing of blessings--unification. GHI have done all this, and my reward is hatred, insult, and these bonds.0 !Take me; do with me as you will.hiI here resign my crown and all my dignities, and gladly do I release myself from their too heavy burden.<=For your sake I took them up; for your sake I lay them down.TUThe imperial jewel is no more; now bruise and defile as ye will the useless setting.By a unanimous voice the people condemned the ex-emperor and the social democrat to perpetual banishment from church services, or to perpetual labor as galley-slaves in the whale-boat--whichever they might prefer.mnThe next day the nation assembled again, and rehoisted the British flag, reinstated the British tyranny, reduced the nobility to the condition of commoners again, and then straightway turned their diligent attention to the weeding of the ruined and neglected yam patches, and the rehabilitation of the old useful industries and the old healing and solacing pieties.@The ex-emperor restored the lost trespass law, and explained that he had stolen it not to injure any one, but to further his political projects.fgTherefore the nation gave the late chief magistrate his office again, and also his alienated Property.jkUpon reflection, the ex-emperor and the social democrat chose perpetual banishment from religious services in preference to perpetual labor as galley slaves "with perpetual religious services," as they phrased it; wherefore the people believed that the poor fellows' troubles had unseated their reason, and so they judged it best to confine them for the present.AWhich they did.89Such is the history of Pitcairn's "doubtful acquisition.LTHE CANVASSER'S TALE Poor, sad-eyed stranger! There was that about his humble mien, his tired look, his decayed-gentility clothes, that almost reached the mustard, seed of charity that still remained, remote and lonely, in the empty vastness of my heart, notwithstanding I observed a portfolio under his arm, and said to myself, Behold, Providence hath delivered his servant into the hands of another canvasser.#-.Well, these people always get one interested. pqBefore I well knew how it came about, this one was telling me his history, and I was all attention and sympathy. [\He told it something like this: My parents died, alas, when I was a little, sinless child.@AMy uncle Ithuriel took me to his heart and reared me as his own.QRHe was my only relative in the wide world; but he was good and rich and generous.."#He reared me in the lap of luxury.(()I knew no want that money could satisfy.7In the fullness of time I was graduated, and went with two of my servants--my chamberlain and my valet--to travel in foreign countries.HIDuring four years I flitted upon careless wing amid the beauteous gardens of the distant strand, if you will permit this form of speech in one whose tongue was ever attuned to poesy; and indeed I so speak with confidence, as one unto his kind, for I perceive by your eyes that you too, sir, are gifted with the divine inflation.abIn those far lands I reveled in the ambrosial food that fructifies the soul, the mind, the heart.56But of all things, that which most appealed to my inborn esthetic taste was the prevailing custom there, among the rich, of making collections of elegant and costly rarities, dainty objets de vertu, and in an evil hour I tried to uplift my uncle Ithuriel to a plane of sympathy with this exquisite employment.45I wrote and told him of one gentleman's vast collection of shells; another's noble collection of meerschaum pipes; another's elevating and refining collection of undecipherable autographs; another's priceless collection of old china; another's enchanting collection of postage-stamps--and so forth and so on.2Soon my letters yielded fruit. CDMy uncle began to look about for something to make a collection of.=>You may know, perhaps, how fleetly a taste like this dilates.56His soon became a raging fever, though I knew it not.>He began to neglect his great pork business; presently he wholly retired and turned an elegant leisure into a rabid search for curious things.&*+His wealth was vast, and he spared it not.7First he tried cow-bells.BHe made a collection which filled five large salons, and comprehended all the different sorts of cow-bells that ever had been contrived, save one.WXThat one--an antique, and the only specimen extant--was possessed by another collector.HIMy uncle offered enormous sums for it, but the gentleman would not sell.#-.Doubtless you know what necessarily resulted.HIA true collector attaches no value to a collection that is not complete.bcHis great heart breaks, he sells his hoard, he turns his mind to some field that seems unoccupied.>Thus did my uncle.8He next tried brickbats.~After piling up a vast and intensely interesting collection, the former difficulty supervened; his great heart broke again; he sold out his soul's idol to the retired brewer who possessed the missing brick.dThen he tried flint hatchets and other implements of Primeval Man, but by and by discovered that the factory where they were made was supplying other collectors as well as himself.deHe tried Aztec inscriptions and stuffed whales--another failure, after incredible labor and expense.xWhen his collection seemed at last perfect, a stuffed whale arrived from Greenland and an Aztec inscription from the Cundurango regions of Central America that made all former specimens insignificant.#-.My uncle hastened to secure these noble gems. DEHe got the stuffed whale, but another collector got the inscription.UA real Cundurango, as possibly you know, is a possession of such supreme value that, when once a collector gets it, he will rather part with his family than with it.:So my uncle sold out, and saw his darlings go forth, never more to return; and his coal-black hair turned white as snow in a single night.5Now he waited, and thought."./He knew another disappointment might kill him.WXHe was resolved that he would choose things next time that no other man was collecting.hiHe carefully made up his mind, and once more entered the field-this time to make a collection of echoes.?Of what?" said I.D Echoes, sir.ijHis first purchase was an echo in Georgia that repeated four times; his next was a six-repeater in Maryland; his next was a thirteen-repeater in Maine; his next was a nine-repeater in Kansas; his next was a twelve-repeater in Tennessee, which he got cheap, so to speak, because it was out of repair, a portion of the crag which reflected it having tumbled down.He believed he could repair it at a cost of a few thousand dollars, and, by increasing the elevation with masonry, treble the repeating capacity; but the architect who undertook the job had never built an echo before, and so he utterly spoiled this one.+{|Before he meddled with it, it used to talk back like a mother-in-law, but now it was only fit for the deaf-and-dumb asylum.HWell, next he bought a lot of cheap little double-barreled echoes, scattered around over various states and territories; he got them at twenty per cent.:off by taking the lot.abNext he bought a perfect Gatling-gun of an echo in Oregon, and it cost a fortune, I can tell you.FYou may know, sir, that in the echo market the scale of prices is cumulative, like the carat-scale in diamonds; in fact, the same phraseology is used.A single-carat echo is worth but ten dollars over and above the value of the land it is on; a two-carat or double-barreled echo is worth thirty dollars; a five-carat is worth nine hundred and fifty; a ten-carat is worth thirteen thousand.My uncle's Oregon-echo, which he called the Great Pitt Echo, was a twenty-two carat gem, and cost two hundred and sixteen thousand dollars--they threw the land in, for it was four hundred miles from a settlement.34Well, in the mean time my path was a path of roses.mnI was the accepted suitor of the only and lovely daughter of an English earl, and was beloved to distraction."./In that dear presence I swam in seas of bliss.%uvThe family were content, for it was known that I was sole heir to an uncle held to be worth five millions of dollars.2However, none of us knew that my uncle had become a collector, at least in anything more than a small way, for esthetic amusement.23Now gathered the clouds above my unconscious head.'wxThat divine echo, since known throughout the world as the Great Koh-i-noor, or Mountain of Repetitions, was discovered.2It was a sixty-five carat gem.klYou could utter a word and it would talk back at you for fifteen minutes, when the day was otherwise quiet.abBut behold, another fact came to light at the same time: another echo-collector was in the field.#-.The two rushed to make the peerless purchase.8The property consisted of a couple of small hills with a shallow swale between, out yonder among the back settlements of New York State.VWBoth men arrived on the ground at the same time, and neither knew the other was there.EThe echo was not all owned by one man; a person by the name of Williamson Bolivar Jarvis owned the east hill, and a person by the name of Harbison J. DEBledso owned the west hill; the swale between was the dividing-line.cSo while my uncle was buying Jarvis's hill for three million two hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars, the other party was buying Bledso's hill for a shade over three million.nNow, do you perceive the natural result? Why, the noblest collection of echoes on earth was forever and ever incomplete, since it possessed but the one-half of the king echo of the universe. YZNeither man was content with this divided ownership, yet neither would sell to the other.!/0There were jawings, bickerings, heart-burnings.And at last that other collector, with a malignity which only a collector can ever feel toward a man and a brother, proceeded to cut down his hill! You see, as long as he could not have the echo, he was resolved that nobody should have it.UVHe would remove his hill, and then there would be nothing to reflect my uncle's echo.DMy uncle remonstrated with him, but the man said, "I own one end of this echo; I choose to kill my end; you must take care of your own end yourself.$,-Well, my uncle got an injunction put an him.78The other man appealed and fought it in a higher court. GHThey carried it on up, clear to the Supreme Court of the United States.0 !It made no end of trouble there.)yzTwo of the judges believed that an echo was personal property, because it was impalpable to sight and touch, and yet was purchasable, salable, and consequently taxable; two others believed that an echo was real estate, because it was manifestly attached to the land, and was not removable from place to place; other of the judges contended that an echo was not property at all.CIt was finally decided that the echo was property; that the hills were property; that the two men were separate and independent owners of the two hills, but tenants in common in the echo; therefore defendant was at full liberty to cut down his hill, since it belonged solely to him, but must give bonds in three million dollars as indemnity for damages which might result to my uncle's half of the echo.This decision also debarred my uncle from using defendant's hill to reflect his part of the echo, without defendant's consent; he must use only his own hill; if his part of the echo would not go, under these circumstances, it was sad, of course, but the court could find no remedy.mnThe court also debarred defendant from using my uncle's hill to reflect his end of the echo, without consent.You see the grand result! Neither man would give consent, and so that astonishing and most noble echo had to cease from its great powers; and since that day that magnificent property is tied up and unsalable.A week before my wedding-day, while I was still swimming in bliss and the nobility were gathering from far and near to honor our espousals, came news of my uncle's death, and also a copy of his will, making me his sole heir.23He was gone; alas, my dear benefactor was no more.89The thought surcharges my heart even at this remote day.JKI handed the will to the earl; I could not read it for the blinding tears.&vwThe earl read it; then he sternly said, "Sir, do you call this wealth?--but doubtless you do in your inflated country.jSir, you are left sole heir to a vast collection of echoes--if a thing can be called a collection that is scattered far and wide over the huge length and breadth of the American continent; sir, this is not all; you are head and ears in debt; there is not an echo in the lot but has a mortgage on it; sir, I am not a hard man, but I must look to my child's interest; if you had but one echo which you could honestly call your own, if you had but one echo which was free from incumbrance, so that you could retire to it with my child, and by humble, painstaking industry cultivate and improve it, and thus wrest from it a maintenance, I would not say you nay; but I cannot marry my child to a beggar.`aLeave his side, my darling; go, sir, take your mortgage-ridden echoes and quit my sight forever.FMy noble Celestine clung to me in tears, with loving arms, and swore she would willingly, nay gladly, marry me, though I had not an echo in the world.<But it could not be. We were torn asunder, she to pine and die within the twelvemonth, I to toil life's long journey sad and alone, praying daily, hourly, for that release which shall join us together again in that dear realm where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.ONow, sir, if you will be so kind as to look at these maps and plans in my portfolio, I am sure I can sell you an echo for less money than any man in the trade.WNow this one, which cost my uncle ten dollars, thirty years ago, and is one of the sweetest things in Texas, I will let you have for-- "Let me interrupt you," I said. FGMy friend, I have not had a moment's respite from canvassers this day.<=I have bought a sewing-machine which I did not want; I have bought a map which is mistaken in all its details; I have bought a clock which will not go; I have bought a moth poison which the moths prefer to any other beverage; I have bought no end of useless inventions, and now I have had enough of this foolishness. FGI would not have one of your echoes if you were even to give it to me.+%&I would not let it stay on the place.12I always hate a man that tries to sell me echoes.RSYou see this gun? Now take your collection and move on; let us not have bloodshed. FGBut he only smiled a sad, sweet smile, and got out some more diagrams.SYou know the result perfectly well, because you know that when you have once opened the door to a canvasser, the trouble is done and you have got to suffer defeat.>?I compromised with this man at the end of an intolerable hour.;I bought two double-barreled echoes in good condition, and he threw in another, which he said was not salable because it only spoke German.KLHe said, "She was a perfect polyglot once, but somehow her palate got down.AN ENCOUNTER WITH AN INTERVIEWER The nervous, dapper, "peart" young man took the chair I offered him, and said he was connected with the Daily Thunderstorm, and added: "Hoping it's no harm, I've come to interview you.1 Come to what?" "Interview you.F Ah! I see.G Yes--yes.C Um! Yes--yes.*&'I was not feeling bright that morning.#-.Indeed, my powers seemed a bit under a cloud.2However, I went to the bookcase, and when I had been looking six or seven minutes I found I was obliged to refer to the young man.;<I said: "How do you spell it?" "Spell what?" "Interview.lmOh, my goodness! what do you want to spell it for?" "I don't want to spell it; I want to see what it means.*&'Well, this is astonishing, I must say. pqI can tell you what it means, if you--if you--" "Oh, all right! That will answer, and much obliged to you, too. pqIn, in, ter, ter, inter--" "Then you spell it with an h?" "Why certainly!" "Oh, that is what took me so long.TUWhy, my dear sir, what did you propose to spell it with?" "Well, I--I--hardly know.mnI had the Unabridged, and I was ciphering around in the back end, hoping I might tree her among the pictures.4But it's a very old edition.}Why, my friend, they wouldn't have a picture of it in even the latest e---- My dear sir, I beg your pardon, I mean no harm in the world, but you do not look as--as--intelligent as I had expected you would.1 No harm--I mean no harm at all.VOh, don't mention it! It has often been said, and by people who would not flatter and who could have no inducement to flatter, that I am quite remarkable in that way.!/0Yes--yes; they always speak of it with rapture.8I can easily imagine it.7But about this interview.NOYou know it is the custom, now, to interview any man who has become notorious.+%&Indeed, I had not heard of it before.4It must be very interesting. GHWhat do you do it with?" "Ah, well--well--well--this is disheartening.BIt ought to be done with a club in some cases; but customarily it consists in the interviewer asking questions and the interviewed answering them.9It is all the rage now.MWill you let me ask you certain questions calculated to bring out the salient points of your public and private history?" "Oh, with pleasure--with pleasure.<=I have a very bad memory, but I hope you will not mind that.@AThat is to say, it is an irregular memory--singularly irregular.fgSometimes it goes in a gallop, and then again it will be as much as a fortnight passing a given point.4This is a great grief to me.<=Oh, it is no matter, so you will try to do the best you can.II will.1 I will put my whole mind on it.IThanks./!"Are you ready to begin?" "Ready.NQ.<How old are you? A.>Nineteen, in June.IIndeed. 01I would have taken you to be thirty-five or six.8Where were you born? A.D In Missouri.0 !When did you begin to write? A.H In 1836.9:Why, how could that be, if you are only nineteen now? A.C I don't know.2It does seem curious, somehow.@It does, indeed.>?Whom do you consider the most remarkable man you ever met? A.E Aaron Burr.LMBut you never could have met Aaron Burr, if you are only nineteen years! A. EFNow, if you know more about me than I do, what do you ask me for? Q.#-.Well, it was only a suggestion; nothing more.,$%How did you happen to meet Burr? A. \]Well, I happened to be at his funeral one day, and he asked me to make less noise, and-- Q.@But, good heavens! if you were at his funeral, he must have been dead, and if he was dead how could he care whether you made a noise or not? A.C I don't know.23He was always a particular kind of a man that way.STStill, I don't understand it at all, You say he spoke to you, and that he was dead.7I didn't say he was dead.9But wasn't he dead? A.$,-Well, some said he was, some said he wasn't.9What did you think? A.<=Oh, it was none of my business! It wasn't any of my funeral.89Did you--However, we can never get this matter straight.0 !Let me ask about something else.,$%What was the date of your birth? A.7Monday, October 31, 1693. EFWhat! Impossible! That would make you a hundred and eighty years old.0 !How do you account for that? A.2I don't account for it at all.ijBut you said at first you were only nineteen, and now you make yourself out to be one hundred and eighty.5It is an awful discrepancy.%+,Why, have you noticed that? (Shaking hands. [\Many a time it has seemed to me like a discrepancy, but somehow I couldn't make up my mind./!"How quick you notice a thing! Q. 01Thank you for the compliment, as far as it goes.23Had you, or have you, any brothers or sisters? A. 01Eh! I--I--I think so--yes--but I don't remember.@AWell, that is the most extraordinary statement I ever heard! A.-#$Why, what makes you think that? Q.%uvHow could I think otherwise? Why, look here! Who is this a picture of on the wall? Isn't that a brother of yours? A. GHOh, yes, yes, yes! Now you remind me of it; that was a brother of mine.-#$That's William--Bill we called him.>Poor old Bill! Q.6Why? Is he dead, then? A.9Ah! well, I suppose so.<We never could tell.-#$There was a great mystery about it.:That is sad, very sad.7He disappeared, then? A.,$%Well, yes, in a sort of general way.BWe buried him. GHBuried him! Buried him, without knowing whether he was dead or not? A.?Oh, no! Not that.=He was dead enough.#-.Well, I confess that I can't understand this.$,-If you buried him, and you knew he was dead.1 No! no! We only thought he was.+%&Oh, I see! He came to life again? A.@I bet he didn't.)'(Well, I never heard anything like this.>Somebody was dead.<Somebody was buried.1 Now, where was the mystery? A.*&'Ah! that's just it! That's it exactly.3You see, we were twins--defunct--and I--and we got mixed in the bathtub when we were only two weeks old, and one of us was drowned.7But we didn't know which.9Some think it was Bill.;Some think it was me.7Well, that is remarkable.:What do you think? A.23Goodness knows! I would give whole worlds to know. DEThis solemn, this awful mystery has cast a gloom over my whole life.UVBut I will tell you a secret now, which I never have revealed to any creature before.VWOne of us had a peculiar mark--a large mole on the back of his left hand; that was me.$,-That child was the one that was drowned! Q.KLVery well, then, I don't see that there is any mystery about it, after all.:You don't? Well, I do.jkAnyway, I don't see how they could ever have been such a blundering lot as to go and bury the wrong child.<=But, 'sh!--don't mention it where the family can hear of it.IJHeaven knows they have heartbreaking troubles enough without adding this.+{|Well, I believe I have got material enough for the present, and I am very much obliged to you for the pains you have taken.IJBut I was a good deal interested in that account of Aaron Burr's funeral.%uvWould you mind telling me what particular circumstance it was that made you think Burr was such a remarkable man? A.LMOh! it was a mere trifle! Not one man in fifty would have noticed it at all.When the sermon was over, and the procession all ready to start for the cemetery, and the body all arranged nice in the hearse, he said he wanted to take a last look at the scenery, and so he got up and rode with the driver.)'(Then the young man reverently withdrew.<=He was very pleasant company, and I was sorry to see him go.VWPARIS NOTES --[Crowded out of "A Tramp Abroad" to make room for more vital statistics.TThe Parisian travels but little, he knows no language but his own, reads no literature but his own, and consequently he is pretty narrow and pretty self-sufficient.!qrHowever, let us not be too sweeping; there are Frenchmen who know languages not their own: these are the waiters.;Among the rest, they know English; that is, they know it on the European plan--which is to say, they can speak it, but can't understand it.AThey easily make themselves understood, but it is next to impossible to word an English sentence in such away as to enable them to comprehend it. DEThey think they comprehend it; they pretend they do; but they don't..~Here is a conversation which I had with one of these beings; I wrote it down at the time, in order to have it exactly correct.9These are fine oranges.6Where are they grown? He.3More? Yes, I will bring them. YZNo, do not bring any more; I only want to know where they are from where they are raised.MHe.45Yes? (with imperturbable mien and rising inflection.NI.LYes. 01Can you tell me what country they are from? He.*&'Yes? (blandly, with rising inflection.NI.Bdisheartened).=They are very nice.MHe.E Good night. 01Bows, and retires, quite satisfied with himself.3That young man could have become a good English scholar by taking the right sort of pains, but he was French, and wouldn't do that.PQHow different is the case with our people; they utilize every means that offers.There are some alleged French Protestants in Paris, and they built a nice little church on one of the great avenues that lead away from the Arch of Triumph, and proposed to listen to the correct thing, preached in the correct way, there, in their precious French tongue, and be happy.)'(But their little game does not succeed.LMOur people are always there ahead of them Sundays, and take up all the room.cWhen the minister gets up to preach, he finds his house full of devout foreigners, each ready and waiting, with his little book in his hand--a morocco-bound Testament, apparently.2But only apparently; it is Mr.\Bellows's admirable and exhaustive little French-English dictionary, which in look and binding and size is just like a Testament and those people are there to study French.HIThe building has been nicknamed "The Church of the Gratis French Lesson.These students probably acquire more language than general information, for I am told that a French sermon is like a French speech--it never names a historical event, but only the date of it; if you are not up in dates, you get left.  A French speech is something like this: Comrades, citizens, brothers, noble parts of the only sublime and perfect nation, let us not forget that the 21st January cast off our chains; that the 10th August relieved us of the shameful presence of foreign spies; that the 5th September was its own justification before heaven and humanity; that the 18th Brumaire contained the seeds of its own punishment; that the 14th July was the mighty voice of liberty proclaiming the resurrection, the new day, and inviting the oppressed peoples of the earth to look upon the divine face of France and live; and let us here record our everlasting curse against the man of the 2d December, and declare in thunder tones, the native tones of France, that but for him there had been no 17th March in history, no 12th October, no 19th January, no 22d April, no 16th November, no 30th September, no 2d July, no 14th February, no 29th June, no 15th August, no 31st May--that but for him, France the pure, the grand, the peerless, had had a serene and vacant almanac today! I have heard of one French sermon which closed in this odd yet eloquent way: My hearers, we have sad cause to remember the man of the 13th January.'wxThe results of the vast crime of the 13th January have been in just proportion to the magnitude of the set itself.But for it there had been no 30 November--sorrowful spectacle! The grisly deed of the 16th June had not been done but for it, nor had the man of the 16th June known existence; to it alone the 3d September was due, also the fatal 12th October.Shall we, then, be grateful for the 13th January, with its freight of death for you and me and all that breathe? Yes, my friends, for it gave us also that which had never come but for it, and it atone--the blessed 25th December.ijIt may be well enough to explain, though in the case of many of my readers this will hardly be necessary.)yzThe man of the 13th January is Adam; the crime of that date was the eating of the apple; the sorrowful spectacle of the 30th November was the expulsion from Eden; the grisly deed of the 16th June was the murder of Abel; the act of the 3d September was the beginning of the journey to the land of Nod; the 12th day of October, the last mountain-tops disappeared under the flood.STWhen you go to church in France, you want to take your almanac with you--annotated.?LEGEND OF SAGENFELD, IN GERMANY --[Left out of "A Tramp Abroad" because its authenticity seemed doubtful, and could not at that time be proved.CMore than a thousand years ago this small district was a kingdom--a little bit of a kingdom, a sort of dainty little toy kingdom, as one might say.&vwIt was far removed from the jealousies, strifes, and turmoils of that old warlike day, and so its life was a simple life, its people a gentle and guileless race; it lay always in a deep dream of peace, a soft Sabbath tranquillity; there was no malice, there was no envy, there was no ambition, consequently there were no heart-burnings, there was no unhappiness in the land.UVIn the course of time the old king died and his little son Hubert came to the throne.:The people's love for him grew daily; he was so good and so pure and so noble, that by and by his love became a passion, almost a worship.$%Now at his birth the soothsayers had diligently studied the stars and found something written in that shining book to this effect: In Hubert's fourteenth year a pregnant event will happen; the animal whose singing shall sound sweetest in Hubert's ear shall save Hubert's life.pSo long as the king and the nation shall honor this animal's race for this good deed, the ancient dynasty shall not fail of an heir, nor the nation know war or pestilence or poverty.gBut beware an erring choice! All through the king's thirteenth year but one thing was talked of by the soothsayers, the statesmen, the little parliament, and the general people.That one thing was this: How is the last sentence of the prophecy to be understood? What goes before seems to mean that the saving animal will choose itself at the proper time; but the closing sentence seems to mean that the king must choose beforehand, and say what singer among the animals pleases him best, and that if he choose wisely the chosen animal will save his life, his dynasty, his people, but that if he should make "an erring choice"--beware! By the end of the year there were as many opinions about this matter as there had been in the beginning; but a majority of the wise and the simple were agreed that the safest plan would be for the little king to make choice beforehand, and the earlier the better.\So an edict was sent forth commanding all persons who owned singing creatures to bring them to the great hall of the palace in the morning of the first day of the new year.8This command was obeyed.IWhen everything was in readiness for the trial, the king made his solemn entry with the great officers of the crown, all clothed in their robes of state.ABThe king mounted his golden throne and prepared to give judgment.)yzBut he presently said: "These creatures all sing at once; the noise is unendurable; no one can choose in such a turmoil.12Take them all away, and bring back one at a time.BThis was done.opOne sweet warbler after another charmed the young king's ear and was removed to make way for another candidate.The precious minutes slipped by; among so many bewitching songsters he found it hard to choose, and all the harder because the promised penalty for an error was so terrible that it unsettled his judgment and made him afraid to trust his own ears.#-.He grew nervous and his face showed distress.IJHis ministers saw this, for they never took their eyes from him a moment.Now they began to say in their hearts: "He has lost courage--the cool head is gone--he will err--he and his dynasty and his people are doomed!" At the end of an hour the king sat silent awhile, and then said: "Bring back the linnet.$,-The linnet trilled forth her jubilant music.2In the midst of it the king was about to uplift his scepter in sign of choice, but checked himself and said: "But let us be sure."./Bring back the thrush; let them sing together.TUThe thrush was brought, and the two birds poured out their marvels of song together.klThe king wavered, then his inclination began to settle and strengthen--one could see it in his countenance.Hope budded in the hearts of the old ministers, their pulses began to beat quicker, the scepter began to rise slowly, when: There was a hideous interruption! It was a sound like this--just at the door: "Waw.H he! waw.cdhe! waw-he!-waw he!-waw-he!" Everybody was sorely startled--and enraged at himself for showing it.The next instant the dearest, sweetest, prettiest little peasant-maid of nine years came tripping in, her brown eyes glowing with childish eagerness; but when she saw that august company and those angry faces she stopped and hung her head and put her poor coarse apron to her eyes.')*Nobody gave her welcome, none pitied her.,|}Presently she looked up timidly through her tears, and said: "My lord the king, I pray you pardon me, for I meant no wrong.^_I have no father and no mother, but I have a goat and a donkey, and they are all in all to me.#stMy goat gives me the sweetest milk, and when my dear good donkey brays it seems to me there is no music like to it.So when my lord the king's jester said the sweetest singer among all the animals should save the crown and nation, and moved me to bring him here--" All the court burst into a rude laugh, and the child fled away crying, without trying to finish her speech.SThe chief minister gave a private order that she and her disastrous donkey be flogged beyond the precincts of the palace and commanded to come within them no more.(()Then the trial of the birds was resumed.QRThe two birds sang their best, but the scepter lay motionless in the king's hand.%+,Hope died slowly out in the breasts of all."./An hour went by; two hours, still no decision.$tuThe day waned to its close, and the waiting multitudes outside the palace grew crazed with anxiety and apprehension.9:The twilight came on, the shadows fell deeper and deeper.>?The king and his court could no longer see each other's faces.+%&No one spoke--none called for lights.IThe great trial had been made; it had failed; each and all wished to hide their faces from the light and cover up their deep trouble in their own hearts.Finally-hark! A rich, full strain of the divinest melody streamed forth from a remote part of the hall the nightingale's voice! "Up!" shouted the king, "let all the bells make proclamation to the people, for the choice is made and we have not erred.,$%King, dynasty, and nation are saved.KLFrom henceforth let the nightingale be honored throughout the land forever. pqAnd publish it among all the people that whosoever shall insult a nightingale, or injure it, shall suffer death.;The king hath spoken.')*All that little world was drunk with joy.GThe castle and the city blazed with bonfires all night long, the people danced and drank and sang; and the triumphant clamor of the bells never ceased. 01From that day the nightingale was a sacred bird.]Its song was heard in every house; the poets wrote its praises; the painters painted it; its sculptured image adorned every arch and turret and fountain and public building.It was even taken into the king's councils; and no grave matter of state was decided until the soothsayers had laid the thing before the state nightingale and translated to the ministry what it was that the bird had sung about it."./II The young king was very fond of the chase.jkWhen the summer was come he rode forth with hawk and hound, one day, in a brilliant company of his nobles.8He got separated from them by and by, in a great forest, and took what he imagined a neat cut, to find them again; but it was a mistake.HIHe rode on and on, hopefully at first, but with sinking courage finally.NOTwilight came on, and still he was plunging through a lonely and unknown land.8Then came a catastrophe.ghIn the dim light he forced his horse through a tangled thicket overhanging a steep and rocky declivity.bcWhen horse and rider reached the bottom, the former had a broken neck and the latter a broken leg.cdThe poor little king lay there suffering agonies of pain, and each hour seemed a long month to him.6He kept his ear strained to hear any sound that might promise hope of rescue; but he heard no voice, no sound of horn or bay of hound.LMSo at last he gave up all hope, and said, "Let death come, for come it must. [\Just then the deep, sweet song of a nightingale swept across the still wastes of the night.:Saved!" the king said.<=Saved! It is the sacred bird, and the prophecy is come true.:;The gods themselves protected me from error in the choice.ABHe could hardly contain his joy; he could not word his gratitude.LMEvery few moments, now he thought he caught the sound of approaching succor.67But each time it was a disappointment; no succor came.6The dull hours drifted on.67Still no help came--but still the sacred bird sang on.BCHe began to have misgivings about his choice, but he stifled them.4Toward dawn the bird ceased.?@The morning came, and with it thirst and hunger; but no succor.8The day waxed and waned.(()At last the king cursed the nightingale.:;Immediately the song of the thrush came from out the wood._`The king said in his heart, "This was the true-bird--my choice was false--succor will come now.<But it did not come.."#Then he lay many hours insensible."./When he came to himself, a linnet was singing.8He listened with apathy.=His faith was gone.STThese birds," he said, "can bring no help; I and my house and my people are doomed..~He turned him about to die; for he was grown very feeble from hunger and thirst and suffering, and felt that his end was near.67In truth, he wanted to die, and be released from pain.;<For long hours he lay without thought or feeling or motion.7Then his senses returned.%+,The dawn of the third morning was breaking.78Ah, the world seemed very beautiful to those worn eyes.ySuddenly a great longing to live rose up in the lad's heart, and from his soul welled a deep and fervent prayer that Heaven would have mercy upon him and let him see his home and his friends once more.?In that instant a soft, a faint, a far-off sound, but oh, how inexpressibly sweet to his waiting ear, came floating out of the distance: "Waw.H he! waw.mnhe! waw-he!--waw-he!--waw-he!" "That, oh, that song is sweeter, a thousand times sweeter than the voice of the nightingale, thrush, or linnet, for it brings not mere hope, but certainty of succor; and now, indeed, am I saved! The sacred singer has chosen itself, as the oracle intended; the prophecy is fulfilled, and my life, my house, and my people are redeemed.UThe ass shall be sacred from this day!" The divine music grew nearer and nearer, stronger and stronger and ever sweeter and sweeter to the perishing sufferer's ear.Down the declivity the docile little donkey wandered, cropping herbage and singing as he went; and when at last he saw the dead horse and the wounded king, he came and snuffed at them with simple and marveling curiosity.fgThe king petted him, and he knelt down as had been his wont when his little mistress desired to mount.,|}With great labor and pain the lad drew himself upon the creature's back, and held himself there by aid of the generous ears.`aThe ass went singing forth from the place and carried the king to the little peasant-maid's hut.PShe gave him her pallet for a bed, refreshed him with goat's milk, and then flew to tell the great news to the first scouting-party of searchers she might meet.>The king got well.His first act was to proclaim the sacredness and inviolability of the ass; his second was to add this particular ass to his cabinet and make him chief minister of the crown; his third was to have all the statues and effigies of nightingales throughout his kingdom destroyed, and replaced by statues and effigies of the sacred donkey; and, his fourth was to announce that when the little peasant maid should reach her fifteenth year he would make her his queen and he kept his word.=Such is the legend.This explains why the moldering image of the ass adorns all these old crumbling walls and arches; and it explains why, during many centuries, an ass was always the chief minister in that royal cabinet, just as is still the case in most cabinets to this day; and it also explains why, in that little kingdom, during many centuries, all great poems, all great speeches, all great books, all public solemnities, and all royal proclamations, always began with these stirring words: "Waw.H he! waw.Ehe!--waw he! Waw-he!" SPEECH ON THE BABIES AT THE BANQUET, IN CHICAGO, GIVEN BY THE ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE TO THEIR FIRST COMMANDER, GENERAL U.KGRANT, NOVEMBER, 1879 The fifteenth regular toast was "The Babies--as they comfort us in our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities.D I like that.23We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies..~We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground./It is a shame that for a thousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if he didn't amount to anything.If you will stop and think a minute--if you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married life and recontemplate your first baby--you will remember that he amounted to a great deal, and even something over.%uvYou soldiers all know that when the little fellow arrived at family headquarters you had to hand in your resignation.9He took entire command.OPYou became his lackey, his mere body servant, and you had to stand around, too. YZHe was not a commander who made allowances for time, distance, weather, or anything else.<=You had to execute his order whether it was possible or not.`aAnd there was only one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that was the double-quick.mnHe treated you with every sort of insolence and disrespect, and the bravest of you didn't dare to say a word.iYou could face the death-storm at Donelson and Vicksburg, and give back blow for blow; but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair, and twisted your nose, you had to take it.When the thunders of war were sounding in your ears you set your faces toward the batteries, and advanced with steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of his war-whoop you advanced in the other direction, and mighty glad of the chance, too.HWhen he called for soothing-syrup, did you venture to throw out any side remarks about certain services being unbecoming an officer and a gentleman? No.:You got up and got it.OPWhen he ordered his pap-bottle and it was not warm, did you talk back? Not you.1 You went to work and warmed it.You even descended so far in your menial office as to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was right--three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those hiccoughs.5I can taste that stuff yet.And how many things you learned as you went along! Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful old saying that when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the angels are whispering to him.BCVery pretty, but too thin--simply wind on the stomach, my friends. If the baby proposed to take a walk at his usual hour, two o'clock in the morning, didn't you rise up promptly and remark, with a mental addition which would not improve a Sunday-school book much, that that was the very thing you were about to propose yourself? Oh! you were under good discipline, and as you went fluttering up and down the room in your undress uniform, you not only prattled undignified baby-talk, but even tuned up your martial voices and tried to sing!--"Rock-a-by baby in the treetop," for instance.mWhat a spectacle for an Army of the Tennessee! And what an affliction for the neighbors, too; for it is not everybody within a mile around that likes military music at three in the morning.And when you had been keeping this sort of thing up two or three hours, and your little velvet-head intimated that nothing suited him like exercise and noise, what did you do? ["Go on!"] You simply went on until you dropped in the last ditch.opThe idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full by itself. ]^One baby can furnish more business than you and your whole Interior Department can attend to.ABHe is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities.?@Do what you please, you can't make him stay on the reservation.,$%Sufficient unto the day is one baby. DEAs long as you are in your right mind don't you ever pray for twins./!"Twins amount to a permanent riot.IJAnd there ain't any real difference between triplets and an insurrection.STYes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognize the importance of the babies.Think what is in store for the present crop! Fifty years from now we shall all be dead, I trust, and then this flag, if it still survive (and let us hope it may), will be floating over a Republic numbering 200,000,000 souls, according to the settled laws of our increase. Z[Our present schooner of State will have grown into a political leviathan--a Great Eastern.#-.The cradled babies of to-day will be on deck.RSLet them be well trained, for we are going to leave a big contract on their hands.ZAmong the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could know which ones they are.In one of them cradles the unconscious Farragut of the future is at this moment teething--think of it!--and putting in a world of dead earnest, unarticulated, but perfectly justifiable profanity over it, too.wIn another the future renowned astronomer is blinking at the shining Milky Way with but a languid interest--poor little chap!--and wondering what has become of that other one they call the wet-nurse.&vwIn another the future great historian is lying--and doubtless will continue to lie until his earthly mission is ended.ABIn another the future President is busying himself with no profounder problem of state than what the mischief has become of his hair so early; and in a mighty array of other cradles there are now some 60,000 future office-seekers, getting ready to furnish him occasion to grapple with that same old problem a second time../And in still one more cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious commander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened with his approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole strategic mind at this moment to trying to find out some way to get his big toe into his mouth--an achievement which, meaning no disrespect, the illustrious guest of this evening turned his entire attention to some fifty-six years ago; and if the child is but a prophecy of the man, there are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded.aSPEECH ON THE WEATHER AT THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY'S SEVENTY-FIRST ANNUAL DINNER, NEW YORK CITY The next toast was: "The Oldest Inhabitant--The Weather of New England.5Who can lose it and forget it? Who can have it and regret it? Be interposes 'twixt us Twain.=Merchant of Venice.?To this Samuel L.AClemens (Mark Twain) replied as follows:-- I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in New England but the weather.34I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk's factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it.noThere is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration--and regret.XThe weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on the people to see how they will go. EFBut it gets through more business in spring than in any other season.#stIn the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four-and-twenty hours.TIt was I that made the fame and fortune of that man that had that marvelous collection of weather on exhibition at the Centennial, that so astounded the foreigners.PQHe was going to travel all over the world and get specimens from all the climes.LMI said, "Don't you do it; you come to New England on a favorable spring day. GHI told him what we could do in the way of style, variety, and quantity.67Well, he came and he made his collection in four days.lmAs to variety, why, he confessed that he got hundreds of kinds of weather that he had never heard of before.And as to quantity--well, after he had picked out and discarded all that was blemished in any way, he not only had weather enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out; weather to sell; to deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the poor.$tuThe people of New England are by nature patient and forbearing, but there are some things which they will not stand.HIEvery year they kill a lot of poets for writing about "Beautiful Spring.JThese are generally casual visitors, who bring their notions of spring from somewhere else, and cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about spring.bcAnd so the first thing they know the opportunity to inquire how they feel has permanently gone by.abOld Probabilities has a mighty reputation for accurate prophecy, and thoroughly well deserves it.kYou take up the paper and observe how crisply and confidently he checks off what to-day's weather is going to be on the Pacific, down South, in the Middle States, in the Wisconsin region.mnSee him sail along in the joy and pride of his power till he gets to New England, and then see his tail drop.?@He doesn't know what the weather is going to be in New England.jkWell, he mulls over it, and by and by he gets out something about like this: Probable northeast to southwest minds, varying to the southward and westward and eastward, and points between, high and low barometer swapping around from place to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes, with thunder and lightning.KThen he jots down this postscript from his wandering mind, to cover accidents: "But it is possible that the program may be wholly changed in the mean time. \]Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it.oThere is only one thing certain about it: you are certain there is going to be plenty of it--a perfect grand review; but you never can tell which end of the procession is going to move first.opYou fix up for the drought; you leave your umbrella in the house and sally out, and two to one you get drowned.`You make up your mind that the earthquake is due; you stand from under, and take hold of something to steady yourself, and the first thing you know you get struck by lightning.:;These are great disappointments; but they can't be helped.The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether--Well, you'd think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there.@And the thunder.-.When the thunder begins to merely tune up and scrape and saw, and key up the instruments for the performance, strangers say, "Why, what awful thunder you have here!" But when the baton is raised and the real concert begins, you'll find that stranger down in the cellar with his head in the ash-barrel. DENow as to the size of the weather in New England lengthways, I mean.ABIt is utterly disproportioned to the size of that little country.Half the time, when it is packed as full as it can stick, you will see that New England weather sticking out beyond the edges and projecting around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the neighboring states.%+,She can't hold a tenth part of her weather.LMYou can see cracks all about where she has strained herself trying to do it.%uvI could speak volumes about the inhuman perversity of the New England weather, but I will give but a single specimen.."#I like to hear rain on a tin roof.BCSo I covered part of my roof with tin, with an eye to that luxury.PQWell, sir, do you think it ever rains on that tin? No, sir; skips it every time.'wxMind, in this speech I have been trying merely to do honor to the New England weather--no language could do it justice.SBut, after all, there is at least one or two things about that weather (or, if you please, effects produced, by it) which we residents would not like to part with.bIf we hadn't our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries--the ice-storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top--ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dewdrops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia's diamond plume.Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold--the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence.+%&One cannot make the words too strong.efCONCERNING THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE --[Being part of a chapter which was crowded out of "A Tramp Abroad.NM.jkThere was as Englishman in our compartment, and he complimented me on--on what? But you would never guess./!"He complimented me on my English.VWHe said Americans in general did not speak the English language as correctly as I did.fI said I was obliged to him for his compliment, since I knew he meant it for one, but that I was not fairly entitled to it, for I did not speak English at all--I only spoke American.?@He laughed, and said it was a distinction without a difference.LMI said no, the difference was not prodigious, but still it was considerable. 01We fell into a friendly dispute over the matter.CDI put my case as well as I could, and said: "The languages were identical several generations ago, but our changed conditions and the spread of our people far to the south and far to the west have made many alterations in our pronunciation, and have introduced new words among us and changed the meanings of many old ones.34English people talk through their noses; we do not.3We say know, English people say nao; we say cow, the Briton says kaow; we--" "Oh, come! that is pure Yankee; everybody knows that.+%&Yes, it is pure Yankee; that is true.deOne cannot hear it in America outside of the little corner called New England, which is Yankee land.$tuThe English themselves planted it there, two hundred and fifty years ago, and there it remains; it has never spread.But England talks through her nose yet; the Londoner and the backwoods New-Englander pronounce 'know' and 'cow' alike, and then the Briton unconsciously satirizes himself by making fun of the Yankee's pronunciation.We argued this point at some length; nobody won; but no matter, the fact remains Englishmen say nao and kaow for "know" and "cow," and that is what the rustic inhabitant of a very small section of America does.eYou conferred your 'a' upon New England, too, and there it remains; it has not traveled out of the narrow limits of those six little states in all these two hundred and fifty years.2All England uses it, New England's small population--say four millions--use it, but we have forty-five millions who do not use it.RSYou say 'glahs of wawtah,' so does New England; at least, New England says 'glahs.<=America at large flattens the 'a', and says 'glass of water.7These sounds are pleasanter than yours; you may think they are not right--well, in English they are not right, but 'American' they are.@You say 'flahsk' and 'bahsket,' and 'jackahss'; we say 'flask,' 'basket,' 'jackass'--sounding the 'a' as it is in 'tallow,' 'fallow,' and so on.7Up to as late as 1847 Mr.Webster's Dictionary had the impudence to still pronounce 'basket' bahsket, when he knew that outside of his little New England all America shortened the 'a' and paid no attention to his English broadening of it.(xyHowever, it called itself an English Dictionary, so it was proper enough that it should stick to English forms, perhaps.0It still calls itself an English Dictionary today, but it has quietly ceased to pronounce 'basket' as if it were spelt 'bahsket. Z[In the American language the 'h' is respected; the 'h' is not dropped or added improperly.NOThe same is the case in England--I mean among the educated classes, of course.BCYes, that is true; but a nation's language is a very large matter.KIt is not simply a manner of speech obtaining among the educated handful; the manner obtaining among the vast uneducated multitude must be considered also._Your uneducated masses speak English, you will not deny that; our uneducated masses speak American it won't be fair for you to deny that, for you can see, yourself, that when your stable-boy says, 'It isn't the 'unting that 'urts the 'orse, but the 'ammer, 'ammer, 'ammer on the 'ard 'ighway,' and our stable-boy makes the same remark without suffocating a single h, these two people are manifestly talking two different languages.STBut if the signs are to be trusted, even your educated classes used to drop the 'h.34They say humble, now, and heroic, and historic etc.:but I judge that they used to drop those h's because your writers still keep up the fashion of patting an before those words instead of a.@This is what Mr.MDarwin might call a 'rudimentary' sign that as an was justifiable once, and useful when your educated classes used to say 'umble, and 'eroic, and 'istorical.JKCorrect writers of the American language do not put an before three words.#stThe English gentleman had something to say upon this matter, but never mind what he said--I'm not arguing his case.."#I have him at a disadvantage, now.I proceeded: "In England you encourage an orator by exclaiming, 'H'yaah! 'yaah!' We pronounce it heer in some sections, 'h'yer' in others, and so on; but our whites do not say 'h'yaah,' pronouncing the a's like the a in ah.cdI have heard English ladies say 'don't you'--making two separate and distinct words of it; your Mr.7Burnand has satirized it.5But we always say 'dontchu.<This is much better.1Your ladies say, 'Oh, it's oful nice!' Ours say, 'Oh, it's awful nice!' We say, 'Four hundred,' you say 'For'--as in the word or.4Your clergymen speak of 'the Lawd,' ours of 'the Lord'; yours speak of 'the gawds of the heathen,' ours of 'the gods of the heathen.45When you are exhausted, you say you are 'knocked up.G We don't.FWhen you say you will do a thing 'directly,' you mean 'immediately'; in the American language--generally speaking--the word signifies 'after a little.-}~When you say 'clever,' you mean 'capable'; with us the word used to mean 'accommodating,' but I don't know what it means now.IJYour word 'stout' means 'fleshy'; our word 'stout' usually means 'strong.>Your words 'gentleman' and 'lady' have a very restricted meaning; with us they include the barmaid, butcher, burglar, harlot, and horse-thief.You say, 'I haven't got any stockings on,' 'I haven't got any memory,' 'I haven't got any money in my purse; we usually say, 'I haven't any stockings on,' 'I haven't any memory!' 'I haven't any money in my purse. 01You say 'out of window'; we always put in a the.<If one asks 'How old is that man?' the Briton answers, 'He will be about forty'; in the American language we should say, 'He is about forty.  However, I won't tire you, sir; but if I wanted to, I could pile up differences here until I not only convinced you that English and American are separate languages, but that when I speak my native tongue in its utmost purity an Englishman can't understand me at all.PQI don't wish to flatter you, but it is about all I can do to understand you now.(xyThat was a very pretty compliment, and it put us on the pleasantest terms directly--I use the word in the English sense.D Later--1882.=Esthetes in many of our schools are now beginning to teach the pupils to broaden the 'a,' and to say "don't you," in the elegant foreign way.5ROGERS This Man Rogers happened upon me and introduced himself at the town of -----, in the South of England, where I stayed awhile.BHis stepfather had married a distant relative of mine who was afterward hanged; and so he seemed to think a blood relationship existed between us.#-.He came in every day and sat down and talked.STOf all the bland, serene human curiosities I ever saw, I think he was the chiefest.#-.He desired to look at my new chimney-pot hat./I was very willing, for I thought he would notice the name of the great Oxford Street hatter in it, and respect me accordingly.mBut he turned it about with a sort of grave compassion, pointed out two or three blemishes, and said that I, being so recently arrived, could not be expected to know where to supply myself. 01Said he would send me the address of his hatter.vThen he said, "Pardon me," and proceeded to cut a neat circle of red tissue paper; daintily notched the edges of it; took the mucilage and pasted it in my hat so as to cover the manufacturer's name. 01He said, "No one will know now where you got it.UVI will send you a hat-tip of my hatter, and you can paste it over this tissue circle.LMIt was the calmest, coolest thing--I never admired a man so much in my life. Mind, he did this while his own hat sat offensively near our noses, on the table--an ancient extinguisher of the "slouch" pattern, limp and shapeless with age, discolored by vicissitudes of the weather, and banded by an equator of bear's grease that had stewed through./!"Another time he examined my coat.`aI had no terrors, for over my tailor's door was the legend, "By Special Appointment Tailor to H.6the Prince of Wales," etc.rI did not know at the time that the most of the tailor shops had the same sign out, and that whereas it takes nine tailors to make an ordinary man, it takes a hundred and fifty to make a prince.*&'He was full of compassion for my coat.$,-Wrote down the address of his tailor for me.klDid not tell me to mention my nom de plume and the tailor would put his best work on my garment, as complimentary people sometimes do, but said his tailor would hardly trouble himself for an unknown person (unknown person, when I thought I was so celebrated in England!--that was the cruelest cut), but cautioned me to mention his name, and it would be all right.XYThinking to be facetious, I said: "But he might sit up all night and injure his health.`aWell, let him," said Rogers; "I've done enough for him, for him to show some appreciation of it. GHI might as well have tried to disconcert a mummy with my facetiousness.QRSaid Rogers: "I get all my coats there--they're the only coats fit to be seen in.8I made one more attempt.IJI said, "I wish you had brought one with you--I would like to look at it. GHBless your heart, haven't I got one on?--this article is Morgan's make.BI examined it._`The coat had been bought ready-made, of a Chatham Street Jew, without any question--about 1848."./It probably cost four dollars when it was new.89It was ripped, it was frayed, it was napless and greasy.34I could not resist showing him where it was ripped.9:It so affected him that I was almost sorry I had done it.9:First he seemed plunged into a bottomless abyss of grief.Then he roused himself, made a feint with his hands as if waving off the pity of a nation, and said--with what seemed to me a manufactured emotion--"No matter; no matter; don't mind me; do not bother about it.>I can get another.mWhen he was thoroughly restored, so that he could examine the rip and command his feelings, he said, ah, now he understood it--his servant must have done it while dressing him that morning. GHHis servant! There was something awe-inspiring in effrontery like this. FGNearly every day he interested himself in some article of my clothing.COne would hardly have expected this sort of infatuation in a man who always wore the same suit, and it a suit that seemed coeval with the Conquest.JIt was an unworthy ambition, perhaps, but I did wish I could make this man admire something about me or something I did--you would have felt the same way.efI saw my opportunity: I was about to return to London, and had "listed" my soiled linen for the wash.PQIt made quite an imposing mountain in the corner of the room--fifty-four pieces.@AI hoped he would fancy it was the accumulation of a single week.+{|I took up the wash-list, as if to see that it was all right, and then tossed it on the table, with pretended forgetfulness.IJSure enough, he took it up and ran his eye along down to the grand total.9:Then he said, "You get off easy," and laid it down again.RSHis gloves were the saddest ruin, but he told me where I could get some like them.-}~His shoes would hardly hold walnuts without leaking, but he liked to put his feet up on the mantelpiece and contemplate them.fHe wore a dim glass breastpin, which he called a "morphylitic diamond"--whatever that may mean--and said only two of them had ever been found--the Emperor of China had the other one.Afterward, in London, it was a pleasure to me to see this fantastic vagabond come marching into the lobby of the hotel in his grand-ducal way, for he always had some new imaginary grandeur to develop--there was nothing stale about him but his clothes.1If he addressed me when strangers were about, he always raised his voice a little and called me "Sir Richard," or "General," or "Your Lordship"--and when people began to stare and look deferential, he would fall to inquiring in a casual way why I disappointed the Duke of Argyll the night before; and then remind me of our engagement at the Duke of Westminster's for the following day. CDI think that for the time being these things were realities to him.lmHe once came and invited me to go with him and spend the evening with the Earl of Warwick at his town house.%+,I said I had received no formal invitation. \]He said that that was of no consequence, the Earl had no formalities for him or his friends.,$%I asked if I could go just as I was.`aHe said no, that would hardly do; evening dress was requisite at night in any gentleman's house.BHe said he would wait while I dressed, and then we would go to his apartments and I could take a bottle of champagne and a cigar while he dressed.klI was very willing to see how this enterprise would turn out, so I dressed, and we started to his lodgings.)'(He said if I didn't mind we would walk.QSo we tramped some four miles through the mud and fog, and finally found his "apartments"; they consisted of a single room over a barber's shop in a back street.XTwo chairs, a small table, an ancient valise, a wash-basin and pitcher (both on the floor in a corner), an unmade bed, a fragment of a looking-glass, and a flower-pot, with a perishing little rose geranium in it, which he called a century plant, and said it had not bloomed now for upward of two centuries--given to him by the late Lord Palmerston (been offered a prodigious sum for it)--these were the contents of the room. 01Also a brass candlestick and a part of a candle. GHRogers lit the candle, and told me to sit down and make myself at home.He said he hoped I was thirsty, because he would surprise my palate with an article of champagne that seldom got into a commoner's system; or would I prefer sherry, or port? Said he had port in bottles that were swathed in stratified cobwebs, every stratum representing a generation.;<And as for his cigars--well, I should judge of them myself.IJThen he put his head out at the door and called: "Sackville!" No answer.7Hi-Sackville!" No answer.*z{Now what the devil can have become of that butler? I never allow a servant to--Oh, confound that idiot, he's got the keys. 01Can't get into the other rooms without the keys.OI was just wondering at his intrepidity in still keeping up the delusion of the champagne, and trying to imagine how he was going to get out of the difficulty.<=Now he stopped calling Sackville and began to call "Anglesy.8But Anglesy didn't come.RSHe said, "This is the second time that that equerry has been absent without leave.3To-morrow I'll discharge him.=>Now he began to whoop for "Thomas," but Thomas didn't answer.#-.Then for "Theodore," but no Theodore replied./!"Well, I give it up," said Rogers.LMThe servants never expect me at this hour, and so they're all off on a lark.9Might get along without the equerry and the page, but can't have any wine or cigars without the butler, and can't dress without my valet.@I offered to help him dress, but he would not hear of it; and besides, he said he would not feel comfortable unless dressed by a practised hand.2However, he finally concluded that he was such old friends with the Earl that it would not make any difference how he was dressed. EFSo we took a cab, he gave the driver some directions, and we started.67By and by we stopped before a large house and got out.%+,I never had seen this man with a collar on.0He now stepped under a lamp and got a venerable paper collar out of his coat pocket, along with a hoary cravat, and put them on.-#$He ascended the stoop, and entered.noPresently he reappeared, descended rapidly, and said: "Come--quick!" We hurried away, and turned the corner. ]^Now we're safe," he said, and took off his collar and cravat and returned them to his pocket.*&'Made a mighty narrow escape," said he.C How?" said I."rsB' George, the Countess was there!" "Well, what of that?--don't she know you?" "Know me? Absolutely worships me.NOI just did happen to catch a glimpse of her before she saw me--and out I shot. ]^Haven't seen her for two months--to rush in on her without any warning might have been fatal.4She could not have stood it.=>I didn't know she was in town--thought she was at the castle. ]^Let me lean on you--just a moment--there; now I am better--thank you; thank you ever so much.OPLord bless me, what an escape!" So I never got to call on the Earl, after all.$,-But I marked the house for future reference. YZIt proved to be an ordinary family hotel, with about a thousand plebeians roosting in it.#-.In most things Rogers was by no means a fool.XYIn some things it was plain enough that he was a fool, but he certainly did not know it.12He was in the "deadest" earnest in these matters.67He died at sea, last summer, as the "Earl of Ramsgate. .~THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT by Mark Twain 1892 EXPLANATORY The Colonel Mulberry Sellers here re-introduced to the public is the same person who appeared as Eschol Sellers in the first edition of the tale entitled "The Gilded Age," years ago, and as Beriah Sellers in the subsequent editions of the same book, and finally as Mulberry Sellers in the drama played afterward by John T.H Raymond.The name was changed from Eschol to Beriah to accommodate an Eschol Sellers who rose up out of the vasty deeps of uncharted space and preferred his request--backed by threat of a libel suit--then went his way appeased, and came no more.qIn the play Beriah had to be dropped to satisfy another member of the race, and Mulberry was substituted in the hope that the objectors would be tired by that time and let it pass unchallenged.ISo far it has occupied the field in peace; therefore we chance it again, feeling reasonably safe, this time, under shelter of the statute of limitations.E MARK TWAIN.AHartford, 1891.7THE WEATHER IN THIS BOOK.*&'No weather will be found in this book.:;This is an attempt to pull a book through without weather.pIt being the first attempt of the kind in fictitious literature, it may prove a failure, but it seemed worth the while of some dare-devil person to try it, and the author was in just the mood."rsMany a reader who wanted to read a tale through was not able to do it because of delays on account of the weather.bcNothing breaks up an author's progress like having to stop every few pages to fuss-up the weather. Z[Thus it is plain that persistent intrusions of weather are bad for both reader and author.BCOf course weather is necessary to a narrative of human experience.?That is conceded.noBut it ought to be put where it will not be in the way; where it will not interrupt the flow of the narrative.cdAnd it ought to be the ablest weather that can be had, not ignorant, poor-quality, amateur weather. YZWeather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article of it.jkThe present author can do only a few trifling ordinary kinds of weather, and he cannot do those very good.<So it has seemed wisest to borrow such weather as is necessary for the book from qualified and recognized experts--giving credit, of course.MNThis weather will be found over in the back part of the book, out of the way.C See Appendix. YZThe reader is requested to turn over and help himself from time to time as he goes along.F CHAPTER I.%+,It is a matchless morning in rural England.NOn a fair hill we see a majestic pile, the ivied walls and towers of Cholmondeley Castle, huge relic and witness of the baronial grandeurs of the Middle Ages.45This is one of the seats of the Earl of Rossmore, K.Letc.Letc.Letc.Letc.Letc.who possesses twenty-two thousand acres of English land, owns a parish in London with two thousand houses on its lease-roll, and struggles comfortably along on an income of two hundred thousand pounds a year.The father and founder of this proud old line was William the Conqueror his very self; the mother of it was not inventoried in history by name, she being merely a random episode and inconsequential, like the tanner's daughter of Falaise./In a breakfast room of the castle on this breezy fine morning there are two persons and the cooling remains of a deserted meal.One of these persons is the old lord, tall, erect, square-shouldered, white-haired, stern-browed, a man who shows character in every feature, attitude, and movement, and carries his seventy years as easily as most men carry fifty.'wxThe other person is his only son and heir, a dreamy-eyed young fellow, who looks about twenty-six but is nearer thirty.=Candor, kindliness, honesty, sincerity, simplicity, modesty--it is easy to see that these are cardinal traits of his character; and so when you have clothed him in the formidable components of his name, you somehow seem to be contemplating a lamb in armor: his name and style being the Honourable Kirkcudbright Llanover Marjorihanks Sellers Viscount-Berkeley, of Cholmondeley Castle, Warwickshire. ]^Pronounced K'koobry Thlanover Marshbanks Sellers Vycount Barkly, of Chumly Castle, Warrikshr.iHe is standing by a great window, in an attitude suggestive of respectful attention to what his father is saying and equally respectful dissent from the positions and arguments offered.ijThe father walks the floor as he talks, and his talk shows that his temper is away up toward summer heat.&'Soft-spirited as you are, Berkeley, I am quite aware that when you have once made up your mind to do a thing which your ideas of honor and justice require you to do, argument and reason are (for the time being,) wasted upon you--yes, and ridicule; persuasion, supplication, and command as well.To my mind--" "Father, if you will look at it without prejudice, without passion, you must concede that I am not doing a rash thing, a thoughtless, wilful thing, with nothing substantial behind it to justify it.BI did not create the American claimant to the earldom of Rossmore; I did not hunt for him, did not find him, did not obtrude him upon your notice.He found himself, he injected himself into our lives--" "And has made mine a purgatory for ten years with his tiresome letters, his wordy reasonings, his acres of tedious evidence,--" "Which you would never read, would never consent to read.45Yet in common fairness he was entitled to a hearing.eThat hearing would either prove he was the rightful earl--in which case our course would be plain--or it would prove that he wasn't--in which case our course would be equally plain.-#$I have read his evidences, my lord.?@I have conned them well, studied them patiently and thoroughly.:;The chain seems to be complete, no important link wanting.."#I believe he is the rightful earl.QRAnd I a usurper--a--nameless pauper, a tramp! Consider what you are saying, sir.Father, if he is the rightful earl, would you, could you--that fact being established--consent to keep his titles and his properties from him a day, an hour, a minute?" "You are talking nonsense--nonsense--lurid idiotcy! Now, listen to me.>?I will make a confession--if you wish to call it by that name.VI did not read those evidences because I had no occasion to--I was made familiar with them in the time of this claimant's father and of my own father forty years ago.#stThis fellow's predecessors have kept mine more or less familiar with them for close upon a hundred and fifty years.The truth is, the rightful heir did go to America, with the Fairfax heir or about the same time--but disappeared--somewhere in the wilds of Virginia, got married, end began to breed savages for the Claimant market; wrote no letters home; was supposed to be dead; his younger brother softly took possession; presently the American did die, and straightway his eldest product put in his claim--by letter--letter still in existence--and died before the uncle in-possession found time--or maybe inclination--to --answer./The infant son of that eldest product grew up--long interval, you see--and he took to writing letters and furnishing evidences.MNWell, successor after successor has done the same, down to the present idiot.noIt was a succession of paupers; not one of them was ever able to pay his passage to England or institute suit.NThe Fairfaxes kept their lordship alive, and so they have never lost it to this day, although they live in Maryland; their friend lost his by his own neglect.dYou perceive now, that the facts in this case bring us to precisely this result: morally the American tramp is rightful earl of Rossmore; legally he has no more right than his dog.There now--are you satisfied?" There was a pause, then the son glanced at the crest carved in the great oaken mantel and said, with a regretful note in his voice: "Since the introduction of heraldic symbols,--the motto of this house has been 'Suum cuique'--to every man his own.By your own intrepidly frank confession, my lord, it is become a sarcasm: If Simon Lathers--" "Keep that exasperating name to yourself! For ten years it has pestered my eye--and tortured my ear; till at last my very footfalls time themselves to the brain-racking rhythm of Simon Lathers!--Simon Lathers! --Simon Lathers! And now, to make its presence in my soul eternal, immortal, imperishable, you have resolved to--to--what is it you have resolved to do?" "To go to Simon Lathers, in America, and change places with him.RSWhat? Deliver the reversion of the earldom into his hands?" "That is my purpose.7Make this tremendous surrender without even trying the fantastic case in the Lords?" "Ye--s--" with hesitation and some embarrassment.9:By all that is amazing, I believe you are insane, my son.See here --have you been training with that ass again--that radical, if you prefer the term, though the words are synonymous--Lord Tanzy, of Tollmache?" The son did not reply, and the old lord continued: "Yes, you confess.7That puppy, that shame to his birth and caste, who holds all hereditary lordships and privilege to be usurpation, all nobility a tinsel sham, all aristocratic institutions a fraud, all inequalities in rank a legalized crime and an infamy, and no bread honest bread that a man doesn't earn by his own work--work, pah!"--and the old patrician brushed imaginary labor-dirt from his white hands.UVYou have come to hold just those opinions yourself, suppose,"--he added with a sneer.%uvA faint flush in the younger man's cheek told that the shot had hit and hurt; but he answered with dignity: "I have.,$%I say it without shame--I feel none.XYAnd now my reason for resolving to renounce my heirship without resistance is explained.I wish to retire from what to me is a false existence, a false position, and begin my life over again--begin it right--begin it on the level of mere manhood, unassisted by factitious aids, and succeed or fail by pure merit or the want of it.yI will go to America, where all men are equal and all have an equal chance; I will live or die, sink or swim, win or lose as just a man--that alone, and not a single helping gaud or fiction back of it.*z{Hear, hear!" The two men looked each other steadily in the eye a moment or two, then the elder one added, musingly, "Ab-so-lutely cra-zy-ab-solutely!" After another silence, he said, as one who, long troubled by clouds, detects a ray of sunshine, "Well, there will be one satisfaction--Simon Lathets will come here to enter into his own, and I will drown him in the horsepond.,-That poor devil--always so humble in his letters, so pitiful, so deferential; so steeped in reverence for our great line and lofty-station; so anxious to placate us, so prayerful for recognition as a relative, a bearer in his veins of our sacred blood --and withal so poor, so needy, so threadbare and pauper-shod as to raiment, so despised, so laughed at for his silly claimantship by the lewd American scum around him--ah, the vulgar, crawling, insufferable tramp! To read one of his cringing, nauseating letters--well?" This to a splendid flunkey, all in inflamed plush and buttons and knee-breeches as to his trunk, and a glinting white frost-work of ground-glass paste as to his head, who stood with his heels together and the upper half of him bent forward, a salver in his hands: "The letters, my lord.!/0My lord took them, and the servant disappeared.-#$Among the rest, an American letter.6From the tramp, of course.8Jove, but here's a change! No brown paper envelope this time, filched from a shop, and carrying the shop's advertisement in the corner.Oh, no, a proper enough envelope--with a most ostentatiously broad mourning border--for his cat, perhaps, since he was a bachelor--and fastened with red wax--a batch of it as big as a half-crown--and--and--our crest for a seal!--motto and all.<And the ignorant, sprawling hand is gone; he sports a secretary, evidently--a secretary with a most confident swing and flourish to his pen._`Oh indeed, our fortunes are improving over there--our meek tramp has undergone a metamorphosis.7Read it, my lord, please.:Yes, this time I will.TUFor the sake of the cat:" 14,042 SIXTEENTH.BCSTREET, WASHINGTON, May 2.^_It is my painful duty to announce to you that the head of our illustrious house is no more--The Right Honourable, The Most Noble, The Most Puissant Simon Lathers Lord Rossmore having departed this life ("Gone at last --this is unspeakably precious news, my son,") at his seat in the environs of the hamlet of Duffy's Corners in the grand old State of Arkansas, --and his twin brother with him, both being crushed by a log at a smoke-house-raising, owing to carelessness on the part of all present, referable to over-confidence and gaiety induced by overplus of sour-mash--("Extolled be sour-mash, whatever that may be, eh Berkeley?") five days ago, with no scion of our ancient race present to close his eyes and inter him with the honors due his historic name and lofty rank--in fact, he is on the ice yet, him and his brother--friends took a collection for it.tBut I shall take immediate occasion to have their noble remains shipped to you ("Great heavens!") for interment, with due ceremonies and solemnities, in the family vault or mausoleum of our house.)yzMeantime I shall put up a pair of hatchments on my house-front, and you will of course do the same at your several seats. YZI have also to remind you that by this sad disaster I as sole heir, inherit and become seized of all the titles, honors, lands, and goods of our lamented relative, and must of necessity, painful as the duty is, shortly require at the bar of the Lords restitution of these dignities and properties, now illegally enjoyed by your titular lordship.With assurance of my distinguished consideration and warm cousinly regard, I remain Your titular lordship's Most obedient servant, Mulberry Sellers Earl Rossmore.(()Im-mense! Come, this one's interesting.MNWhy, Berkeley, his breezy impudence is--is--why, it's colossal, it's sublime.')*No, this one doesn't seem to cringe much.56Cringe--why, he doesn't know the meaning of the word.NOHatchments! To commemorate that sniveling tramp and his, fraternal duplicate.)'(And he is going to send me the remains.BCThe late Claimant was a fool, but plainly this new one's a maniac.(xyWhat a name! Mulberry Sellers--there's music for you, Simon Lathers--Mulberry Sellers--Mulberry Sellers--Simon Lathers.%+,Sounds like machinery working and churning.LMSimon Lathers, Mulberry Sel--Are you going?" "If I have your leave, father.ABThe old gentleman stood musing some time, after his son was gone.67This was his thought: "He is a good boy, and lovable.bcLet him take his own course--as it would profit nothing to oppose him--make things worse, in fact. [\My arguments and his aunt's persuasions have failed; let us see what America can do for us.lmLet us see what equality and hard-times can effect for the mental health of a brain-sick young British lord. CDGoing to renounce his lordship and be a man! Yas!" CHAPTER II.COLONEL MULBERRY SELLERS--this was some days before he wrote his letter to Lord Rossmore--was seated in his "library," which was also his "drawing-room" and was also his "picture gallery" and likewise his "work-shop.klSometimes he called it by one of these names, sometimes by another, according to occasion and circumstance./He was constructing what seemed to be some kind of a frail mechanical toy; and was apparently very much interested in his work."rsHe was a white-headed man, now, but otherwise he was as young, alert, buoyant, visionary and enterprising as ever.abHis loving old wife sat near by, contentedly knitting and thinking, with a cat asleep in her lap.The room was large, light, and had a comfortable look, in fact a home-like look, though the furniture was of a humble sort and not over abundant, and the knickknacks and things that go to adorn a living-room not plenty and not costly.vBut there were natural flowers, and there was an abstract and unclassifiable something about the place which betrayed the presence in the house of somebody with a happy taste and an effective touch.Even the deadly chromos on the walls were somehow without offence; in fact they seemed to belong there and to add an attraction to the room --a fascination, anyway; for whoever got his eye on one of them was like to gaze and suffer till he died--you have seen that kind of pictures.mnSome of these terrors were landscapes, some libeled the sea, some were ostensible portraits, all were crimes.]All the portraits were recognizable as dead Americans of distinction, and yet, through labeling added, by a daring hand, they were all doing duty here as "Earls of Rossmore./The newest one had left the works as Andrew Jackson, but was doing its best now, as "Simon Lathers Lord Rossmore, Present Earl.9:On one wall was a cheap old railroad map of Warwickshire.23This had been newly labeled "The Rossmore Estates.^On the opposite wall was another map, and this was the most imposing decoration of the establishment and the first to catch a stranger's attention, because of its great size.mnIt had once borne simply the title SIBERIA; but now the word "FUTURE" had been written in front of that word.bThere were other additions, in red ink--many cities, with great populations set down, scattered over the vast-country at points where neither cities nor populations exist to-day.One of these cities, with population placed at 1,500,000, bore the name "Libertyorloffskoizalinski," and there was a still more populous one, centrally located and marked "Capital," which bore the name "Freedomolovnaivanovich.gThe "mansion"--the Colonel's usual name for the house--was a rickety old two-story frame of considerable size, which had been painted, some time or other, but had nearly forgotten it. \]It was away out in the ragged edge of Washington and had once been somebody's country place.0It had a neglected yard around it, with a paling fence that needed straightening up, in places, and a gate that would stay shut.!/0By the door-post were several modest tin signs.LCol.JKMulberry Sellers, Attorney at Law and Claim Agent," was the principal one.noOne learned from the others that the Colonel was a Materializer, a Hypnotizer, a Mind-Cure dabbler; and so on.45For he was a man who could always find things to do.\A white-headed negro man, with spectacles and damaged white cotton gloves appeared in the presence, made a stately obeisance and announced: "Marse Washington Hawkins, suh."./Great Scott! Show him in, Dan'l, show him in.The Colonel and his wife were on their feet in a moment, and the next moment were joyfully wringing the hands of a stoutish, discouraged-looking man whose general aspect suggested that he was fifty years old, but whose hair swore to a hundred. FGWell, well, well, Washington, my boy, it is good to look at you again."./Sit down, sit down, and make yourself at home.}There, now--why, you look perfectly natural; aging a little, just a little, but you'd have known him anywhere, wouldn't you, Polly?" "Oh, yes, Berry, he's just like his pa would have looked if he'd lived.,|}Dear, dear, where have you dropped from? Let me see, how long is it since--" "I should say it's all of fifteen years, Mrs.H Sellers.%+,Well, well, how time does get away with us.  Yes, and oh, the changes that--" There was a sudden catch of her voice and a trembling of the lip, the men waiting reverently for her to get command of herself and go on; but after a little struggle she turned away, with her apron to her eyes, and softly disappeared.efSeeing you made her think of the children, poor thing--dear, dear, they're all dead but the youngest.But banish care, it's no time for it now--on with the dance, let joy be unconfined is my motto, whether there's any dance to dance; or any joy to unconfine--you'll be the healthier for it every time,--every time, Washington--it's my experience, and I've seen a good deal of this world.NCome--where have you disappeared to all these years, and are you from there, now, or where are you from?" "I don't quite think you would ever guess, Colonel.ACherokee Strip.3My land!" "Sure as you live.>You can't mean it. Actually living out there?" "Well, yes, if a body may call it that; though it's a pretty strong term for 'dobies and jackass rabbits, boiled beans and slap-jacks, depression, withered hopes, poverty in all its varieties--" "Louise out there?" "Yes, and the children.?@Out there now?" "Yes, I couldn't afford to bring them with me.:;Oh, I see,--you had to come--claim against the government.56Make yourself perfectly easy--I'll take care of that.$,-But it isn't a claim against the government."./No? Want to be postmaster? That's all right.ALeave it to me.D I'll fix it.!/0But it isn't postmaster--you're all astray yet.Well, good gracious, Washington, why don't you come out and tell me what it is? What, do you want to be so reserved and distrustful with an old friend like me, for? Don't you reckon I can keep a se--" "There's no secret about it--you merely don't give me a chance to--" "Now look here, old friend, I know the human race; and I know that when a man comes to Washington, I don't care if it's from heaven, let alone Cherokee-Strip, it's because he wants something.XYAnd I know that as a rule he's not going to get it; that he'll stay and try--for another thing and won't get that; the same luck with the next and the next and the next; and keeps on till he strikes bottom, and is too poor and ashamed to go back, even to Cherokee Strip; and at last his heart breaks--and they take up a collection and bury him.9:There--don't interrupt me, I know what I'm talking about.=>Happy and prosperous in the Far West wasn't I? You know that.)yzPrincipal citizen of Hawkeye, looked up to by everybody, kind of an autocrat, actually a kind of an autocrat, Washington.45Well, nothing would do but I must go Minister to St.6James, the Governor and everybody insisting, you know, and so at last I consented--no getting out of it, had to do it, so here I came.5A day too late, Washington.bcThink of that--what little things change the world's history--yes, sir, the place had been filled.5Well, there I was, you see.(()I offered to compromise and go to Paris.$tuThe President was very sorry and all that, but that place, you see, didn't belong to the West, so there I was again. There was no help for it, so I had to stoop a little--we all reach the day some time or other when we've got to do that, Washington, and it's not a bad thing for us, either, take it by and large and all around --I had to stoop a little and offer to take Constantinople.KLWashington, consider this--for it's perfectly true--within a month I asked for China; within another month I begged for Japan; one year later I was away down, down, down, supplicating with tears and anguish for the bottom office in the gift of the government of the United States--Flint-Picker in the cellars of the War Department.2And by George I didn't get it.;Flint-Picker?" "Yes.?@Office established in the time of the Revolution, last century.HIThe musket-flints for the military posts were supplied from the capitol.%&They do it yet; for although the flint-arm has gone out and the forts have tumbled down, the decree hasn't been repealed--been overlooked and forgotten, you see--and so the vacancies where old Ticonderoga and others used to stand, still get their six quarts of gun-flints a year just the same.aWashington said musingly after a pause: "How strange it seems--to start for Minister to England at twenty thousand a year and fail for flintpicker at--" "Three dollars a week.CIt's human life, Washington--just an epitome of human ambition, and struggle, and the outcome: you aim for the palace and get drowned in the sewer.+%&There was another meditative silence.Then Washington said, with earnest compassion in his voice-- "And so, after coming here, against your inclination, to satisfy your sense of patriotic duty and appease a selfish public clamor, you get absolutely nothing for it.XYNothing?" The Colonel had to get up and stand, to get room for his amazement to expand.Nothing, Washington? I ask you this: to be a perpetual Member and the only Perpetual Member of a Diplomatic Body accredited to the greatest country on earth do you call that nothing?" It was Washington's turn to be amazed.@He was stricken dumb; but the wide-eyed wonder, the reverent admiration expressed in his face were more eloquent than any words could have been.TUThe Colonel's wounded spirit was healed and he resumed his seat pleased and content.^He leaned forward and said impressively: "What was due to a man who had become forever conspicuous by an experience without precedent in the history of the world?--a man made permanently and diplomatically sacred, so to speak, by having been connected, temporarily, through solicitation, with every single diplomatic post in the roster of this government, from Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St.~James all the way down to Consul to a guano rock in the Straits of Sunda--salary payable in guano--which disappeared by volcanic convulsion the day before they got down to my name in the list of applicants.0Certainly something august enough to be answerable to the size of this unique and memorable experience was my due, and I got it.ijBy the common voice of this community, by acclamation of the people, that mighty utterance which brushes aside laws and legislation, and from whose decrees there is no appeal, I was named Perpetual Member of the Diplomatic Body representing the multifarious sovereignties and civilizations of the globe near the republican court of the United States of America.67And they brought me home with a torchlight procession.%+,It is wonderful, Colonel, simply wonderful.78It's the loftiest official position in the whole earth.%+,I should think so--and the most commanding.8You have named the word.D Think of it.OPI frown, and there is war; I smile, and contending nations lay down their arms.D It is awful.5The responsibility, I mean.BIt is nothing.PQResponsibility is no burden to me; I am used to it; have always been used to it.}And the work--the work! Do you have to attend all the sittings?" "Who, I? Does the Emperor of Russia attend the conclaves of the governors of the provinces? He sits at home, and indicates his pleasure.=>Washington was silent a moment, then a deep sigh escaped him.JKHow proud I was an hour ago; how paltry seems my little promotion now! Colonel, the reason I came to Washington is,--I am Congressional Delegate from Cherokee Strip!" The Colonel sprang to his feet and broke out with prodigious enthusiasm: "Give me your hand, my boy--this is immense news! I congratulate you with all my heart.2My prophecies stand confirmed.4I always said it was in you. FGI always said you were born for high distinction and would achieve it.6You ask Polly if I didn't.;<Washington was dazed by this most unexpected demonstration.,$%Why, Colonel, there's nothing to it.kThat little narrow, desolate, unpeopled, oblong streak of grass and gravel, lost in the remote wastes of the vast continent--why, it's like representing a billiard table--a discarded one.WXTut-tut, it's a great, it's a staving preferment, and just opulent with influence here.)'(Shucks, Colonel, I haven't even a vote.*&'That's nothing; you can make speeches.D No, I can't.The population's only two hundred--" "That's all right, that's all right--" "And they hadn't any right to elect me; we're not even a territory, there's no Organic Act, the government hasn't any official knowledge of us whatever.+%&Never mind about that; I'll fix that.?@I'll rush the thing through, I'll get you organized in no time.ZWill you, Colonel?--it's too good of you; but it's just your old sterling self, the same old ever-faithful friend," and the grateful tears welled up in Washington's eyes.89It's just as good as done, my boy, just as good as done.D Shake hands.RSWe'll hitch teams together, you and I, and we'll make things hum!" CHAPTER III.LMrs.GHSellers returned, now, with her composure restored, and began to ask after Hawkins's wife, and about his children, and the number of them, and so on, and her examination of the witness resulted in a circumstantial history of the family's ups and downs and driftings to and fro in the far West during the previous fifteen years. \]There was a message, now, from out back, and Colonel Sellers went out there in answer to it.noHawkins took this opportunity to ask how the world had been using the Colonel during the past half-generation.'wxOh, it's been using him just the same; it couldn't change its way of using him if it wanted to, for he wouldn't let it.1 I can easily believe that, Mrs.H Sellers.noYes, you see, he doesn't change, himself--not the least little bit in the world--he's always Mulberry Sellers.4I can see that plain enough.iJust the same old scheming, generous, good-hearted, moonshiny, hopeful, no-account failure he always was, and still everybody likes him just as well as if he was the shiningest success.They always did: and it was natural, because he was so obliging and accommodating, and had something about him that made it kind of easy to ask help of him, or favors--you didn't feel shy, you know, or have that wish--you--didn't--have--to--try feeling that you have with other people.It's just so, yet; and a body wonders at it, too, because he's been shamefully treated, many times, by people that had used him for a ladder to climb up by, and then kicked him down when they didn't need him any more.DFor a time you can see he's hurt, his pride's wounded, because he shrinks away from that thing and don't want to talk about it--and so I used to think now he's learned something and he'll be more careful hereafter--but laws! in a couple of weeks he's forgotten all about it, and any selfish tramp out of nobody knows where can come and put up a poor mouth and walk right into his heart with his boots on.34It must try your patience pretty sharply sometimes. FGOh, no, I'm used to it; and I'd rather have him so than the other way.NOWhen I call him a failure, I mean to the world he's a failure; he isn't to me.<=I don't know as I want him different much different, anyway.:I have to scold him some, snarl at him, you might even call it, but I reckon I'd do that just the same, if he was different--it's my make._`But I'm a good deal less snarly and more contented when he's a failure than I am when he isn't.;<Then he isn't always a failure," said Hawking, brightening.8Him? Oh, bless you, no.56He makes a strike, as he calls it, from time to time.0 !Then's my time to fret and fuss.34For the money just flies --first come first served.23Straight off, he loads up the house with cripples and idiots and stray cats and all the different kinds of poor wrecks that other people don't want and he does, and then when the poverty comes again I've got to clear the most of them out or we'd starve; and that distresses him, and me the same, of course.  Here's old Dan'l and old Jinny, that the sheriff sold south one of the times that we got bankrupted before the war--they came wandering back after the peace, worn out and used up on the cotton plantations, helpless, and not another lick of work left in their old hides for the rest of this earthly pilgrimage--and we so pinched, oh so pinched for the very crumbs to keep life in us, and he just flung the door wide, and the way he received them you'd have thought they had come straight down from heaven in answer to prayer.lmI took him one side and said, 'Mulberry we can't have them--we've nothing for ourselves--we can't feed them.He looked at me kind of hurt, and said, 'Turn them out?--and they've come to me just as confident and trusting as--as--why Polly, I must have bought that confidence sometime or other a long time ago, and given my note, so to speak--you don't get such things as a gift--and how am I going to go back on a debt like that? And you see, they're so poor, and old, and friendless, and--' But I was ashamed by that time, and shut him off, and somehow felt a new courage in me, and so I said, softly, 'We'll keep them--the Lord will provide.AHe was glad, and started to blurt out one of those over-confident speeches of his, but checked himself in time, and said humbly, 'I will, anyway.+%&It was years and years and years ago.$,-Well, you see those old wrecks are here yet.56But don't they do your housework?" "Laws! The idea.XYThey would if they could, poor old things, and perhaps they think they do do some of it.8But it's a superstition.Dan'l waits on the front door, and sometimes goes on an errand; and sometimes you'll see one or both of them letting on to dust around in here--but that's because there's something they want to hear about and mix their gabble into.89And they're always around at meals, for the same reason.@But the fact is, we have to keep a young negro girl just to take care of them, and a negro woman to do the housework and help take care of them.78Well, they ought to be tolerably happy, I should think.<It's no name for it.&'They quarrel together pretty much all the time --most always about religion, because Dan'l's a Dunker Baptist and Jinny's a shouting Methodist, and Jinny believes in special Providences and Dan'l don't, because he thinks he's a kind of a free-thinker--and they play and sing plantation hymns together, and talk and chatter just eternally and forever, and are sincerely fond of each other and think the world of Mulberry, and he puts up patiently with all their spoiled ways and foolishness, and so--ah, well, they're happy enough if it comes to that.*&'And I don't mind--I've got used to it.1I can get used to anything, with Mulberry to help; and the fact is, I don't much care what happens, so long as he's spared to me.?@Well, here's to him, and hoping he'll make another strike soon.opAnd rake in the lame, the halt and the blind, and turn the house into a hospital again? It's what he would do.-#$I've seen aplenty of that and more.`aNo, Washington, I want his strikes to be mighty moderate ones the rest of the way down the vale.RSWell, then, big strike or little strike, or no strike at all, here's hoping he'll never lack for friends--and I don't reckon he ever will while there's people around who know enough to--" "Him lack for friends!" and she tilted her head up with a frank pride-- "why, Washington, you can't name a man that's anybody that isn't fond of him.!qrI'll tell you privately, that I've had Satan's own time to keep them from appointing him to some office or other.2They knew he'd no business with an office, just as well as I did, but he's the hardest man to refuse anything to, a body ever saw.QRMulberry Sellers with an office! laws goodness, you know what that would be like. FGWhy, they'd come from the ends of the earth to see a circus like that.ABI'd just as lieves be married to Niagara Falls, and done with it.zAfter a reflective pause she added--having wandered back, in the interval, to the remark that had been her text: "Friends?--oh, indeed, no man ever had more; and such friends: Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Johnston, Longstreet, Lee--many's the time they've sat in that chair you're sitting in--" Hawkins was out of it instantly, and contemplating it with a reverential surprise, and with the awed sense of having trodden shod upon holy ground-- "They!" he said.&*+Oh, indeed, yes, a many and a many a time.!"He continued to gaze at the chair fascinated, magnetized; and for once in his life that continental stretch of dry prairie which stood for his imagination was afire, and across it was marching a slanting flamefront that joined its wide horizons together and smothered the skies with smoke.He was experiencing what one or another drowsing, geographically ignorant alien experiences every day in the year when he turns a dull and indifferent eye out of the car window and it falls upon a certain station-sign which reads "Stratford-on-Avon!" Mrs.WSellers went gossiping comfortably along: "Oh, they like to hear him talk, especially if their load is getting rather heavy on one shoulder and they want to shift it.lmHe's all air, you know,--breeze, you may say--and he freshens them up; it's a trip to the country, they say.lMany a time he's made General Grant laugh--and that's a tidy job, I can tell you, and as for Sheridan, his eye lights up and he listens to Mulberry Sellers the same as if he was artillery.!qrYou see, the charm about Mulberry is, he is so catholic and unprejudiced that he fits in anywhere and everywhere.>?It makes him powerful good company, and as popular as scandal.klYou go to the White House when the President's holding a general reception--sometime when Mulberry's there.OPWhy, dear me, you can't tell which of them it is that's holding that reception.:;Well, he certainly is a remarkable man--and he always was.wIs he religious?" "Clear to his marrow--does more thinking and reading on that subject than any other except Russia and Siberia: thrashes around over the whole field, too; nothing bigoted about him.^What is his religion?" "He--" She stopped, and was lost for a moment or two in thinking, then she said, with simplicity, "I think he was a Mohammedan or something last week.PWashington started down town, now, to bring his trunk, for the hospitable Sellerses would listen to no excuses; their house must be his home during the session. CDThe Colonel returned presently and resumed work upon his plaything.')*It was finished when Washington got back."./There it is," said the Colonel, "all finished.34What is it for, Colonel?" "Oh, it's just a trifle.6Toy to amuse the children.9Washington examined it.8It seems to be a puzzle.9Yes, that's what it is.3I call it Pigs in the Clover. 01Put them in--see if you can put them in the pen.HIAfter many failures Washington succeeded, and was as pleased as a child.lmIt's wonderfully ingenious, Colonel, it's ever so clever and interesting--why, I could play with it all day.12What are you going to do with it?" "Oh, nothing.3Patent it and throw it aside.."#Don't you do anything of the kind.4There's money in that thing.:A compassionate look traveled over the Colonel's countenance, and he said: "Money--yes; pin money: a couple of hundred thousand, perhaps.G Not more.7Washington's eyes blazed.9:A couple of hundred thousand dollars! do you call that pin money?" The colonel rose and tip-toed his way across the room, closed a door that was slightly ajar, tip-toed his way to his seat again, and said, under his breath: "You can keep a secret?" Washington nodded his affirmative, he was too awed to speak.efYou have heard of materialization--materialization of departed spirits?" Washington had heard of it.89And probably didn't believe in it; and quite right, too.The thing as practised by ignorant charlatans is unworthy of attention or respect-- where there's a dim light and a dark cabinet, and a parcel of sentimental gulls gathered together, with their faith and their shudders and their tears all ready, and one and the same fatty degeneration of protoplasm and humbug comes out and materializes himself into anybody you want, grandmother, grandchild, brother-in-law, Witch of Endor, John Milton, Siamese twins, Peter the Great, and all such frantic nonsense--no, that is all foolish and pitiful.9But when a man that is competent brings the vast powers of science to bear, it's a different matter, a totally different matter, you see.45The spectre that answers that call has come to stay."rsDo you note the commercial value of that detail?" "Well, I--the--the truth is, that I don't quite know that I do.Do you mean that such, being permanent, not transitory, would give more general satisfaction, and so enhance the price--of tickets to the show--" "Show? Folly--listen to me; and get a good grip on your breath, for you are going to need it.#stWithin three days I shall have completed my method, and then--let the world stand aghast, for it shall see marvels./Washington, within three days--ten at the outside--you shall see me call the dead of any century, and they will arise and walk.45Walk?--they shall walk forever, and never die again.<=Walk with all the muscle and spring of their pristine vigor. 01Colonel! Indeed it does take one's breath away.TUNow do you see the money that's in it?" "I'm--well, I'm--not really sure that I do.9Great Scott, look here.opI shall have a monopoly; they'll all belong to me, won't they? Two thousand policemen in the city of New York.6Wages, four dollars a day.34I'll replace them with dead ones at half the money.')*Oh, prodigious! I never thought of that.1 F-o-u-r thousand dollars a day.JNow I do begin to see! But will dead policemen answer?" "Haven't they--up to this time?" "Well, if you put it that way--" "Put it any way you want to.@AModify it to suit yourself, and my lads shall still be superior.)yzThey won't eat, they won't drink--don't need those things; they won't wink for cash at gambling dens and unlicensed rum-holes, they won't spark the scullery maids; and moreover the bands of toughs that ambuscade them on lonely beats, and cowardly shoot and knife them will only damage the uniforms and not live long enough to get more than a momentary satisfaction out of that.)yzWhy, Colonel, if you can furnish policemen, then of course--" "Certainly--I can furnish any line of goods that's wanted._`Take the army, for instance--now twenty-five thousand men; expense, twenty-two millions a year.34I will dig up the Romans, I will resurrect the Greeks, I will furnish the government, for ten millions a year, ten thousand veterans drawn from the victorious legions of all the ages--soldiers that will chase Indians year in and year out on materialized horses, and cost never a cent for rations or repairs. YZThe armies of Europe cost two billions a year now--I will replace them all for a billion.ABI will dig up the trained statesmen of all ages and all climes, and furnish this country with a Congress that knows enough to come in out of the rain-- a thing that's never happened yet, since the Declaration of Independence, and never will happen till these practically dead people are replaced with the genuine article.TUI will restock the thrones of Europe with the best brains and the best morals that all the royal sepulchres of all the centuries can furnish--which isn't promising very much--and I'll divide the wages and the civil list, fair and square, merely taking my half and--" "Colonel, if the half of this is true, there's millions in it--millions.!/0Billions in it--billions; that's what you mean.Why, look here; the thing is so close at hand, so imminent, so absolutely immediate, that if a man were to come to me now and say, Colonel, I am a little short, and if you could lend me a couple of billion dollars for--come in!" This in answer to a knock.  An energetic looking man bustled in with a big pocket-book in his hand, took a paper from it and presented it, with the curt remark: "Seventeenth and last call--you want to out with that three dollars and forty cents this time without fail, Colonel Mulberry Sellers. !The Colonel began to slap this pocket and that one, and feel here and there and everywhere, muttering: "What have I done with that wallet?--let me see--um--not here, not there --Oh, I must have left it in the kitchen; I'll just run and--" "No you won't--you'll stay right where you are.#-.And you're going to disgorge, too--this time.#-.Washington innocently offered to go and look.When he was gone the Colonel said: "The fact is, I've got to throw myself on your indulgence just this once more, Suggs; you see the remittances I was expecting--" "Hang the remittances--it's too stale--it won't answer.12Come!" The Colonel glanced about him in despair.$tuThen his face lighted; he ran to the wall and began to dust off a peculiarly atrocious chromo with his handkerchief.-}~Then he brought it reverently, offered it to the collector, averted his face and said: "Take it, but don't let me see it go.OPIt's the sole remaining Rembrandt that--" "Rembrandt be damned, it's a chromo.,$%Oh, don't speak of it so, I beg you.It's the only really great original, the only supreme example of that mighty school of art which--" "Art! It's the sickest looking thing I--" The colonel was already bringing another horror and tenderly dusting it..~Take this one too--the gem of my collection--the only genuine Fra Angelico that--" "Illuminated liver-pad, that's what it is.MNGive it here--good day-- people will think I've robbed a' nigger barber-shop.;As he slammed the door behind him the Colonel shouted with an anguished accent-- "Do please cover them up--don't let the damp get at them.<=The delicate tints in the Angelico--" But the man was gone.IJWashington re-appeared and said he had looked everywhere, and so had Mrs.TSellers and the servants, but in vain; and went on to say he wished he could get his eye on a certain man about this time--no need to hunt up that pocket-book then.')*The Colonel's interest was awake at once.XYWhat man?" "One-armed Pete they call him out there--out in the Cherokee country I mean.3Robbed the bank in Tahlequah.89Do they have banks in Tahlequah?" "Yes--a bank, anyway.1 He was suspected of robbing it.?@Whoever did it got away with more than twenty thousand dollars.)'(They offered a reward of five thousand."./I believe I saw that very man, on my way east.bNo--is that so? "I certainly saw a man on the train, the first day I struck the railroad, that answered the description pretty exactly--at least as to clothes and a lacking arm. CDWhy don't you get him arrested and claim the reward?" "I couldn't.*&'I had to get a requisition, of course. 01But I meant to stay by him till I got my chance.<=Well?" "Well, he left the train during the night some time.4Oh, hang it, that's too bad.8Not so very bad, either.fgWhy?" "Because he came down to Baltimore in the very train I was in, though I didn't know it in time._`As we moved out of the station I saw him going toward the iron gate with a satchel in his hand.:Good; we'll catch him.?Let's lay a plan.RSSend description to the Baltimore police?" "Why, what are you talking about? No.WXDo you want them to get the reward?" "What shall we do, then?" The Colonel reflected.BI'll tell you.,$%Put a personal in the Baltimore Sun.4Word it like this: "A.;DROP ME A LINE, PETE.H Hold on.,$%Which arm has he lost?" "The right.KGood.ANow then-- "A. DEDROP ME A LINE, PETE, EVEN IF YOU HAVE to write with your left hand.F Address X.1 General Postoffice, Washington.>From YOU KNOW WHO.7There--that'll fetch him.#stBut he won't know who--will he?" "No, but he'll want to know, won't he?" "Why, certainly--I didn't think of that.;<What made you think of it?" "Knowledge of human curiosity.0 !Strong trait, very strong trait.lmNow I'll go to my room and write it out and enclose a dollar and tell them to print it to the worth of that.E CHAPTER IV.8The day wore itself out.@AAfter dinner the two friends put in a long and harassing evening trying to decide what to do with the five thousand dollars reward which they were going to get when they should find One-Armed Pete, and catch him, and prove him to be the right person, and extradite him, and ship him to Tahlequah in the Indian Territory.3But there were so many dazzling openings for ready cash that they found it impossible to make up their minds and keep them made up.C Finally, Mrs.`Sellers grew very weary of it all, and said: "What is the sense in cooking a rabbit before it's caught?" Then the matter was dropped, for the time being, and all went to bed.  Next morning, being persuaded by Hawkins, the colonel made drawings and specifications and went down and applied for a patent for his toy puzzle, and Hawkins took the toy itself and started out to see what chance there might be to do something with it commercially.6He did not have to go far.rIn a small old wooden shanty which had once been occupied as a dwelling by some humble negro family he found a keen-eyed Yankee engaged in repairing cheap chairs and other second-hand furniture.This man examined the toy indifferently; attempted to do the puzzle; found it not so easy as he had expected; grew more interested, and finally emphatically so; achieved a success at last, and asked: "Is it patented?" "Patent applied for.?That will answer.`aWhat do you want for it?" "What will it retail for?" "Well, twenty-five cents, I should think.9What will you give for the exclusive right?" "I couldn't give twenty dollars, if I had to pay cash down; but I'll tell you what I'll do. GHI'll make it and market it, and pay you five cents royalty on each one.>Washington sighed.12Another dream disappeared; no money in the thing.')*So he said: "All right, take it at that.@Draw me a paper.He went his way with the paper, and dropped the matter out of his mind dropped it out to make room for further attempts to think out the most promising way to invest his half of the reward, in case a partnership investment satisfactory to both beneficiaries could not be hit upon.nHe had not been very long at home when Sellers arrived sodden with grief and booming with glad excitement--working both these emotions successfully, sometimes separately, sometimes together.deHe fell on Hawkins's neck sobbing, and said: "Oh, mourn with me my friend, mourn for my desolate house: death has smitten my last kinsman and I am Earl of Rossmore--congratulate me!" He turned to his wife, who had entered while this was going on, put his arms about her and said--"You will bear up, for my sake, my lady--it had to happen, it was decreed.67She bore up very well, and said: "It's no great loss.klSimon Lathers was a poor well-meaning useless thing and no account, and his brother never was worth shucks.The rightful earl continued: "I am too much prostrated by these conflicting griefs and joys to be able to concentrate my mind upon affairs; I will ask our good friend here to break the news by wire or post to the Lady Gwendolen and instruct her to--" "What Lady Gwendolen?" "Our poor daughter, who, alas!--" "Sally Sellers? Mulberry Sellers, are you losing your mind?" "There--please do not forget who you are, and who I am; remember your own dignity, be considerate also of mine. DEIt were best to cease from using my family name, now, Lady Rossmore.cdGoodness gracious, well, I never! What am I to call you then?" "In private, the ordinary terms of endearment will still be admissible, to some degree; but in public it will be more becoming if your ladyship will speak to me as my lord, or your lordship, and of me as Rossmore, or the Earl, or his Lordship, and--" "Oh, scat! I can't ever do it, Berry.,|}But indeed you must, my love--we must live up to our altered position and submit with what grace we may to its requirements.tWell, all right, have it your own way; I've never set my wishes against your commands yet, Mul--my lord, and it's late to begin now, though to my mind it's the rottenest foolishness that ever was.@ASpoken like my own true wife! There, kiss and be friends again. EFBut--Gwendolen! I don't know how I am ever going to stand that name."./Why, a body wouldn't know Sally Sellers in it.*z{It's too large for her; kind of like a cherub in an ulster, and it's a most outlandish sort of a name, anyway, to my mind. 01You'll not hear her find fault with it, my lady.=That's a true word.BCShe takes to any kind of romantic rubbish like she was born to it.*&'She never got it from me, that's sure.WXAnd sending her to that silly college hasn't helped the matter any--just the other way.7Now hear her, Hawkins! Rowena-Ivanhoe College is the selectest and most aristocratic seat of learning for young ladies in our country.TUnder no circumstances can a girl get in there unless she is either very rich and fashionable or can prove four generations of what may be called American nobility.45Castellated college-buildings--towers and turrets and an imitation moat--and everything about the place named out of Sir Walter Scott's books and redolent of royalty and state and style; and all the richest girls keep phaetons, and coachmen in livery, and riding-horses, with English grooms in plug hats and tight-buttoned coats, and top-boots, and a whip-handle without any whip to it, to ride sixty-three feet behind them--" "And they don't learn a blessed thing, Washington Hawkins, not a single blessed thing but showy rubbish and un-american pretentiousness.pBut send for the Lady Gwendolen--do; for I reckon the peerage regulations require that she must come home and let on to go into seclusion and mourn for those Arkansas blatherskites she's lost.78My darling! Blatherskites? Remember--noblesse oblige. pqThere, there--talk to me in your own tongue, Ross--you don't know any other, and you only botch it when you try.bcOh, don't stare--it was a slip, and no crime; customs of a life-time can't be dropped in a second.QRRossmore--there, now, be appeased, and go along with you and attend to Gwendolen.NOAre you going to write, Washington?--or telegraph?" "He will telegraph, dear.;<I thought as much," my lady muttered, as she left the room.;<Wants it so the address will have to appear on the envelop.)'(It will just make a fool of that child.efShe'll get it, of course, for if there are any other Sellerses there they'll not be able to claim it. CDAnd just leave her alone to show it around and make the most of it.*&'Well, maybe she's forgivable for that.IShe's so poor and they're so rich, of course she's had her share of snubs from the livery-flunkey sort, and I reckon it's only human to want to get even.Uncle Dan'l was sent with the telegram; for although a conspicuous object in a corner of the drawing-room was a telephone hanging on a transmitter, Washington found all attempts to raise the central office vain.The Colonel grumbled something about its being "always out of order when you've got particular and especial use for it," but he didn't explain that one of the reasons for this was that the thing was only a dummy and hadn't any wire attached to it.efAnd yet the Colonel often used it--when visitors were present--and seemed to get messages through it. EFMourning paper and a seal were ordered, then the friends took a rest.{Next afternoon, while Hawkins, by request, draped Andrew Jackson's portrait with crape, the rightful earl, wrote off the family bereavement to the usurper in England--a letter which we have already read.AHe also, by letter to the village authorities at Duffy's Corners, Arkansas, gave order that the remains of the late twins be embalmed by some St.;<Louis expert and shipped at once to the usurper--with bill.  Then he drafted out the Rossmore arms and motto on a great sheet of brown paper, and he and Hawkins took it to Hawkins's Yankee furniture-mender and at the end of an hour came back with a couple of stunning hatchments, which they nailed up on the front of the house--attractions calculated to draw, and they did; for it was mainly an idle and shiftless negro neighborhood, with plenty of ragged children and indolent dogs to spare for a point of interest like that, and keep on sparing them for it, days and days together.The new earl found--without surprise--this society item in the evening paper, and cut it out and scrapbooked it: By a recent bereavement our esteemed fellow citizen, Colonel Mulberry Sellers, Perpetual Member-at-large of the Diplomatic Body, succeeds, as rightful lord, to the great earldom of Rossmore, third by order of precedence in the earldoms of Great Britain, and will take early measures, by suit in the House of Lords, to wrest the title and estates from the present usurping holder of them..~Until the season of mourning is past, the usual Thursday evening receptions at Rossmore Towers will be discontinued.^Lady Rossmore's comment-to herself: "Receptions! People who don't rightly know him may think he is commonplace, but to my mind he is one of the most unusual men I ever saw.STAs for suddenness and capacity in imagining things, his beat don't exist, I reckon.:As like as not it wouldn't have occurred to anybody else to name this poor old rat-trap Rossmore Towers, but it just comes natural to him.+{|Well, no doubt it's a blessed thing to have an imagination that can always make you satisfied, no matter how you are fixed.NUncle Dave Hopkins used to always say, 'Turn me into John Calvin, and I want to know which place I'm going to; turn me into Mulberry Sellers and I don't care.KLThe rightful earl's comment-to himself: "It's a beautiful name, beautiful.56Pity I didn't think of it before I wrote the usurper.&*+But I'll be ready for him when he answers.F CHAPTER V.12No answer to that telegram; no arriving daughter.UVYet nobody showed any uneasiness or seemed surprised; that is, nobody but Washington.VWAfter three days of waiting, he asked Lady Rossmore what she supposed the trouble was.MNShe answered, tranquilly: "Oh, it's some notion of hers, you never can tell.[She's a Sellers, all through--at least in some of her ways; and a Sellers can't tell you beforehand what he's going to do, because he don't know himself till he's done it. 01She's all right; no occasion to worry about her. [\When she's ready she'll come or she'll write, and you can't tell which, till it's happened.3It turned out to be a letter.It was handed in at that moment, and was received by the mother without trembling hands or feverish eagerness, or any other of the manifestations common in the case of long delayed answers to imperative telegrams.  She polished her glasses with tranquility and thoroughness, pleasantly gossiping along, the while, then opened the letter and began to read aloud: KENILWORTH KEEP, REDGAUNTLET HALL, ROWENA-IVANHOE COLLEGE, THURSDAY.HIDEAR PRECIOUS MAMMA ROSSMORE: Oh, the joy of it!--you can't think.DThey had always turned up their noses at our pretentions, you know; and I had fought back as well as I could by turning up mine at theirs.12They always said it might be something great and fine to be rightful Shadow of an earldom, but to merely be shadow of a shadow, and two or three times removed at that--pooh-pooh! And I always retorted that not to be able to show four generations of American-Colonial-Dutch Peddler- and-Salt-Cod-McAllister-Nobility might be endurable, but to have to confess such an origin--pfew-few! Well, the telegram, it was just a cyclone! The messenger came right into the great Rob Roy Hall of Audience, as excited as he could be, singing out, "Dispatch for Lady Gwendolen Sellers!" and you ought to have seen that simpering chattering assemblage of pinchbeck aristocrats, turn to stone! I was off in the corner, of course, by myself--it's where Cinderella belongs./0I took the telegram and read it, and tried to faint--and I could have done it if I had had any preparation, but it was all so sudden, you know--but no matter, I did the next best thing: I put my handkerchief to my eyes and fled sobbing to my room, dropping the telegram as I started.]I released one corner of my eye a moment-- just enough to see the herd swarm for the telegram--and then continued my broken-hearted flight just as happy as a bird.Then the visits of condolence began, and I had to accept the loan of Miss Augusta-Templeton-Ashmore Hamilton's quarters because the press was so great and there isn't room for three and a cat in mine.)yzAnd I've been holding a Lodge of Sorrow ever since and defending myself against people's attempts to claim kin.,-And do you know, the very first girl to fetch her tears and sympathy to my market was that foolish Skimperton girl who has always snubbed me so shamefully and claimed lordship and precedence of the whole college because some ancestor of hers, some time or other, was a McAllister.'wxWhy it was like the bottom bird in the menagerie putting on airs because its head ancestor was a pterodactyl."./But the ger-reatest triumph of all was--guess.?But you'll never.E This is it.9That little fool and two others have always been fussing and fretting over which was entitled to precedence--by rank, you know.They've nearly starved themselves at it; for each claimed the right to take precedence of all the college in leaving the table, and so neither of them ever finished her dinner, but broke off in the middle and tried to get out ahead of the others.Well, after my first day's grief and seclusion--I was fixing up a mourning dress you see--I appeared at the public table again, and then--what do you think? Those three fluffy goslings sat there contentedly, and squared up the long famine--lapped and lapped, munched and munched, ate and ate, till the gravy appeared in their eyes--humbly waiting for the Lady Gwendolen to take precedence and move out first, you see! Oh, yes, I've been having a darling good time.opAnd do you know, not one of these collegians has had the cruelty to ask me how I came by my new name. EFWith some, this is due to charity, but with the others it isn't.IJThey refrain, not from native kindness but from educated discretion.@I educated them.pWell, as soon as I shall have settled up what's left of the old scores and snuffed up a few more of those pleasantly intoxicating clouds of incense, I shall pack and depart homeward.:;Tell papa I am as fond of him as I am of my new name.&*+I couldn't put it stronger than that. DEWhat an inspiration it was! But inspirations come easy to him.TUThese, from your loving daughter, GWENDOLEN.34Hawkins reached for the letter and glanced over it.XYGood hand," he said, "and full of confidence and animation, and goes racing right along.5She's bright--that's plain.*&'Oh, they're all bright--the Sellerses.')*Anyway, they would be, if there were any._`Even those poor Latherses would have been bright if they had been Sellerses; I mean full blood.4Of course they had a Sellers strain in them--a big strain of it, too--but being a Bland dollar don't make it a dollar just the same.DThe seventh day after the date of the telegram Washington came dreaming down to breakfast and was set wide awake by an electrical spasm of pleasure.HIHere was the most beautiful young creature he had ever seen in his life.?@It was Sally Sellers Lady Gwendolen; she had come in the night.And it seemed to him that her clothes were the prettiest and the daintiest he had ever looked upon, and the most exquisitely contrived and fashioned and combined, as to decorative trimmings, and fixings, and melting harmonies of color.:It was only a morning dress, and inexpensive, but he confessed to himself, in the English common to Cherokee Strip, that it was a "corker.HIAnd now, as he perceived, the reason why the Sellers household poverties and sterilities had been made to blossom like the rose, and charm the eye and satisfy the spirit, stood explained; here was the magician; here in the midst of her works, and furnishing in her own person the proper accent and climaxing finish of the whole.EMy daughter, Major Hawkins--come home to mourn; flown home at the call of affliction to help the authors of her being bear the burden of bereavement.jkShe was very fond of the late earl--idolized him, sir, idolized him--" "Why, father, I've never seen him.WTrue--she's right, I was thinking of another--er--of her mother--" "I idolized that smoked haddock?--that sentimental, spiritless--" "I was thinking of myself! Poor noble fellow, we were inseparable com--" "Hear the man! Mulberry Sel--Mul--Rossmore--hang the troublesome name I can never--if I've heard you say once, I've heard you say a thousand times that if that poor sheep--" "I was thinking of--of--I don't know who I was thinking of, and it doesn't make any difference anyway; somebody idolized him, I recollect it as if it were yesterday; and--" "Father, I am going to shake hands with Major Hawkins, and let the introduction work along and catch up at its leisure.!"I remember you very well in deed, Major Hawkins, although I was a little child when I saw you last; and I am very, very glad indeed to see you again and have you in our house as one of us;" and beaming in his face she finished her cordial shake with the hope that he had not forgotten her.,-He was prodigiously pleased by her outspoken heartiness, and wanted to repay her by assuring her that he remembered her, and not only that but better even than he remembered his own children, but the facts would not quite warrant this; still, he stumbled through a tangled sentence which answered just as well, since the purport of it was an awkward and unintentional confession that her extraordinary beauty had so stupefied him that he hadn't got back to his bearings, yet, and therefore couldn't be certain as to whether he remembered her at all or not.9:The speech made him her friend; it couldn't well help it.2In truth the beauty of this fair creature was of a rare type, and may well excuse a moment of our time spent in its consideration.#stIt did not consist in the fact that she had eyes, nose, mouth, chin, hair, ears, it consisted in their arrangement.&vwIn true beauty, more depends upon right location and judicious distribution of feature than upon multiplicity of them.7So also as regards color.)yzThe very combination of colors which in a volcanic irruption would add beauty to a landscape might detach it from a girl.5Such was Gwendolen Sellers.The family circle being completed by Gwendolen's arrival, it was decreed that the official mourning should now begin; that it should begin at six o'clock every evening, (the dinner hour,) and end with the dinner./It's a grand old line, major, a sublime old line, and deserves to be mourned for, almost royally; almost imperially, I may say.kEr--Lady Gwendolen--but she's gone; never mind; I wanted my Peerage; I'll fetch it myself, presently, and show you a thing or two that will give you a realizing idea of what our house is.jI've been glancing through Burke, and I find that of William the Conqueror's sixty-four natural ah-- my dear, would you mind getting me that book? It's on the escritoire in our boudoir.*&'Yes, as I was saying, there's only St.(xyAlbans, Buccleugh and Grafton ahead of us on the list--all the rest of the British nobility are in procession behind us.<Ah, thanks, my lady.HNow then, we turn to William, and we find--letter for XYZ? Oh, splendid--when'd you get it?" "Last night; but I was asleep before you came, you were out so late; and when I came to breakfast Miss Gwendolen--well, she knocked everything out of me, you know--" "Wonderful girl, wonderful; her great origin is detectable in her step, her carriage, her features--but what does he say? Come, this is exciting./!"I haven't read it--er--Rossm--Mr.45Rossm--er--" "M'lord! Just cut it short like that.;It's the English way.C I'll open it.>Ah, now let's see.NA.@TO YOU KNOW WHO.?Think I know you.BWait ten days.6Coming to Washington.$,-The excitement died out of both men's faces.-}~There was a brooding silence for a while, then the younger one said with a sigh: "Why, we can't wait ten days for the money.NONo--the man's unreasonable; we are down to the bed rock, financially speaking.>If we could explain to him in some way, that we are so situated that time is of the utmost importance to us--" "Yes--yes, that's it--and so if it would be as convenient for him to come at once it would be a great accommodation to us, and one which we--which we--which we--wh--well, which we should sincerely appreciate--" "That's it--and most gladly reciprocate--" "Certainly--that'll fetch him.2Worded right, if he's a man--got any of the feelings of a man, sympathies and all that, he'll be here inside of twenty-four hours.%+,Pen and paper--come, we'll get right at it.XYBetween them they framed twenty-two different advertisements, but none was satisfactory.(()A main fault in all of them was urgency.VThat feature was very troublesome: if made prominent, it was calculated to excite Pete's suspicion; if modified below the suspicion-point it was flat and meaningless.|Finally the Colonel resigned, and said: "I have noticed, in such literary experiences as I have had, that one of the most taking things to do is to conceal your meaning when you are trying to conceal it.JWhereas, if you go at literature with a free conscience and nothing to conceal, you can turn out a book, every time, that the very elect can't understand.D They all do.lmThen Hawkins resigned also, and the two agreed that they must manage to wait the ten days some how or other.&'Next, they caught a ray of cheer: since they had something definite to go upon, now, they could probably borrow money on the reward--enough, at any rate, to tide them over till they got it; and meantime the materializing recipe would be perfected, and then good bye to trouble for good and all. GHThe next day, May the tenth, a couple of things happened--among others.hiThe remains of the noble Arkansas twins left our shores for England, consigned to Lord Rossmore, and Lord Rossmore's son, Kirkcudbright Llanover Marjoribanks Sellers Viscount Berkeley, sailed from Liverpool for America to place the reversion of the earldom in the hands of the rightful peer, Mulberry Sellers, of Rossmore Towers in the District of Columbia, U.fgThese two impressive shipments would meet and part in mid-Atlantic, five days later, and give no sign.E CHAPTER VI.RSIn the course of time the twins arrived and were delivered to their great kinsman.%uvTo try to describe the rage of that old man would profit nothing, the attempt would fall so far short of the purpose.However when he had worn himself out and got quiet again, he looked the matter over and decided that the twins had some moral rights, although they had no legal ones; they were of his blood, and it could not be decorous to treat them as common clay.ZSo he laid them with their majestic kin in the Cholmondeley church, with imposing state and ceremony, and added the supreme touch by officiating as chief mourner himself.-#$But he drew the line at hatchments.SOur friends in Washington watched the weary days go by, while they waited for Pete and covered his name with reproaches because of his calamitous procrastinations.Meantime, Sally Sellers, who was as practical and democratic as the Lady Gwendolen Sellers was romantic and aristocratic, was leading a life of intense interest and activity and getting the most she could out of her double personality.[All day long in the privacy of her work-room, Sally Sellers earned bread for the Sellers family; and all the evening Lady Gwendolen Sellers supported the Rossmore dignity.All day she was American, practically, and proud of the work of her head and hands and its commercial result; all the evening she took holiday and dwelt in a rich shadow-land peopled with titled and coroneted fictions.4By day, to her, the place was a plain, unaffected, ramshackle old trap just that, and nothing more; by night it was Rossmore Towers.67At college she had learned a trade without knowing it. CDThe girls had found out that she was the designer of her own gowns.She had no idle moments after that, and wanted none; for the exercise of an extraordinary gift is the supremest pleasure in life, and it was manifest that Sally Sellers possessed a gift of that sort in the matter of costume-designing.Within three days after reaching home she had hunted up some work; before Pete was yet due in Washington, and before the twins were fairly asleep in English soil, she was already nearly swamped with work, and the sacrificing of the family chromos for debt had got an effective check.=She's a brick," said Rossmore to the Major; "just her father all over: prompt to labor with head or hands, and not ashamed of it; capable, always capable, let the enterprise be what it may; successful by nature-- don't know what defeat is; thus, intensely and practically American by inhaled nationalism, and at the same time intensely and aristocratically European by inherited nobility of blood.bJust me, exactly: Mulberry Sellers in matter of finance and invention; after office hours, what do you find? The same clothes, yes, but what's in them? Rossmore of the peerage.:;The two friends had haunted the general post-office daily.2At last they had their reward.:;Toward evening the 20th of May, they got a letter for XYZ.?@It bore the Washington postmark; the note itself was not dated.?@It said: "Ash barrel back of lamp post Black horse Alley.JKIf you are playing square go and set on it to-morrow morning 21st 10.%+,not sooner not later wait till I come.!/0The friends cogitated over the note profoundly.EPresently the earl said: "Don't you reckon he's afraid we are a sheriff with a requisition?" "Why, m'lord?" "Because that's no place for a seance.$,-Nothing friendly, nothing sociable about it.-.And at the same time, a body that wanted to know who was roosting on that ash-barrel without exposing himself by going near it, or seeming to be interested in it, could just stand on the street corner and take a glance down the alley and satisfy himself, don't you see?" "Yes, his idea is plain, now.>?He seems to be a man that can't be candid and straightforward.^He acts as if he thought we--shucks, I wish he had come out like a man and told us what hotel he--" "Now you've struck it! you've struck it sure, Washington; he has told us."./Has he?" "Yes, he has; but he didn't mean to.RSThat alley is a lonesome little pocket that runs along one side of the New Gadsby.?That's his hotel.34What makes' you think that?" "Why, I just know it.78He's got a room that's just across from that lamp post.HIHe's going to sit there perfectly comfortable behind his shutters at 10.to-morrow, and when he sees us sitting on the ash-barrel, he'll say to himself, 'I saw one of those fellows on the train'--and then he'll pack his satchel in half a minute and ship for the ends of the earth.fgHawkins turned sick with disappointment: "Oh, dear, it's all up, Colonel--it's exactly what he'll do.efIndeed he won't!" "Won't he? Why?" "Because you won't be holding the ash barrel down, it'll be me.FYou'll be coming in with an officer and a requisition in plain clothes--the officer, I mean--the minute you see him arrive and open up a talk with me.cdWell, what a head you have got, Colonel Sellers! I never should have thought of that in the world.INeither would any earl of Rossmore, betwixt William's contribution and Mulberry--as earl; but it's office hours, now, you see, and the earl in me sleeps.."#Come--I'll show you his very room.&vwThey reached the neighborhood of the New Gadsby about nine in the evening, and passed down the alley to the lamp post."rsThere you are," said the colonel, triumphantly, with a wave of his hand which took in the whole side of the hotel.TUThere it is--what did I tell you?" "Well, but--why, Colonel, it's six stories high.JKI don't quite make out which window you--" "All the windows, all of them. FGLet him have his choice--I'm indifferent, now that I have located him.ABYou go and stand on the corner and wait; I'll prospect the hotel.4The earl drifted here and there through the swarming lobby, and finally took a waiting position in the neighborhood of the elevator.During an hour crowds went up and crowds came down; and all complete as to limbs; but at last the watcher got a glimpse of a figure that was satisfactory-- got a glimpse of the back of it, though he had missed his chance at the face through waning alertness.5The glimpse revealed a cowboy hat, and below it a plaided sack of rather loud pattern, and an empty sleeve pinned up to the shoulder.0Then the elevator snatched the vision aloft and the watcher fled away in joyful excitement, and rejoined the fellow-conspirator.RWe've got him, Major--got him sure! I've seen him--seen him good; and I don't care where or when that man approaches me backwards, I'll recognize him every time.@We're all right.8Now for the requisition.23They got it, after the delays usual in such cases.noBy half past eleven they were at home and happy, and went to bed full of dreams of the morrow's great promise.PAmong the elevator load which had the suspect for fellow-passenger was a young kinsman of Mulberry Sellers, but Mulberry was not aware of it and didn't see him.7It was Viscount Berkeley.D CHAPTER VII.iArrived in his room Lord Berkeley made preparations for that first and last and all-the-time duty of the visiting Englishman--the jotting down in his diary of his "impressions" to date.=>His preparations consisted in ransacking his "box" for a pen.VWThere was a plenty of steel pens on his table with the ink bottle, but he was English."rsThe English people manufacture steel pens for nineteen-twentieths of the globe, but they never use any themselves.$,-They use exclusively the pre-historic quill.,-My lord not only found a quill pen, but the best one he had seen in several years--and after writing diligently for some time, closed with the following entry: BUT IN ONE THING I HAVE MADE AN IMMENSE MISTAKE, I OUGHT TO HAVE SHUCKED MY TITLE AND CHANGED MY NAME BEFORE I STARTED.He sat admiring that pen a while, and then went on: "All attempts to mingle with the common people and became permanently one of them are going to fail, unless I can get rid of it, disappear from it, and re-appear with the solid protection of a new name.TI am astonished and pained to see how eager the most of these Americans are to get acquainted with a lord, and how diligent they are in pushing attentions upon him.RSThey lack English servility, it is true--but they could acquire it, with practice.:;My quality travels ahead of me in the most mysterious way.?@I write my family name without additions, on the register of this hotel, and imagine that I am going to pass for an obscure and unknown wanderer, but the clerk promptly calls out, 'Front! show his lordship to four-eighty-two!' and before I can get to the lift there is a reporter trying to interview me as they call it.)'(This sort of thing shall cease at once.TI will hunt up the American Claimant the first thing in the morning, accomplish my mission, then change my lodging and vanish from scrutiny under a fictitious name.UHe left his diary on the table, where it would be handy in case any new "impressions" should wake him up in the night, then he went to bed and presently fell asleep.*+An hour or two passed, and then he came slowly to consciousness with a confusion of mysterious and augmenting sounds hammering at the gates of his brain for admission; the next moment he was sharply awake, and those sounds burst with the rush and roar and boom of an undammed freshet into his ears.GBanging and slamming of shutters; smashing of windows and the ringing clash of falling glass; clatter of flying feet along the halls; shrieks, supplications, dumb moanings of despair, within, hoarse shouts of command outside; cracklings and mappings, and the windy roar of victorious flames! Bang, bang, bang! on the door, and a cry: "Turn out--the house is on fire!" The cry passed on, and the banging.`Lord Berkeley sprang out of bed and moved with all possible speed toward the clothes-press in the darkness and the gathering smoke, but fell over a chair and lost his bearings.hHe groped desperately about on his hands, and presently struck his head against the table and was deeply grateful, for it gave him his bearings again, since it stood close by the door.ghHe seized his most precious possession; his journaled Impressions of America, and darted from the room.efHe ran down the deserted hall toward the red lamp which he knew indicated the place of a fire-escape.(()The door of the room beside it was open.MNIn the room the gas was burning full head; on a chair was a pile of clothing.He ran to the window, could not get it up, but smashed it with a chair, and stepped out on the landing of the fire-escape; below him was a crowd of men, with a sprinkling of women and youth, massed in a ruddy light.IMust he go down in his spectral night dress? No--this side of the house was not yet on fire except at the further end; he would snatch on those clothes.C Which he did.`aThey fitted well enough, though a trifle loosely, and they were just a shade loud as to pattern. ]^Also as to hat--which was of a new breed to him, Buffalo Bill not having been to England yet.(xyOne side of the coat went on, but the other side refused; one of its sleeves was turned up and stitched to the shoulder.;He started down without waiting to get it loose, made the trip successfully, and was promptly hustled outside the limit-rope by the police.The cowboy hat and the coat but half on made him too much of a centre of attraction for comfort, although nothing could be more profoundly respectful, not to say deferential, than was the manner of the crowd toward him.mIn his mind he framed a discouraged remark for early entry in his diary: "It is of no use; they know a lord through any disguise, and show awe of him--even something very like fear, indeed.VWPresently one of the gaping and adoring half-circle of boys ventured a timid question.<My lord answered it./The boys glanced wonderingly at each other and from somewhere fell the comment: "English cowboy! Well, if that ain't curious.;<Another mental note to be preserved for the diary: "Cowboy.Now what might a cowboy be? Perhaps--" But the viscount perceived that some more questions were about to be asked; so he worked his way out of the crowd, released the sleeve, put on the coat and wandered away to seek a humble and obscure lodging. 01He found it and went to bed and was soon asleep.(()In the morning, he examined his clothes.WXThey were rather assertive, it seemed to him, but they were new and clean, at any rate.!/0There was considerable property in the pockets.,$%Item, five one-hundred dollar bills.34Item, near fifty dollars in small bills and silver.@Plug of tobacco.;<Hymn-book, which refuses to open; found to contain whiskey.0 !Memorandum book bearing no name.Scattering entries in it, recording in a sprawling, ignorant hand, appointments, bets, horse-trades, and so on, with people of strange, hyphenated name--Six-Fingered Jake, Young-Man-afraid-of his-Shadow, and the like.7No letters, no documents.')*The young man muses--maps out his course.sHis letter of credit is burned; he will borrow the small bills and the silver in these pockets, apply part of it to advertising for the owner, and use the rest for sustenance while he seeks work.NOHe sends out for the morning paper, next, and proceeds to read about the fire.abThe biggest line in the display-head announces his own death! The body of the account furnishes all the particulars; and tells how, with the inherited heroism of his caste, he went on saving women and children until escape for himself was impossible; then with the eyes of weeping multitudes upon him, he stood with folded arms and sternly awaited the approach of the devouring fiend; "and so standing, amid a tossing sea of flame and on-rushing billows of smoke, the noble young heir of the great house of Rossmore was caught up in a whirlwind of fiery glory, and disappeared forever from the vision of men. YZThe thing was so fine and generous and knightly that it brought the moisture to his eyes.BCPresently he said to himself: "What to do is as plain as day, now.&*+My Lord Berkeley is dead--let him stay so.KLDied creditably, too; that will make the calamity the easier for my father.9:And I don't have to report to the American Claimant, now.BCYes, nothing could be better than the way matters have turned out.abI have only to furnish myself with a new name, and take my new start in life totally untrammeled.Now I breathe my first breath of real freedom; and how fresh and breezy and inspiring it is! At last I am a man! a man on equal terms with my neighbor; and by my manhood; and by it alone, I shall rise and be seen of the world, or I shall sink from sight and deserve it.fgThis is the gladdest day, and the proudest, that ever poured it's sun upon my head!" CHAPTER VIII. [\GOD bless my soul, Hawkins!" The morning paper dropped from the Colonel's nerveless-grasp.$%What is it?" "He's gone!--the bright, the young, the gifted, the noblest of his illustrious race--gone! gone up in flames and unimaginable glory!" "Who?" "My precious, precious young kinsman--Kirkcudbright Llanover Marjoribanks Sellers Viscount Berkeley, son and heir of usurping Rossmore.5No!" "It's true--too true.<When?" "Last night. ]^Where?" "Right here in Washington; where he arrived from England last night, the papers say.,$%You don't say!" "Hotel burned down. pqWhat hotel?" "The New Gadsby!" "Oh, my goodness! And have we lost both of them?" "Both who?" "One-Arm Pete.)'(Oh, great guns, I forgot all about him.AOh, I hope not.5Hope! Well, I should say! Oh, we can't spare him! We can better afford to lose a million viscounts than our only support and stay.ghThey searched the paper diligently, and were appalled to find that a one-armed man had been seen flying along one of the halls of the hotel in his underclothing and apparently out of his head with fright, and as he would listen to no one and persisted in making for a stairway which would carry him to certain death, his case was given over as a hopeless one.:;Poor fellow," sighed Hawkins; "and he had friends so near. EFI wish we hadn't come away from there--maybe we could have saved him. DEThe earl looked up and said calmly: "His being dead doesn't matter.8He was uncertain before.2We've got him sure, this time.')*Got him? How?" "I will materialize him.*&'Rossmore, don't--don't trifle with me.XYDo you mean that? Can you do it?" "I can do it, just as sure as you are sitting there.E And I will.=>Give me your hand, and let me have the comfort of shaking it.34I was perishing, and you have put new life into me.,$%Get at it, oh, get at it right away.cdIt will take a little time, Hawkins, but there's no hurry, none in the world--in the circumstances.cdAnd of course certain duties have devolved upon me now, which necessarily claim my first attention.)yzThis poor young nobleman--" "Why, yes, I am sorry for my heartlessness, and you smitten with this new family affliction.BCOf course you must materialize him first--I quite understand that.lmI--I--well, I wasn't meaning just that, but,--why, what am I thinking of! Of course I must materialize him.3Oh, Hawkins, selfishness is the bottom trait in human nature; I was only thinking that now, with the usurper's heir out of the way.:;But you'll forgive that momentary weakness, and forget it.&vwDon't ever remember it against me that Mulberry Sellers was once mean enough to think the thought that I was thinking.()I'll materialise him--I will, on my honor--and I'd do it were he a thousand heirs jammed into one and stretching in a solid rank from here to the stolen estates of Rossmore, and barring the road forever to the rightful earl! "There spoke the real Sellers--the other had a false ring, old friend.0Hawkins, my boy, it just occurs to me--a thing I keep forgetting to mention--a matter that we've got to be mighty careful about.LMWhat is that?" "We must keep absolutely still about these materializations.12Mind, not a hint of them must escape--not a hint.ITo say nothing of how my wife and daughter--high-strung, sensitive organizations--might feel about them, the negroes wouldn't stay on the place a minute.5That's true, they wouldn't.WXIt's well you spoke, for I'm not naturally discreet with my tongue when I'm not warned. Z[Sellers reached out and touched a bell-button in the wall; set his eye upon the rear door and waited; touched it again and waited; and just as Hawkins was remarking admiringly that the Colonel was the most progressive and most alert man he had ever seen, in the matter of impressing into his service every modern convenience the moment it was invented, and always keeping breast to breast with the drum major in the great work of material civilization, he forsook the button (which hadn't any wire attached to it,) rang a vast dinner bell which stood on the table, and remarked that he had tried that new-fangled dry battery, now, to his entire satisfaction, and had got enough of it; and added: "Nothing would do Graham Bell but I must try it; said the mere fact of my trying it would secure public confidence, and get it a chance to show what it could do.<I told him that in theory a dry battery was just a curled darling and no mistake, but when it come to practice, sho!--and here's the result. ]^Was I right? What should you say, Washington Hawkins? You've seen me try that button twice.2Was I right?--that's the idea.0Did I know what I was talking about, or didn't I?" "Well, you know how I feel about you, Colonel Sellers, and always have felt.@AIt seems to me that you always know everything about everything.1If that man had known you as I know you he would have taken your judgment at the start, and dropped his dry battery where it was.9:Did you ring, Marse Sellers?" "No, Marse Sellers didn't./!"Den it was you, Marse Washington.BI's heah, suh.)'(No, it wasn't Marse Washington, either.~De good lan'! who did ring her, den?" "Lord Rossmore rang it!" The old negro flung up his hands and exclaimed: "Blame my skin if I hain't gone en forgit dat name agin! Come heah, Jinny--run heah, honey.BJinny arrived.ijYou take dish-yer order de lord gwine to give you I's gwine down suller and study dat name tell I git it. DEI take de order! Who's yo' nigger las' year? De bell rung for you.5Dat don't make no diffunce.45When a bell ring for anybody, en old marster tell me to--" "Clear out, and settle it in the kitchen!" The noise of the quarreling presently sank to a murmur in the distance, and the earl added: "That's a trouble with old house servants that were your slaves once and have been your personal friends always.1 Yes, and members of the family.STMembers of the family is just what they become--THE members of the family, in fact.34And sometimes master and mistress of the household.These two are mighty good and loving and faithful and honest, but hang it, they do just about as they please, they chip into a conversation whenever they want to, and the plain fact is, they ought to be killed.cdIt was a random remark, but it gave him an idea--however, nothing could happen without that result.NOWhat I wanted, Hawkins, was to send for the family and break the news to them. 01O, never mind bothering with the servants, then.2I will go and bring them down.$,-While he was gone, the earl worked his idea.RYes," he said to himself, "when I've got the materializing down to a certainty, I will get Hawkins to kill them, and after that they will be under better control.^_Without doubt a materialized negro could easily be hypnotized into a state resembling silence._And this could be made permanent--yes, and also modifiable, at will--sometimes very silent, sometimes turn on more talk, more action, more emotion, according to what you want.9It's a prime good idea."./Make it adjustable--with a screw or something.The two ladies entered, now, with Hawkins, and the two negroes followed, uninvited, and fell to brushing and dusting around, for they perceived that there was matter of interest to the fore, and were willing to find out what it was.deSellers broke the news with stateliness and ceremony, first warning the ladies, with gentle art, that a pang of peculiar sharpness was about to be inflicted upon their hearts--hearts still sore from a like hurt, still lamenting a like loss--then he took the paper, and with trembling lips and with tears in his voice he gave them that heroic death-picture.STThe result was a very genuine outbreak of sorrow and sympathy from all the hearers.45The elder lady cried, thinking how proud that great-hearted young hero's mother would be, if she were living, and how unappeasable her grief; and the two old servants cried with her, and spoke out their applauses and their pitying lamentations with the eloquent sincerity and simplicity native to their race.UVGwendolen was touched, and the romantic side of her nature was strongly wrought upon.NShe said that such a nature as that young man's was rarely and truly noble, and nearly perfect; and that with nobility of birth added it was entirely perfect.cdFor such a man she could endure all things, suffer all things, even to the sacrificing of her life.She wished she could have seen him; the slightest, the most momentary, contact with such a spirit would have ennobled her own character and made ignoble thoughts and ignoble acts thereafter impossible to her forever.45Have they found the body, Rossmore?" asked the wife.,$%Yes, that is, they've found several.:;It must be one of them, but none of them are recognizable.$tuWhat are you going to do?" "I am going down there and identify one of them and send it home to the stricken father.HBut papa, did you ever see the young man?" "No, Gwendolen-why?" "How will you identify it?" "I--well, you know it says none of them are recognizable.=>I'll send his father one of them--there's probably no choice.Gwendolen knew it was not worth while to argue the matter further, since her father's mind was made up and there was a chance for him to appear upon that sad scene down yonder in an authentic and official way. 01So she said no more--till he asked for a basket. 01A basket, papa? What for?" "It might be ashes.E CHAPTER IX.PQThe earl and Washington started on the sorrowful errand, talking as they walked.?@And as usual!" "What, Colonel?" "Seven of them in that hotel.F Actresses.3And all burnt out, of course.BAny of them burnt up?" "Oh, no they escaped; they always do; but there's never a one of them that knows enough to fetch out her jewelry with her.AThat's strange.89Strange--it's the most unaccountable thing in the world.XYExperience teaches them nothing; they can't seem to learn anything except out of a book.45In some uses there's manifestly a fatality about it. ]^For instance, take What's-her-name, that plays those sensational thunder and lightning parts.#stShe's got a perfectly immense reputation--draws like a dog-fight--and it all came from getting burnt out in hotels.fgWhy, how could that give her a reputation as an actress?" "It didn't--it only made her name familiar.1People want to see her play because her name is familiar, but they don't know what made it familiar, because they don't remember.'wxFirst, she was at the bottom of the ladder, and absolutely obscure wages thirteen dollars a week and find her own pads.RSPads?" "Yes--things to fat up her spindles with so as to be plump and attractive. FGWell, she got burnt out in a hotel and lost $30,000 worth of diamonds.7She? Where'd she get them?" "Goodness knows--given to her, no doubt, by spoony young flats and sappy old bald-heads in the front row.1 All the papers were full of it.+%&She struck for higher pay and got it.lmWell, she got burnt out again and lost all her diamonds, and it gave her such a lift that she went starring.6Well, if hotel fires are all she's got to depend on to keep up her name, it's a pretty precarious kind of a reputation I should think.C Not with her.:No, anything but that.#-.Because she's so lucky; born lucky, I reckon.$,-Every time there's a hotel fire she's in it.HIShe's always there--and if she can't be there herself, her diamonds are.<=Now you can't make anything out of that but just sheer luck.2I never heard of such a thing.*&'She must have lost quarts of diamonds.-#$Quarts, she's lost bushels of them.89It's got so that the hotels are superstitious about her.:They won't let her in.VWThey think there will be a fire; and besides, if she's there it cancels the insurance.ABShe's been waning a little lately, but this fire will set her up.."#She lost $60,000 worth last night.;I think she's a fool. DEIf I had $60,000 worth of diamonds I wouldn't trust them in a hotel.78I wouldn't either; but you can't teach an actress that.$,-This one's been burnt out thirty-five times.fgAnd yet if there's a hotel fire in San Francisco to-night she's got to bleed again, you mark my words. GHPerfect ass; they say she's got diamonds in every hotel in the country.JWhen they arrived at the scene of the fire the poor old earl took one glimpse at the melancholy morgue and turned away his face overcome by the spectacle.-}~He said: "It is too true, Hawkins--recognition is impossible, not one of the five could be identified by its nearest friend.(()You make the selection, I can't bear it.12Which one had I better--" "Oh, take any of them.:Pick out the best one.However, the officers assured the earl--for they knew him, everybody in Washington knew him--that the position in which these bodies were found made it impossible that any one of them could be that of his noble young kinsman.HThey pointed out the spot where, if the newspaper account was correct, he must have sunk down to destruction; and at a wide distance from this spot they showed him where the young man must have gone down in case he was suffocated in his room; and they showed him still a third place, quite remote, where he might possibly have found his death if perchance he tried to escape by the side exit toward the rear.%uvThe old Colonel brushed away a tear and said to Hawkins: "As it turns out there was something prophetic in my fears.4Yes, it's a matter of ashes.2Will you kindly step to a grocery and fetch a couple more baskets?" Reverently they got a basket of ashes from each of those now hallowed spots, and carried them home to consult as to the best manner of forwarding them to England, and also to give them an opportunity to "lie in state,"--a mark of respect which the colonel deemed obligatory, considering the high rank of the deceased.They set the baskets on the table in what was formerly the library, drawing-room and workshop--now the Hall of Audience--and went up stairs to the lumber room to see if they could find a British flag to use as a part of the outfit proper to the lying in state.4A moment later, Lady Rossmore came in from the street and caught sight of the baskets just as old Jinny crossed her field of vision.sShe quite lost her patience and said: "Well, what will you do next? What in the world possessed you to clutter up the parlor table with these baskets of ashes?" "Ashes?" And she came to look."./She put up her hands in pathetic astonishment.1Well, I never see de like!" "Didn't you do it?" "Who, me? Clah to goodness it's de fust time I've sot eyes on 'em, Miss Polly.D Dat's Dan'l.0 !Dat ole moke is losin' his mine.67But it wasn't Dan'l, for he was called, and denied it.0 !Dey ain't no way to 'splain dat.;Wen hit's one er dese-yer common 'currences, a body kin reckon maybe de cat--" "Oh!" and a shudder shook Lady Rossmore to her foundations.C I see it all./!"Keep away from them--they're his.LMHis, m' lady?" "Yes--your young Marse Sellers from England that's burnt up.HIShe was alone with the ashes--alone before she could take half a breath.Then she went after Mulberry Sellers, purposing to make short work with his program, whatever it might be; "for," said she, "when his sentimentals are up, he's a numskull, and there's no knowing what extravagance he'll contrive, if you let him alone.BShe found him.&*+He had found the flag and was bringing it./When she heard that his idea was to have the remains "lie in state, and invite the government and the public," she broke it up.She said: "Your intentions are all right--they always are--you want to do honour to the remains, and surely nobody can find any fault with that, for he was your kin; but you are going the wrong way about it, and you will see it yourself if you stop and think.`You can't file around a basket of ashes trying to look sorry for it and make a sight that is really solemn, because the solemner it is, the more it isn't--anybody can see that. FGIt would be so with one basket; it would be three times so with three.IWell, it stands to reason that if it wouldn't be solemn with one mourner, it wouldn't be with a procession--and there would be five thousand people here. FGI don't know but it would be pretty near ridiculous; I think it would.=>No, Mulberry, they can't lie in state--it would be a mistake.')*Give that up and think of something else.klSo he gave it up; and not reluctantly, when he had thought it over and realized how right her instinct was.HIHe concluded to merely sit up with the remains just himself and Hawkins.*+Even this seemed a doubtful attention, to his wife, but she offered no objection, for it was plain that he had a quite honest and simple-hearted desire to do the friendly and honourable thing by these forlorn poor relics which could command no hospitality in this far off land of strangers but his._He draped the flag about the baskets, put some crape on the door-knob, and said with satisfaction: "There--he is as comfortable, now, as we can make him in the circumstances.hiExcept--yes, we must strain a point there--one must do as one would wish to be done by--he must have it.2Have what, dear?" "Hatchment.The wife felt that the house-front was standing about all it could well stand, in that way; the prospect of another stunning decoration of that nature distressed her, and she wished the thing had not occurred to him.She said, hesitatingly: "But I thought such an honour as that wasn't allowed to any but very very near relations, who--" "Right, you are quite right, my lady, perfectly right; but there aren't any nearer relatives than relatives by usurpation.IJWe cannot avoid it; we are slaves of aristocratic custom and must submit.DEThe hatchments were unnecessarily generous, each being as large as a blanket, and they were unnecessarily volcanic, too, as to variety and violence of color, but they pleased the earl's barbaric eye, and they satisfied his taste for symmetry and completeness, too, for they left no waste room to speak of on the house-front.OLady Rossmore and her daughter assisted at the sitting-up till near midnight, and helped the gentlemen to consider what ought to be done next with the remains.WXRossmore thought they ought to be sent home with a committee and resolutions,--at once.6But the wife was doubtful.?@She said: "Would you send all of the baskets?" "Oh, yes, all.45All at once?" "To his father? Oh, no--by no means.=Think of the shock."./No--one at a time; break it to him by degrees.9:Would that have that effect, father?" "Yes, my daughter.34Remember, you are young and elastic, but he is old. DETo send him the whole at once might well be more than he could bear.*z{But mitigated--one basket at a time, with restful intervals between, he would be used to it by the time he got all of him.!/0And sending him in three ships is safer anyway.0 !On account of wrecks and storms.2I don't like the idea, father.YIf I were his father it would be dreadful to have him coming in that--in that--" "On the installment plan," suggested Hawkins, gravely, and proud of being able to help.89Yes--dreadful to have him coming in that incoherent way.;<There would be the strain of suspense upon me all the time.To have so depressing a thing as a funeral impending, delayed, waiting, unaccomplished--" "Oh, no, my child," said the earl reassuringly, "there would be nothing of that kind; so old a gentleman could not endure a long-drawn suspense like that.3There will be three funerals..~Lady Rossmore looked up surprised, and said: "How is that going to make it easier for him? It's a total mistake, to my mind.23He ought to be buried all at once; I'm sure of it.*&'I should think so, too," said Hawkins.%+,And certainly I should," said the daughter.."#You are all wrong," said the earl.')*You will see it yourselves, if you think.$,-Only one of these baskets has got him in it.UVVery well, then," said Lady Rossmore, "the thing is perfectly simple-- bury that one.0 !Certainly," said Lady Gwendolen.TUBut it is not simple," said the earl, "because we do not know which basket he is in.9:We know he is in one of them, but that is all we do know.XYYou see now, I reckon, that I was right; it takes three funerals, there is no other way.QRAnd three graves and three monuments and three inscriptions?" asked the daughter.6Well--yes--to do it right.7That is what I should do.0 !It could not be done so, father.LEach of the inscriptions would give the same name and the same facts and say he was under each and all of these monuments, and that would not answer at all.$,-The earl nestled uncomfortably in his chair.,$%No," he said, "that is an objection.4That is a serious objection.?I see no way out.(()There was a general silence for a while.CThen Hawkins said: "It seems to me that if we mixed the three ramifications together--" The earl grasped him by the hand and shook it gratefully.*&'It solves the whole problem," he said.JKOne ship, one funeral, one grave, one monument--it is admirably conceived.QIt does you honor, Major Hawkins, it has relieved me of a most painful embarrassment and distress, and it will save that poor stricken old father much suffering.,$%Yes, he shall go over in one basket.:When?" asked the wife./!"To-morrow-immediately, of course.9I would wait, Mulberry. FGWait? Why?" "You don't want to break that childless old man's heart. DEGod knows I don't!" "Then wait till he sends for his son's remains.:If you do that, you will never have to give him the last and sharpest pain a parent can know-- I mean, the certainty that his son is dead.9For he will never send.Why won't he?" "Because to send--and find out the truth--would rob him of the one precious thing left him, the uncertainty, the dim hope that maybe, after all, his boy escaped, and he will see him again some day.9:Why Polly, he'll know by the papers that he was burnt up.lHe won't let himself believe the papers; he'll argue against anything and everything that proves his son is dead; and he will keep that up and live on it, and on nothing else till he dies.sBut if the remains should actually come, and be put before that poor old dim-hoping soul--" "Oh, my God, they never shall! Polly, you've saved me from a crime, and I'll bless you for it always.9Now we know what to do.:;We'll place them reverently away, and he shall never know.F CHAPTER X.)*The young Lord Berkeley, with the fresh air of freedom in his nostrils, was feeling invincibly strong for his new career; and yet--and yet--if the fight should prove a very hard one at first, very discouraging, very taxing on untoughened moral sinews, he might in some weak moment want to retreat.67Not likely, of course, but possibly that might happen.RSAnd so on the whole it might be pardonable caution to burn his bridges behind him.>Oh, without doubt.RHe must not stop with advertising for the owner of that money, but must put it where he could not borrow from it himself, meantime, under stress of circumstances.klSo he went down town, and put in his advertisement, then went to a bank and handed in the $500 for deposit.UVWhat name?" He hesitated and colored a little; he had forgotten to make a selection. GHHe now brought out the first one that suggested itself: "Howard Tracy. CDWhen he was gone the clerks, marveling, said: "The cowboy blushed.0 !The first step was accomplished.noThe money was still under his command and at his disposal, but the next step would dispose of that difficulty.JKHe went to another bank and drew upon the first bank for the 500 by check.RSThe money was collected and deposited a second time to the credit of Howard Tracy. CDHe was asked to leave a few samples of his signature, which he did.qThen he went away, once more proud and of perfect courage, saying: "No help for me now, for henceforth I couldn't draw that money without identification, and that is become legally impossible.3No resources to fall back on.')*It is work or starve from now to the end.mnI am ready--and not afraid!" Then he sent this cablegram to his father: "Escaped unhurt from burning hotel.5Have taken fictitious name.H Goodbye.During the evening while he was wandering about in one of the outlying districts of the city, he came across a small brick church, with a bill posted there with these words printed on it: "MECHANICS' CLUB DEBATE.D ALL INVITED.mnHe saw people, apparently mainly of the working class, entering the place, and he followed and took his seat.>?It was a humble little church, quite bare as to ornamentation.^_It had painted pews without cushions, and no pulpit, properly speaking, but it had a platform.YOn the platform sat the chairman, and by his side sat a man who held a manuscript in his hand and had the waiting look of one who is going to perform the principal part.ghThe church was soon filled with a quiet and orderly congregation of decently dressed and modest people.#stThis is what the chairman said: "The essayist for this evening is an old member of our club whom you all know, Mr.!/0Parker, assistant editor of the Daily Democrat.!qrThe subject of his essay is the American Press, and he will use as his text a couple of paragraphs taken from Mr.6Matthew Arnold's new book.)'(He asks me to read these texts for him.6The first is as follows: "'Goethe says somewhere that "the thrill of awe," that is to say, REVERENCE, is the best thing humanity has.MMr.Arnold's other paragraph is as follows: "'I should say that if one were searching for the best means to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline of respect, one could not do better than take the American newspapers.MMr.;<Parker rose and bowed, and was received with warm applause..~He then began to read in a good round resonant voice, with clear enunciation and careful attention to his pauses and emphases.56His points were received with approval as he went on.45The essayist took the position that the most important function of a public journal in any country was the propagating of national feeling and pride in the national name--the keeping the people "in love with their country and its institutions, and shielded from the allurements of alien and inimical systems.wHe sketched the manner in which the reverent Turkish or Russian journalist fulfilled this function--the one assisted by the prevalent "discipline of respect" for the bastinado, the other for Siberia.Continuing, he said: The chief function of an English journal is that of all other journals the world over: it must keep the public eye fixed admiringly upon certain things, and keep it diligently diverted from certain others.For instance, it must keep the public eye fixed admiringly upon the glories of England, a processional splendor stretching its receding line down the hazy vistas of time, with the mellowed lights of a thousand years glinting from its banners; and it must keep it diligently diverted from the fact that all these glories were for the enrichment and aggrandizement of the petted and privileged few, at cost of the blood and sweat and poverty of the unconsidered masses who achieved them but might not enter in and partake of them.It must keep the public eye fixed in loving and awful reverence upon the throne as a sacred thing, and diligently divert it from the fact that no throne was ever set up by the unhampered vote of a majority of any nation; and that hence no throne exists that has a right to exist, and no symbol of it, flying from any flagstaff, is righteously entitled to wear any device but the skull and crossbones of that kindred industry which differs from royalty only business-wise--merely as retail differs from wholesale.bIt must keep the citizen's eye fixed in reverent docility upon that curious invention of machine politics, an Established Church, and upon that bald contradiction of common justice, a hereditary nobility; and diligently divert it from the fact that the one damns him if he doesn't wear its collar, and robs him under the gentle name of taxation whether he wears it or not, and the other gets all the honors while he does all the work.3The essayist thought that Mr.Arnold, with his trained eye and intelligent observation, ought to have perceived that the very quality which he so regretfully missed from our press--respectfulness, reverence --was exactly the thing which would make our press useless to us if it had it--rob it of the very thing which differentiates it from all other journalism in the world and makes it distinctively and preciously American, its frank and cheerful irreverence being by all odds the most valuable of all its qualities.."#For its mission--overlooked by Mr.OPArnold--is to stand guard over a nation's liberties, not its humbugs and shams.He thought that if during fifty years the institutions of the old world could be exposed to the fire of a flouting and scoffing press like ours, "monarchy and its attendant crimes would disappear from Christendom.|Monarchists might doubt this; then "why not persuade the Czar to give it a trial in Russia?" Concluding, he said: Well, the charge is, that our press has but little of that old world quality, reverence.&*+Let us be candidly grateful that it is so.yWith its limited reverence it at least reveres the things which this nation reveres, as a rule, and that is sufficient: what other people revere is fairly and properly matter of light importance to us.?@Our press does not reverence kings, it does not reverence so called nobilities, it does not reverence established ecclesiastical slaveries, it does not reverence laws which rob a younger son to fatten an elder one, it does not reverence any fraud or sham or infamy, howsoever old or rotten or holy, which sets one citizen above his neighbor by accident of birth: it does not reverence any law or custom, howsoever old or decayed or sacred, which shuts against the best man in the land the best place in the land and the divine right to prove property and go up and occupy it.In the sense of the poet Goethe--that meek idolater of provincial three carat royalty and nobility--our press is certainly bankrupt in the "thrill of awe"--otherwise reverence; reverence for nickel plate and brummagem.Let us sincerely hope that this fact will remain a fact forever: for to my mind a discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty--even as the other thing is the creator, nurse, and steadfast protector of all forms of human slavery, bodily and mental.STTracy said to himself, almost shouted to himself, "I'm glad I came to this country.D I was right.hiI was right to seek out a land where such healthy principles and theories are in men's hearty and minds.%uvThink of the innumerable slaveries imposed by misplaced reverence! How well he brought that out, and how true it is.12There's manifestly prodigious force in reverence.?@If you can get a man to reverence your ideals, he's your slave. Oh, yes, in all the ages the peoples of Europe have been diligently taught to avoid reasoning about the shams of monarchy and nobility, been taught to avoid examining them, been taught to reverence them; and now, as a natural result, to reverence them is second nature.ghIn order to shock them it is sufficient to inject a thought of the opposite kind into their dull minds. YZFor ages, any expression of so-called irreverence from their lips has been sin and crime._The sham and swindle of all this is apparent the moment one reflects that he is himself the only legitimately qualified judge of what is entitled to reverence and what is not. GHCome, I hadn't thought of that before, but it is true, absolutely true.KWhat right has Goethe, what right has Arnold, what right has any dictionary, to define the word Irreverence for me? What their ideals are is nothing to me.mnSo long as I reverence my own ideals my whole duty is done, and I commit no profanation if I laugh at theirs.:;I may scoff at other people's ideals as much as I want to.0 !It is my right and my privilege.0 !No man has any right to deny it. GHTracy was expecting to hear the essay debated, but this did not happen.The chairman said, by way of explanation: "I would say, for the information of the strangers present here, that in accordance with our custom the subject of this meeting will be debated at the next meeting of the club.ZThis is in order to enable our members to prepare what they may wish to say upon the subject with pen and paper, for we are mainly mechanics and unaccustomed to speaking.34We are obliged to write down what we desire to say.Many brief papers were now read, and several offhand speeches made in discussion of the essay read at the last meeting of the club, which had been a laudation, by some visiting professor, of college culture, and the grand results flowing from it to the nation.One of the papers was read by a man approaching middle age, who said he hadn't had a college education, that he had got his education in a printing office, and had graduated from there into the patent office, where he had been a clerk now for a great many years.cThen he continued to this effect: The essayist contrasted the America of to-day with the America of bygone times, and certainly the result is the exhibition of a mighty progress. ]^But I think he a little overrated the college-culture share in the production of that result.It can no doubt be easily shown that the colleges have contributed the intellectual part of this progress, and that that part is vast; but that the material progress has been immeasurably vaster, I think you will concede.DNow I have been looking over a list of inventors--the creators of this amazing material development--and I find that they were not college-bred men.VWOf course there are exceptions--like Professor Henry of Princeton, the inventor of Mr.;<Morse's system of telegraphy--but these exceptions are few.|It is not overstatement to say that the imagination-stunning material development of this century, the only century worth living in since time itself was invented, is the creation of men not college-bred.hWe think we see what these inventors have done: no, we see only the visible vast frontage of their work; behind it is their far vaster work, and it is invisible to the careless glance.TThey have reconstructed this nation-- made it over, that is--and metaphorically speaking, have multiplied its numbers almost beyond the power of figures to express.5I will explain what I mean.What constitutes the population of a land? Merely the numberable packages of meat and bones in it called by courtesy men and women? Shall a million ounces of brass and a million ounces of gold be held to be of the same value? Take a truer standard: the measure of a man's contributing capacity to his time and his people--the work he can do--and then number the population of this country to-day, as multiplied by what a man can now do, more than his grandfather could do.QBy this standard of measurement, this nation, two or three generations ago, consisted of mere cripples, paralytics, dead men, as compared with the men of to-day.*&'In 1840 our population was 17,000,000.By way of rude but striking illustration, let us consider, for argument's sake, that four of these millions consisted of aged people, little children, and other incapables, and that the remaining 13,000,000 were divided and employed as follows: 2,000,000 as ginners of cotton.4women) as stocking-knitters.6women) as thread-spinners.@as screw makers.7as reapers, binders, etc.?as corn shellers.E as weavers.5as stitchers of shoe soles.ghNow the deductions which I am going to append to these figures may sound extravagant, but they are not.$,-I take them from Miscellaneous Documents No. DEsecond session 45th Congress, and they are official and trustworthy.'(To-day, the work of those 2,000,000 cotton-ginners is done by 2,000 men; that of the 6,000,000 stocking-knitters is done by 3,000 boys; that of the 2,000,000 thread-spinners is done by 1,000 girls; that of the 500,000 screw makers is done by 500 girls; that of the 400,000 reapers, binders, etc.qis done by 4,000 boys; that of the 1,000,000 corn shelters is done by 7,500 men; that of the 40,000 weavers is done by 1,200 men; and that of the 1,000 stitchers of shoe soles is done by 6 men.ATo bunch the figures, 17,900 persons to-day do the above-work, whereas fifty years ago it would have taken thirteen millions of persons to do it.Now then, how many of that ignorant race--our fathers and grandfathers--with their ignorant methods, would it take to do our work to-day? It would take forty thousand millions--a hundred times the swarming population of China--twenty times the present population of the globe.CDYou look around you and you see a nation of sixty millions-- apparently; but secreted in their hands and brains, and invisible to your eyes, is the true population of this Republic, and it numbers forty billions! It is the stupendous creation of those humble unlettered, un-college-bred inventors--all honor to their name.67How grand that is!" said Tracy, as he wended homeward.What a civilization it is, and what prodigious results these are! and brought about almost wholly by common men; not by Oxford-trained aristocrats, but men who stand shoulder to shoulder in the humble ranks of life and earn the bread that they eat.9Again, I'm glad I came.I have found a country at last where one may start fair, and breast to breast with his fellow man, rise by his own efforts, and be something in the world and be proud of that something; not be something created by an ancestor three hundred years ago.E CHAPTER XI.4During the first few days he kept the fact diligently before his mind that he was in a land where there was "work and bread for all.In fact, for convenience' sake he fitted it to a little tune and hummed it to himself; but as time wore on the fact itself began to take on a doubtful look, and next the tune got fatigued and presently ran down and stopped.=His first effort was to get an upper clerkship in one of the departments, where his Oxford education could come into play and do him service.0 !But he stood no chance whatever.deThere, competency was no recommendation; political backing, without competency, was worth six of it.rHe was glaringly English, and that was necessarily against him in the political centre of a nation where both parties prayed for the Irish cause on the house-top and blasphemed it in the cellar.*z{By his dress he was a cowboy; that won him respect--when his back was not turned--but it couldn't get a clerkship for him.But he had said, in a rash moment, that he would wear those clothes till the owner or the owner's friends caught sight of them and asked for that money, and his conscience would not let him retire from that engagement now.KLAt the end of a week things were beginning to wear rather a startling look.,-He had hunted everywhere for work, descending gradually the scale of quality, until apparently he had sued for all the various kinds of work a man without a special calling might hope to be able to do, except ditching and the other coarse manual sorts--and had got neither work nor the promise of it.7He was mechanically turning over the leaves of his diary, meanwhile, and now his eye fell upon the first record made after he was burnt out: "I myself did not doubt my stamina before, nobody could doubt it now, if they could see how I am housed, and realise that I feel absolutely no disgust with these quarters, but am as serenely content with them as any dog would be in a similar kennel.."#Terms, twenty-five dollars a week.-#$I said I would start at the bottom.<I have kept my word.A shudder went quaking through him, and he exclaimed: "What have I been thinking of! This the bottom! Mooning along a whole week, and these terrific expenses climbing and climbing all the time! I must end this folly straightway. EFHe settled up at once and went forth to find less sumptuous lodgings.?@He had to wander far and seek with diligence, but he succeeded.abThey made him pay in advance--four dollars and a half; this secured both bed and food for a week.-}~The good-natured, hardworked landlady took him up three flights of narrow, uncarpeted stairs and delivered him into his room.:;There were two double-bedsteads in it, and one single one.2He would be allowed to sleep alone in one of the double beds until some new boarder should come, but he wouldn't be charged extra._`So he would presently be required to sleep with some stranger! The thought of it made him sick.LMrs.fgMarsh, the landlady, was very friendly and hoped he would like her house--they all liked it, she said.,$%And they're a very nice set of boys. 01They carry on a good deal, but that's their fun.]You see, this room opens right into this back one, and sometimes they're all in one and sometimes in the other; and hot nights they all sleep on the roof when it don't rain."./They get out there the minute it's hot enough. GHThe season's so early that they've already had a night or two up there.56If you'd like to go up and pick out a place, you can.KLYou'll find chalk in the side of the chimney where there's a brick wanting.ABYou just take the chalk and--but of course you've done it before.>Oh, no, I haven't.!qrWhy, of course you haven't--what am I thinking of? Plenty of room on the Plains without chalking, I'll be bound.=Well, you just chalk out a place the size of a blanket anywhere on the tin that ain't already marked off, you know, and that's your property.uYou and your bed-mate take turnabout carrying up the blanket and pillows and fetching them down again; or one carries them up and the other fetches them down, you fix it the way you like, you know. GHYou'll like the boys, they're everlasting sociable--except the printer.WHe's the one that sleeps in that single bed--the strangest creature; why, I don't believe you could get that man to sleep with another man, not if the house was afire.)'(Mind you, I'm not just talking, I know.5The boys tried him, to see.They took his bed out one night, and so when he got home about three in the morning--he was on a morning paper then, but he's on an evening one now--there wasn't any place for him but with the iron-moulder; and if you'll believe me, he just set up the rest of the night--he did, honest.OPThey say he's cracked, but it ain't so, he's English--they're awful particular.2You won't mind my saying that.4You--you're English?" "Yes.C I thought so.JI could tell it by the way you mispronounce the words that's got a's in them, you know; such as saying loff when you mean laff --but you'll get over that.`He's a right down good fellow, and a little sociable with the photographer's boy and the caulker and the blacksmith that work in the navy yard, but not so much with the others.The fact is, though it's private, and the others don't know it, he's a kind of an aristocrat, his father being a doctor, and you know what style that is-- in England, I mean, because in this country a doctor ain't so very much, even if he's that.(()But over there of course it's different.QSo this chap had a falling out with his father, and was pretty high strung, and just cut for this country, and the first he knew he had to get to work or starve.#stWell, he'd been to college, you see, and so he judged he was all right--did you say anything?" "No--I only sighed.."#And there's where he was mistaken.4Why, he mighty near starved.9And I reckon he would have starved sure enough, if some jour' printer or other hadn't took pity on him and got him a place as apprentice.KLSo he learnt the trade, and then he was all right--but it was a close call.jkOnce he thought he had got to haul in his pride and holler for his father and-- why, you're sighing again. DEIs anything the matter with you?--does my clatter--" "Oh, dear--no.:Pray go on--I like it.ijYes, you see, he's been over here ten years; he's twenty-eight, now, and he ain't pretty well satisfied in his mind, because he can't get reconciled to being a mechanic and associating with mechanics, he being, as he says to me, a gentleman, which is a pretty plain letting-on that the boys ain't, but of course I know enough not to let that cat out of the bag.(xyWhy--would there be any harm in it?" "Harm in it? They'd lick him, wouldn't they? Wouldn't you? Of course you would. CDDon't you ever let a man say you ain't a gentleman in this country."rsBut laws, what am I thinking about? I reckon a body would think twice before he said a cowboy wasn't a gentleman.5A trim, active, slender and very pretty girl of about eighteen walked into the room now, in the most satisfied and unembarrassed way.She was cheaply but smartly and gracefully dressed, and the mother's quick glance at the stranger's face as he rose, was of the kind which inquires what effect has been produced, and expects to find indications of surprise and admiration.#-.This is my daughter Hattie--we call her Puss.5It's the new boarder, Puss.<This without rising.'wxThe young Englishman made the awkward bow common to his nationality and time of life in circumstances of delicacy and difficulty, and these were of that sort; for, being taken by surprise, his natural, lifelong self sprang to the front, and that self of course would not know just how to act when introduced to a chambermaid, or to the heiress of a mechanics' boarding house.THis other self--the self which recognized the equality of all men--would have managed the thing better, if it hadn't been caught off guard and robbed of its chance.nThe young girl paid no attention to the bow, but put out her hand frankly and gave the stranger a friendly shake and said: "How do you do?" Then she marched to the one washstand in the room, tilted her head this way and that before the wreck of a cheap mirror that hung above it, dampened her fingers with her tongue, perfected the circle of a little lock of hair that was pasted against her forehead, then began to busy herself with the slops.89Well, I must be going--it's getting towards supper time.6Make yourself at home, Mr.$,-Tracy, you'll hear the bell when it's ready.klThe landlady took her tranquil departure, without commanding either of the young people to vacate the room..~The young man wondered a little that a mother who seemed so honest and respectable should be so thoughtless, and was reaching for his hat, intending to disembarrass the girl of his presence; but she said: "Where are you going?" "Well--nowhere in particular, but as I am only in the way here--" "Why, who said you were in the way? Sit down--I'll move you when you are in the way.3She was making the beds, now.:;He sat down and watched her deft and diligent performance.3What gave you that notion? Do you reckon I need a whole room just to make up a bed or two in?" "Well no, it wasn't that, exactly.cWe are away up here in an empty house, and your mother being gone--" The girl interrupted him with an amused laugh, and said: "Nobody to protect me? Bless you, I don't need it.AI'm not afraid.IJI might be if I was alone, because I do hate ghosts, and I don't deny it.(()Not that I believe in them, for I don't.3I'm only just afraid of them.;How can you be afraid of them if you don't believe in them?" "Oh, I don't know the how of it--that's too many for me; I only know it's so.2It's the same with Maggie Lee.IJWho is that?" "One of the boarders; young lady that works in the factry.1 She works in a factory?" "Yes.C Shoe factory.XIn a shoe factory; and you call her a young lady?" "Why, she's only twenty-two; what should you call her?" "I wasn't thinking of her age, I was thinking of the title.HThe fact is, I came away from England to get away from artificial forms--for artificial forms suit artificial people only--and here you've got them too.F I'm sorry.LMI hoped you had only men and women; everybody equal; no differences in rank.IThe girl stopped with a pillow in her teeth and the case spread open below it, contemplating him from under her brows with a slightly puzzled expression.<=She released the pillow and said: "Why, they are all equal.:Where's any difference in rank?" "If you call a factory girl a young lady, what do you call the President's wife?" "Call her an old one. \]Oh, you make age the only distinction?" "There ain't any other to make as far as I can see.12Then all women are ladies?" "Certainly they are.7All the respectable ones.,$%Well, that puts a better face on it. DECertainly there is no harm in a title when it is given to everybody.IJIt is only an offense and a wrong when it is restricted to a favored few.7But Miss--er--" "Hattie.XYMiss Hattie, be frank; confess that that title isn't accorded by everybody to everybody.PQThe rich American doesn't call her cook a lady-- isn't that so?" "Yes, it's so.,|}What of it?" He was surprised and a little disappointed, to see that his admirable shot had produced no perceptible effect.;What of it?" he said.ijWhy this: equality is not conceded here, after all, and the Americans are no better off than the English.2In fact there's no difference.?Now what an idea.QRThere's nothing in a title except what is put into it--you've said that yourself.!/0Suppose the title is 'clean,' instead of 'lady.2You get that?" "I believe so. \]Instead of speaking of a woman as a lady, you substitute clean and say she's a clean person.F That's it.`aIn England the swell folks don't speak of the working people as gentlemen and ladies?" "Oh, no.TUAnd the working people don't call themselves gentlemen and ladies?" "Certainly not.;<So if you used the other word there wouldn't be any change.\The swell people wouldn't call anybody but themselves 'clean,' and those others would drop sort of meekly into their way of talking and they wouldn't call themselves clean.6We don't do that way here.@Everybody calls himself a lady or gentleman, and thinks he is, and don't care what anybody else thinks him, so long as he don't say it out loud.0 !You think there's no difference.2You knuckle down and we don't.QRAin't that a difference?" "It is a difference I hadn't thought of; I admit that.QRStill--calling one's self a lady doesn't--er--" "I wouldn't go on if I were you.TUHoward Tracy turned his head to see who it might be that had introduced this remark.qIt was a short man about forty years old, with sandy hair, no beard, and a pleasant face badly freckled but alive and intelligent, and he wore slop-shop clothing which was neat but showed wear.9He had come from the front room beyond the hall, where he had left his hat, and he had a chipped and cracked white wash-bowl in his hand.0 !The girl came and took the bowl.<I'll get it for you.&*+You go right ahead and give it to him, Mr.IBarrow.7He's the new boarder--Mr.@ATracy--and I'd just got to where it was getting too deep for me./!"Much obliged if you will, Hattie.-#$I was coming to borrow of the boys.AHe sat down at his ease on an old trunk, and said, "I've been listening and got interested; and as I was saying, I wouldn't go on, if I were you.You see where you are coming to, don't you? Calling yourself a lady doesn't elect you; that is what you were going to say; and you saw that if you said it you were going to run right up against another difference that you hadn't thought of: to-wit, Whose right is it to do the electing? Over there, twenty thousand people in a million elect themselves gentlemen and ladies, and the nine hundred and eighty thousand accept that decree and swallow the affront which it puts upon them.noWhy, if they didn't accept it, it wouldn't be an election, it would be a dead letter and have no force at all.&vwOver here the twenty thousand would-be exclusives come up to the polls and vote themselves to be ladies and gentlemen./!"But the thing doesn't stop there./The nine hundred and eighty thousand come and vote themselves to be ladies and gentlemen too, and that elects the whole nation.ghSince the whole million vote themselves ladies and gentlemen, there is no question about that election.It does make absolute equality, and there is no fiction about it; while over yonder the inequality, (by decree of the infinitely feeble, and consent of the infinitely strong,) is also absolute--as real and absolute as our equality.Tracy had shrunk promptly into his English shell when this speech began, notwithstanding he had now been in severe training several weeks for contact and intercourse with the common herd on the common herd's terms; but he lost no time in pulling himself out again, and so by the time the speech was finished his valves were open once more, and he was forcing himself to accept without resentment the common herd's frank fashion of dropping sociably into other people's conversations unembarrassed and uninvited.#stThe process was not very difficult this time, for the man's smile and voice and manner were persuasive and winning.Tracy would even have liked him on the spot, but for the fact--fact which he was not really aware of--that the equality of men was not yet a reality to him, it was only a theory; the mind perceived, but the man failed to feel it.78It was Hattie's ghost over again, merely turned around. \]Theoretically Barrow was his equal, but it was distinctly distasteful to see him exhibit it.IHe presently said: "I hope in all sincerity that what you have said is true, as regards the Americans, for doubts have crept into my mind several times.It seemed that the equality must be ungenuine where the sign-names of castes were still in vogue; but those sign-names have certainly lost their offence and are wholly neutralized, nullified and harmless if they are the undisputed property of every individual in the nation.*z{I think I realize that caste does not exist and cannot exist except by common consent of the masses outside of its limits.I thought caste created itself and perpetuated itself; but it seems quite true that it only creates itself, and is perpetuated by the people whom it despises, and who can dissolve it at any time by assuming its mere sign-names themselves.>It's what I think.KThere isn't any power on earth that can prevent England's thirty millions from electing themselves dukes and duchesses to-morrow and calling themselves so.^_And within six months all the former dukes and duchesses would have retired from the business.9I wish they'd try that.!/0Royalty itself couldn't survive such a process.NOA handful of frowners against thirty million laughers in a state of irruption..~Why, it's Herculaneum against Vesuvius; it would take another eighteen centuries to find that Herculaneum after the cataclysm.WXWhat's a Colonel in our South? He's a nobody; because they're all colonels down there./0No, Tracy" (shudder from Tracy) "nobody in England would call you a gentleman and you wouldn't call yourself one; and I tell you it's a state of things that makes a man put himself into most unbecoming attitudes sometimes--the broad and general recognition and acceptance of caste as caste does, I mean.cdMakes him do it unconsciously--being bred in him, you see, and never thought over and reasoned out.8You couldn't conceive of the Matterhorn being flattered by the notice of one of your comely little English hills, could you?" "Why, no. pqWell, then, let a man in his right mind try to conceive of Darwin feeling flattered by the notice of a princess.>?It's so grotesque that it--well, it paralyzes the imagination. [\Yet that Memnon was flattered by the notice of that statuette; he says so--says so himself.CThe system that can make a god disown his godship and profane it--oh, well, it's all wrong, it's all wrong and ought to be abolished, I should say.&vwThe mention of Darwin brought on a literary discussion, and this topic roused such enthusiasm in Barrow that he took off his coat and made himself the more free and comfortable for it, and detained him so long that he was still at it when the noisy proprietors of the room came shouting and skylarking in and began to romp, scuffle, wash, and otherwise entertain themselves.He lingered yet a little longer to offer the hospitalities of his room and his book shelf to Tracy and ask him a personal question or two: "What is your trade?" "They--well, they call me a cowboy, but that is a fancy.C I'm not that.<I haven't any trade.QWhat do you work at for your living?" "Oh, anything--I mean I would work at, anything I could get to do, but thus far I haven't been able to find an occupation.*&'Maybe I can help you; I'd like to try.;I shall be very glad./!"I've tried, myself, to weariness.UVWell, of course where a man hasn't a regular trade he's pretty bad off in this world.UVWhat you needed, I reckon, was less book learning and more bread-and-butter learning.:;I don't know what your father could have been thinking of.KLYou ought to have had a trade, you ought to have had a trade, by all means.BCBut never mind about that; we'll stir up something to do, I guess.23And don't you get homesick; that's a bad business.34We'll talk the thing over and look around a little.6You'll come out all right.#-.Wait for me--I'll go down to supper with you.qBy this time Tracy had achieved a very friendly feeling for Barrow and would have called him a friend, maybe, if not taken too suddenly on a straight-out requirement to realize on his theories.PQHe was glad of his society, anyway, and was feeling lighter hearted than before.VAlso he was pretty curious to know what vocation it might be which had furnished Barrow such a large acquaintanceship with books and allowed him so much time to read.D CHAPTER XII.ZPresently the supper bell began to ring in the depths of the house, and the sound proceeded steadily upward, growing in intensity all the way up towards the upper floors.The higher it came the more maddening was the noise, until at last what it lacked of being absolutely deafening, was made up of the sudden crash and clatter of an avalanche of boarders down the uncarpeted stairway.>The peerage did not go to meals in this fashion; Tracy's training had not fitted him to enjoy this hilarious zoological clamor and enthusiasm.PHe had to confess that there was something about this extraordinary outpouring of animal spirits which he would have to get inured to before he could accept it.NNo doubt in time he would prefer it; but he wished the process might be modified and made just a little more gradual, and not quite so pronounced and violent.5Barrow and Tracy followed the avalanche down through an ever increasing and ever more and more aggressive stench of bygone cabbage and kindred smells; smells which are to be found nowhere but in a cheap private boarding house; smells which once encountered can never be forgotten; smells which encountered generations later are instantly recognizable, but never recognizable with pleasure.lmTo Tracy these odors were suffocating, horrible, almost unendurable; but he held his peace and said nothing. pqArrived in the basement, they entered a large dining-room where thirty-five or forty people sat at a long table.9They took their places.*z{The feast had already begun and the conversation was going on in the liveliest way from one end of the table to the other.deThe table cloth was of very coarse material and was liberally spotted with coffee stains and grease.)yzThe knives and forks were iron, with bone handles, the spoons appeared to be iron or sheet iron or something of the sort.WXThe tea and coffee cups were of the commonest and heaviest and most durable stone ware. FGAll the furniture of the table was of the commonest and cheapest sort.SThere was a single large thick slice of bread by each boarder's plate, and it was observable that he economized it as if he were not expecting it to be duplicated.@Dishes of butter were distributed along the table within reach of people's arms, if they had long ones, but there were no private butter plates.lThe butter was perhaps good enough, and was quiet and well behaved; but it had more bouquet than was necessary, though nobody commented upon that fact or seemed in any way disturbed by it.6The main feature of the feast was a piping hot Irish stew made of the potatoes and meat left over from a procession of previous meals. 01Everybody was liberally supplied with this dish.UOn the table were a couple of great dishes of sliced ham, and there were some other eatables of minor importance--preserves and New Orleans molasses and such things.There was also plenty of tea and coffee of an infernal sort, with brown sugar and condensed milk, but the milk and sugar supply was not left at the discretion of the boarders, but was rationed out at headquarters--one spoonful of sugar and one of condensed milk to each cup and no more.DThe table was waited upon by two stalwart negro women who raced back and forth from the bases of supplies with splendid dash and clatter and energy. FGTheir labors were supplemented after a fashion by the young girl Puss.HShe carried coffee and tea back and forth among the boarders, but she made pleasure excursions rather than business ones in this way, to speak strictly.-#$She made jokes with various people.`She chaffed the young men pleasantly and wittily, as she supposed, and as the rest also supposed, apparently, judging by the applause and laughter which she got by her efforts.`aManifestly she was a favorite with most of the young fellows and sweetheart of the rest of them.Where she conferred notice she conferred happiness, as was seen by the face of the recipient; and; at the same time she conferred unhappiness--one could see it fall and dim the faces of the other young fellows like a shadow.*z{She never "Mistered" these friends of hers, but called them "Billy," "Tom," "John," and they called her "Puss" or "Hattie.MMr.=>Marsh sat at the head of the table, his wife sat at the foot.%uvMarsh was a man of sixty, and was an American; but if he had been born a month earlier he would have been a Spaniard.He was plenty good enough Spaniard as it was; his face was very dark, his hair very black, and his eyes were not only exceedingly black but were very intense, and there was something about them that indicated that they could burn with passion upon occasion.9He was stoop-shouldered and lean-faced, and the general aspect of him was disagreeable; he was evidently not a very companionable person.2If looks went for anything, he was the very opposite of his wife, who was all motherliness and charity, good will and good nature.PQAll the young men and the women called her Aunt Rachael, which was another sign.-}~Tracy's wandering and interested eye presently fell upon one boarder who had been overlooked in the distribution of the stew.BHe was very pale and looked as if he had but lately come out of a sick bed, and also as if he ought to get back into it again as soon as possible.3His face was very melancholy.YThe waves of laughter and conversation broke upon it without affecting it any more than if it had been a rock in the sea and the words and the laughter veritable waters.')*He held his head down and looked ashamed.  Some of the women cast glances of pity toward him from time to time in a furtive and half afraid way, and some of the youngest of the men plainly had compassion on the young fellow--a compassion exhibited in their faces but not in any more active or compromising way.efBut the great majority of the people present showed entire indifference to the youth and his sorrows.klMarsh sat with his head down, but one could catch the malicious gleam of his eyes through his shaggy brows.67He was watching that young fellow with evident relish. ]^He had not neglected him through carelessness, and apparently the table understood that fact.3The spectacle was making Mrs.7Marsh very uncomfortable.NOShe had the look of one who hopes against hope that the impossible may happen.BBut as the impossible did not happen, she finally ventured to speak up and remind her husband that Nat Brady hadn't been helped to the Irish stew.lmMarsh lifted his head and gasped out with mock courtliness, "Oh, he hasn't, hasn't he? What a pity that is.(()I don't know how I came to overlook him.:Ah, he must pardon me.<=You must indeed Mr--er--Baxter-- Barker, you must pardon me.IJI--er--my attention was directed to some other matter, I don't know what. DEThe thing that grieves me mainly is, that it happens every meal now.56But you must try to overlook these little things, Mr.')*Bunker, these little neglects on my part.oThey're always likely to happen with me in any case, and they are especially likely to happen where a person has--er--well, where a person is, say, about three weeks in arrears for his board.zYou get my meaning?--you get my idea? Here is your Irish stew, and--er--it gives me the greatest pleasure to send it to you, and I hope that you will enjoy the charity as much as I enjoy conferring it.A blush rose in Brady's white cheeks and flowed slowly backward to his ears and upward toward his forehead, but he said nothing and began to eat his food under the embarrassment of a general silence and the sense that all eyes were fastened upon him.ABBarrow whispered to Tracy: "The old man's been waiting for that.12He wouldn't have missed that chance for anything.,$%It's a brutal business," said Tracy.WXThen he said to himself, purposing to set the thought down in his diary later: "Well, here in this very house is a republic where all are free and equal, if men are free and equal anywhere in the earth, therefore I have arrived at the place I started to find, and I am a man among men, and on the strictest equality possible to men, no doubt.!/0Yet here on the threshold I find an inequality.There are people at this table who are looked up to for some reason or another, and here is a poor devil of a boy who is looked down upon, treated with indifference, and shamed by humiliations, when he has committed no crime but that common one of being poor.(()Equality ought to make men noble-minded.*&'In fact I had supposed it did do that.78After supper, Barrow proposed a walk, and they started.;Barrow had a purpose."./He wanted Tracy to get rid of that cowboy hat.efHe didn't see his way to finding mechanical or manual employment for a person rigged in that fashion.ABBarrow presently said: "As I understand it, you're not a cowboy.D No, I'm not.?@Well, now if you will not think me too curious, how did you come to mount that hat? Where'd you get it?" Tracy didn't know quite how to reply to this, but presently said, "Well, without going into particulars; I exchanged clothes with a stranger under stress of weather, and I would like to find him and re-exchange.<=Well, why don't you find him? Where is he?" "I don't know.WI supposed the best way to find him would be to continue to wear his clothes, which are conspicuous enough to attract his attention if I should meet him on the street.ROh, very well," said Barrow, "the rest of the outfit, is well enough, and while it's not too conspicuous, it isn't quite like the clothes that anybody else wears.?Suppress the hat.<=When you meet your man he'll recognize the rest of his suit.RSThat's a mighty embarrassing hat, you know, in a centre of civilization like this.PQI don't believe an angel could get employment in Washington in a halo like that.DTracy agreed to replace the hat with something of a modester form, and they stepped aboard a crowded car and stood with others on the rear platform.wPresently, as the car moved swiftly along the rails, two men crossing the street caught sight of the backs of Barrow and Tracy, and both exclaimed at once, "There he is!" It was Sellers and Hawkins.cBoth were so paralyzed with joy that before they could pull themselves together and make an effort to stop the car, it was gone too far, and they decided to wait for the next one.FThey waited a while; then it occurred to Washington that there could be no use in chasing one horse-car with another, and he wanted to hunt up a hack. Z[But the Colonel said: "When you come to think of it, there's no occasion for that at all.>?Now that I've got him materialized, I can command his motions.45I'll have him at the house by the time we get there. EFThen they hurried off home in a state of great and joyful excitement.hiThe hat exchange accomplished, the two new friends started to walk back leisurely to the boarding house.<=Barrow's mind was full of curiosity about this young fellow.;<He said, "You've never been to the Rocky Mountains?" "No.%+,You've never been out on the plains?" "No.;<How long have you been in this country?" "Only a few days.IJYou've never been in America before?" Then Barrow communed with himself.89Now what odd shapes the notions of romantic people take.XYHere's a young, fellow who's read in England about cowboys and adventures on the plains.)'(He comes here and buys a cowboy's suit.MNThinks he can play himself on folks for a cowboy, all inexperienced as he is.deNow the minute he's caught in this poor little game, he's ashamed of it and ready to retire from it.9:It is that exchange that he has put up as an explanation.*&'It's rather thin, too thin altogether. \]Well, he's young, never been anywhere, knows nothing about the world, sentimental, no doubt.mnPerhaps it was the natural thing for him to do, but it was a most singular choice, curious freak, altogether. [\Both men were busy with their thoughts for a time, then Tracy heaved a sigh and said, "Mr.23Barrow, the case of that young fellow troubles me.ABYou mean Nat Brady?" "Yes, Brady, or Baxter, or whatever it was.78The old landlord called him by several different names.deOh, yes, he has been very liberal with names for Brady, since Brady fell into arrears for his board.KLWell, that's one of his sarcasms--the old man thinks he's great on sarcasm.RSWell, what is Brady's difficulty? What is Brady--who is he?" "Brady is a tinner.bcHe's a young journeyman tinner who was getting along all right till he fell sick and lost his job.OPHe was very popular before he lost his job; everybody in the house liked Brady.The old man was rather especially fond of him, but you know that when a man loses his job and loses his ability to support himself and to pay his way as he goes, it makes a great difference in the way people look at him and feel about him.ABIs that so! Is it so?" Barrow looked at Tracy in a puzzled way.:Why of course it's so.."#Wouldn't you know that, naturally.GHDon't you know that the wounded deer is always attacked and killed by its companions and friends?" Tracy said to himself, while a chilly and boding discomfort spread itself through his system, "In a republic of deer and men where all are free and equal, misfortune is a crime, and the prosperous gore the unfortunate to death.UThen he said aloud, "Here in the boarding house, if one would have friends and be popular instead of having the cold shoulder turned upon him, he must be prosperous.1 Yes," Barrow said, "that is so.8It's their human nature.They do turn against Brady, now that he's unfortunate, and they don't like him as well as they did before; but it isn't because of any lack in Brady--he's just as he was before, has the same nature and the same impulses, but they-- well, Brady is a thorn in their consciences, you see.They know they ought to help him and they're too stingy to do it, and they're ashamed of themselves for that, and they ought also to hate themselves on that account, but instead of that they hate Brady because he makes them ashamed of themselves.@I say that's human nature; that occurs everywhere; this boarding house is merely the world in little, it's the case all over--they're all alike.BIn prosperity we are popular; popularity comes easy in that case, but when the other thing comes our friends are pretty likely to turn against us.WXTracy's noble theories and high purposes were beginning to feel pretty damp and clammy.KHe wondered if by any possibility he had made a mistake in throwing his own prosperity to the winds and taking up the cross of other people's unprosperity.LBut he wouldn't listen to that sort of thing; he cast it out of his mind and resolved to go ahead resolutely along the course he had mapped out for himself.LMExtracts from his diary: Have now spent several days in this singular hive.45I don't know quite what to make out of these people. pqThey have merits and virtues, but they have some other qualities, and some ways that are hard to get along with.=I can't enjoy them.ABThe moment I appeared in a hat of the period, I noticed a change.The respect which had been paid me before, passed suddenly away, and the people became friendly--more than that--they became familiar, and I'm not used to familiarity, and can't take to it right off; I find that out.;<These people's familiarity amounts to impudence, sometimes.deI suppose it's all right; no doubt I can get used to it, but it's not a satisfactory process at all.YI have accomplished my dearest wish, I am a man among men, on an equal footing with Tom, Dick and Harry, and yet it isn't just exactly what I thought it was going to be.AI--I miss home.0 !Am obliged to say I am homesick.Another thing-- and this is a confession--a reluctant one, but I will make it: The thing I miss most and most severely, is the respect, the deference, with which I was treated all my life in England, and which seems to be somehow necessary to me.iI get along very well without the luxury and the wealth and the sort of society I've been accustomed to, but I do miss the respect and can't seem to get reconciled to the absence of it.KLThere is respect, there is deference here, but it doesn't fall to my share.6It is lavished on two men. CDOne of them is a portly man of middle age who is a retired plumber.!/0Everybody is pleased to have that man's notice.SHe's full of pomp and circumstance and self complacency and bad grammar, and at table he is Sir Oracle and when he opens his mouth not any dog in the kennel barks.89The other person is a policeman at the capitol-building.3He represents the government.:The deference paid to these two men is not so very far short of that which is paid to an earl in England, though the method of it differs.89Not so much courtliness, but the deference is all there.*&'Yes, and there is obsequiousness, too.noIt does rather look as if in a republic where all are free and equal, prosperity and position constitute rank.C CHAPTER XIII.45The days drifted by, and they grew ever more dreary.<=For Barrow's efforts to find work for Tracy were unavailing.9Always the first question asked was, "What Union do you belong to?" Tracy was obliged to reply that he didn't belong to any trade-union.!/0Very well, then, it's impossible to employ you.`aMy men wouldn't stay with me if I should employ a 'scab,' or 'rat,'" or whatever the phrase was.-#$Finally, Tracy had a happy thought.JKHe said, "Why the thing for me to do, of course, is to join a trade-union.@AYes," Barrow said, "that is the thing for you to do--if you can.klIf I can? Is it difficult?" "Well, Yes," Barrow said, "it's sometimes difficult--in fact, very difficult.67But you can try, and of course it will be best to try."./Therefore Tracy tried; but he did not succeed.YHe was refused admission with a good deal of promptness, and was advised to go back home, where he belonged, not come here taking honest men's bread out of their mouths.efTracy began to realize that the situation was desperate, and the thought made him cold to the marrow.zHe said to himself, "So there is an aristocracy of position here, and an aristocracy of prosperity, and apparently there is also an aristocracy of the ins as opposed to the outs, and I am with the outs.2So the ranks grow daily, here.WXPlainly there are all kinds of castes here and only one that I belong to, the outcasts.)yzBut he couldn't even smile at his small joke, although he was obliged to confess that he had a rather good opinion of it.dHe was feeling so defeated and miserable by this time that he could no longer look with philosophical complacency on the horseplay of the young fellows in the upper rooms at night.gAt first it had been pleasant to see them unbend and have a good time after having so well earned it by the labors of the day, but now it all rasped upon his feelings and his dignity.,$%He lost patience with the spectacle. Z[When they were feeling good, they shouted, they scuffled, they sang songs, they romped about the place like cattle, and they generally wound up with a pillow fight, in which they banged each other over the head, and threw the pillows in all directions, and every now and then he got a buffet himself; and they were always inviting him to join in. YZThey called him "Johnny Bull," and invited him with excessive familiarity to take a hand.At first he had endured all this with good nature, but latterly he had shown by his manner that it was distinctly distasteful to him, and very soon he saw a change in the manner of these young people toward him.KLThey were souring on him as they would have expressed it in their language.!/0He had never been what might be called popular.abThat was hardly the phrase for it; he had merely been liked, but now dislike for him was growing.=His case was not helped by the fact that he was out of luck, couldn't get work, didn't belong to a union, and couldn't gain admission to one.He got a good many slights of that small ill-defined sort that you can't quite put your finger on, and it was manifest that there was only one thing which protected him from open insult, and that was his muscle.wThese young people had seen him exercising, mornings, after his cold sponge bath, and they had perceived by his performance and the build of his body, that he was athletic, and also versed in boxing.deHe felt pretty naked now, recognizing that he was shorn of all respect except respect for his fists.KOne night when he entered his room he found about a dozen of the young fellows there carrying on a very lively conversation punctuated with horse-laughter.OPThe talking ceased instantly, and the frank affront of a dead silence followed.12He said, "Good evening gentlemen," and sat down.:There was no response.ABHe flushed to the temples but forced himself to maintain silence.QRHe sat there in this uncomfortable stillness some time, then got up and went out.RSThe moment he had disappeared he heard a prodigious shout of laughter break forth.78He saw that their plain purpose had been to insult him.klHe ascended to the flat roof, hoping to be able to cool down his spirit there and get back his tranquility._`He found the young tinner up there, alone and brooding, and entered into conversation with him.rThey were pretty fairly matched, now, in unpopularity and general ill-luck and misery, and they had no trouble in meeting upon this common ground with advantage and something of comfort to both.sBut Tracy's movements had been watched, and in a few minutes the tormentors came straggling one after another to the roof, where they began to stroll up and down in an apparently purposeless way.opBut presently they fell to dropping remarks that were evidently aimed at Tracy, and some of them at the tinner.The ringleader of this little mob was a short-haired bully and amateur prize-fighter named Allen, who was accustomed to lording it over the upper floor, and had more than once shown a disposition to make trouble with Tracy.#$Now there was an occasional cat-call, and hootings, and whistlings, and finally the diversion of an exchange of connected remarks was introduced: "How many does it take to make a pair?" "Well, two generally makes a pair, but sometimes there ain't stuff enough in them to make a whole pair.BGeneral laugh.bWhat were you saying about the English a while ago?" "Oh, nothing, the English are all right, only--I--" "What was it you said about them?" "Oh, I only said they swallow well.ghSwallow better than other people?" "Oh, yes, the English swallow a good deal better than other people.#-.What is it they swallow best?" "Oh, insults.:Another general laugh.MNPretty hard to make 'em fight, ain't it?" "No, taint hard to make 'em fight.,$%Ain't it, really?" "No, taint hard.@It's impossible.BAnother laugh."./This one's kind of spiritless, that's certain.)'(Couldn't be the other way--in his case.klWhy?" "Don't you know the secret of his birth?" "No! has he got a secret of his birth?" "You bet he has.%+,What is it?" "His father was a wax-figger.DAllen came strolling by where the pair were sitting; stopped, and said to the tinner; "How are you off for friends, these days?" "Well enough off.$,-Got a good many?" "Well, as many as I need.:;A friend is valuable, sometimes--as a protector, you know.1What do you reckon would happen if I was to snatch your cap off and slap you in the face with it?" "Please don't trouble me, Mr.+%&Allen, I ain't doing anything to you. GHYou answer me! What do you reckon would happen?" "Well, I don't know.-}~Tracy spoke up with a good deal of deliberation and said: "Don't trouble the young fellow, I can tell you what would happen.@Oh, you can, can you? Boys, Johnny Bull can tell us what would happen if I was to snatch this chump's cap off and slap him in the face with it.ANow you'll see.kHe snatched the cap and struck the youth in the face, and before he could inquire what was going to happen, it had already happened, and he was warming the tin with the broad of his back.2Instantly there was a rush, and shouts of: "A ring, a ring, make a ring! Fair play all round! Johnny's grit; give him a chance.SThe ring was quickly chalked on the tin, and Tracy found himself as eager to begin as he could have been if his antagonist had been a prince instead of a mechanic.At bottom he was a little surprised at this, because although his theories had been all in that direction for some time, he was not prepared to find himself actually eager to measure strength with quite so common a man as this ruffian. \]In a moment all the windows in the neighborhood were filled with people, and the roofs also.')*The men squared off, and the fight began.ABBut Allen stood no chance whatever, against the young Englishman.23Neither in muscle nor in science was he his equal.kHe measured his length on the tin time and again; in fact, as fast as he could get up he went down again, and the applause was kept up in liberal fashion from all the neighborhood around.-#$Finally, Allen had to be helped up. FGThen Tracy declined to punish him further and the fight was at an end.Allen was carried off by some of his friends in a very much humbled condition, his face black and blue and bleeding, and Tracy was at once surrounded by the young fellows, who congratulated him, and told him that he had done the whole house a service, and that from this out Mr..~Allen would be a little more particular about how he handled slights and insults and maltreatment around amongst the boarders."./Tracy was a hero now, and exceedingly popular.IJPerhaps nobody had ever been quite so popular on that upper floor before.OBut if being discountenanced by these young fellows had been hard to bear, their lavish commendations and approval and hero-worship was harder still to endure.WXHe felt degraded, but he did not allow himself to analyze the reasons why, too closely.He was content to satisfy himself with the suggestion that he looked upon himself as degraded by the public spectacle which he had made of himself, fighting on a tin roof, for the delectation of everybody a block or two around.=>But he wasn't entirely satisfied with that explanation of it.klOnce he went a little too far and wrote in his diary that his case was worse than that of the prodigal son.LMHe said the prodigal son merely fed swine, he didn't have to chum with them.45But he struck that out, and said "All men are equal.0 !I will not disown my principles.2These men are as good as I am.23Tracy was become popular on the lower floors also.;Everybody was grateful for Allen's reduction to the ranks, and for his transformation from a doer of outrages to a mere threatener of them.HThe young girls, of whom there were half a dozen, showed many attentions to Tracy, particularly that boarding house pet Hattie, the landlady's daughter.=>She said to him, very sweetly, "I think you're ever so nice.0And when he said, "I'm glad you think so, Miss Hattie," she said, still more sweetly, "Don't call me Miss Hattie--call me Puss.23Ah, here was promotion! He had struck the summit.=>There were no higher heights to climb in that boarding house.4His popularity was complete.-}~In the presence of people, Tracy showed a tranquil outside, but his heart was being eaten out of him by distress and despair.QIn a little while he should be out of money, and then what should he do? He wished, now, that he had borrowed a little more liberally from that stranger's store.0 !He found it impossible to sleep.A single torturing, terrifying thought went racking round and round in his head, wearing a groove in his brain: What should he do--What was to become of him? And along with it began to intrude a something presently which was very like a wish that he had not joined the great and noble ranks of martyrdom, but had stayed at home and been content to be merely an earl and nothing better, with nothing more to do in this world of a useful sort than an earl finds to do.But he smothered that part of his thought as well as he could; he made every effort to drive it away, and with fair keep it from intruding a little success, but he couldn't now and then, and when it intruded it came suddenly and nipped him like a bite, a sting, a burn.ABHe recognized that thought by the peculiar sharpness of its pang.KLThe others were painful enough, but that one cut to the quick when it calm.Night after night he lay tossing to the music of the hideous snoring of the honest bread-winners until two and three o'clock in the morning, then got up and took refuge on the roof, where he sometimes got a nap and sometimes failed entirely.JKHis appetite was leaving him and the zest of life was going along with it.  Finally, owe day, being near the imminent verge of total discouragement, he said to himself--and took occasion to blush privately when he said it, "If my father knew what my American name is,--he--well, my duty to my father rather requires that I furnish him my name.noI have no right to make his days and nights unhappy, I can do enough unhappiness for the family all by myself.12Really he ought to know what my American name is.!qrHe thought over it a while and framed a cablegram in his mind to this effect: "My American name is Howard Tracy.+%&That wouldn't be suggesting anything.xHis father could understand that as he chose, and doubtless he would understand it as it was meant, as a dutiful and affectionate desire on the part of a son to make his old father happy for a moment.@Continuing his train of thought, Tracy said to himself, "Ah, but if he should cable me to come home! I--I--couldn't do that--I mustn't do that.MNI've started out on a mission, and I mustn't turn my back on it in cowardice. GHNo, no, I couldn't go home, at--at-- least I shouldn't want to go home.After a reflective pause: "Well, maybe--perhaps--it would be my duty to go in the circumstances; he's very old and he does need me by him to stay his footsteps down the long hill that inclines westward toward the sunset of his life.4Well, I'll think about that.12Yes, of course it wouldn't be right to stay here.lmIf I-- well, perhaps I could just drop him a line and put it off a little while and satisfy him in that way.TUIt would be--well, it would mar everything to have him require me to come instantly.xAnother reflective pause-- then: "And yet if he should do that I don't know but--oh, dear me--home! how good it sounds! and a body is excusable for wanting to see his home again, now and then, anyway.He went to one of the telegraph offices in the avenue and got the first end of what Barrow called the "usual Washington courtesy," where "they treat you as a tramp until they find out you're a congressman, and then they slobber all over you.;<There was a boy of seventeen on duty there, tying his shoe.BCHe had his foot on a chair and his back turned towards the wicket. \]He glanced over his shoulder, took Tracy's measure, turned back, and went on tying his shoe.Tracy finished writing his telegram and waited, still waited, and still waited, for that performance to finish, but there didn't seem to be any finish to it; so finally Tracy said: "Can't you take my telegram?" The youth looked over his shoulder and said, by his manner, not his words: "Don't you think you could wait a minute, if you tried?" However, he got the shoe tied at last, and came and took the telegram, glanced over it, then looked up surprised, at Tracy.zThere was something in his look that bordered upon respect, almost reverence, it seemed to Tracy, although he had been so long without anything of this kind he was not sure that he knew the signs of it.JKThe boy read the address aloud, with pleased expression in face and voice.89The Earl of Rossmore! Cracky! Do you know him?" "Yes.$,-Is that so! Does he know you?" "Well--yes.78Well, I swear! Will he answer you?" "I think he will.;<Will he though? Where'll you have it sent?" "Oh, nowhere.6I'll call here and get it.<=When shall I call?" "Oh, I don't know--I'll send it to you.RSWhere shall I send it? Give me your address; I'll send it to you soon's it comes.,$%But Tracy didn't propose to do this.vHe had acquired the boy's admiration and deferential respect, and he wasn't willing to throw these precious things away, a result sure to follow if he should give the address of that boarding house.KLSo he said again that he would call and get the telegram, and went his way.5He idled along, reflecting. GHHe said to himself, "There is something pleasant about being respected.."#I have acquired the respect of Mr."rsAllen and some of those others, and almost the deference of some of them on pure merit, for having thrashed Allen.EWhile their respect and their deference--if it is deference--is pleasant, a deference based upon a sham, a shadow, does really seem pleasanter still.#stIt's no real merit to be in correspondence with an earl, and yet after all, that boy makes me feel as if there was.STThe cablegram was actually gone home! the thought of it gave him an immense uplift.1 He walked with a lighter tread.0 !His heart was full of happiness.WHe threw aside all hesitances and confessed to himself that he was glad through and through that he was going to give up this experiment and go back to his home again.!qrHis eagerness to get his father's answer began to grow, now, and it grew with marvelous celerity, after it began.He waited an hour, walking about, putting in his time as well as he could, but interested in nothing that came under his eye, and at last he presented himself at the office again and asked if any answer had come yet.*z{The boy said, "No, no answer yet," then glanced at the clock and added, "I don't think it's likely you'll get one to-day.34Why not?" "Well, you see it's getting pretty late.You can't always tell where 'bouts a man is when he's on the other side, and you can't always find him just the minute you want him, and you see it's getting about six o'clock now, and over there it's pretty late at night. 01Why yes," said Tracy, "I hadn't thought of that.!/0Yes, pretty late, now, half past ten or eleven.34Oh yes, you probably won't get any answer to-night.D CHAPTER XIV.3So Tracy went home to supper.WThe odors in that supper room seemed more strenuous and more horrible than ever before, and he was happy in the thought that he was so soon to be free from them again.5When the supper was over he hardly knew whether he had eaten any of it or not, and he certainly hadn't heard any of the conversation.His heart had been dancing all the time, his thoughts had been faraway from these things, and in the visions of his mind the sumptuous appointments of his father's castle had risen before him without rebuke.!qrEven the plushed flunkey, that walking symbol of a sham inequality, had not been unpleasant to his dreaming view.%+,After the meal Barrow said, "Come with me.2I'll give you a jolly evening.F Very good.-#$Where are you going?" "To my club.!/0What club is that?" "Mechanics' Debating Club.6Tracy shuddered, slightly.?@He didn't say anything about having visited that place himself.78Somehow he didn't quite relish the memory of that time. The sentiments which had made his former visit there so enjoyable, and filled him with such enthusiasm, had undergone a gradual change, and they had rotted away to such a degree that he couldn't contemplate another visit there with anything strongly resembling delight.wIn fact he was a little ashamed to go; he didn't want to go there and find out by the rude impact of the thought of those people upon his reorganized condition of mind, how sharp the change had been.+%&He would have preferred to stay away.XHe expected that now he should hear nothing except sentiments which would be a reproach to him in his changed mental attitude, and he rather wished he might be excused.And yet he didn't quite want to say that, he didn't want to show how he did feel, or show any disinclination to go, and so he forced himself to go along with Barrow, privately purposing to take an early opportunity to get away.XAfter the essayist of the evening had read his paper, the chairman announced that the debate would now be upon the subject of the previous meeting, "The American Press.?@It saddened the backsliding disciple to hear this announcement.+%&It brought up too many reminiscences.23He wished he had happened upon some other subject.45But the debate began, and he sat still and listened.uIn the course of the discussion one of the speakers--a blacksmith named Tompkins--arraigned all monarchs and all lords in the earth for their cold selfishness in retaining their unearned dignities.@He said that no monarch and no son of a monarch, no lord and no son of a lord ought to be able to look his fellow man in the face without shame.%&Shame for consenting to keep his unearned titles, property, and privileges--at the expense of other people; shame for consenting to remain, on any terms, in dishonourable possession of these things, which represented bygone robberies and wrongs inflicted upon the general people of the nation.JHe said, "if there were a laid or the son of a lord here, I would like to reason with him, and try to show him how unfair and how selfish his position is.I would try to persuade him to relinquish it, take his place among men on equal terms, earn the bread he eats, and hold of slight value all deference paid him because of artificial position, all reverence not the just due of his own personal merits.hiTracy seemed to be listening to utterances of his own made in talks with his radical friends in England.\It was as if some eavesdropping phonograph had treasured up his words and brought them across the Atlantic to accuse him with them in the hour of his defection and retreat._Every word spoken by this stranger seemed to leave a blister on Tracy's conscience, and by the time the speech was finished he felt that he was all conscience and one blister.This man's deep compassion for the enslaved and oppressed millions in Europe who had to bear with the contempt of that small class above them, throned upon shining heights whose paths were shut against them, was the very thing he had often uttered himself.`The pity in this man's voice and words was the very twin of the pity that used to reside in his own heart and come from his own lips when he thought of these oppressed peoples.89The homeward tramp was accomplished in brooding silence.34It was a silence most grateful to Tracy's feelings.hiHe wouldn't have broken it for anything; for he was ashamed of himself all the way through to his spine.He kept saying to himself: "How unanswerable it all is--how absolutely unanswerable! It is basely, degradingly selfish to keep those unearned honors, and--and--oh, hang it, nobody but a cur--" "What an idiotic damned speech that Tompkins made!" This outburst was from Barrow.?@It flooded Tracy's demoralized soul with waters of refreshment.These were the darlingest words the poor vacillating young apostate had ever heard--for they whitewashed his shame for him, and that is a good service to have when you can't get the best of all verdicts, self-acquittal.%+,Come up to my room and smoke a pipe, Tracy.'wxTracy had been expecting this invitation, and had had his declination all ready: but he was glad enough to accept, now.4Was it possible that a reasonable argument could be made against that man's desolating speech? He was burning to hear Barrow try it.+{|He knew how to start him, and keep him going: it was to seem to combat his positions--a process effective with most people.WWhat is it you object to in Tompkins's speech, Barrow?" "Oh, the leaving out of the factor of human nature; requiring another man to do what you wouldn't do yourself.:;Do you mean--" "Why here's what I mean; it's very simple.opTompkins is a blacksmith; has a family; works for wages; and hard, too--fooling around won't furnish the bread.2Suppose it should turn out that by the death of somebody in England he is suddenly an earl--income, half a million dollars a year.sWhat would he do?" "Well, I--I suppose he would have to decline to--" "Man, he would grab it in a second!" "Do you really think he would?" "Think?--I don't think anything about it, I know it.0 !Why?" "Because he's not a fool.9:So you think that if he were a fool, he--" "No, I don't.."#Fool or no fool, he would grab it.BAnybody would.;Anybody that's alive.:;And I've seen dead people that would get up and go for it.AI would myself. EFThis was balm, this was healing, this was rest and peace and comfort.#-.But I thought you were opposed to nobilities.8Transmissible ones, yes.=But that's nothing.PQI'm opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."rsYou'd take it?" "I would leave the funeral of my dearest enemy to go and assume its burdens and responsibilities.`aTracy thought a while, then said: "I don't know that I quite get the bearings of your position..~You say you are opposed to hereditary nobilities, and yet if you had the chance you would--" "Take one? In a minute I would.=>And there isn't a mechanic in that entire club that wouldn't.There isn't a lawyer, doctor, editor, author, tinker, loafer, railroad president, saint-land, there isn't a human being in the United States that wouldn't jump at the chance!" "Except me," said Tracy softly.NOExcept you!" Barrow could hardly get the words out, his scorn so choked him. \]And he couldn't get any further than that form of words; it seemed to dam his flow, utterly.;<He got up and came and glared upon Tracy in a kind of outraged and unappeasable way, and said again, "Except you!" He walked around him--inspecting him from one point of view and then another, and relieving his soul now and then by exploding that formula at him; "Except you!" Finally he slumped down into his chair with the air of one who gives it up, and said: "He's straining his viscera and he's breaking his heart trying to get some low-down job that a good dog wouldn't have, and yet wants to let on that if he had a chance to scoop an earldom he wouldn't do it.#-.Tracy, don't put this kind of a strain on me.."#Lately I'm not as strong as I was.yWell, I wasn't meaning to put--a strain on you, Barrow, I was only meaning to intimate that if an earldom ever does fall in my way--" "There--I wouldn't give myself any worry about that, if I was you.$,-And besides, I can settle what you would do.%+,Are you any different from me?" "Well--no.:;Are you any better than me?" "O,--er--why, certainly not.rAre you as good? Come!" "Indeed, I--the fact is you take me so suddenly--" "Suddenly? What is there sudden about it? It isn't a difficult question is it? Or doubtful? Just measure us on the only fair lines--the lines of merit--and of course you'll admit that a journeyman chairmaker that earns his twenty dollars a week, and has had the good and genuine culture of contact with men, and care, and hardship, and failure, and success, and downs and ups and ups and downs, is just a trifle the superior of a young fellow like you, who doesn't know how to do anything that's valuable, can't earn his living in any secure and steady way, hasn't had any experience of life and its seriousness, hasn't any culture but the artificial culture of books, which adorns but doesn't really educate --come! if I wouldn't scorn an earldom, what the devil right have you to do it!" Tracy dissembled his joy, though he wanted to thank the chair-maker for that last remark.^Presently a thought struck him, and he spoke up briskly and said: "But look here, I really can't quite get the hang of your notions--your principles, if they are principles.;You are inconsistent.IJYou are opposed to aristocracies, yet you'd take an earldom if you could.fgAm I to understand that you don't blame an earl for being and remaining an earl?" "I certainly don't.2And you wouldn't blame Tompkins, or yourself, or me, or anybody, for accepting an earldom if it was offered?" "Indeed I wouldn't.Well, then, who would you blame?" "The whole nation--any bulk and mass of population anywhere, in any country, that will put up with the infamy, the outrage, the insult of a hereditary aristocracy which they can't enter--and on absolutely free and equal terms.deCome, aren't you beclouding yourself with distinctions that are not differences?" "Indeed I am not.$,-I am entirely clear-headed about this thing.noIf I could extirpate an aristocratic system by declining its honors, then I should be a rascal to accept them.=And if enough of the mass would join me to make the extirpation possible, then I should be a rascal to do otherwise than help in the attempt.45I believe I understand--yes, I think I get the idea.zYou have no blame for the lucky few who naturally decline to vacate the pleasant nest they were born into, you only despise the all-powerful and stupid mass of the nation for allowing the nest to exist.bcThat's it, that's it! You can get a simple thing through your head if you work at it long enough.IThanks.?Don't mention it.And I'll give you some sound advice: when you go back; if you find your nation up and ready to abolish that hoary affront, lend a hand; but if that isn't the state of things and you get a chance at an earldom, don't you be a fool--you take it. [\Tracy responded with earnestness and enthusiasm: "As I live, I'll do it!" Barrow laughed.6I never saw such a fellow.78I begin to think you've got a good deal of imagination.>?With you, the idlest-fancy freezes into a reality at a breath.XYWhy, you looked, then, as if it wouldn't astonish you if you did tumble into an earldom.BTracy blushed.'(Barrow added: "Earldom! Oh, yes, take it, if it offers; but meantime we'll go on looking around, in a modest way, and if you get a chance to superintend a sausage-stuffer at six or eight dollars a week, you just trade off the earldom for a last year's almanac and stick to the sausage-stuffing.E CHAPTER XV.ABTracy went to bed happy once more, at rest in his mind once more.He had started out on a high emprise--that was to his credit, he argued; he had fought the best fight he could, considering the odds against him--that was to his credit; he had been defeated--certainly there was nothing discreditable in that.OBeing defeated, he had a right to retire with the honors of war and go back without prejudice to the position in the world's society to which he had been born.=>Why not? even the rabid republican chair-maker would do that."./Yes, his conscience was comfortable once more.67He woke refreshed, happy, and eager for his cablegram.bcHe had been born an aristocrat, he had been a democrat for a time, he was now an aristocrat again.He marveled to find that this final change was not merely intellectual, it had invaded his feeling; and he also marveled to note that this feeling seemed a good deal less artificial than any he had entertained in his system for a long time.;He could also have noted, if he had thought of it, that his bearing had stiffened, over night, and that his chin had lifted itself a shade.\Arrived in the basement, he was about to enter the breakfast room when he saw old Marsh in the dim light of a corner of the hall, beckoning him with his finger to approach.0The blood welled slowly up in Tracy's cheek, and he said with a grade of injured dignity almost ducal: "Is that for me?" "Yes.ABWhat is the purpose of it?" "I want to speak to you--in private.-#$This spot is private enough for me.23Marsh was surprised; and not particularly pleased.=>He approached and said: "Oh, in public, then, if you prefer.3Though it hasn't been my way."./The boarders gathered to the spot, interested.9Speak out," said Tracy. \]What is it you want?" "Well, haven't you--er--forgot something?" "I? I'm not aware of it.23Oh, you're not? Now you stop and think, a minute.5I refuse to stop and think.9It doesn't interest me.1 If it interests you, speak out.AWell, then," said Marsh, raising his voice to a slightly angry pitch, "You forgot to pay your board yesterday--if you're bound to have it public.2Oh, yes, this heir to an annual million or so had been dreaming and soaring, and had forgotten that pitiful three or four dollars.nFor penalty he must have it coarsely flung in his face in the presence of these people--people in whose countenances was already beginning to dawn an uncharitable enjoyment of the situation.;<Is that all! Take your money and give your terrors a rest.;<Tracy's hand went down into his pocket with angry decision.8But--it didn't come out.)'(The color began to ebb out of his face.abThe countenances about him showed a growing interest; and some of them a heightened satisfaction. \]There was an uncomfortable pause--then he forced out, with difficulty, the words: "I've--been robbed!" Old Marsh's eyes flamed up with Spanish fire, and he exclaimed: "Robbed, is it? That's your tune? It's too old--been played in this house too often; everybody plays it that can't get work when he wants it, and won't work when he can get it.D Trot out Mr.!/0Allen, somebody, and let him take a toot at it.!/0It's his turn next, he forgot, too, last night.=I'm laying for him.ijOne of the negro women came scrambling down stairs as pale as a sorrel horse with consternation and excitement: "Misto Marsh, Misto Allen's skipped out!" "What!" "Yes-sah, and cleaned out his room clean; tuck bofe towels en de soap!" "You lie, you hussy!" "It's jes' so, jes' as I tells you--en Misto Summer's socks is gone, en Misto Naylor's yuther shirt.MMr.(()Marsh was at boiling point by this time. pqHe turned upon Tracy: "Answer up now--when are you going to settle?" "To-day--since you seem to be in a hurry.9:To-day is it? Sunday--and you out of work? I like that.NOCome--where are you going to get the money?" Tracy's spirit was rising again.LMHe proposed to impress these people: "I am expecting a cablegram from home.23Old Marsh was caught out, with the surprise of it.RSThe idea was so immense, so extravagant, that he couldn't get his breath at first. 01When he did get it, it came rancid with sarcasm.dA cablegram--think of it, ladies and gents, he's expecting a cablegram! He's expecting a cablegram--this duffer, this scrub, this bilk! From his father--eh? Yes--without a doubt. pqA dollar or two a word--oh, that's nothing--they don't mind a little thing like that--this kind's fathers don't.VNow his father is--er--well, I reckon his father--" "My father is an English earl!" The crowd fell back aghast-aghast at the sublimity of the young loafer's "cheek.:;Then they burst into a laugh that made the windows rattle.@ATracy was too angry to realize that he had done a foolish thing.1 He said: "Stand aside, please."rsI--" "Wait a minute, your lordship," said Marsh, bowing low, "where is your lordship going?" "For the cablegram.D Let me pass.:;Excuse me, your lordship, you'll stay right where you are. YZWhat do you mean by that?" "I mean that I didn't begin to keep boarding-house yesterday.CIt means that I am not the kind that can be taken in by every hack-driver's son that comes loafing over here because he can't bum a living at home._`It means that you can't skip out on any such--" Tracy made a step toward the old man, but Mrs.$,-Marsh sprang between, and said: "Don't, Mr.BTracy, please.;<She turned to her husband and said, "Do bridle your tongue.)yzWhat has he done to be treated so? Can't you see he has lost his mind, with trouble and distress? He's not responsible.UThank your kind heart, madam, but I've not lost my mind; and if I can have the mere privilege of stepping to the telegraph office--" "Well, you can't," cried Marsh. 01or sending--" "Sending! That beats everything._`If there's anybody that's fool enough to go on such a chuckle-headed errand--" "Here comes Mr.6Barrow--he will go for me.CDBarrow--" A brisk fire of exclamations broke out-- "Say, Barrow, he's expecting a cablegram!" "Cablegram from his father, you know!" "Yes--cablegram from the wax-figger!" "And say, Barrow, this fellow's an earl--take off your hat, pull down your vest!" "Yes, he's come off and forgot his crown, that he wears Sundays.')*He's cabled over to his pappy to send it.PQYou step out and get that cablegram, Barrow; his majesty's a little lame to-day.!/0Oh stop," cried Barrow; "give the man a chance.2He turned, and said with some severity, "Tracy, what's the matter with you? What kind of foolishness is this you've been talking.3You ought to have more sense.cdI've not been talking foolishness; and if you'll go to the telegraph office--" "Oh; don't talk so.I'm your friend in trouble and out of it, before your face and behind your back, for anything in reason; but you've lost your head, you see, and this moonshine about a cablegram--" "I'll go there and ask for it!" "Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Brady.%+,Here, I'll give you a Written order for it.9Fly, now, and fetch it.3We'll soon see!" Brady flew.noImmediately the sort of quiet began to steal over the crowd which means dawning doubt, misgiving; and might be translated into the words, "Maybe he is expecting a cablegram--maybe he has got a father somewhere--maybe we've been just a little too fresh, just a shade too 'previous'!" Loud talk ceased; then the mutterings and low murmurings and whisperings died out./!"The crowd began to crumble apart.>?By ones and twos the fragments drifted to the breakfast table.JKBarrow tried to bring Tracy in; but he said: "Not yet, Barrow--presently.LMrs."rsMarsh and Hattie tried, offering gentle and kindly persuasions; but he said; "I would rather wait--till he comes.$%Even old Marsh began to have suspicions that maybe he had been a trifle too "brash," as he called it in the privacy of his soul, and he pulled himself together and started toward Tracy with invitation in his eyes; but Tracy warned him off with a gesture which was quite positive and eloquent.jkThen followed the stillest quarter of an hour which had ever been known in that house at that time of day.It was so still, and so solemn withal, that when somebody's cup slipped from his fingers and landed in his plate the shock made people start, and the sharp sound seemed as indecorous there and as out of place as if a coffin and mourners were imminent and being waited for.^_And at last when Brady's feet came clattering down the stairs the sacrilege seemed unbearable.DEverybody rose softly and turned toward the door, where stood Tracy; then with a common impulse, moved a step or two in that direction, and stopped.efWhile they gazed, young Brady arrived, panting, and put into Tracy's hand,--sure enough--an envelope.=Tracy fastened a bland victorious eye upon the gazers, and kept it there till one by one they dropped their eyes, vanquished and embarrassed.:;Then he tore open the telegram and glanced at its message. ]^The yellow paper fell from his fingers and fluttered to the floor, and his face turned white. 01There was nothing there but one word-- "Thanks.-}~The humorist of the house, the tall, raw-boned Billy Nash, caulker from the navy yard, was standing in the rear of the crowd.qIn the midst of the pathetic silence that was now brooding over the place and moving some few hearts there toward compassion, he began to whimper, then he put his handkerchief to his eyes and buried his face in the neck of the bashfulest young fellow in the company, a navy-yard blacksmith, shrieked "Oh, pappy, how could you!" and began to bawl like a teething baby, if one may imagine a baby with the energy and the devastating voice of a jackass.So perfect was that imitation of a child's cry, and so vast the scale of it and so ridiculous the aspect of the performer, that all gravity was swept from the place as if by a hurricane, and almost everybody there joined in the crash of laughter provoked by the exhibition.\Then the small mob began to take its revenge--revenge for the discomfort and apprehension it had brought upon itself by its own too rash freshness of a little while before.RSIt guyed its poor victim, baited him, worried him, as dogs do with a cornered cat.;<The victim answered back with defiances and challenges which included everybody, and which only gave the sport new spirit and variety; but when he changed his tactics and began to single out individuals and invite them by name, the fun lost its funniness and the interest of the show died out, along with the noise.`aFinally Marsh was about to take an innings, but Barrow said: "Never mind, now--leave him alone.!/0You've no account with him but a money account.2I'll take care of that myself.`aThe distressed and worried landlady gave Barrow a fervently grateful look for his championship of the abused stranger; and the pet of the house, a very prism in her cheap but ravishing Sunday rig, blew him a kiss from the tips of her fingers and said, with the darlingest smile and a sweet little toss of her head: "You're the only man here, and I'm going to set my cap for you, you dear old thing!" "For shame, Puss! How you talk! I never saw such a child!" It took a good deal of argument and persuasion--that is to say, petting, under these disguises--to get Tracy to entertain the idea of breakfast.He at first said he would never eat again in that house; and added that he had enough firmness of character, he trusted, to enable him to starve like a man when the alternative was to eat insult with his bread.~When he had finished his breakfast, Barrow took him to his room, furnished him a pipe, and said cheerily: "Now, old fellow, take in your battle-flag out of the wet, you're not in the hostile camp any more.noYou're a little upset by your troubles, and that's natural enough, but don't let your mind run on them anymore than you can help; drag your thoughts away from your troubles by the ears, by the heels, or any other way, so you manage it; it's the healthiest thing a body can do; dwelling on troubles is deadly, just deadly--and that's the softest name there is for it.12You must keep your mind amused--you must, indeed.HIOh, miserable me!" "Don't! There's just pure heart-break in that tone.cdIt's just as I say; you've got to get right down to it and amuse your mind, as if it was salvation.,-They're easy words to say, Barrow, but how am I going to amuse, entertain, divert a mind that finds itself suddenly assaulted and overwhelmed by disasters of a sort not dreamed of and not provided for? No--no, the bare idea of amusement is repulsive to my feelings: Let us talk of death and funerals.D No--not yet./!"That would be giving up the ship.1 We'll not give up the ship yet. [\I'm going to amuse you; I sent Brady out for the wherewithal before you finished breakfast.>?You did? What is it?" "Come, this is a good sign--curiosity.3Oh, there's hope for you yet.D CHAPTER XVI.,|}Brady arrived with a box, and departed, after saying, "They're finishing one up, but they'll be along as soon as it's done.aBarrow took a frameless oil portrait a foot square from the box, set it up in a good light, without comment, and reached for another, taking a furtive glance at Tracy, meantime. YZThe stony solemnity in Tracy's face remained as it was, and gave out no sign of interest.hiBarrow placed the second portrait beside the first, and stole another glance while reaching for a third.."#The stone image softened, a shade.MNo.0 !forced the ghost of a smile, No.)'(swept indifference wholly away, and No. EFstarted a laugh which was still in good and hearty condition when No.6took its place in the row.(()Oh, you're all right, yet," said Barrow.."#You see you're not past amusement.The pictures were fearful, as to color, and atrocious as to drawing and expression; but the feature which squelched animosity and made them funny was a feature which could not achieve its full force in a single picture, but required the wonder-working assistance of repetition.34One loudly dressed mechanic in stately attitude, with his hand on a cannon, ashore, and a ship riding at anchor in the offing,--this is merely odd; but when one sees the same cannon and the same ship in fourteen pictures in a row, and a different mechanic standing watch in each, the thing gets to be funny. 01Explain--explain these aberrations," said Tracy.mnWell, they are not the achievement of a single intellect, a single talent--it takes two to do these miracles.STThey are collaborations; the one artist does the figure, the other the accessories.The figure-artist is a German shoemaker with an untaught passion for art, the other is a simple hearted old Yankee sailor-man whose possibilities are strictly limited to his ship, his cannon and his patch of petrified sea.wThey work these things up from twenty-five-cent tintypes; they get six dollars apiece for them, and they can grind out a couple a day when they strike what they call a boost--that is, an inspiration. ]^People actually pay money for these calumnies?" "They actually do--and quite willingly, too.OPAnd these abortionists could double their trade and work the women in, if Capt.RSSaltmarsh could whirl a horse in, or a piano, or a guitar, in place of his cannon.56The fact is, he fatigues the market with that cannon.3Even the male market, I mean.78These fourteen in the procession are not all satisfied.\One is an old 'independent' fireman, and he wants an engine in place of the cannon; another is a mate of a tug, and wants a tug in place of the ship --and so on, and so on.ghBut the captain can't make a tug that is deceptive, and a fire engine is many flights beyond his power.UVThis is a most extraordinary form of robbery, I never have heard of anything like it.?It's interesting.4Yes, and so are the artists.%+,They are perfectly honest men, and sincere.8And the old sailor-man is full of sound religion, and is as devoted a student of the Bible and misquoter of it as you can find anywhere. pqI don't know a better man or kinder hearted old soul than Saltmarsh, although he does swear a little, sometimes.9He seems to be perfect.5I want to know him, Barrow.9You'll have the chance.0 !I guess I hear them coming, now."./We'll draw them out on their art, if you like.:;The artists arrived and shook hands with great heartiness.jkThe German was forty and a little fleshy, with a shiny bald head and a kindly face and deferential manner.KCapt.zSaltmarsh was sixty, tall, erect, powerfully built, with coal-black hair and whiskers, and he had a well tanned complexion, and a gait and countenance that were full of command, confidence and decision./His horny hands and wrists were covered with tattoo-marks, and when his lips parted, his teeth showed up white and blemishless.,|}His voice was the effortless deep bass of a church organ, and would disturb the tranquility of a gas flame fifty yards away.')*They're wonderful pictures," said Barrow.6We've been examining them.PQIt is very bleasant dot you like dem," said Handel, the German, greatly pleased.7Und you, Herr Tracy, you haf peen bleased mit dem too, alretty?" "I can honestly say I have never seen anything just like them before.,$%Schon!" cried the German, delighted.IJYou hear, Gaptain? Here is a chentleman, yes, vot abbreviate unser aart.UThe captain was charmed, and said: "Well, sir, we're thankful for a compliment yet, though they're not as scarce now as they used to be before we made a reputation. CDGetting the reputation is the up-hill time in most things, captain.H It's so.XYIt ain't enough to know how to reef a gasket, you got to make the mate know you know it.>That's reputation.*z{The good word, said at the right time, that's the word that makes us; and evil be to him that evil thinks, as Isaiah says.<=It's very relevant, and hits the point exactly," said Tracy.LMWhere did you study art, Captain?" "I haven't studied; it's a natural gift.."#He is born mit dose cannon in him.67He tondt haf to do noding, his chenius do all de vork.BCOf he is asleep, and take a pencil in his hand, out come a cannon.Py crashus, of he could do a clavier, of he could do a guitar, of he could do a vashtub, it is a fortune, heiliger Yohanniss it is yoost a fortune!" "Well, it is an immense pity that the business is hindered and limited in this unfortunate way. FGThe captain grew a trifle excited, himself, now: "You've said it, Mr.')*Tracy!--Hindered? well, I should say so.AWhy, look here.;This fellow here, No.23he's a hackman,--a flourishing hackman, I may say.."#He wants his hack in this picture.3Wants it where the cannon is../I got around that difficulty, by telling him the cannon's our trademark, so to speak--proves that the picture's our work, and I was afraid if we left it out people wouldn't know for certain if it was a Saltmarsh--Handel--now you wouldn't yourself--" "What, Captain? You wrong yourself, indeed you do.STAnyone who has once seen a genuine Saltmarsh-Handel is safe from imposture forever.Strip it, flay it, skin it out of every detail but the bare color and expression, and that man will still recognize it--still stop to worship--" "Oh, how it makes me feel to hear dose oxpressions!--" --"still say to himself again as he had, said a hundred times before, the art of the Saltmarsh-Handel is an art apart, there is nothing in the heavens above or in the earth beneath that resembles it,--" "Py chiminy, nur horen Sie einmal! In my life day haf I never heard so brecious worts.,$%So I talked him out of the hack, Mr.GTracy, and he let up on that, and said put in a hearse, then--because he's chief mate of a hearse but don't own it--stands a watch for wages, you know.VWBut I can't do a hearse any more than I can a hack; so here we are--becalmed, you see.*&'And it's the same with women and such.qThey come and they want a little johnry picture--" "It's the accessories that make it a 'genre?'" "Yes--cannon, or cat, or any little thing like that, that you heave into whoop up the effect.4We could do a prodigious trade with the women if we could foreground the things they like, but they don't give a damn for artillery.Mine's the lack," continued the captain with a sigh, "Andy's end of the business is all right I tell you he's an artist from way back!" "Yoost hear dot old man! He always talk 'poud me like dot," purred the pleased German.89Look at his work yourself! Fourteen portraits in a row.7And no two of them alike.ABNow that you speak of it, it is true; I hadn't noticed it before.:It is very remarkable.>Unique, I suppose.@I should say so.34That's the very thing about Andy--he discriminates.0Discrimination's the thief of time--forty-ninth Psalm; but that ain't any matter, it's the honest thing, and it pays in the end.Yes, he certainly is great in that feature, one is obliged to admit it; but--now mind, I'm not really criticising--don't you think he is just a trifle overstrong in technique?" The captain's face was knocked expressionless by this remark.JIt remained quite vacant while he muttered to himself--"Technique-- technique--polytechnique--pyro-technique; that's it, likely--fireworks too much color.]Then he spoke up with serenity and confidence, and said: "Well, yes, he does pile it on pretty loud; but they all like it, you know--fact is, it's the life of the business.C Take that No.7there, Evans the butcher.UVHe drops into the stoodio as sober-colored as anything you ever see: now look at him.*&'You can't tell him from scarlet fever.)'(Well, it pleases that butcher to death.BI'm making a study of a sausage-wreath to hang on the cannon, and I don't really reckon I can do it right, but if I can, we can break the butcher.Unquestionably your confederate--I mean your--your fellow-craftsman-- is a great colorist--" "Oh, danke schon!--" --"in fact a quite extraordinary colorist; a colorist, I make bold to say, without imitator here or abroad--and with a most bold and effective touch, a touch like a battering ram; and a manner so peculiar and romantic, and extraneous, and ad libitum, and heart-searching, that-- that--he--he is an impressionist, I presume?" "No," said the captain simply, "he is a Presbyterian.RIt accounts for it all--all--there's something divine about his art,-- soulful, unsatisfactory, yearning, dim hearkening on the void horizon, vague--murmuring to the spirit out of ultra-marine distances and far-sounding cataclysms of uncreated space--oh, if he--if, he--has he ever tried distemper?" The captain answered up with energy: "Not if he knows himself! But his dog has, and--" "Oh, no, it vas not my dog.2Why, you said it was your dog.<Oh, no, gaptain, I--" "It was a white dog, wasn't it, with his tail docked, and one ear gone, and--" "Dot's him, dot's him!--der fery dog.4Wy, py Chorge, dot dog he would eat baint yoost de same like--" "Well, never mind that, now--'vast heaving--I never saw such a man.34You start him on that dog and he'll dispute a year. EFBlamed if I haven't seen him keep it up a level two hours and a half.6Why captain!" said Barrow.3I guess that must be hearsay.23No, sir, no hearsay about it--he disputed with me.3I don't see how you stood it.(()Oh, you've got to--if you run with Andy./!"But it's the only fault he's got.ijAin't you afraid of acquiring it?" "Oh, no," said the captain, tranquilly, "no danger of that, I reckon.)'(The artists presently took their leave.VWThen Barrow put his hands on Tracy's shoulders and said: "Look me in the eye, my boy.ASteady, steady.OPThere--it's just as I thought--hoped, anyway; you're all right, thank goodness.."#Nothing the matter with your mind.*&'But don't do that again--even for fun.BIt isn't wise.<=They wouldn't have believed you if you'd been an earl's son.9Why, they couldn't--don't you know that? What ever possessed you to take such a freak? But never mind about that; let's not talk of it.(()It was a mistake; you see that yourself.:Yes--it was a mistake. DEWell, just drop it out of your mind; it's no harm; we all make them.?@Pull your courage together, and don't brood, and don't give up.>?I'm at your back, and we'll pull through, don't you be afraid.KLWhen he was gone, Barrow walked the floor a good while, uneasy in his mind.$,-He said to himself, "I'm troubled about him.VWHe never would have made a break like that if he hadn't been a little off his balance.IJBut I know what being out of work and no prospect ahead can do for a man.#stFirst it knocks the pluck out of him and drags his pride in the dirt; worry does the rest, and his mind gets shaky.4I must talk to these people.=No--if there's any humanity in them--and there is, at bottom-- they'll be easier on him if they think his troubles have disturbed his reason.MNBut I've got to find him some work; work's the only medicine for his disease.$,-Poor devil! away off here, and not a friend.,|}CHAPTER XVII The moment Tracy was alone his spirits vanished away, and all the misery of his situation was manifest to him.To be moneyless and an object of the chairmaker's charity--this was bad enough, but his folly in proclaiming himself an earl's son to that scoffing and unbelieving crew, and, on top of that, the humiliating result--the recollection of these things was a sharper torture still. YZHe made up his mind that he would never play earl's son again before a doubtful audience.78His father's answer was a blow he could not understand.|At times he thought his father imagined he could get work to do in America without any trouble, and was minded to let him try it and cure himself of his radicalism by hard, cold, disenchanting experience.PQThat seemed the most plausible theory, yet he could not content himself with it.6A theory that pleased him better was, that this cablegram would be followed by another, of a gentler sort, requiring him to come home.bcShould he write and strike his flag, and ask for a ticket home? Oh, no, that he couldn't ever do.>At least, not yet."./That cablegram would come, it certainly would.1So he went from one telegraph office to another every day for nearly a week, and asked if there was a cablegram for Howard Tracy.;No, there wasn't any.2So they answered him at first.23Later, they said it before he had a chance to ask.RSLater still they merely shook their heads impatiently as soon as he came in sight.')*After that he was ashamed to go any more.FHe was down in the lowest depths of despair, now; for the harder Barrow tried to find work for him the more hopeless the possibilities seemed to grow.)'(At last he said to Barrow: "Look here.4I want to make a confession.[I have got down, now, to where I am not only willing to acknowledge to myself that I am a shabby creature and full of false pride, but am willing to acknowledge it to you.-}~Well, I've been allowing you to wear yourself out hunting for work for me when there's been a chance open to me all the time.*&'Forgive my pride--what was left of it.DIt is all gone, now, and I've come to confess that if those ghastly artists want another confederate, I'm their man--for at last I am dead to shame.45No? Really, can you paint?" "Not as badly as they.eNo, I don't claim that, for I am not a genius; in fact, I am a very indifferent amateur, a slouchy dabster, a mere artistic sarcasm; but drunk or asleep I can beat those buccaneers.PQShake! I want to shout! Oh, I tell you, I am immensely delighted and relieved.WXOh, just to work--that is life! No matter what the work is-- that's of no consequence.<=Just work itself is bliss when a man's been starving for it.?@I've been there! Come right along; we'll hunt the old boys up.*&'Don't you feel good? I tell you I do./!"The freebooters were not at home.QRBut their "works" were, displayed in profusion all about the little ratty studio.fgCannon to the right of them, cannon to the left of them, cannon in front--it was Balaclava come again.*&'Here's the uncontented hackman, Tracy. EFBuckle to--deepen the sea-green to turf, turn the ship into a hearse.&*+Let the boys have a taste of your quality.67The artists arrived just as the last touch was put on.*&'They stood transfixed with admiration.STMy souls but she's a stunner, that hearse! The hackman will just go all to pieces when he sees that won't he Andy?" "Oh, it is sphlennid, sphlennid! Herr Tracy, why haf you not said you vas a so sublime aartist? Lob' Gott, of you had lif'd in Paris you would be a Pree de Rome, dot's votes de matter!" The arrangements were soon made.[Tracy was taken into full and equal partnership, and he went straight to work, with dash and energy, to reconstructing gems of art whose accessories had failed to satisfy.klUnder his hand, on that and succeeding days, artillery disappeared and the emblems of peace and commerce took its place--cats, hacks, sausages, tugs, fire engines, pianos, guitars, rocks, gardens, flower-pots, landscapes--whatever was wanted, he flung it in; and the more out of place and absurd the required object was, the more joy he got out of fabricating it.%uvThe pirates were delighted, the customers applauded, the sex began to flock in, great was the prosperity of the firm.'(Tracy was obliged to confess to himself that there was something about work,--even such grotesque and humble work as this--which most pleasantly satisfied a something in his nature which had never been satisfied before, and also gave him a strange new dignity in his own private view of himself.onfess to himself that there was something about work,--even such grotesque and humble work as this--which most pleasantly satisfied a something in his nature which had never been satisfied before, and also gave him a strange new dignity in his own private view of himself.LMThe Unqualified Member from Cherokee Strip was in a state of deep dejection.fFor a good while, now, he had been leading a sort of life which was calculated to kill; for it had consisted in regularly alternating days of brilliant hope and black disappointment.The brilliant hopes were created by the magician Sellers, and they always promised that now he had got the trick, sure, and would effectively influence that materialized cowboy to call at the Towers before night.abThe black disappointments consisted in the persistent and monotonous failure of these prophecies.^At the date which this history has now reached, Sellers was appalled to find that the usual remedy was inoperative, and that Hawkins's low spirits refused absolutely to lift.LSomething must be done, he reflected; it was heart-breaking, this woe, this smileless misery, this dull despair that looked out from his poor friend's face.5Yes, he must be cheered up.*&'He mused a while, then he saw his way.He said in his most conspicuously casual vein: "Er--uh--by the way, Hawkins, we are feeling disappointed about this thing--the way the materializee is acting, I mean--we are disappointed; you concede that?" "Concede it? Why, yes, if you like the term.5Very well; so far, so good./!"Now for the basis of the feeling.*z{It is not that your heart, your affections are concerned; that is to say, it is not that you want the materializee Itself.9:You concede that?" "Yes, I concede that, too--cordially.')*Very well, again; we are making progress.To sum up: The feeling, it is conceded, is not engendered by the mere conduct of the materializee; it is conceded that it does not arise from any pang which the personality of the materializee could assuage.fNow then," said the earl, with the light of triumph in his eye, "the inexorable logic of the situation narrows us down to this: our feeling has its source in the money-loss involved.IJCome--isn't that so?" "Goodness knows I concede that, with all my heart.F Very well.#stWhen you've found out the source of a disease, you've also found out what remedy is required--just as in this case.1 In this case money is required.AAnd only money.,|}The old, old seduction was in that airy, confident tone and those significant words--usually called pregnant words in books.eThe old answering signs of faith and hope showed up in Hawkins's countenance, and he said: "Only money? Do you mean that you know a way to--" "Washington, have you the impression that I have no resources but those I allow the public and my intimate friends to know about?" "Well, I--er--" "Is it likely, do you think, that a man moved by nature and taught by experience to keep his affairs to himself and a cautious and reluctant tongue in his head, wouldn't be thoughtful enough to keep a few resources in reserve for a rainy day, when he's got as many as I have to select from?" "Oh, you make me feel so much better already, Colonel!" "Have you ever been in my laboratory?" "Why, no.F That's it.$,-You see you didn't even know that I had one.E Come along.67I've got a little trick there that I want to show you. FGI've kept it perfectly quiet, not fifty people know anything about it.*&'But that's my way, always been my way.]Wait till you're ready, that's the idea; and when you're ready, zzip!--let her go!" "Well, Colonel, I've never seen a man that I've had such unbounded confidence in as you.)yzWhen you say a thing right out, I always feel as if that ends it; as if that is evidence, and proof, and everything else. 01The old earl was profoundly pleased and touched.ABI'm glad you believe in me, Washington; not everybody is so just. DEI always have believed in you; and I always shall as long as I live.>Thank you, my boy.;You shan't repent it.BAnd you can't.Arrived in the "laboratory," the earl continued, "Now, cast your eye around this room--what do you see? Apparently a junk-shop; apparently a hospital connected with a patent office--in reality, the mines of Golconda in disguise! Look at that thing there.RSNow what would you take that thing to be?" "I don't believe I could ever imagine.9Of course you couldn't.ABIt's my grand adaptation of the phonograph to the marine service.$,-You store up profanity in it for use at sea.HYou know that sailors don't fly around worth a cent unless you swear at them--so the mate that can do the best job of swearing is the most valuable man.!/0In great emergencies his talent saves the ship.^But a ship is a large thing, and he can't be everywhere at once; so there have been times when one mate has lost a ship which could have been saved if they had had a hundred.4Prodigious storms, you know.eWell, a ship can't afford a hundred mates; but she can afford a hundred Cursing Phonographs, and distribute them all over the vessel--and there, you see, she's armed at every point.<Imagine a big storm, and a hundred of my machines all cursing away at once--splendid spectacle, splendid!--you couldn't hear yourself think.WXShip goes through that storm perfectly serene--she's just as safe as she'd be on shore.:It's a wonderful idea.9:How do you prepare the thing?" "Load it--simply load it.56How?" "Why you just stand over it and swear into it. Z[That loads it, does it?" "Yes--because every word it collars, it keeps--keeps it forever.@Never wears out.$,-Any time you turn the crank, out it'll come. GHIn times of great peril, you can reverse it, and it'll swear backwards."./That makes a sailor hump himself!" "O, I see.12Who loads them?--the mate?" "Yes, if he chooses.,$%Or I'll furnish them already loaded. pqI can hire an expert for $75 a month who will load a hundred and fifty phonographs in 150 hours, and do it easy.ghAnd an expert can furnish a stronger article, of course, than the mere average uncultivated mate could.3Then you see, all the ships of the world will buy them ready loaded--for I shall have them loaded in any language a customer wants. DEHawkins, it will work the grandest moral reform of the 19th century.3Five years from now, all the swearing will be done by machinery--you won't ever hear a profane word come from human lips on a ship.!qrMillions of dollars have been spent by the churches, in the effort to abolish profanity in the commercial marine.GThink of it--my name will live forever in the affections of good men as the man, who, solitary and alone, accomplished this noble and elevating reform.$,-O, it is grand and beneficent and beautiful.ABHow did you ever come to think of it? You have a wonderful mind.PQHow did you say you loaded the machine?" "O, it's no trouble--perfectly simple.MNIf you want to load it up loud and strong, you stand right over it and shout.OBut if you leave it open and all set, it'll eavesdrop, so to speak--that is to say, it will load itself up with any sounds that are made within six feet of it.1 Now I'll show you how it works.45I had an expert come and load this one up yesterday.opHello, it's been left open--it's too bad--still I reckon it hasn't had much chance to collect irrelevant stuff.45All you do is to press this button in the floor--so.MThe phonograph began to sing in a plaintive voice: There is a boarding-house, far far away, Where they have ham and eggs, 3 times a day.9Hang it, that ain't it.,$%Somebody's been singing around here.+,The plaintive song began again, mingled with a low, gradually rising wail of cats slowly warming up toward a fight; O, how the boarders yell, When they hear that dinner bell They give that landlord-- (momentary outburst of terrific catfight which drowns out one word.>Three times a day.')*Renewal of furious catfight for a moment.abThe plaintive voice on a high fierce key, "Scat, you devils"--and a racket as of flying missiles.4Well, never mind--let it go.MNI've got some sailor-profanity down in there somewhere, if I could get to it.78But it isn't any matter; you see how the machine works.efHawkins responded with enthusiasm: "O, it works admirably! I know there's a hundred fortunes in it.9:And mind, the Hawkins family get their share, Washington.45O, thanks, thanks; you are just as generous as ever.TUAh, it's the grandest invention of the age!" "Ah, well; we live in wonderful times.IThe elements are crowded full of beneficent forces--always have been--and ours is the first generation to turn them to account and make them work for us. CDWhy Hawkins, everything is useful--nothing ought ever to be wasted.,$%Now look at sewer gas, for instance.ijSewer gas has always been wasted, heretofore; nobody tried to save up sewer-gas--you can't name me a man.!/0Ain't that so? you know perfectly well it's so.!qrYes it is so--but I never--er--I don't quite see why a body--" "Should want to save it up? Well, I'll tell you.RSDo you see this little invention here?--it's a decomposer--I call it a decomposer.I give you my word of honor that if you show me a house that produces a given quantity of sewer-gas in a day, I'll engage to set up my decomposer there and make that house produce a hundred times that quantity of sewer-gas in less than half an hour.IJDear me, but why should you want to?" "Want to? Listen, and you'll see. pqMy boy, for illuminating purposes and economy combined, there's nothing in the world that begins with sewer-gas./!"And really, it don't cost a cent.'wxYou put in a good inferior article of plumbing,--such as you find everywhere--and add my decomposer, and there you are.=>Just use the ordinary gas pipes--and there your expense ends.D Think of it. ]^Why, Major, in five years from now you won't see a house lighted with anything but sewer-gas.<=Every physician I talk to, recommends it; and every plumber.5But isn't it dangerous?" "O, yes, more or less, but everything is--coal gas, candles, electricity --there isn't anything that ain't. 01It lights up well, does it?" "O, magnificently.BCHave you given it a good trial?" "Well, no, not a first rate one.TPolly's prejudiced, and she won't let me put it in here; but I'm playing my cards to get it adopted in the President's house, and then it'll go--don't you doubt it.3I shall not need this one for the present, Washington; you may take it down to some boarding-house and give it a trial if you like.BCHAPTER XVIII.-}~Washington shuddered slightly at the suggestion, then his face took on a dreamy look and he dropped into a trance of thought.JKAfter a little, Sellers asked him what he was grinding in his mental mill.E Well, this.Have you got some secret project in your head which requires a Bank of England back of it to make it succeed?" The Colonel showed lively astonishment, and said: "Why, Hawkins, are you a mind-reader?" "I? I never thought of such a thing.EWell, then how did you happen to drop onto that idea in this curious fashion? It's just mind-reading, that's what it is, though you may not know it.QRBecause I have got a private project that requires a Bank of England at its back. FGHow could you divine that? What was the process? This is interesting.7There wasn't any process.0A thought like this happened to slip through my head by accident: How much would make you or me comfortable? A hundred thousand.9Yet you are expecting two or three of--these inventions of yours to turn out some billions of money--and you are wanting them to do that.RSIf you wanted ten millions, I could understand that--it's inside the human limits.!/0But billions! That's clear outside the limits.89There must be a definite project back of that somewhere.dThe earl's interest and surprise augmented with every word, and when Hawkins finished, he said with strong admiration: "It's wonderfully reasoned out, Washington, it certainly is.9:It shows what I think is quite extraordinary penetration.VWFor you've hit it; you've driven the centre, you've plugged the bulls-eye of my dream.<=Now I'll tell you the whole thing, and you'll understand it.UI don't need to ask you to keep it to yourself, because you'll see that the project will prosper all the better for being kept in the background till the right time.PHave you noticed how many pamphlets and books I've got lying around relating to Russia?" "Yes, I think most anybody would notice that--anybody who wasn't dead.$,-Well, I've been posting myself a good while.ABThat's a great and, splendid nation, and deserves to be set free.efHe paused, then added in a quite matter-of-fact way, "When I get this money I'm going to set it free.WXGreat guns!" "Why, what makes you jump like that?" "Dear me, when you are going to drop a remark under a man's chair that is likely to blow him out through the roof, why don't you put some expression, some force, some noise unto it that will prepare him? You shouldn't flip out such a gigantic thing as this in that colorless kind of a way.4You do jolt a person up, so.0 !Go on, now, I'm all right again.;Tell me all about it.')*I'm all interest--yes, and sympathy, too.tWell, I've looked the ground over, and concluded that the methods of the Russian patriots, while good enough considering the way the boys are hampered, are not the best; at least not the quickest.RThey are trying to revolutionize Russia from within; that's pretty slow, you know, and liable to interruption all the time, and is full of perils for the workers.Do you know how Peter the Great started his army? He didn't start it on the family premises under the noses of the Strelitzes; no, he started it away off yonder, privately,--only just one regiment, you know, and he built to that.&vwThe first thing the Strelitzes knew, the regiment was an army, their position was turned, and they had to take a walk. Z[Just that little idea made the biggest and worst of all the despotisms the world has seen.4The same idea can unmake it.:I'm going to prove it. FGI'm going to get out to one side and work my scheme the way Peter did.+%&This is mighty interesting, Rossmore.STWhat is it you are, going to do?" "I am going to buy Siberia and start a republic.klThere,--bang you go again, without giving any notice! Going to buy it?" "Yes, as soon as I get the money. 01I don't care what the price is, I shall take it.4I can afford it, and I will. GHNow then, consider this-- and you've never thought of it, I'll warrant. Where is the place where there is twenty-five times more manhood, pluck, true heroism, unselfishness, devotion to high and noble ideals, adoration of liberty, wide education, and brains, per thousand of population, than any other domain in the whole world can show?" "Siberia!" "Right. CDIt is true; it certainly is true, but I never thought of it before.7Nobody ever thinks of it.5But it's so, just the same.@In those mines and prisons are gathered together the very finest and noblest and capablest multitude of human beings that God is able to create.@Now if you had that kind of a population to sell, would you offer it to a despotism? No, the despotism has no use for it; you would lose money.56A despotism has no use for anything but human cattle.89But suppose you want to start a republic?" "Yes, I see.2It's just the material for it.'(Well, I should say so! There's Siberia with just the very finest and choicest material on the globe for a republic, and more coming--more coming all the time, don't you see! It is being daily, weekly, monthly recruited by the most perfectly devised system that has ever been invented, perhaps.KLBy this system the whole of the hundred millions of Russia are being constantly and patiently sifted, sifted, sifted, by myriads of trained experts, spies appointed by the Emperor personally; and whenever they catch a man, woman or child that has got any brains or education or character, they ship that person straight to Siberia./!"It is admirable, it is wonderful.0It is so searching and so effective that it keeps the general level of Russian intellect and education down to that of the Czar.,$%Come, that sounds like exaggeration.0 !Well, it's what they say anyway.0 !But I think, myself, it's a lie. EFAnd it doesn't seem right to slander a whole nation that way, anyhow.JKNow, then, you see what the material is, there in Siberia, for a republic.bcHe paused, and his breast began to heave and his eye to burn, under the impulse of strong emotion.?Then his words began to stream forth, with constantly increasing energy and fire, and he rose to his feet as if to give himself larger freedom.~The minute I organize that republic, the light of liberty, intelligence, justice, humanity, bursting from it, flooding from it, flaming from it, will concentrate the gaze of the whole astonished world as upon the miracle of a new sun; Russia's countless multitudes of slaves will rise up and march, march!--eastward, with that great light transfiguring their faces as they come, and far back of them you will see-what will you see?--a vacant throne in an empty land! It can be done, and by God I will do it!" He stood a moment bereft of earthy consciousness by his exaltation; then consciousness returned, bringing him a slight shock, and he said with grave earnestness: "I must ask you to pardon me, Major Hawkins.RSI have never used that expression before, and I beg you will forgive it this time.6Hawkins was quite willing. GHYou see, Washington, it is an error which I am by nature not liable to.;<Only excitable people, impulsive people, are exposed to it.But the circumstances of the present case--I being a democrat by birth and preference, and an aristocrat by inheritance and relish--" The earl stopped suddenly, his frame stiffened, and he began to stare speechless through the curtainless window..~Then he pointed, and gasped out a single rapturous word: "Look!" "What is it, Colonel?" "IT!" "No!" "Sure as you're born.;Keep perfectly still.56I'll apply the influence-- I'll turn on all my force.=>I've brought It thus far--I'll fetch It right into the house.E You'll see.<=He was making all sorts of passes in the air with his hands.;There! Look at that.)'(I've made It smile! See?" Quite true.'wxTracy, out for an afternoon stroll, had come unexpectantly upon his family arms displayed upon this shabby house-front.^_The hatchments made him smile; which was nothing, they had made the neighborhood cats do that.OPLook, Hawkins, look! I'm drawing It over!" "You're drawing it sure, Rossmore.UVIf I ever had any doubts about materialization, they're gone, now, and gone for good.MNOh, this is a joyful day!" Tracy was sauntering over to read the door-plate."rsBefore he was half way over he was saying to himself, "Why, manifestly these are the American Claimant's quarters.0 !It's coming--coming right along.0 !I'll slide, down and pull It in.<You follow after me.MNSellers, pale and a good deal agitated, opened the door and confronted Tracy.QThe old man could not at once get his voice: then he pumped out a scattering and hardly coherent salutation, and followed it with-- "Walk in, walk right in, Mr.4er--" "Tracy--Howard Tracy."./Tracy--thanks--walk right in, you're expected._`Tracy entered, considerably puzzled, and said: "Expected? I think there must be some mistake.Oh, I judge not," said Sellers, who--noticing that Hawkins had arrived, gave him a sidewise glance intended to call his close attention to a dramatic effect which he was proposing to produce by his next remark.;<Then he said, slowly and impressively--"I am--YOU KNOW WHO.bTo the astonishment of both conspirators the remark produced no dramatic effect at all; for the new-comer responded with a quite innocent and unembarrassed air-- "No, pardon me.7I don't know who you are.cdI only suppose--but no doubt correctly--that you are the gentleman whose title is on the doorplate.$,-Right, quite right--sit down, pray sit down. GHThe earl was rattled, thrown off his bearings, his head was in a whirl.BThen he noticed Hawkins standing apart and staring idiotically at what to him was the apparition of a defunct man, and a new idea was born to him.%uvHe said to Tracy briskly: "But a thousand pardons, dear sir, I am forgetting courtesies due to a guest and stranger.hiLet me introduce my friend General Hawkins--General Hawkins, our new Senator--Senator from the latest and grandest addition to the radiant galaxy of sovereign States, Cherokee Strip"--(to himself, "that name will shrivel him up!"--but it didn't, in the least, and the Colonel resumed the introduction piteously disheartened and amazed),-- "Senator Hawkins, Mr.."#Howard Tracy, of--er--" "England.=>England!--Why that's im--" "England, yes, native of England.$,-Recently from there?" "Yes, quite recently.?@Said the Colonel to himself, "This phantom lies like an expert.)'(Purifying this kind by fire don't work.QRI'll sound him a little further, give him another chance or two to work his gift.bcThen aloud--with deep irony-- "Visiting our great country for recreation and amusement, no doubt.sI suppose you find that traveling in the majestic expanses of our Far West is--" "I haven't been West, and haven't been devoting myself to amusement with any sort of exclusiveness, I assure you.=>In fact, to merely live, an artist has got to work, not play.cArtist!" said Hawkins to himself, thinking of the rifled bank; "that is a name for it!" "Are you an artist?" asked the colonel; and added to himself, "now I'm going to catch him.;In a humble way, yes.,$%What line?" pursued the sly veteran.KOils.)'(I've got him!" said Sellers to himself.1 Then aloud, "This is fortunate.efCould I engage you to restore some of my paintings that need that attention?" "I shall be very glad.;Pray let me see them.IJNo shuffling, no evasion, no embarrassment, even under this crucial test.5The Colonel was nonplussed.XHe led Tracy to a chromo which had suffered damage in a former owner's hands through being used as a lamp mat, and said, with a flourish of his hand toward the picture-- "This del Sarto--" "Is that a del Sarto?" The colonel bent a look of reproach upon Tracy, allowed it to sink home, then resumed as if there had been no interruption-- "This del Sarto is perhaps the only original of that sublime master in our country.lYou see, yourself, that the work is of such exceeding delicacy that the risk--could--er--would you mind giving me a little example of what you can do before we--" "Cheerfully, cheerfully./!"I will copy one of these marvels.IJWater-color materials--relics of Miss Sally's college life--were brought. EFTracy said he was better in oils, but would take a chance with these.;So he was left alone.<He began his work, but the attractions of the place were too strong for him, and he got up and went drifting about, fascinated; also amazed.D CHAPTER XIX.WXMeantime the earl and Hawkins were holding a troubled and anxious private consultation.mnThe earl said: "The mystery that bothers me, is, where did It get its other arm?" "Yes--it worries me, too.9:And another thing troubles me--the apparition is English.^_How do you account for that, Colonel?" "Honestly, I don't know, Hawkins, I don't really know.1 It is very confusing and awful.RDon't you think maybe we've waked up the wrong one?" "The wrong one? How do you account for the clothes?" "The clothes are right, there's no getting around it.56What are we going to do? We can't collect, as I see.)'(The reward is for a one-armed American.1 This is a two-armed Englishman.!/0Well, it may be that that is not objectionable.)yzYou see it isn't less than is called for, it is more, and so,--" But he saw that this argument was weak, and dropped it. FGThe friends sat brooding over their perplexities some time in silence.^Finally the earl's face began to glow with an inspiration, and he said, impressively: "Hawkins, this materialization is a grander and nobler science than we have dreamed of.HIWe have little imagined what a solemn and stupendous thing we have done.=>The whole secret is perfectly clear to me, now, clear as day.XYEvery man is made up of heredities, long-descended atoms and particles of his ancestors.%+,This present materialization is incomplete. FGWe have only brought it down to perhaps the beginning of this century.%uvWhat do you mean, Colonel!" cried Hawkins, filled with vague alarms by the old man's awe-compelling words and manner.KThis.IJWe've materialized this burglar's ancestor!" "Oh, don't--don't say that.C It's hideous.."#But it's true, Hawkins, I know it.>Look at the facts.12This apparition is distinctly English--note that.0 !It uses good grammar--note that.5It is an Artist--note that.;<It has the manners and carriage of a gentleman-- note that.*&'Where's your cow-boy? Answer me that.QRossmore, this is dreadful--it's too dreadful to think of!" "Never resurrected a rag of that burglar but the clothes, not a solitary rag of him but the clothes. pqColonel, do you really mean--" The Colonel brought his fist down with emphasis and said: "I mean exactly this.GThe materialization was immature, the burglar has evaded us, this is nothing but a damned ancestor!" He rose and walked the floor in great excitement.ABHawkins said plaintively: "It's a bitter disappointment--bitter.F I know it.9:I know it, Senator; I feel it as deeply as anybody could.&*+But we've got to submit--on moral grounds.\I need money, but God knows I am not poor enough or shabby enough to be an accessory to the punishing of a man's ancestor for crimes committed by that ancestor's posterity.6But Colonel!" implored Hawkins; "stop and think; don't be rash; you know it's the only chance we've got to get the money; and besides, the Bible itself says posterity to the fourth generation shall be punished for the sins and crimes committed by ancestors four generations back that hadn't anything to do with them; and so it's only fair to turn the rule around and make it work both ways.>?The Colonel was struck with the strong logic of this position.56He strode up and down, and thought it painfully over. CDFinally he said: "There's reason in it; yes, there's reason in it.oAnd so, although it seems a piteous thing to sweat this poor ancient devil for a burglary he hadn't the least hand in, still if duty commands I suppose we must give him up to the authorities.!qrI would," said Hawkins, cheered and relieved, "I'd give him up if he was a thousand ancestors compacted into one.[Lord bless me, that's just what he is," said Sellers, with something like a groan, "it's exactly what he is; there's a contribution in him from every ancestor he ever had.=>In him there's atoms of priests, soldiers, crusaders, poets, and sweet and gracious women--all kinds and conditions of folk who trod this earth in old, old centuries, and vanished out of it ages ago, and now by act of ours they are summoned from their holy peace to answer for gutting a one-horse bank away out on the borders of Cherokee Strip, and it's just a howling outrage!" "Oh, don't talk like that, Colonel; it takes the heart all out of me, and makes me ashamed of the part I am proposing to--" "Wait--I've got it!" "A saving hope? Shout it out, I am perishing.89It's perfectly simple; a child would have thought of it. FGHe is all right, not a flaw in him, as far as I have carried the work.<If I've been able to bring him as far as the beginning of this century, what's to stop me now? I'll go on and materialize him down to date. GHLand, I never thought of that!" said Hawkins all ablaze with joy again.<It's the very thing.MNWhat a brain you have got! And will he shed the superfluous arm?" "He will.9:And lose his English accent?" "It will wholly disappear.;<He will speak Cherokee Strip--and other forms of profanity.wColonel, maybe he'll confess!" "Confess? Merely that bank robbery?" "Merely? Yes, but why 'merely'?" The Colonel said in his most impressive manner: "Hawkins, he will be wholly under my command.67I will make him confess every crime he ever committed.7There must be a thousand.(()Do you get the idea?" "Well--not quite.4The rewards will come to us.EProdigious conception! I never saw such ahead for seeing with a lightning glance all the outlying ramifications and possibilities of a central idea.*&'It is nothing; it comes natural to me.<When his time is out in one jail he goes to the next and the next, and we shall have nothing to do but collect the rewards as he goes along.<=It is a perfectly steady income as long as we live, Hawkins.NOAnd much better than other kinds of investments, because he is indestructible.>?It looks--it really does look the way you say; it does indeed.?Look?--why it is.yIt will not be denied that I have had a pretty wide and comprehensive financial experience, and I do not hesitate to say that I consider this one of the most valuable properties I have ever controlled.(()Do you really think so?" "I do, indeed.UVO, Colonel, the wasting grind and grief of poverty! If we could realize immediately.ghI don't mean sell it all, but sell part--enough, you know, to--" "See how you tremble with excitement./!"That comes of lack of experience.`aMy boy, when you have been familiar with vast operations as long as I have, you'll be different.,|}Look at me; is my eye dilated? do you notice a quiver anywhere? Feel my pulse: plunk-plunk-plunk--same as if I were asleep.>And yet, what is passing through my calm cold mind? A procession of figures which would make a financial novice drunk just the sight of them.~Now it is by keeping cool, and looking at a thing all around, that a man sees what's really in it, and saves himself from the novice's unfailing mistake--the one you've just suggested--eagerness to realize.C Listen to me.23Your idea is to sell a part of him for ready cash.=Now mine is--guess.>I haven't an idea.,$%What is it?" "Stock him--of course.&*+Well, I should never have thought of that.0 !Because you are not a financier.)'(Say he has committed a thousand crimes.0 !Certainly that's a low estimate.XYBy the look of him, even in his unfinished condition, he has committed all of a million.qBut call it only a thousand to be perfectly safe; five thousand reward, multiplied by a thousand, gives us a dead sure cash basis of--what? Five million dollars!" "Wait--let me get my breath.0 !And the property indestructible.(xyPerpetually fruitful--perpetually; for a property with his disposition will go on committing crimes and winning rewards.NOYou daze me, you make my head whirl!" "Let it whirl, it won't do it any harm."./Now that matter is all fixed-- leave it alone.>?I'll get up the company and issue the stock, all in good time.6Just leave it in my hands. EFI judge you don't doubt my ability to work it up for all it is worth.AIndeed I don't.6I can say that with truth.@All right, then.=That's disposed of.9Everything in its turn.MNWe old operators, go by order and system--no helter-skelter business with us.klWhat's the next thing on the docket? The carrying on of the materialization--the bringing it down to date.3I will begin on that at once.0 !I think-- "Look here, Rossmore.:You didn't lock It in.bcA hundred to one it has escaped!" "Calm yourself, as to that; don't give yourself any uneasiness.-}~But why shouldn't it escape?" "Let it, if it wants to? What of it?" "Well, I should consider it a pretty serious calamity.78Why, my dear boy, once in my power, always in my power.6It may go and come freely.JKI can produce it here whenever I want it, just by the exercise of my will.45Well, I am truly glad to hear that, I do assure you.0Yes, I shall give it all the painting it wants to do, and we and the family will make it as comfortable and contented as we can.*&'No occasion to restrain its movements.NOI hope to persuade it to remain pretty quiet, though, because a materialization which is in a state of arrested development must of necessity be pretty soft and flabby and substanceless, and--er--by the way, I wonder where It comes from?" "How? What do you mean?" The earl pointed significantly--and interrogatively toward the sky.mnHawkins started; then settled into deep reflection; finally shook his head sorrowfully and pointed downwards.DWhat makes you think so, Washington?" "Well, I hardly know, but really you can see, yourself, that he doesn't seem to be pining for his last place.,$%It's well thought! Soundly deduced.2We've done that Thing a favor.TUBut I believe I will pump it a little, in a quiet way, and find out if we are right."rsHow long is it going to take to finish him off and fetch him down to date, Colonel?" "I wish I knew, but I don't.]I am clear knocked out by this new detail-- this unforeseen necessity of working a subject down gradually from his condition of ancestor to his ultimate result as posterity.)'(But I'll make him hump himself, anyway.9Rossmore!" "Yes, dear.8We're in the laboratory.:Come--Hawkins is here. Z[Mind, now Hawkins--he's a sound, living, human being to all the family--don't forget that.AHere she comes.-#$Keep your seats, I'm not coming in.89I just wanted to ask, who is it that's painting down there?" "That? Oh, that's a young artist; young Englishman, named Tracy; very promising--favorite pupil of Hans Christian Andersen or one of the other old masters--Andersen I'm pretty sure it is; he's going to half-sole some of our old Italian masterpieces.&*+Been talking to him?" "Well, only a word.?@I stumbled right in on him without expecting anybody was there.fgI tried to be polite to him; offered him a snack"--(Sellers delivered a large wink to Hawkins from behind his hand), "but he declined, and said he wasn't hungry" (another sarcastic wink); "so I brought some apples" (doublewink), "and he ate a couple of--" "What!" and the colonel sprang some yards toward the ceiling and came down quaking with astonishment."./Lady Rossmore was smitten dumb with amazement.deShe gazed at the sheepish relic of Cherokee Strip, then at her husband, and then at the guest again. [\Finally she said: "What is the matter with you, Mulberry?" He did not answer immediately.KLHis back was turned; he was bending over his chair, feeling the seat of it.HIBut he answered next moment, and said: "Ah, there it is; it was a tack.iThe lady contemplated him doubtfully a moment, then said, pretty snappishly: "All that for a tack! Praise goodness it wasn't a shingle nail, it would have landed you in the Milky Way.(()I do hate to have my nerves shook up so.$,-And she turned on her heel and went her way.jkAs soon as she was safely out, the Colonel said, in a suppressed voice: "Come--we must see for ourselves.;It must be a mistake.)'(They hurried softly down and peeped in.`Sellers whispered, in a sort of despair-- It is eating! What a grisly spectacle! Hawkins it's horrible! Take me away--I can't stand-- They tottered back to the laboratory.E CHAPTER XX.JKTracy made slow progress with his work, for his mind wandered a good deal.2Many things were puzzling him.Finally a light burst upon him all of a sudden--seemed to, at any rate--and he said to himself, "I've got the clew at last--this man's mind is off its balance; I don't know how much, but it's off a point or two, sure; off enough to explain this mess of perplexities, anyway.These dreadful chromos which he takes for old masters; these villainous portraits--which to his frantic mind represent Rossmores; the hatchments; the pompous name of this ramshackle old crib-- Rossmore Towers; and that odd assertion of his, that I was expected. 01How could I be expected? that is, Lord Berkeley.HIHe knows by the papers that that person was burned up in the New Gadsby.hWhy, hang it, he really doesn't know who he was expecting; for his talk showed that he was not expecting an Englishman, or yet an artist, yet I answer his requirements notwithstanding.(()He seems sufficiently satisfied with me.WXYes, he is a little off; in fact I am afraid he is a good deal off, poor old gentleman. GHBut he's interesting--all people in about his condition are, I suppose.HII hope he'll like my work; I would like to come every day and study him.ijAnd when I write my father--ah, that hurts! I mustn't get on that subject; it isn't good for my spirits.,$%Somebody coming--I must get to work.3It's the old gentleman again.>He looks bothered.=>Maybe my clothes are suspicious; and they are--for an artist.RSIf my conscience would allow me to make a change, but that is out of the question. FGI wonder what he's making those passes in the air for, with his hands.0 !I seem to be the object of them.89Can he be trying to mesmerize me? I don't quite like it.-#$There's something uncanny about it.OPThe colonel muttered to himself, "It has an effect on him, I can see it myself.+%&That's enough for one time, I reckon.BCHe's not very solid, yet, I suppose, and I might disintegrate him.&vwI'll just put a sly question or two at him, now, and see if I can find out what his condition is, and where he's from.?@He approached and said affably: "Don't let me disturb you, Mr.9:Tracy; I only want to take a little glimpse of your work.')*Ah, that's fine--that's very fine indeed.5You are doing it elegantly.*&'My daughter will be charmed with this.23May I sit down by you?" "Oh, do; I shall be glad.GIt won't disturb you? I mean, won't dissipate your inspirations?" Tracy laughed and said they were not ethereal enough to be very easily discommoded.01The colonel asked a number of cautious and well-considered questions-- questions which seemed pretty odd and flighty to Tracy--but the answers conveyed the information desired, apparently, for the colonel said to himself, with mixed pride and gratification: "It's a good job as far as I've got, with it.E He's solid.12Solid and going to last, solid as the real thing.6It's wonderful--wonderful.1 I believe I could--petrify him.vAfter a little he asked, warily "Do you prefer being here, or--or there?" "There? Where?" "Why--er--where you've been?" Tracy's thought flew to his boarding-house, and he answered with decision.ghOh, here, much!" The colonel was startled, and said to himself, "There's no uncertain ring about that.#-.It indicates where he's been to, poor fellow.6Well, I am satisfied, now.9I'm glad I got him out.9:He sat thinking, and thinking, and watching the brush go.*z{At length he said to himself, "Yes, it certainly seems to account for the failure of my endeavors in poor Berkeley's case.1 He went in the other direction.;Well, it's all right.@He's better off.ghSally Sellers entered from the street, now, looking her divinest, and the artist was introduced to her."rsIt was a violent case of mutual love at first sight, though neither party was entirely aware of the fact, perhaps. \]The Englishman made this irrelevant remark to himself, "Perhaps he is not insane, after all.jSally sat down, and showed an interest in Tracy's work which greatly pleased him, and a benevolent forgiveness of it which convinced him that the girl's nature was cast in a large mould.Sellers was anxious to report his discoveries to Hawkins; so he took his leave, saying that if the two "young devotees of the colored Muse" thought they could manage without him, he would go and look after his affairs.XYThe artist said to himself, "I think he is a little eccentric, perhaps, but that is all.(xyHe reproached himself for having injuriously judged a man without giving him any fair chance to show what he really was.PQOf course the stranger was very soon at his ease and chatting along comfortably.`aThe average American girl possesses the valuable qualities of naturalness, honesty, and inoffensive straightforwardness; she is nearly barren of troublesome conventions and artificialities, consequently her presence and her ways are unembarrassing, and one is acquainted with her and on the pleasantest terms with her before he knows how it came about. This new acquaintanceship--friendship, indeed-- progressed swiftly; and the unusual swiftness of it, and the thoroughness of it are sufficiently evidenced and established by one noteworthy fact-- that within the first half hour both parties had ceased to be conscious of Tracy's clothes.PLater this consciousness was re-awakened; it was then apparent to Gwendolen that she was almost reconciled to them, and it was apparent to Tracy that he wasn't.XYThe re-awakening was brought about by Gwendolen's inviting the artist to stay to dinner.WHe had to decline, because he wanted to live, now--that is, now that there was something to live for--and he could not survive in those clothes at a gentleman's table.8He thought he knew that. CDBut he went away happy, for he saw that Gwendolen was disappointed.TAnd whither did he go? He went straight to a slopshop and bought as neat and reasonably well-fitting a suit of clothes as an Englishman could be persuaded to wear.7He said--to himself, but at his conscience--"I know it's wrong; but it would be wrong not to do it; and two wrongs do not make a right.#-.This satisfied him, and made his heart light.JKPerhaps it will also satisfy the reader--if he can make out what it means.abThe old people were troubled about Gwendolen at dinner, because she was so distraught and silent.<If they had noticed, they would have found that she was sufficiently alert and interested whenever the talk stumbled upon the artist and his work; but they didn't notice, and so the chat would swap around to some other subject, and then somebody would presently be privately worrying about Gwendolen again, and wondering if she were not well, or if something had gone wrong in the millinery line.=>Her mother offered her various reputable patent medicines, and tonics with iron and other hardware in them, and her father even proposed to send out for wine, relentless prohibitionist and head of the order in the District of Columbia as he was, but these kindnesses were all declined-- thankfully, but with decision.LAt bedtime, when the family were breaking up for the night, she privately looted one of the brushes, saying to herself, "It's the one he has used, the most.1The next morning Tracy went forth wearing his new suit, and equipped with a pink in his button-hole--a daily attention from Puss.^_His whole soul was full of Gwendolen Sellers, and this condition was an inspiration, art-wise.9All the morning his brush pawed nimbly away at the canvases, almost without his awarity--awarity, in this sense being the sense of being aware, though disputed by some authorities--turning out marvel upon marvel, in the way of decorative accessories to the portraits, with a felicity and celerity which amazed the veterans of the firm and fetched out of them continuous explosions of applause.<=Meantime Gwendolen was losing her morning, and many dollars.ijShe supposed Tracy was coming in the forenoon--a conclusion which she had jumped to without outside help.;So she tripped down stairs every little while from her work-parlor to arrange the brushes and things over again, and see if he had arrived."rsAnd when she was in her work-parlor it was not profitable, but just the other way--as she found out to her sorrow.She had put in her idle moments during the last little while back, in designing a particularly rare and capable gown for herself, and this morning she set about making it up; but she was absent minded, and made an irremediable botch of it.GWhen she saw what she had done, she knew the reason of it and the meaning of it; and she put her work away from her and said she would accept the sign.hiAnd from that time forth she came no more away from the Audience Chamber, but remained there and waited.0 !After luncheon she waited again.C A whole hour.@AThen a great joy welled up in her heart, for she saw him coming.TSo she flew back up stairs thankful, and could hardly wait for him to miss the principal brush, which she had mislaid down there, but knew where she had mislaid it.!qrHowever, all in good time the others were called in and couldn't find the brush, and then she was sent for, and she couldn't find it herself for some little time; but then she found it when the others had gone away to hunt in the kitchen and down cellar and in the woodshed, and all those other places where people look for things whose ways they are not familiar with.So she gave him the brush, and remarked that she ought to have seen that everything was ready for him, but it hadn't seemed necessary, because it was so early that she wasn't expecting--but she stopped there, surprised at herself for what she was saying; and he felt caught and ashamed, and said to himself, "I knew my impatience would drag me here before I was expected, and betray me, and that is just what it has done; she sees straight through me--and is laughing at me, inside, of course.}Gwendolen was very much pleased, on one account, and a little the other way in another; pleased with the new clothes and the improvement which they had achieved; less pleased by the pink in the buttonhole.3Yesterday's pink had hardly interested her; this one was just like it, but somehow it had got her immediate attention, and kept it.mnShe wished she could think of some way of getting at its history in a properly colorless and indifferent way.3Presently she made a venture..~She said: "Whatever a man's age may be, he can reduce it several years by putting a bright-colored flower in his button-hole.6I have often noticed that.)yzIs that your sex's reason for wearing a boutonniere?" "I fancy not, but certainly that reason would be a sufficient one.,$%I've never heard of the idea before.7You seem to prefer pinks.^_Is it on account of the color, or the form?" "Oh no," he said, simply, "they are given to me.,$%I don't think I have any preference.VWThey are given to him," she said to herself, and she felt a coldness toward that pink.')*I wonder who it is, and what she is like.sThe flower began to take up a good deal of room; it obtruded itself everywhere, it intercepted all views, and marred them; it was becoming exceedingly annoying and conspicuous for a little thing.3I wonder if he cares for her.$,-That thought gave her a quite definite pain.D CHAPTER XXI. ]^She had made everything comfortable for the artist; there was no further pretext for staying.deSo she said she would go, now, and asked him to summon the servants in case he should need anything.bcShe went away unhappy; and she left unhappiness behind her; for she carried away all the sunshine.)'(The time dragged heavily for both, now.noHe couldn't paint for thinking of her; she couldn't design or millinerize with any heart, for thinking of him.#stNever before had painting seemed so empty to him, never before had millinerizing seemed so void of interest to her.cdShe had gone without repeating that dinner-invitation--an almost unendurable disappointment to him.TUOn her part-well, she was suffering, too; for she had found she couldn't invite him.89It was not hard yesterday, but it was impossible to-day.klA thousand innocent privileges seemed to have been filched from her unawares in the past twenty-four hours.>?To-day she felt strangely hampered, restrained of her liberty.eTo-day she couldn't propose to herself to do anything or say anything concerning this young man without being instantly paralyzed into non-action by the fear that he might "suspect.@AInvite him to dinner to-day? It made her shiver to think of it.)'(And so her afternoon was one long fret.<Broken at intervals.lmThree times she had to go down stairs on errands--that is, she thought she had to go down stairs on errands.fgThus, going and coming, she had six glimpses of him, in the aggregate, without seeming to look in his direction; and she tried to endure these electric ecstasies without showing any sign, but they fluttered her up a good deal, and she felt that the naturalness she was putting on was overdone and quite too frantically sober and hysterically calm to deceive.The painter had his share of the rapture; he had his six glimpses, and they smote him with waves of pleasure that assaulted him, beat upon him, washed over him deliciously, and drowned out all consciousness of what he was doing with his brush. GHSo there were six places in his canvas which had to be done over again.4At last Gwendolen got some peace of mind by sending word to the Thompsons, in the neighborhood, that she was coming there to dinner.WShe wouldn't be reminded, at that table, that there was an absentee who ought to be a presentee--a word which she meant to look out in the dictionary at a calmer time.fgAbout this time the old earl dropped in for a chat with the artist, and invited him to stay to dinner."#Tracy cramped down his joy and gratitude by a sudden and powerful exercise of all his forces; and he felt that now that he was going to be close to Gwendolen, and hear her voice and watch her face during several precious hours, earth had nothing valuable to add to his life for the present. CDThe earl said to himself, "This spectre can eat apples, apparently.!/0We shall find out, now, if that is a specialty.."#I think, myself, it's a specialty.56Apples, without doubt, constitute the spectral limit.)'(It was the case with our first parents.%+,No, I am wrong--at least only partly right._`The line was drawn at apples, just as in the present case, but it was from the other direction.89The new clothes gave him a thrill of pleasure and pride.?@He said to himself, "I've got part of him down to date, anyway.|Sellers said he was pleased with Tracy's work; and he went on and engaged him to restore his old masters, and said he should also want him to paint his portrait and his wife's and possibly his daughter's.56The tide of the artist's happiness was at flood, now.,|}The chat flowed pleasantly along while Tracy painted and Sellers carefully unpacked a picture which he had brought with him.+%&It was a chromo; a new one, just out.It was the smirking, self-satisfied portrait of a man who was inundating the Union with advertisements inviting everybody to buy his specialty, which was a three-dollar shoe or a dress-suit or something of that kind.(xyThe old gentleman rested the chromo flat upon his lap and gazed down tenderly upon it, and became silent and meditative.9:Presently Tracy noticed that he was dripping tears on it.~This touched the young fellow's sympathetic nature, and at the same time gave him the painful sense of being an intruder upon a sacred privacy, an observer of emotions which a stranger ought not to witness.JBut his pity rose superior to other considerations, and compelled him to try to comfort the old mourner with kindly words and a show of friendly interest._He said: "I am very sorry--is it a friend whom--" "Ah, more than that, far more than that--a relative, the dearest I had on earth, although I was never permitted to see him.3Yes, it is young Lord Berkeley, who perished so heroically in the awful conflagration, what is the matter?" "Oh, nothing, nothing..~It was a little startling to be so suddenly brought face to face, so to speak, with a person one has heard so much talk about.#-.Is it a good likeness?" "Without doubt, yes.I never saw him, but you can easily see the resemblance to his father," said Sellers, holding up the chromo and glancing from it to the chromo misrepresenting the Usurping Earl and back again with an approving eye.56Well, no--I am not sure that I make out the likeness.UIt is plain that the Usurping Earl there has a great deal of character and a long face like a horse's, whereas his heir here is smirky, moon-faced and characterless.OPWe are all that way in the beginning--all the line," said Sellers, undisturbed.!qrWe all start as moonfaced fools, then later we tadpole along into horse-faced marvels of intellect and character.(xyIt is by that sign and by that fact that I detect the resemblance here and know this portrait to be genuine and perfect.)'(Yes, all our family are fools at first. CDThis young man seems to meet the hereditary requirement, certainly.%+,Yes, yes, he was a fool, without any doubt.89Examine the face, the shape of the head, the expression.$,-It's all fool, fool, fool, straight through.+%&Thanks,--" said Tracy, involuntarily.&*+Thanks?" "I mean for explaining it to me.BGo on, please.34As I was saying, fool is printed all over the face./!"A body can even read the details.56What do they say?" "Well, added up, he is a wobbler.<A which?" "Wobbler.56A person that's always taking a firm stand about something or other--kind of a Gibraltar stand, he thinks, for unshakable fidelity and everlastingness--and then, inside of a little while, he begins to wobble; no more Gibraltar there; no, sir, a mighty ordinary commonplace weakling wobbling--around on stilts.kThat's Lord Berkeley to a dot, you can see it look at that sheep! But,--why are you blushing like sunset! Dear sir, have I unwittingly offended in some way?" "Oh, no indeed, no indeed.D Far from it.@ABut it always makes me blush to hear a man revile his own blood. \]He said to himself, "How strangely his vagrant and unguided fancies have hit upon the truth./!"By accident, he has described me.3I am that contemptible thing.dWhen I left England I thought I knew myself; I thought I was a very Frederick the Great for resolution and staying capacity; whereas in truth I am just a Wobbler, simply a Wobbler.5Well--after all, it is at least creditable to have high ideals and give birth to lofty resolutions; I will allow myself that comfort.zThen he said, aloud, "Could this sheep, as you call him, breed a great and self-sacrificing idea in his head, do you think? Could he meditate such a thing, for instance, as the renunciation of the earldom and its wealth and its glories, and voluntary retirement to the ranks of the commonalty, there to rise by his own merit or remain forever poor and obscure?" "Could he? Why, look at him--look at this simpering self-righteous mug! There is your answer.*&'It's the very thing he would think of.,$%And he would start in to do it, too.7And then?" "He'd wobble.3And back down?" "Every time. pqIs that to happen with all my--I mean would that happen to all his high resolutions?" "Oh certainly--certainly.8It's the Rossmore of it.)yzThen this creature was fortunate to die! Suppose, for argument's sake, that I was a Rossmore, and--" "It can't be done.%+,Why?" "Because it's not a supposable case.MNTo be a Rossmore at your age, you'd have to be a fool, and you're not a fool.uAnd you'd have to be a Wobbler, whereas anybody that is an expert in reading character can see at a glance that when you set your foot down once, it's there to stay; and earthquake can't wobble it.abHe added to himself, "That's enough to say to him, but it isn't half strong enough for the facts.<=The more I observe him, now, the more remarkable I find him."./It is the strongest face I have ever examined.XYThere is almost superhuman firmness here, immovable purpose, iron steadfastness of will.1 A most extraordinary young man. Z[He presently said, aloud: "Some time I want to ask your advice about a little matter, Mr.JTracy.hiYou see, I've got that young lord's remaims--my goodness, how you jump!" "Oh, it's nothing, pray go on.1 You've got his remains?" "Yes.JKAre you sure they are his, and not somebody else's?" "Oh, perfectly sure.@Samples, I mean.ANot all of him.4Samples?" "Yes--in baskets.mnSome time you will be going home; and if you wouldn't mind taking them along--" "Who? I?" "Yes--certainly."rsI don't mean now; but after a while; after--but look here, would you like to see them?" "No! Most certainly not.7I don't want to see them.C O, very well. GHI only thought--hey, where are you going, dear?" "Out to dinner, papa.?Tracy was aghast.=>The colonel said, in a disappointed voice: "Well, I'm sorry.')*Sho, I didn't know she was going out, Mr.JTracy.VWGwendolen's face began to take on a sort of apprehensive 'What-have-I-done expression.MNThree old people to one young one--well, it isn't a good team, that's a fact.Gwendolen's face betrayed a dawning hopefulness and she said--with a tone of reluctance which hadn't the hall-mark on it: "If you prefer, I will send word to the Thompsons that I--" "Oh, is it the Thompsons? That simplifies it--sets everything right.;<We can fix it without spoiling your arrangements, my child.jkYou've got your heart set on--" "But papa, I'd just as soon go there some other--" "No--I won't have it.IYou are a good hard-working darling child, and your father is not the man to disappoint you when you--" "But papa, I--" "Go along, I won't hear a word.:We'll get along, dear.')*Gwendolen was ready to cry with venation./But there was nothing to do but start; which she was about to do when her father hit upon an idea which filled him with delight because it so deftly covered all the difficulties of the situation and made things smooth and satisfactory: "I've got it, my love, so that you won't be robbed of your holiday and at the same time we'll be pretty satisfactorily fixed for a good time here../You send Belle Thompson here--perfectly beautiful creature, Tracy, perfectly beautiful; I want you to see that girl; why, you'll just go mad; you'll go mad inside of a minute; yes, you send her right along, Gwendolen, and tell her--why, she's gone!" He turned--she was already passing out at the gate.&vwHe muttered, "I wonder what's the matter; I don't know what her mouth's doing, but I think her shoulders are swearing.JKWell," said Sellers blithely to Tracy, "I shall miss her-- parents always miss the children as soon as they're out of sight, it's only a natural and wisely ordained partiality--but you'll be all right, because Miss Belle will supply the youthful element for you and to your entire content; and we old people will do our best, too./!"We shall have a good enough time. GHAnd you'll have a chance to get better acquainted with Admiral Hawkins.4That's a rare character, Mr.MNTracy--one of the rarest and most engaging characters the world has produced.1 You'll find him worth studying.PQI've studied him ever since he was a child and have always found him developing.I really consider that one of the main things that has enabled me to master the difficult science of character-reading was the livid interest I always felt in that boy and the baffling inscrutabilities of his ways and inspirations.3Tracy was not hearing a word.)'(His spirits were gone, he was desolate.0 !Yes, a most wonderful character.,$%Concealment--that's the basis of it. pqAlways the first thing you want to do is to find the keystone a man's character is built on--then you've got it.JKNo misleading and apparently inconsistent peculiarities can fool you then.RWhat do you read on the Senator's surface? Simplicity; a kind of rank and protuberant simplicity; whereas, in fact, that's one of the deepest minds in the world.GA perfectly honest man--an absolutely honest and honorable man-- and yet without doubt the profoundest master of dissimulation the world has ever seen.PO, it's devilish!" This was wrung from the unlistening Tracy by the anguished thought of what might have been if only the dinner arrangements hadn't got mixed.QNo, I shouldn't call it that," said Sellers, who was now placidly walking up and down the room with his hands under his coat-tails and listening to himself talk.QROne could quite properly call it devilish in another man, but not in the Senator.PQYour term is right--perfectly right--I grant that--but the application is wrong.4It makes a great difference./!"Yes, he is a marvelous character.3I do not suppose that any other statesman ever had such a colossal sense of humor, combined with the ability to totally conceal it.`aI may except George Washington and Cromwell, and perhaps Robespierre, but I draw the line there.8A person not an expert might be in Judge Hawkins's company a lifetime and never find out he had any more sense of humor than a cemetery.ZA deep-drawn yard-long sigh from the distraught and dreaming artist, followed by a murmured, "Miserable, oh, miserable!" "Well, no, I shouldn't say that about it, quite.4On the contrary, I admire his ability to conceal his humor even more if possible than I admire the gift itself, stupendous as it is.2Another thing--General Hawkins is a thinker; a keen, logical, exhaustive, analytical thinker-- perhaps the ablest of modern times.mnThat is, of course, upon themes suited to his size, like the glacial period, and the correlation of forces, and the evolution of the Christian from the caterpillar--any of those things; give him a subject according to his size, and just stand back and watch him think! Why you can see the place rock! Ah, yes, you must know him; you must get on the inside of him.45Perhaps the most extraordinary mind since Aristotle.rDinner was kept waiting for a while for Miss Thompson, but as Gwendolen had not delivered the invitation to her the waiting did no good, and the household presently went to the meal without her.FGPoor old Sellers tried everything his hospitable soul could devise to make the occasion an enjoyable one for the guest, and the guest tried his honest best to be cheery and chatty and happy for the old gentleman's sake; in fact all hands worked hard in the interest of a mutual good time, but the thing was a failure from the start; Tracy's heart was lead in his bosom, there seemed to be only one prominent feature in the landscape and that was a vacant chair, he couldn't drag his mind away from Gwendolen and his hard luck; consequently his distractions allowed deadly pauses to slip in every now and then when it was his turn to say something, and of course this disease spread to the rest of the conversation--wherefore, instead of having a breezy sail in sunny waters, as anticipated, everybody was bailing out and praying for land.abWhat could the matter be? Tracy alone could have told, the others couldn't even invent a theory.deMeanwhile they were having a similarly dismal time at the Thompson house; in fact a twin experience.Gwendolen was ashamed of herself for allowing her disappointment to so depress her spirits and make her so strangely and profoundly miserable; but feeling ashamed of herself didn't improve the matter any; it only seemed to aggravate the suffering.[She explained that she was not feeling very well, and everybody could see that this was true; so she got sincere sympathy and commiseration; but that didn't help the case.."#Nothing helps that kind of a case.!/0It is best to just stand off and let it fester.dThe moment the dinner was over the girl excused herself, and she hurried home feeling unspeakably grateful to get away from that house and that intolerable captivity and suffering.OPWill he be gone? The thought arose in her brain, but took effect in her heels.WXShe slipped into the house, threw off her things and made straight for the dining room.7She stopped and listened.GHer father's voice--with no life in it; presently her mother's--no life in that; a considerable vacancy, then a sterile remark from Washington Hawkins.@AAnother silence; then, not Tracy's but her father's voice again.`aHe's gone," she said to herself despairingly, and listlessly opened the door and stepped within.lmWhy, my child," cried the mother, "how white you are! Are you--has anything--" "White?" exclaimed Sellers.')*It's gone like a flash; 'twasn't serious.klAlready she's as red as the soul of a watermelon! Sit down, dear, sit down--goodness knows you're welcome.?@Did you have a good time? We've had great times here--immense.0 !Why didn't Miss Belle come? Mr.=>Tracy is not feeling well, and she'd have made him forget it.@She was content now; and out from her happy eyes there went a light that told a secret to another pair of eyes there and got a secret in return.-}~In just that infinitely small fraction of a second those two great confessions were made, received, and perfectly understood.,|}All anxiety, apprehension, uncertainty, vanished out of these young people's hearts and left them filled with a great peace.TSellers had had the most confident faith that with the new reinforcement victory would be at this last moment snatched from the jaws of defeat, but it was an error."./The talk was as stubbornly disjointed as ever.iHe was proud of Gwendolen, and liked to show her off, even against Miss Belle Thompson, and here had been a great opportunity, and what had she made of it? He felt a good deal put out.PIt vexed him to think that this Englishman, with the traveling Briton's everlasting disposition to generalize whole mountain ranges from single sample-grains of sand, would jump to the conclusion that American girls were as dumb as himself-- generalizing the whole tribe from this single sample and she at her poorest, there being nothing at that table to inspire her, give her a start, keep her from going to sleep.0He made up his mind that for the honor of the country he would bring these two together again over the social board before long.:;There would be a different result another time, he judged.cdHe said to himself, with a deep sense of injury, "He'll put in his diary--they all keep diaries--he'll put in his diary that she was miraculously uninteresting--dear, dear, but wasn't she! I never saw the like--and yet looking as beautiful as Satan, too--and couldn't seem to do anything but paw bread crumbs, and pick flowers to pieces, and look fidgety.56And it isn't any better here in the Hall of Audience.UVI've had enough; I'll haul down my flag--the others may fight it out if they want to.RSHe shook hands all around and went off to do some work which he said was pressing.deThe idolaters were the width of the room apart; and apparently unconscious of each other's presence.')*The distance got shortened a little, now.2Very soon the mother withdrew.4The distance narrowed again. Tracy stood before a chromo of some Ohio politician which had been retouched and chain-mailed for a crusading Rossmore, and Gwendolen was sitting on the sofa not far from his elbow artificially absorbed in examining a photograph album that hadn't any photographs in it.3The "Senator" still lingered. GHHe was sorry for the young people; it had been a dull evening for them.lIn the goodness of his heart he tried to make it pleasant for them now; tried to remove the ill impression necessarily left by the general defeat; tried to be chatty, even tried to be gay.QBut the responses were sickly, there was no starting any enthusiasm; he would give it up and quit--it was a day specially picked out and consecrated to failures.UBut when Gwendolen rose up promptly and smiled a glad smile and said with thankfulness and blessing, "Must you go?" it seemed cruel to desert, and he sat down again.45He was about to begin a remark when--when he didn't.9We have all been there.2He didn't know how he knew his concluding to stay longer had been a mistake, he merely knew it; and knew it for dead certain, too.'wxAnd so he bade goodnight, and went mooning out, wondering what he could have done that changed the atmosphere that way.WAs the door closed behind him those two were standing side by side, looking at that door--looking at it in a waiting, second-counting, but deeply grateful kind of way.And the instant it closed they flung their arms about each other's necks, and there, heart to heart and lip to lip-- "Oh, my God, she's kissing it!" Nobody heard this remark, because Hawkins, who bred it, only thought it, he didn't utter it.bHe had turned, the moment he had closed the door, and had pushed it open a little, intending to re-enter and ask what ill-advised thing he had done or said, and apologize for it.HIBut he didn't re-enter; he staggered off stunned, terrified, distressed.C CHAPTER XXII.DFive minutes later he was sitting in his room, with his head bowed within the circle of his arms, on the table--final attitude of grief and despair.MNHis tears were flowing fast, and now and then a sob broke upon the stillness.ijPresently he said: "I knew her when she was a little child and used to climb about my knees; I love her as I love my own, and now--oh, poor thing, poor thing, I cannot bear it!--she's gone and lost her heart to this mangy materializee! Why didn't we see that that might happen? But how could we? Nobody could; nobody could ever have dreamed of such a thing.@AYou couldn't expect a person would fall in love with a wax-work.')*And this one doesn't even amount to that.RSHe went on grieving to himself, and now and then giving voice to his lamentations.XYIt's done, oh, it's done, and there's no help for it, no undoing the miserable business.,$%If I had the nerve, I would kill it.2But that wouldn't do any good.45She loves it; she thinks it's genuine and authentic.KLIf she lost it she would grieve for it just as she would for a real person.<=And who's to break it to the family! Not I--I'll die first.7Sellers is the best human being I ever knew and I wouldn't any more think of--oh, dear, why it'll break his heart when he finds it out.@And Polly's too.0This comes of meddling with such infernal matters! But for this, the creature would still be roasting in Sheol where it belongs.5How is it that these people don't smell the brimstone? Sometimes I can't come into the same room with him without nearly suffocating.BCAfter a while he broke out again: "Well, there's one thing, sure.45The materializing has got to stop right where it is.If she's got to marry a spectre, let her marry a decent one out of the Middle Ages, like this one--not a cowboy and a thief such as this protoplasmic tadpole's going to turn into if Sellers keeps on fussing at it.VIt costs five thousand dollars cash and shuts down on the incorporated company to stop the works at this point, but Sally Sellers's happiness is worth more than that.34He heard Sellers coming, and got himself to rights.STSellers took a seat, and said: "Well, I've got to confess I'm a good deal puzzled.34It did certainly eat, there's no getting around it.)yzNot eat, exactly, either, but it nibbled; nibbled in an appetiteless way, but still it nibbled; and that's just a marvel.hNow the question is, what does it do with those nibblings? That's it--what does it do with them? My idea is that we don't begin to know all there is to this stupendous discovery yet.PQBut time will show--time and science--give us a chance, and don't get impatient..~But he couldn't get Hawkins interested; couldn't make him talk to amount to anything; couldn't drag him out of his depression.=>But at last he took a turn that arrested Hawkins's attention.0 !I'm coming to like him, Hawkins.<=He is a person of stupendous character--absolutely gigantic..~Under that placid exterior is concealed the most dare-devil spirit that was ever put into a man--he's just a Clive over again. pqYes, I'm all admiration for him, on account of his character, and liking naturally follows admiration, you know./!"I'm coming to like him immensely.Do you know, I haven't the heart to degrade such a character as that down to the burglar estate for money or for anything else; and I've come to ask if you are willing to let the reward go, and leave this poor fellow--" "Where he is?" "Yes--not bring him down to date.QOh, there's my hand; and my heart's in it, too!" "I'll never forget you for this, Hawkins," said the old gentleman in a voice which he found it hard to control.]You are making a great sacrifice for me, and one which you can ill afford, but I'll never forget your generosity, and if I live you shall not suffer for it, be sure of that.UVSally Sellers immediately and vividly realized that she was become a new being; a being of a far higher and worthier sort than she had been such a little while before; an earnest being, in place of a dreamer; and supplied with a reason for her presence in the world, where merely a wistful and troubled curiosity about it had existed before.mSo great and so comprehensive was the change which had been wrought, that she seemed to herself to be a real person who had lately been a shadow; a something which had lately been a nothing; a purpose, which had lately been a fancy; a finished temple, with the altar-fires lit and the voice of worship ascending, where before had been but an architect's confusion of arid working plans, unintelligible to the passing eye and prophesying nothing.`aLady" Gwendolen! The pleasantness of that sound was all gone; it was an offense to her ear now.VWShe said: "There--that sham belongs to the past; I will not be called by it any more.~I may call you simply Gwendolen? You will allow me to drop the formalities straightway and name you by your dear first name without additions?" She was dethroning the pink and replacing it with a rosebud.:There--that is better.7I hate pinks--some pinks.SIndeed yes, you are to call me by my first name without additions--that is,--well, I don't mean without additions entirely, but--" It was as far as she could get.There was a pause; his intellect was struggling to comprehend; presently it did manage to catch the idea in time to save embarrassment all around, and he said gratefully-- "Dear Gwendolen! I may say that?" "Yes--part of it.QRBut--don't kiss me when I am talking, it makes me forget what I was going to say.<=You can call me by part of that form, but not the last part.7Gwendolen is not my name.67Not your name?" This in a tone of wonder and surprise.mnThe girl's soul was suddenly invaded by a creepy apprehension, a quite definite sense of suspicion and alarm.noShe put his arms away from her, looked him searchingly in the eye, and said: "Answer me truly, on your honor.8You are not seeking to marry me on account of my rank?" The shot almost knocked him through the wall, he was so little prepared for it.OThere was something so finely grotesque about the question and its parent suspicion, that he stopped to wonder and admire, and thus was he saved from laughing.BCThen, without wasting precious time, he set about the task of convincing her that he had been lured by herself alone, and had fallen in love with her only, not her title and position; that he loved her with all his heart, and could not love her more if she were a duchess, or less if she were without home, name or family.She watched his face wistfully, eagerly, hopefully, translating his words by its expression; and when he had finished there was gladness in her heart-- a tumultuous gladness, indeed, though outwardly she was calm, tranquil, even judicially austere.PQShe prepared a surprise for him, now, calculated to put a heavy strain upon those disinterested protestations of his; and thus she delivered it, burning it away word by word as the fuse burns down to a bombshell, and watching to see how far the explosion would lift him: "Listen--and do not doubt me, for I shall speak the exact truth.&vwHoward Tracy, I am no more an earl's child than you are!" To her joy--and secret surprise, also--it never phased him.$,-He was ready, this time, and saw his chance.TUHe cried out with enthusiasm, "Thank heaven for that!" and gathered her to his arms.>?To express her happiness was almost beyond her gift of speech.bcYou make me the proudest girl in all the earth," she said, with her head pillowed on his shoulder.I thought it only natural that you should be dazzled by the title--maybe even unconsciously, you being English--and that you might be deceiving yourself in thinking you loved only me, and find you didn't love me when the deception was swept away; so it makes me proud that the revelation stands for nothing and that you do love just me, only me--oh, prouder than any words can tell!" "It is only you, sweetheart, I never gave one envying glance toward your father's earldom.+%&That is utterly true, dear Gwendolen.0 !There--you mustn't call me that.9I hate that false name.6I told you it wasn't mine. 01My name is Sally Sellers--or Sarah, if you like.NOFrom this time I banish dreams, visions, imaginings, and will no more of them.:I am going to be myself--my genuine self, my honest self, my natural self, clear and clean of sham and folly and fraud, and worthy of you.iThere is no grain of social inequality between us; I, like you, am poor; I, like you, am without position or distinction; you are a struggling artist, I am that, too, in my humbler way.23Our bread is honest bread, we work for our living.vHand in hand we will walk hence to the grave, helping each other in all ways, living for each other, being and remaining one in heart and purpose, one in hope and aspiration, inseparable to the end.kAnd though our place is low, judged by the world's eye, we will make it as high as the highest in the great essentials of honest work for what we eat and wear, and conduct above reproach.KWe live in a land, let us be thankful, where this is all-sufficient, and no man is better than his neighbor by the grace of God, but only by his own merit.HITracy tried to break in, but she stopped him and kept the floor herself.;I am not through yet.RI am going to purge myself of the last vestiges of artificiality and pretence, and then start fair on your own honest level and be worthy mate to you thenceforth.(()My father honestly thinks he is an earl.!qrWell, leave him his dream, it pleases him and does no one any harm: It was the dream of his ancestors before him.(xyIt has made fools of the house of Sellers for generations, and it made something of a fool of me, but took no deep root.,$%I am done with it now, and for good.+{|Forty-eight hours ago I was privately proud of being the daughter of a pinchbeck earl, and thought the proper mate for me must be a man of like degree; but to-day--oh, how grateful I am for your love which has healed my sick brain and restored my sanity!--I could make oath that no earl's son in all the world--" "Oh,--well, but--but--" "Why, you look like a person in a panic.BCWhat is it? What is the matter?" "Matter? Oh, nothing--nothing.)*I was only going to say"--but in his flurry nothing occurred to him to say, for a moment; then by a lucky inspiration he thought of something entirely sufficient for the occasion, and brought it out with eloquent force: "Oh, how beautiful you are! You take my breath away when you look like that.RSIt was well conceived, well timed, and cordially delivered--and it got its reward.E Let me see.9:Where was I? Yes, my father's earldom is pure moonshine.&*+Look at those dreadful things on the wall.UVYou have of course supposed them to be portraits of his ancestors, earls of Rossmore.=Well, they are not.,|}They are chromos of distinguished Americans--all moderns; but he has carried them back a thousand years by re-labeling them.Andrew Jackson there, is doing what he can to be the late American earl; and the newest treasure in the collection is supposed to be the young English heir--I mean the idiot with the crape; but in truth it's a shoemaker, and not Lord Berkeley at all.,$%Are you sure?" "Why of course I am.5He wouldn't look like that.opWhy?" "Because his conduct in his last moments, when the fire was sweeping around him shows that he was a man.89It shows that he was a fine, high-souled young creature.GTracy was strongly moved by these compliments, and it seemed to him that the girl's lovely lips took on anew loveliness when they were delivering them.He said, softly: "It is a pity he could not know what a gracious impression his behavior was going to leave with the dearest and sweetest stranger in the land of--" "Oh, I almost loved him! Why, I think of him every day.)'(He is always floating about in my mind.:;Tracy felt that this was a little more than was necessary.&*+He was conscious of the sting of jealousy.He said: "It is quite right to think of him--at least now and then--that is, at intervals--in perhaps an admiring way--but it seems to me that--" "Howard Tracy, are you jealous of that dead man?" He was ashamed--and at the same time not ashamed.89He was jealous--and at the same time he was not jealous.CIn a sense the dead man was himself; in that case compliments and affection lavished upon that corpse went into his own till and were clear profit.RBut in another sense the dead man was not himself; and in that case all compliments and affection lavished there were wasted, and a sufficient basis for jealousy.56A tiff was the result of the dispute between the two.56Then they made it up, and were more loving than ever.01As an affectionate clincher of the reconciliation, Sally declared that she had now banished Lord Berkeley from her mind; and added, "And in order to make sure that he shall never make trouble between us again, I will teach myself to detest that name and all that have ever borne it or ever shall bear it.This inflicted another pang, and Tracy was minded to ask her to modify that a little just on general principles, and as practice in not overdoing a good thing--perhaps he might better leave things as they were and not risk bringing on another tiff.QRHe got away from that particular, and sought less tender ground for conversation.2I suppose you disapprove wholly of aristocracies and nobilities, now that you have renounced your title and your father's earldom. EFReal ones? Oh, dear no--but I've thrown aside our sham one for good.JThis answer fell just at the right time and just in the right place, to save the poor unstable young man from changing his political complexion once more.SHe had been on the point of beginning to totter again, but this prop shored him up and kept him from floundering back into democracy and re-renouncing aristocracy.>?So he went home glad that he had asked the fortunate question.%uvThe girl would accept a little thing like a genuine earldom, she was merely prejudiced against the brummagem article. \]Yes, he could have his girl and have his earldom, too: that question was a fortunate stroke.VWSally went to bed happy, too; and remained happy, deliriously happy, for nearly two hours; but at last, just as she was sinking into a contented and luxurious unconsciousness, the shady devil who lives and lurks and hides and watches inside of human beings and is always waiting for a chance to do the proprietor a malicious damage, whispered to her soul and said, "That question had a harmless look, but what was back of it?--what was the secret motive of it?--what suggested it?" The shady devil had knifed her, and could retire, now, and take a rest; the wound would attend to business for him.E And it did.ABWhy should Howard Tracy ask that question? If he was not trying to marry her for the sake of her rank, what should suggest that question to him? Didn't he plainly look gratified when she said her objections to aristocracy had their limitations? Ah, he is after that earldom, that gilded sham--it isn't poor me he wants.,$%So she argued, in anguish and tears. ]^Then she argued the opposite theory, but made a weak, poor business of it, and lost the case.She kept the arguing up, one side and then the other, the rest of the night, and at last fell asleep at dawn; fell in the fire at dawn, one may say; for that kind of sleep resembles fire, and one comes out of it with his brain baked and his physical forces fried out of him.BCHAPTER XXIII. 01Tracy wrote his father before he sought his bed.!qrHe wrote a letter which he believed would get better treatment than his cablegram received, for it contained what ought to be welcome news; namely, that he had tried equality and working for a living; had made a fight which he could find no reason to be ashamed of, and in the matter of earning a living had proved that he was able to do it; but that on the whole he had arrived at the conclusion that he could not reform the world single-handed, and was willing to retire from the conflict with the fair degree of honor which he had gained, and was also willing to return home and resume his position and be content with it and thankful for it for the future, leaving further experiment of a missionary sort to other young people needing the chastening and quelling persuasions of experience, the only logic sure to convince a diseased imagination and restore it to rugged health.;Then he approached the subject of marriage with the daughter of the American Claimant with a good deal of caution and much painstaking art.!qrHe said praiseful and appreciative things about the girl, but didn't dwell upon that detail or make it prominent.The thing which he made prominent was the opportunity now so happily afforded, to reconcile York and Lancaster, graft the warring roses upon one stem, and end forever a crying injustice which had already lasted far too long.One could infer that he had thought this thing all out and chosen this way of making all things fair and right because it was sufficiently fair and considerably wiser than the renunciation-scheme which he had brought with him from England.%+,One could infer that, but he didn't say it.RSIn fact the more he read his letter over, the more he got to inferring it himself.wWhen the old earl received that letter, the first part of it filled him with a grim and snarly satisfaction; but the rest of it brought a snort or two out of him that could be translated differently.7He wasted no ink in this emergency, either in cablegrams or letters; he promptly took ship for America to look into the matter himself.89He had staunchly held his grip all this long time, and given no sign of the hunger at his heart to see his son; hoping for the cure of his insane dream, and resolute that the process should go through all the necessary stages without assuaging telegrams or other nonsense from home, and here was victory at last.>?Victory, but stupidly marred by this idiotic marriage project.?@Yes, he would step over and take a hand in this matter himself.During the first ten days following the mailing of the letter Tracy's spirits had no idle time; they were always climbing up into the clouds or sliding down into the earth as deep as the law of gravitation reached.XYHe was intensely happy or intensely miserable by turns, according to Miss Sally's moods.,|}He never could tell when the mood was going to change, and when it changed he couldn't tell what it was that had changed it.VWSometimes she was so in love with him that her love was tropical, torrid, and she could find no language fervent enough for its expression; then suddenly, and without warning or any apparent reason, the weather would change, and the victim would find himself adrift among the icebergs and feeling as lonesome and friendless as the north pole."rsIt sometimes seemed to him that a man might better be dead than exposed to these devastating varieties of climate.<The case was simple.Sally wanted to believe that Tracy's preference was disinterested; so she was always applying little tests of one sort or another, hoping and expecting that they would bring out evidence which would confirm or fortify her belief.APoor Tracy did not know that these experiments were being made upon him, consequently he walked promptly into all the traps the girl set for him./These traps consisted in apparently casual references to social distinction, aristocratic title and privilege, and such things.?Often Tracy responded to these references heedlessly and not much caring what he said provided it kept the talk going and prolonged the seance.He didn't suspect that the girl was watching his face and listening for his words as one who watches the judge's face and listens for the words which will restore him to home and friends and freedom or shut him away from the sun and human companionship forever.oHe didn't suspect that his careless words were being weighed, and so he often delivered sentence of death when it would have been just as handy and all the same to him to pronounce acquittal.KLDaily he broke the girl's heart, nightly he sent her to the rack for sleep.6He couldn't understand it.\Some people would have put this and that together and perceived that the weather never changed until one particular subject was introduced, and that then it always changed.,|}And they would have looked further, and perceived that that subject was always introduced by the one party, never the other.?@They would have argued, then, that this was done for a purpose.^_If they could not find out what that purpose was in any simpler or easier way, they would ask.LMBut Tracy was not deep enough or suspicious enough to think of these things.UVHe noticed only one particular; that the weather was always sunny when a visit began.MNNo matter how much it might cloud up later, it always began with a clear sky.QRHe couldn't explain this curious fact to himself, he merely knew it to be a fact.IJThe truth of the matter was, that by the time Tracy had been out of Sally's sight six hours she was so famishing for a sight of him that her doubts and suspicions were all consumed away in the fire of that longing, and so always she came into his presence as surprisingly radiant and joyous as she wasn't when she went out of it. FGIn circumstances like these a growing portrait runs a good many risks.bThe portrait of Sellers, by Tracy, was fighting along, day by day, through this mixed weather, and daily adding to itself ineradicable signs of the checkered life it was leading.It was the happiest portrait, in spots, that was ever seen; but in other spots a damned soul looked out from it; a soul that was suffering all the different kinds of distress there are, from stomach ache to rabies.;But Sellers liked it.lmHe said it was just himself all over--a portrait that sweated moods from every pore, and no two moods alike. CDHe said he had as many different kinds of emotions in him as a jug.XYIt was a kind of a deadly work of art, maybe, but it was a starchy picture for show; for it was life size, full length, and represented the American earl in a peer's scarlet robe, with the three ermine bars indicative of an earl's rank, and on the gray head an earl's coronet, tilted just a wee bit to one side in a most gallus and winsome way.RWhen Sally's weather was sunny the portrait made Tracy chuckle, but when her weather was overcast it disordered his mind and stopped the circulation of his blood.tLate one night when the sweethearts had been having a flawless visit together, Sally's interior devil began to work his specialty, and soon the conversation was drifting toward the customary rock.XPresently, in the midst of Tracy's serene flow of talk, he felt a shudder which he knew was not his shudder, but exterior to his breast although immediately against it."./After the shudder came sobs; Sally was crying.hOh, my darling, what have I done--what have I said? It has happened again! What have I done to wound you?" She disengaged herself from his arms and gave him a look of deep reproach.89What have you done? I will tell you what you have done.'(You have unwittingly revealed--oh, for the twentieth time, though I could not believe it, would not believe it!--that it is not me you love, but that foolish sham my father's imitation earldom; and you have broken my heart!" "Oh, my child, what are you saying! I never dreamed of such a thing.!qrOh, Howard, Howard, the things you have uttered when you were forgetting to guard your tongue, have betrayed you.VWThings I have uttered when I was forgetting to guard my tongue? These are hard words.;<When have I remembered to guard it? Never in one instance.(()It has no office but to speak the truth.2It needs no guarding for that.JHoward, I have noted your words and weighed them, when you were not thinking of their significance--and they have told me more than you meant they should.Do you mean to say you have answered the trust I had in you by using it as an ambuscade from which you could set snares for my unsuspecting tongue and be safe from detection while you did it? You have not done this--surely you have not done this thing.0 !Oh, one's enemy could not do it.TUThis was an aspect of the girl's conduct which she had not clearly perceived before.deWas it treachery? Had she abused a trust? The thought crimsoned her cheeks with shame and remorse.<=Oh, forgive me," she said, "I did not know what I was doing.OI have been so tortured--you will forgive me, you must; I have suffered so much, and I am so sorry and so humble; you do forgive me, don't you?--don't turn away, don't refuse me; it is only my love that is at fault, and you know I love you, love you with all my heart; I couldn't bear to--oh, dear, dear, I am so miserable, and I sever meant any harm, and I didn't see where this insanity was carrying me, and how it was wronging and abusing the dearest heart in all the world to me--and--and--oh, take me in your arms again, I have no other refuge, no other home and hope!" There was reconciliation again--immediate, perfect, all-embracing--and with it utter happiness.$,-This would have been a good time to adjourn.efBut no, now that the cloud-breeder was revealed at last; now that it was manifest that all the sour weather had come from this girl's dread that Tracy was lured by her rank and not herself, he resolved to lay that ghost immediately and permanently by furnishing the best possible proof that he couldn't have had back of him at any time the suspected motive.(xySo he said: "Let me whisper a little secret in your ear--a secret which I have kept shut up in my breast all this time. 01Your rank couldn't ever have been an enticement.I am son and heir to an English earl!" The girl stared at him--one, two, three moments, maybe a dozen--then her lips parted: "You?" she said, and moved away from him, still gazing at him in a kind of blank amazement.7Why--why, certainly I am.*z{Why do you act like this? What have I done now?" "What have you done? You have certainly made a most strange statement.5You must see that yourself.:Well," with a timid little laugh, "it may be a strange enough statement; but of what consequence is that, if it is true?" "If it is true./!"You are already retiring from it.!/0Oh, not for a moment! You should not say that.9I have not deserved it. EFI have spoken the truth; why do you doubt it?" Her reply was prompt.zSimply because you didn't speak it earlier!" "Oh!" It wasn't a groan, exactly, but it was an intelligible enough expression of the fact that he saw the point and recognized that there was reason in it.You have seemed to conceal nothing from me that I ought to know concerning yourself, and you were not privileged to keep back such a thing as this from me a moment after--after--well, after you had determined to pay your court to me.:Its true, it's true, I know it! But there were circumstances--in-- in the way--circumstances which--" She waved the circumstances aside.Well, you see," he said, pleadingly, "you seemed so bent on our traveling the proud path of honest labor and honorable poverty, that I was terrified--that is, I was afraid--of--of--well, you know how you talked.7Yes, I know how I talked.HAnd I also know that before the talk was finished you inquired how I stood as regards aristocracies, and my answer was calculated to relieve your fears.:He was silent a while. DEThen he said, in a discouraged way: "I don't see any way out of it.?It was a mistake.$,-That is in truth all it was, just a mistake.(()No harm was meant, no harm in the world.')*I didn't see how it might some time look.C It is my way.8I don't seem to see far.%+,The girl was almost disarmed, for a moment.7Then she flared up again.?An Earl's son! Do earls' sons go about working in lowly callings for their bread and butter?" "God knows they don't! I have wished they did.12Do earls' sons sink their degree in a country like this, and come sober and decent to sue for the hand of a born child of poverty when they can go drunk, profane, and steeped in dishonorable debt and buy the pick and choice of the millionaires' daughters of America? You an earl's son! Show me the signs.23I thank God I am not able--if those are the signs.,$%But yet I am an earl's son and heir.<It is all I can say."./I wish you would believe me, but you will not.2I know no way to persuade you.OPShe was about to soften again, but his closing remark made her bring her foot down with smart vexation, and she cried out: "Oh, you drive all patience out of me! Would you have one believe that you haven't your proofs at hand, and yet are what you say you are? You do not put your hand in your pocket now--for you have nothing there.KLYou make a claim like this, and then venture to travel without credentials./!"These are simply incredibilities.Don't you see that, yourself?" He cast about in his mind for a defence of some kind or other--hesitated a little, and then said, with difficulty and diffidence: "I will tell you just the truth, foolish as it will seem to you-- to anybody, I suppose--but it is the truth.KI had an ideal--call it a dream, a folly, if you will--but I wanted to renounce the privileges and unfair advantages enjoyed by the nobility and wrung from the nation by force and fraud, and purge myself of my share of those crimes against right and reason, by thenceforth comrading with the poor and humble on equal terms, earning with my own hands the bread I ate, and rising by my own merit if I rose at all.)yzThe young girl scanned his face narrowly while he spoke; and there was something about his simplicity of manner and statement which touched her --touched her almost to the danger point; but she set her grip on the yielding spirit and choked it to quiescence; it could not be wise to surrender to compassion or any kind of sentiment, yet; she must ask one or two more questions.VWTracy was reading her face; and what he read there lifted his drooping hopes a little.PAn earl's son to do that! Why, he were a man! A man to love!--oh, more, a man to worship!" "Why?" "But he never lived! He is not born, he will not be born.The self-abnegation that could do that--even in utter folly, and hopeless of conveying benefit to any, beyond the mere example--could be mistaken for greatness; why, it would be greatness in this cold age of sordid ideals! A moment--wait--let me finish; I have one question more.fgYour father is earl of what?" "Rossmore--and I am Viscount Berkeley!" The fat was in the fire again.ABThe girl felt so outraged that it was difficult for her to speak.`aHow can you venture such a brazen thing! You know that he is dead, and you know that I know it.Oh, to rob the living of name and honors for a selfish and temporary advantage is crime enough, but to rob the defenceless dead--why it is more than crime, it degrades crime!" "Oh, listen to me--just a word--don't turn away like that.!/0Don't go-- don't leave me, so--stay one moment.0On my honor--" "Oh, on your honor!" "On my honor I am what I say! And I will prove it, and you will believe, I know you will.*z{I will bring you a message--a cablegram--" "When?" "To-morrow--next day--" "Signed 'Rossmore'?" "Yes--signed Rossmore.CWhat will that prove?" "What will it prove? What should it prove?" "If you force me to say it--possibly the presence of a confederate somewhere.(()This was a hard blow, and staggered him.."#He said, dejectedly: "It is true.:I did not think of it.?@Oh, my God, I do not know any way to do; I do everything wrong.ijYou are going?--and you won't say even good-night--or good-bye? Ah, we have not parted like this before.-#$Oh, I want to run and--no, go, now.ABA pause--then she said, "You may bring the message when it comes.6Oh, may I? God bless you.XYHe was gone; and none too soon; her lips were already quivering, and now she broke down.78Through her sobbings her words broke from time to time.AOh, he is gone. 01I have lost him, I shall never see him any more.And he didn't kiss me good-bye; never even offered to force a kiss from me, and he knowing it was the very, very last, and I expecting he would, and never dreaming he would treat me so after all we have been to each other.vOh, oh, oh, oh, what shall I do, what shall I do! He is a dear, poor, miserable, good-hearted, transparent liar and humbug, but oh, I do love him so--!" After a little she broke into speech again.How dear he is! and I shall miss him so, I shall miss him so! Why won't he ever think to forge a message and fetch it?--but no, he never will, he never thinks of anything; he's so honest and simple it wouldn't ever occur to him.1Oh, what did possess him to think he could succeed as a fraud--and he hasn't the first requisite except duplicity that I can see.$,-Oh, dear, I'll go to bed and give it all up.:Oh, I wish I had told him to come and tell me whenever he didn't get any telegram--and now it's all my own fault if I never see him again.')*How my eyes must look!" CHAPTER XXIV.12Next day, sure enough, the cablegram didn't come.EThis was an immense disaster; for Tracy couldn't go into the presence without that ticket, although it wasn't going to possess any value as evidence.&'But if the failure of the cablegram on that first day may be called an immense disaster, where is the dictionary that can turn out a phrase sizeable enough to describe the tenth day's failure? Of course every day that the cablegram didn't come made Tracy all of twenty-four hours' more ashamed of himself than he was the day before, and made Sally fully twenty-four hours more certain than ever that he not only hadn't any father anywhere, but hadn't even a confederate--and so it followed that he was a double-dyed humbug and couldn't be otherwise.12These were hard days for Barrow and the art firm.89All these had their hands full, trying to comfort Tracy.Barrow's task was particularly hard, because he was made a confidant in full, and therefore had to humor Tracy's delusion that he had a father, and that the father was an earl, and that he was going to send a cablegram.lBarrow early gave up the idea of trying to convince Tracy that he hadn't any father, because this had such a bad effect on the patient, and worked up his temper to such an alarming degree.TUHe had tried, as an experiment, letting Tracy think he had a father; the result was so good that he went further, with proper caution, and tried letting him think his father was an earl; this wrought so well, that he grew bold, and tried letting him think he had two fathers, if he wanted to, but he didn't want to, so Barrow withdrew one of them and substituted letting him think he was going to get a cablegram--which Barrow judged he wouldn't, and was right; but Barrow worked the cablegram daily for all it was worth, and it was the one thing that kept Tracy alive; that was Barrow's opinion. Z[And these were bitter hard days for poor Sally, and mainly delivered up to private crying.gShe kept her furniture pretty damp, and so caught cold, and the dampness and the cold and the sorrow together undermined her appetite, and she was a pitiful enough object, poor thing.PHer state was bad enough, as per statement of it above quoted; but all the forces of nature and circumstance seemed conspiring to make it worse--and succeeding.fgFor instance, the morning after her dismissal of Tracy, Hawkins and Sellers read in the associated press dispatches that a toy puzzle called Pigs in the Clover, had come into sudden favor within the past few weeks, and that from the Atlantic to the Pacific all the populations of all the States had knocked off work to play with it, and that the business of the country had now come to a standstill by consequence; that judges, lawyers, burglars, parsons, thieves, merchants, mechanics, murderers, women, children, babies--everybody, indeed, could be seen from morning till midnight, absorbed in one deep project and purpose, and only one--to pen those pigs, work out that puzzle successfully; that all gayety, all cheerfulness had departed from the nation, and in its place care, preoccupation and anxiety sat upon every countenance, and all faces were drawn, distressed, and furrowed with the signs of age and trouble, and marked with the still sadder signs of mental decay and incipient madness; that factories were at work night and day in eight cities, and yet to supply the demand for the puzzle was thus far impossible. 01Hawkins was wild with joy, but Sellers was calm.#-.Small matters could not disturb his serenity.&*+He said-- "That's just the way things go.A man invents a thing which could revolutionize the arts, produce mountains of money, and bless the earth, and who will bother with it or show any interest in it?--and so you are just as poor as you were before.dBut you invent some worthless thing to amuse yourself with, and would throw it away if let alone, and all of a sudden the whole world makes a snatch for it and out crops a fortune.BCHunt up that Yankee and collect, Hawkins--half is yours, you know./!"Leave me to potter at my lecture.2This was a temperance lecture.iSellers was head chief in the Temperance camp, and had lectured, now and then in that interest, but had been dissatisfied with his efforts; wherefore he was now about to try a new plan.RAfter much thought he had concluded that a main reason why his lectures lacked fire or something, was, that they were too transparently amateurish; that is to say, it was probably too plainly perceptible that the lecturer was trying to tell people about the horrid effects of liquor when he didn't really know anything about those effects except from hearsay, since he had hardly ever tasted an intoxicant in his life.HIHis scheme, now, was to prepare himself to speak from bitter experience.@Hawkins was to stand by with the bottle, calculate the doses, watch the effects, make notes of results, and otherwise assist in the preparation.gTime was short, for the ladies would be along about noon--that is to say, the temperance organization called the Daughters of Siloam--and Sellers must be ready to head the procession.UThe time kept slipping along--Hawkins did not return--Sellers could not venture to wait longer; so he attacked the bottle himself, and proceeded to note the effects.%uvHawkins got back at last; took one comprehensive glance at the lecturer, and went down and headed off the procession.WThe ladies were grieved to hear that the champion had been taken suddenly ill and violently so, but glad to hear that it was hoped he would be out again in a few days.'wxAs it turned out, the old gentleman didn't turn over or show any signs of life worth speaking of for twenty-four hours.KLThen he asked after the procession, and learned what had happened about it."./He was sorry; said he had been "fixed" for it.%uvHe remained abed several days, and his wife and daughter took turns in sitting with him and ministering to his wants.67Often he patted Sally's head and tried to comfort her.KLDon't cry, my child, don't cry so; you know your old father did it by mistake and didn't mean a bit of harm; you know he wouldn't intentionally do anything to make you ashamed for the world; you know he was trying to do good and only made the mistake through ignorance, not knowing the right doses and Washington not there to help.8Don't cry so, dear, it breaks my old heart to see you, and think I've brought this humiliation on you and you so dear to me and so good.WXI won't ever do it again, indeed I won't; now be comforted, honey, that's a good child.But when she wasn't on duty at the bedside the crying went on just the same; then the mother would try to comfort her, and say: "Don't cry, dear, he never meant any harm; it was all one of those happens that you can't guard against when you are trying experiments, that way.<You see I don't cry.0 !It's because I know him so well.I could never look anybody in the face again if he had got into such an amazing condition as that a-purpose; but bless you his intention was pure and high, and that makes the act pure, though it was higher than was necessary. \]We're not humiliated, dear, he did it under a noble impulse and we don't need to be ashamed./!"There, don't cry any more, honey.ghThus, the old gentleman was useful to Sally, during several days, as an explanation of her tearfulness.VWShe felt thankful to him for the shelter he was affording her, but often said to herself, "It's a shame to let him see in my cryings a reproach--as if he could ever do anything that could make me reproach him! But I can't confess; I've got to go on using him for a pretext, he's the only one I've got in the world, and I do need one so much.tAs soon as Sellers was out again, and found that stacks of money had been placed in bank for him and Hawkins by the Yankee, he said, "Now we'll soon see who's the Claimant and who's the Authentic.89I'll just go over there and warm up that House of Lords.bDuring the next few days he and his wife were so busy with preparations for the voyage that Sally had all the privacy she needed, and all the chance to cry that was good for her.12Then the old pair left for New York--and England. 01Sally had also had a chance to do another thing.TUThat was, to make up her mind that life was not worth living upon the present terms.  If she must give up her impostor and die; doubtless she must submit; but might she not lay her whole case before some disinterested person, first, and see if there wasn't perhaps some saving way out of the matter? She turned this idea over in her mind a good deal.VIn her first visit with Hawkins after her parents were gone, the talk fell upon Tracy, and she was impelled to set her case before the statesman and take his counsel. EFSo she poured out her heart, and he listened with painful solicitude. DEShe concluded, pleadingly, with-- "Don't tell me he is an impostor.[I suppose he is, but doesn't it look to you as if he isn't? You are cool, you know, and outside; and so, maybe it can look to you as if he isn't one, when it can't to me.qDoesn't it look to you as if he isn't? Couldn't you--can't it look to you that way--for--for my sake?" The poor man was troubled, but he felt obliged to keep in the neighborhood of the truth..~He fought around the present detail a little while, then gave it up and said he couldn't really see his way to clearing Tracy."./No," he said, "the truth is, he's an impostor.PQThat is, you--you feel a little certain, but not entirely--oh, not entirely, Mr.-}~Hawkins!" "It's a pity to have to say it--I do hate to say it, but I don't think anything about it, I know he's an impostor.D Oh, now, Mr.1 Hawkins, you can't go that far.*&'A body can't really know it, you know.12It isn't proved that he's not what he says he is..~Should he come out and make a clean breast of the whole wretched business? Yes--at least the most of it--it ought to be done.CSo he set his teeth and went at the matter with determination, but purposing to spare the girl one pain--that of knowing that Tracy was a criminal.'wxNow I am going to tell you a plain tale; one not pleasant for me to tell or for you to hear, but we've got to stand it.=>I know all about that fellow; and I know he is no earl's son.{The girl's eyes flashed, and she said: "I don't care a snap for that--go on!" This was so wholly unexpected that it at once obstructed the narrative; Hawkins was not even sure that he had heard aright. 01He said: "I don't know that I quite understand.9Do you mean to say that if he was all right and proper otherwise you'd be indifferent about the earl part of the business?" "Absolutely.nYou'd be entirely satisfied with him and wouldn't care for his not being an earl's son,--that being an earl's son wouldn't add any value to him?" "Not the least value that I would care for.H Why, Mr.vHawkins, I've gotten over all that day-dreaming about earldoms and aristocracies and all such nonsense and am become just a plain ordinary nobody and content with it; and it is to him I owe my cure.IJAnd as to anything being able to add a value to him, nothing can do that.8He is the whole world to me, just as he is; he comprehends all the values there are--then how can you add one?" "She's pretty far gone.8He said that to himself.fHe continued, still to himself, "I must change my plan again; I can't seem to strike one that will stand the requirements of this most variegated emergency five minutes on a stretch.+{|Without making this fellow a criminal, I believe I will invent a name and a character for him calculated to disenchant her.4If it fails to do it, then I'll know that the next rightest thing to do will be to help her to her fate, poor thing, not hinder her. EFThen he said aloud: "Well, Gwendolen--" "I want to be called Sally.')*I'm glad of it; I like it better, myself.34Well, then, I'll tell you about this man Snodgrass. 01Snodgrass! Is that his name?" "Yes--Snodgrass.3The other's his nom de plume.;<It's hideous!" "I know it is, but we can't help our names.opAnd that is truly his real name--and not Howard Tracy?" Hawkins answered, regretfully: "Yes, it seems a pity.@AThe girl sampled the name musingly, once or twice-- "Snodgrass.F Snodgrass.4No, I could not endure that.5I could not get used to it.(()No, I should call him by his first name.78What is his first name?" "His--er--his initials are S.89His initials? I don't care anything about his initials./!"I can't call him by his initials.What do they stand for?" "Well, you see, his father was a physician, and he--he--well he was an idolater of his profession, and he--well, he was a very eccentric man, and--" "What do they stand for! What are you shuffling about?" "They--well they stand for Spinal Meningitis.)yzHis father being a phy--" "I never heard such an infamous name! Nobody can ever call a person that--a person they love.(()I wouldn't call an enemy by such a name.6It sounds like an epithet."rsAfter a moment, she added with a kind of consternation, "Why, it would be my name! Letters would come with it on.G Yes--Mrs.4Spinal Meningitis Snodgrass.(()Don't repeat it--don't; I can't bear it.56Was the father a lunatic?" "No, that is not charged.12I am glad of that, because that is transmissible.NOWhat do you think was the matter with him, then?" "Well, I don't really know.deThe family used to run a good deal to idiots, and so, maybe--" "Oh, there isn't any maybe about it.:This one was an idiot.2Well, yes--he could have been.?He was suspected.(()Suspected!" said Sally, with irritation.uWould one suspect there was going to be a dark time if he saw the constellations fall out of the sky? But that is enough about the idiot, I don't take any interest in idiots; tell me about the son.?@Very well, then, this one was the eldest, but not the favorite. FGHis brother, Zylobalsamum--" "Wait--give me a chance to realize that.5It is perfectly stupefying.$,-Zylo--what did you call it?" "Zylobalsamum.45I never heard such a name: It sounds like a disease.56Is it a disease?" "No, I don't think it's a disease.9:It's either Scriptural or--" "Well, it's not Scriptural.;Then it's anatomical.1 I knew it was one or the other.)'(Yes, I remember, now, it is anatomical.OPIt's a ganglion--a nerve centre--it is what is called the zylobalsamum process.fgWell, go on; and if you come to any more of them, omit the names; they make one feel so uncomfortable.@Very well, then.fAs I said, this one was not a favorite in the family, and so he was neglected in every way, never sent to school, always allowed to associate with the worst and coarsest characters, and so of course he has grown up a rude, vulgar, ignorant, dissipated ruffian, and--" "He? It's no such thing! You ought to be more generous than to make such a statement as that about a poor young stranger who--who--why, he is the very opposite of that! He is considerate, courteous, obliging, modest, gentle, refined, cultivated-oh, for shame! how can you say such things about him?" "I don't blame you, Sally--indeed I haven't a word of blame for you for being blinded by--your affection--blinded to these minor defects which are so manifest to others who--" "Minor defects? Do you call these minor defects? What are murder and arson, pray?" "It is a difficult question to answer straight off--and of course estimates of such things vary with environment.|With us, out our way, they would not necessarily attract as much attention as with you, yet they are often regarded with disapproval--" "Murder and arson are regarded with disapproval?" "Oh, frequently.?With disapproval.nWho are those Puritans you are talking about? But wait--how did you come to know so much about this family? Where did you get all this hearsay evidence?" "Sally, it isn't hearsay evidence.1 That is the serious part of it.1 I knew that family--personally.<This was a surprise. \]You? You actually knew them?" "Knew Zylo, as we used to call him, and knew his father, Dr.F Snodgrass.%uvI didn't know your own Snodgrass, but have had glimpses of him from time to time, and I heard about him all the time.-}~He was the common talk, you see, on account of his--" "On account of his not being a house-burner or an assassin, I suppose.+%&That would have made him commonplace.67Where did you know these people?" "In Cherokee Strip.opOh, how preposterous! There are not enough people in Cherokee Strip to give anybody a reputation, good or bad.;There isn't a quorum.NOWhy the whole population consists of a couple of wagon loads of horse thieves. FGHawkins answered placidly-- "Our friend was one of those wagon loads.HSally's eyes burned and her breath came quick and fast, but she kept a fairly good grip on her anger and did not let it get the advantage of her tongue.45The statesman sat still and waited for developments.3He was content with his work..~It was as handsome a piece of diplomatic art as he had ever turned out, he thought; and now, let the girl make her own choice.ZHe judged she would let her spectre go; he hadn't a doubt of it in fact; but anyway, let the choice be made, and he was ready to ratify it and offer no further hindrance.=>Meantime Sally had thought her case out and made up her mind.:;To the major's disappointment the verdict was against him. EFSally said: "He has no friend but me, and I will not desert him now.,|}I will not marry him if his moral character is bad; but if he can prove that it isn't, I will--and he shall have the chance.FTo me he seems utterly good and dear; I've never seen anything about him that looked otherwise-- except, of course, his calling himself an earl's son.NOMaybe that is only vanity, and no real harm, when you get to the bottom of it.?@I do not believe he is any such person as you have painted him.>I want to see him.&*+I want you to find him and send him to me.XYI will implore him to be honest with me, and tell me the whole truth, and not be afraid.12Very well; if that is your decision I will do it.NOBut Sally, you know, he's poor, and--" "Oh, I don't care anything about that.2That's neither here nor there.(()Will you bring him to me?" "I'll do it.bcWhen?--" "Oh, dear, it's getting toward dark, now, and so you'll have to put it off till morning.9:But you will find him in the morning, won't you? Promise.1 I'll have him here by daylight.cdOh, now you're your own old self again--and lovelier than ever!" "I couldn't ask fairer than that.AGood-bye, dear.2Sally mused a moment alone, then said earnestly, "I love him in spite of his name!" and went about her affairs with a light heart.D CHAPTER XXV.MNHawkins went straight to the telegraph office and disburdened his conscience.VWHe said to himself, "She's not going to give this galvanized cadaver up, that's plain.')*Wild horses can't pull her away from him.=>I've done my share; it's for Sellers to take an innings, now.12So he sent this message to New York: "Come back.=Hire special train.*&'She's going to marry the materializee.TMeantime a note came to Rossmore Towers to say that the Earl of Rossmore had just arrived from England, and would do himself the pleasure of calling in the evening..~Sally said to herself, "It is a pity he didn't stop in New York; but it's no matter; he can go up to-morrow and see my father.JKHe has come over here to tomahawk papa, very likely--or buy out his claim.lmThis thing would have excited me, a while back; but it has only one interest for me now, and only one value.I can say to--to-- Spine, Spiny, Spinal--I don't like any form of that name!--I can say to him to-morrow, 'Don't try to keep it up any more, or I shall have to tell you whom I have been talking with last night, and then you will be embarrassed.QRTracy couldn't know he was to be invited for the morrow, or he might have waited.`aAs it was, he was too miserable to wait any longer; for his last hope--a letter--had failed him.')*It was fully due to-day; it had not come.45Had his father really flung him away? It looked so.45It was not like his father, but it surely looked so.6His father was a rather tough nut, in truth, but had never been so with his son--still, this implacable silence had a calamitous look.mAnyway, Tracy would go to the Towers and --then what? He didn't know; his head was tired out with thinking-- he wouldn't think about what he must do or say--let it all take care of itself. [\So that he saw Sally once more, he would be satisfied, happen what might; he wouldn't care.12He hardly knew how he got to the Towers, or when.>?He knew and cared for only one thing--he was alone with Sally.YShe was kind, she was gentle, there was moisture in her eyes, and a yearning something in her face and manner which she could not wholly hide--but she kept her distance.D They talked.4Bye and bye she said--watching his downcast countenance out of the corner of her eye-- "It's so lonesome--with papa and mamma gone.>?I try to read, but I can't seem to get interested in any book.;<I try the newspapers, but they do put such rubbish in them.2You take up a paper and start to read something you thinks interesting, and it goes on and on and on about how somebody--well, Dr.RSSnodgrass, for instance--" Not a movement from Tracy, not the quiver of a muscle.rSally was amazed --what command of himself he must have! Being disconcerted, she paused so long that Tracy presently looked up wearily and said: "Well?" "Oh, I thought you were not listening.~Yes, it goes on and on about this Doctor Snodgrass, till you are so tired, and then about his younger son-- the favorite son--Zylobalsamum Snodgrass--" Not a sign from Tracy, whose head was drooping again.What supernatural self-possession! Sally fixed her eye on him and began again, resolved to blast him out of his serenity this time if she knew how to apply the dynamite that is concealed in certain forms of words when those words are properly loaded with unexpected meanings.bcAnd next it goes on and on and on about the eldest son--not the favorite, this one--and how he is neglected in his poor barren boyhood, and allowed to grow up unschooled, ignorant, coarse, vulgar, the comrade of the community's scum, and become in his completed manhood a rude, profane, dissipated ruffian--" That head still drooped! Sally rose, moved softly and solemnly a step or two, and stood before Tracy--his head came slowly up, his meek eyes met her intense ones--then she finished with deep impressiveness-- "--named Spinal Meningitis Snodgrass!" Tracy merely exhibited signs of increased fatigue.The girl was outraged by this iron indifference and callousness, and cried out-- "What are you made of?" "I? Why?" "Haven't you any sensitiveness? Don't these things touch any poor remnant of delicate feeling in you?" "N--no," he said wonderingly, "they don't seem to.Why should they?" "O, dear me, how can you look so innocent, and foolish, and good, and empty, and gentle, and all that, right in the hearing of such things as those! Look me in the eye--straight in the eye.$,-There, now then, answer me without a flinch.Isn't Doctor Snodgrass your father, and isn't Zylobalsamum your brother," [here Hawkins was about to enter the room, but changed his mind upon hearing these words, and elected for a walk down town, and so glided swiftly away], "and isn't your name Spinal Meningitis, and isn't your father a doctor and an idiot, like all the family for generations, and doesn't he name all his children after poisons and pestilences and abnormal anatomical eccentricities of the human body? Answer me, some way or somehow--and quick.Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it and see me going mad before your face with suspense!" "Oh, I wish I could do--do--I wish I could do something, anything that would give you peace again and make you happy; but I know of nothing-- I know of no way. 01I have never heard of these awful people before.@AWhat? Say it again!" "I have never--never in my life till now.hOh, you do look so honest when you say that! It must be true--surely you couldn't look that way, you wouldn't look that way if it were not true--would you?" "I couldn't and wouldn't.E It is true.fgOh, let us end this suffering-- take me back into your heart and confidence--" "Wait--one more thing.Tell me you told that falsehood out of mere vanity and are sorry for it; that you're not expecting to ever wear the coronet of an earl--" "Truly I am cured--cured this very day--I am not expecting it!" "O, now you are mine! I've got you back in the beauty and glory of your unsmirched poverty and your honorable obscurity, and nobody shall ever take you from me again but the grave! And if--" "De earl of Rossmore, fum Englan'!" "My father!" The young man released the girl and hung his head.DThe old gentleman stood surveying the couple--the one with a strongly complimentary right eye, the other with a mixed expression done with the left.#-.This is difficult, and not often resorted to.]Presently his face relaxed into a kind of constructive gentleness, and he said to his son: "Don't you think you could embrace me, too?" The young man did it with alacrity. GHThen you are the son of an earl, after all," said Sally, reproachfully.JKYes, I--" "Then I won't have you!" "O, but you know--" "No, I will not.5You've told me another fib.D She's right.;Go away and leave us.8I want to talk with her.5Berkeley was obliged to go.:But he did not go far.4He remained on the premises.bcAt midnight the conference between the old gentleman and the young girl was still going blithely on, but it presently drew to a close, and the former said: "I came all the way over here to inspect you, my dear, with the general idea of breaking off this match if there were two fools of you, but as there's only one, you can have him if you'll take him.12Indeed I will, then! May I kiss you?" "You may.F Thank you.89Now you shall have that privilege whenever you are good.JKMeantime Hawkins had long ago returned and slipped up into the laboratory.HIHe was rather disconcerted to find his late invention, Snodgrass, there.9:The news was told him that the English Rossmore was come.>?And I'm his son, Viscount Berkeley, not Howard Tracy any more.=Hawkins was aghast. Z[He said: "Good gracious, then you're dead!" "Dead?" "Yes you are--we've got your ashes.ABHang those ashes, I'm tired of them; I'll give them to my father.ySlowly and painfully the statesman worked the truth into his head that this was really a flesh and blood young man, and not the insubstantial resurrection he and Sellers had so long supposed him to be.RSThen he said with feeling-- "I'm so glad; so glad on Sally's account, poor thing.BCWe took you for a departed materialized bank thief from Tahlequah.+%&This will be a heavy blow to Sellers..~Then he explained the whole matter to Berkeley, who said: "Well, the Claimant must manage to stand the blow, severe as it is.*&'But he'll get over the disappointment. [\Who--the colonel? He'll get over it the minute he invents a new miracle to take its place.,$%And he's already at it by this time.noBut look here-- what do you suppose became of the man you've been representing all this time?" "I don't know.%+,I saved his clothes--it was all I could do.3I am afraid he lost his life."rsWell, you must have found twenty or thirty thousand dollars in those clothes, in money or certificates of deposit.%+,No, I found only five hundred and a trifle.23I borrowed the trifle and banked the five hundred.23What'll we do about it?" "Return it to the owner.)'(It's easy said, but not easy to manage.23Let's leave it alone till we get Sellers's advice.<And that reminds me.LI've got to run and meet Sellers and explain who you are not and who you are, or he'll come thundering in here to stop his daughter from marrying a phantom.?But-- suppose your father came over here to break off the match?" "Well, isn't he down stairs getting acquainted with Sally? That's all safe.67So Hawkins departed to meet and prepare the Sellerses.JKRossmore Towers saw great times and late hours during the succeeding week.JKThe two earls were such opposites in nature that they fraternized at once.Sellers said privately that Rossmore was the most extraordinary character he had ever met--a man just made out of the condensed milk of human kindness, yet with the ability to totally hide the fact from any but the most practised character-reader; a man whose whole being was sweetness, patience and charity, yet with a cunning so profound, an ability so marvelous in the acting of a double part, that many a person of considerable intelligence might live with him for centuries and never suspect the presence in him of these characteristics.Finally there was a quiet wedding at the Towers, instead of a big one at the British embassy, with the militia and the fire brigades and the temperance organizations on hand in torchlight procession, as at first proposed by one of the earls.VThe art-firm and Barrow were present at the wedding, and the tinner and Puss had been invited, but the tinner was ill and Puss was nursing him--for they were engaged.MThe Sellerses were to go to England with their new allies for a brief visit, but when it was time to take the train from Washington, the colonel was missing.fgHawkins was going as far as New York with the party, and said he would explain the matter on the road. GHThe explanation was in a letter left by the colonel in Hawkins's hands.2In it he promised to join Mrs.oSellers later, in England, and then went on to say: The truth is, my dear Hawkins, a mighty idea has been born to me within the hour, and I must not even stop to say goodbye to my dear ones.^A man's highest duty takes precedence of all minor ones, and must be attended to with his best promptness and energy, at whatsoever cost to his affections or his convenience. YZAnd first of all a man's duties is his duty to his own honor--he must keep that spotless.=Mine is threatened.XWhen I was feeling sure of my imminent future solidity, I forwarded to the Czar of Russia--perhaps prematurely--an offer for the purchase of Siberia, naming a vast sum.xSince then an episode has warned me that the method by which I was expecting to acquire this money-- materialization upon a scale of limitless magnitude--is marred by a taint of temporary uncertainty.78His imperial majesty may accept my offer at any moment.efIf this should occur now, I should find myself painfully embarrassed, in fact financially inadequate.7I could not take Siberia.45This would become known, and my credit would suffer.{Recently my private hours have been dark indeed, but the sun shines main, now; I see my way; I shall be able to meet my obligation, and without having to ask an extension of the stipulated time, I think.`aThis grand new idea of mine--the sublimest I have ever conceived, will save me whole, I am sure.`aI am leaving for San Francisco this moment, to test it, by the help of the great Lick telescope.NLike all of my more notable discoveries and inventions, it is based upon hard, practical scientific laws; all other bases are unsound and hence untrustworthy.EIn brief, then, I have conceived the stupendous idea of reorganizing the climates of the earth according to the desire of the populations interested. \]That is to say, I will furnish climates to order, for cash or negotiable paper, taking the old climates in part payment, of course, at a fair discount, where they are in condition to be repaired at small cost and let out for hire to poor and remote communities not able to afford a good climate and not caring for an expensive one for mere display.>My studies have convinced me that the regulation of climates and the breeding of new varieties at will from the old stock is a feasible thing.,|}Indeed I am convinced that it has been done before; done in prehistoric times by now forgotten and unrecorded civilizations. YZEverywhere I find hoary evidences of artificial manipulation of climates in bygone times.8Take the glacial period.BCWas that produced by accident? Not at all; it was done for money.>?I have a thousand proofs of it, and will some day reveal them.$,-I will confide to you an outline of my idea.jIt is to utilize the spots on the sun--get control of them, you understand, and apply the stupendous energies which they wield to beneficent purposes in the reorganizing of our climates.At present they merely make trouble and do harm in the evoking of cyclones and other kinds of electric storms; but once under humane and intelligent control this will cease and they will become a boon to man.I have my plan all mapped out, whereby I hope and expect to acquire complete and perfect control of the sun-spots, also details of the method whereby I shall employ the same commercially; but I will not venture to go into particulars before the patents shall have been issued.  I shall hope and expect to sell shop-rights to the minor countries at a reasonable figure and supply a good business article of climate to the great empires at special rates, together with fancy brands for coronations, battles and other great and particular occasions.GThere are billions of money in this enterprise, no expensive plant is required, and I shall begin to realize in a few days--in a few weeks at furthest.mnI shall stand ready to pay cash for Siberia the moment it is delivered, and thus save my honor and my credit.9I am confident of this.!qrI would like you to provide a proper outfit and start north as soon as I telegraph you, be it night or be it day.uI wish you to take up all the country stretching away from the north pole on all sides for many degrees south, and buy Greenland and Iceland at the best figure you can get now while they are cheap.cdIt is my intention to move one of the tropics up there and transfer the frigid zone to the equator.I will have the entire Arctic Circle in the market as a summer resort next year, and will use the surplusage of the old climate, over and above what can be utilized on the equator, to reduce the temperature of opposition resorts.<But I have said enough to give you an idea of the prodigious nature of my scheme and the feasible and enormously profitable character of it.EI shall join all you happy people in England as soon as I shall have sold out some of my principal climates and arranged with the Czar about Siberia.-#$Meantime, watch for a sign from me.AEight days from now, we shall be wide asunder; for I shall be on the border of the Pacific, and you far out on the Atlantic, approaching England.deThat day, if I am alive and my sublime discovery is proved and established, I will send you greeting, and my messenger shall deliver it where you are, in the solitudes of the sea; for I will waft a vast sun-spot across the disk like drifting smoke, and you will know it for my love-sign, and will say "Mulberry Sellers throws us a kiss across the universe.G APPENDIX.3WEATHER FOR USE IN THIS BOOK.-#$Selected from the Best Authorities.BCA brief though violent thunderstorm which had raged over the city was passing away; but still, though the rain had ceased more than an hour before, wild piles of dark and coppery clouds, in which a fierce and rayless glow was laboring, gigantically overhung the grotesque and huddled vista of dwarf houses, while in the distance, sheeting high over the low, misty confusion of gables and chimneys, spread a pall of dead, leprous blue, suffused with blotches of dull, glistening yellow, and with black plague-spots of vapor floating and faint lightnings crinkling on its surface..~Thunder, still muttering in the close and sultry air, kept the scared dwellers in the street within, behind their closed shutters; and all deserted, cowed, dejected, squalid, like poor, stupid, top-heavy things that had felt the wrath of the summer tempest, stood the drenched structures on either side of the narrow and crooked way, ghastly and picturesque, under the giant canopy.Rain dripped wretchedly in slow drops of melancholy sound from their projecting eaves upon the broken flagging, lay there in pools or trickled into the swollen drains, where the fallen torrent sullenly gurgled on its way to the river.=The Brazen Android.G O'Connor.;The fiery mid-March sun a moment hung Above the bleak Judean wilderness; Then darkness swept upon us, and 't was night.7Easter-Eve at Kerak-Moab.?Clinton Scollard.56The quick-coming winter twilight was already at hand.IJSnow was again falling, sifting delicately down, incidentally as it were.H Felicia.H Fanny N.H Murfree.oMerciful heavens! The whole west, from right to left, blazes up with a fierce light, and next instant the earth reels and quivers with the awful shock of ten thousand batteries of artillery.KIt is the signal for the Fury to spring--for a thousand demons to scream and shriek--for innumerable serpents of fire to writhe and light up the blackness.Now the rain falls--now the wind is let loose with a terrible shriek--now the lightning is so constant that the eyes burn, and the thunder-claps merge into an awful roar, as did the 800 cannon at Gettysburg. CDCrash! Crash! Crash! It is the cottonwood trees falling to earth.hiShriek! Shriek! Shriek! It is the Demon racing along the plain and uprooting even the blades of grass. \]Shock! Shock! Shock! It is the Fury flinging his fiery bolts into the bosom of the earth.9The Demon and the Fury.NM.KQuad.MAway up the gorge all diurnal fancies trooped into the wide liberties of endless luminous vistas of azure sunlit mountains beneath the shining azure heavens.$tuThe sky, looking down in deep blue placidities, only here and there smote the water to azure emulations of its tint.6In the Stranger's Country.8Charles Egbert Craddock.STThere was every indication of a dust-storm, though the sun still shone brilliantly.')*The hot wind had become wild and rampant. EFIt was whipping up the sandy coating of the plain in every direction.hiHigh in the air were seen whirling spires and cones of sand--a curious effect against the deep-blue sky./Below, puffs of sand were breaking out of the plain in every direction, as though the plain were alive with invisible horsemen.nThese sandy cloudlets were instantly dissipated by the wind; it was the larger clouds that were lifted whole into the air, and the larger clouds of sand were becoming more and more the rule.)yzAlfred's eye, quickly scanning the horizon, descried the roof of the boundary-rider's hut still gleaming in the sunlight.5He remembered the hut well. Z[It could not be farther than four miles, if as much as that, from this point of the track.EHe also knew these dust-storms of old; Bindarra was notorious for them: Without thinking twice, Alfred put spurs to his horse and headed for the hut. YZBefore he had ridden half the distance the detached clouds of sand banded together in one dense whirlwind, and it was only owing to his horse's instinct that he did not ride wide of the hut altogether; for during the last half-mile he never saw the hut, until its outline loomed suddenly over his horse's ears; and by then the sun was invisible.:A Bride from the Bush.*&'It rained forty days and forty nights.H Genesis.]BCTHE $30,000 BEQUEST and Other Stories by Mark Twain (Samuel L.Clemens) Contents: The $30,000 Bequest A Dog's Tale Was It Heaven? Or Hell? A Cure for the Blues The Enemy Conquered; or, Love Triumphant The Californian's Tale A Helpless Situation A Telephonic Conversation Edward Mills and George Benton: A Tale The Five Boons of Life The First Writing-machines Italian without a Master Italian with Grammar A Burlesque Biography How to Tell a Story General Washington's Negro Body-servant Wit Inspirations of the "Two-year-olds" An Entertaining Article A Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Amended Obituaries A Monument to Adam A Humane Word from Satan Introduction to "The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English" Advice to Little Girls Post-mortem Poetry The Danger of Lying in Bed Portrait of King William III Does the Race of Man Love a Lord? Extracts from Adam's Diary Eve's Diary THE $30,000 BEQUEST CHAPTER I Lakeside was a pleasant little town of five or six thousand inhabitants, and a rather pretty one, too, as towns go in the Far West.It had church accommodations for thirty-five thousand, which is the way of the Far West and the South, where everybody is religious, and where each of the Protestant sects is represented and has a plant of its own.CRank was unknown in Lakeside--unconfessed, anyway; everybody knew everybody and his dog, and a sociable friendliness was the prevailing atmosphere.$tuSaladin Foster was book-keeper in the principal store, and the only high-salaried man of his profession in Lakeside. YZHe was thirty-five years old, now; he had served that store for fourteen years; he had begun in his marriage-week at four hundred dollars a year, and had climbed steadily up, a hundred dollars a year, for four years; from that time forth his wage had remained eight hundred--a handsome figure indeed, and everybody conceded that he was worth it.(xyHis wife, Electra, was a capable helpmeet, although--like himself--a dreamer of dreams and a private dabbler in romance.|The first thing she did, after her marriage--child as she was, aged only nineteen--was to buy an acre of ground on the edge of the town, and pay down the cash for it--twenty-five dollars, all her fortune.3Saladin had less, by fifteen.1She instituted a vegetable garden there, got it farmed on shares by the nearest neighbor, and made it pay her a hundred per cent.Ia year.ZOut of Saladin's first year's wage she put thirty dollars in the savings-bank, sixty out of his second, a hundred out of his third, a hundred and fifty out of his fourth.lHis wage went to eight hundred a year, then, and meantime two children had arrived and increased the expenses, but she banked two hundred a year from the salary, nevertheless, thenceforth.vWhen she had been married seven years she built and furnished a pretty and comfortable two-thousand-dollar house in the midst of her garden-acre, paid half of the money down and moved her family in. ]^Seven years later she was out of debt and had several hundred dollars out earning its living.  Earning it by the rise in landed estate; for she had long ago bought another acre or two and sold the most of it at a profit to pleasant people who were willing to build, and would be good neighbors and furnish a general comradeship for herself and her growing family.[She had an independent income from safe investments of about a hundred dollars a year; her children were growing in years and grace; and she was a pleased and happy woman.`aHappy in her husband, happy in her children, and the husband and the children were happy in her.#-.It is at this point that this history begins.IThe youngest girl, Clytemnestra--called Clytie for short--was eleven; her sister, Gwendolen--called Gwen for short--was thirteen; nice girls, and comely./The names betray the latent romance-tinge in the parental blood, the parents' names indicate that the tinge was an inheritance.IIt was an affectionate family, hence all four of its members had pet names, Saladin's was a curious and unsexing one--Sally; and so was Electra's--Aleck.All day long Sally was a good and diligent book-keeper and salesman; all day long Aleck was a good and faithful mother and housewife, and thoughtful and calculating business woman; but in the cozy living-room at night they put the plodding world away, and lived in another and a fairer, reading romances to each other, dreaming dreams, comrading with kings and princes and stately lords and ladies in the flash and stir and splendor of noble palaces and grim and ancient castles. FGCHAPTER II Now came great news! Stunning news--joyous news, in fact.STIt came from a neighboring state, where the family's only surviving relative lived.rIt was Sally's relative--a sort of vague and indefinite uncle or second or third cousin by the name of Tilbury Foster, seventy and a bachelor, reputed well off and corresponding sour and crusty.ijSally had tried to make up to him once, by letter, in a bygone time, and had not made that mistake again."#Tilbury now wrote to Sally, saying he should shortly die, and should leave him thirty thousand dollars, cash; not for love, but because money had given him most of his troubles and exasperations, and he wished to place it where there was good hope that it would continue its malignant work.?@The bequest would be found in his will, and would be paid over.PROVIDED, that Sally should be able to prove to the executors that he had TAKEN NO NOTICE OF THE GIFT BY SPOKEN WORD OR BY LETTER, HAD MADE NO INQUIRIES CONCERNING THE MORIBUND'S PROGRESS TOWARD THE EVERLASTING TROPICS, AND HAD NOT ATTENDED THE FUNERAL.SAs soon as Aleck had partially recovered from the tremendous emotions created by the letter, she sent to the relative's habitat and subscribed for the local paper.deMan and wife entered into a solemn compact, now, to never mention the great news to any one while the relative lived, lest some ignorant person carry the fact to the death-bed and distort it and make it appear that they were disobediently thankful for the bequest, and just the same as confessing it and publishing it, right in the face of the prohibition.For the rest of the day Sally made havoc and confusion with his books, and Aleck could not keep her mind on her affairs, not even take up a flower-pot or book or a stick of wood without forgetting what she had intended to do with it.9For both were dreaming.noThir-ty thousand dollars!" All day long the music of those inspiring words sang through those people's heads.QFrom his marriage-day forth, Aleck's grip had been upon the purse, and Sally had seldom known what it was to be privileged to squander a dime on non-necessities.34Thir-ty thousand dollars!" the song went on and on.1A vast sum, an unthinkable sum! All day long Aleck was absorbed in planning how to invest it, Sally in planning how to spend it.(()There was no romance-reading that night.!qrThe children took themselves away early, for their parents were silent, distraught, and strangely unentertaining.The good-night kisses might as well have been impressed upon vacancy, for all the response they got; the parents were not aware of the kisses, and the children had been gone an hour before their absence was noticed.MNTwo pencils had been busy during that hour--note-making; in the way of plans.#-.It was Sally who broke the stillness at last.XHe said, with exultation: "Ah, it'll be grand, Aleck! Out of the first thousand we'll have a horse and a buggy for summer, and a cutter and a skin lap-robe for winter.XYAleck responded with decision and composure-- "Out of the CAPITAL? Nothing of the kind.XYNot if it was a million!" Sally was deeply disappointed; the glow went out of his face.-#$Oh, Aleck!" he said, reproachfully.\We've always worked so hard and been so scrimped: and now that we are rich, it does seem--" He did not finish, for he saw her eye soften; his supplication had touched her.bcShe said, with gentle persuasiveness: "We must not spend the capital, dear, it would not be wise.Out of the income from it--" "That will answer, that will answer, Aleck! How dear and good you are! There will be a noble income and if we can spend that--" "Not ALL of it, dear, not all of it, but you can spend a part of it.5That is, a reasonable part. [\But the whole of the capital--every penny of it--must be put right to work, and kept at it.<=You see the reasonableness of that, don't you?" "Why, ye-s.AYes, of course.1 But we'll have to wait so long.!/0Six months before the first interest falls due.>Yes--maybe longer.%uvLonger, Aleck? Why? Don't they pay half-yearly?" "THAT kind of an investment--yes; but I sha'n't invest in that way.-#$What way, then?" "For big returns.LBig.D That's good.C Go on, Aleck.<What is it?" "Coal.BThe new mines.ICannel.2I mean to put in ten thousand.C Ground floor.12When we organize, we'll get three shares for one.ijBy George, but it sounds good, Aleck! Then the shares will be worth--how much? And when?" "About a year.7They'll pay ten per cent.&*+half yearly, and be worth thirty thousand. GHI know all about it; the advertisement is in the Cincinnati paper here.MLand, thirty thousand for ten--in a year! Let's jam in the whole capital and pull out ninety! I'll write and subscribe right now--tomorrow it maybe too late.WXHe was flying to the writing-desk, but Aleck stopped him and put him back in his chair.,$%She said: "Don't lose your head so.CWE mustn't subscribe till we've got the money; don't you know that?" Sally's excitement went down a degree or two, but he was not wholly appeased.67Why, Aleck, we'll HAVE it, you know--and so soon, too..~He's probably out of his troubles before this; it's a hundred to nothing he's selecting his brimstone-shovel this very minute.%uvNow, I think--" Aleck shuddered, and said: "How CAN you, Sally! Don't talk in that way, it is perfectly scandalous.^_Oh, well, make it a halo, if you like, _I_ don't care for his outfit, I was only just talking."#Can't you let a person talk?" "But why should you WANT to talk in that dreadful way? How would you like to have people talk so about YOU, and you not cold yet?" "Not likely to be, for ONE while, I reckon, if my last act was giving away money for the sake of doing somebody a harm with it.HIBut never mind about Tilbury, Aleck, let's talk about something worldly. DEIt does seem to me that that mine is the place for the whole thirty.JKWhat's the objection?" "All the eggs in one basket--that's the objection.7All right, if you say so.<What about the other twenty? What do you mean to do with that?" "There is no hurry; I am going to look around before I do anything with it.12All right, if your mind's made up," signed Sally.&vwHe was deep in thought awhile, then he said: "There'll be twenty thousand profit coming from the ten a year from now.9:We can spend that, can we, Aleck?" Aleck shook her head.WXNo, dear," she said, "it won't sell high till we've had the first semi-annual dividend.5You can spend part of that.SShucks, only THAT--and a whole year to wait! Confound it, I--" "Oh, do be patient! It might even be declared in three months--it's quite within the possibilities.MNOh, jolly! oh, thanks!" and Sally jumped up and kissed his wife in gratitude.4It'll be three thousand--three whole thousand! how much of it can we spend, Aleck? Make it liberal!--do, dear, that's a good fellow.MAleck was pleased; so pleased that she yielded to the pressure and conceded a sum which her judgment told her was a foolish extravagance--a thousand dollars.hiSally kissed her half a dozen times and even in that way could not express all his joy and thankfulness.45This new access of gratitude and affection carried Aleck quite beyond the bounds of prudence, and before she could restrain herself she had made her darling another grant--a couple of thousand out of the fifty or sixty which she meant to clear within a year of the twenty which still remained of the bequest. ]^The happy tears sprang to Sally's eyes, and he said: "Oh, I want to hug you!" And he did it.4Then he got his notes and sat down and began to check off, for first purchase, the luxuries which he should earliest wish to secure.VHorse--buggy--cutter--lap-robe--patent-leathers--dog--plug-hat-- church-pew--stem-winder--new teeth--SAY, Aleck!" "Well?" "Ciphering away, aren't you? That's right.'wxHave you got the twenty thousand invested yet?" "No, there's no hurry about that; I must look around first, and think.bBut you are ciphering; what's it about?" "Why, I have to find work for the thirty thousand that comes out of the coal, haven't I?" "Scott, what a head! I never thought of that.WXHow are you getting along? Where have you arrived?" "Not very far--two years or three.9:I've turned it over twice; once in oil and once in wheat.WWhy, Aleck, it's splendid! How does it aggregate?" "I think--well, to be on the safe side, about a hundred and eighty thousand clear, though it will probably be more.CDMy! isn't it wonderful? By gracious! luck has come our way at last, after all the hard sledding, Aleck!" "Well?" "I'm going to cash in a whole three hundred on the missionaries--what real right have we care for expenses!" "You couldn't do a nobler thing, dear; and it's just like your generous nature, you unselfish boy.kThe praise made Sally poignantly happy, but he was fair and just enough to say it was rightfully due to Aleck rather than to himself, since but for her he should never have had the money.opThen they went up to bed, and in their delirium of bliss they forgot and left the candle burning in the parlor.8They did not remember until they were undressed; then Sally was for letting it burn; he said they could afford it, if it was a thousand.-#$But Aleck went down and put it out.PA good job, too; for on her way back she hit on a scheme that would turn the hundred and eighty thousand into half a million before it had had time to get cold.cCHAPTER III The little newspaper which Aleck had subscribed for was a Thursday sheet; it would make the trip of five hundred miles from Tilbury's village and arrive on Saturday.hTilbury's letter had started on Friday, more than a day too late for the benefactor to die and get into that week's issue, but in plenty of time to make connection for the next output.5Thus the Fosters had to wait almost a complete week to find out whether anything of a satisfactory nature had happened to him or not.9:It was a long, long week, and the strain was a heavy one.abThe pair could hardly have borne it if their minds had not had the relief of wholesome diversion.0 !We have seen that they had that.7The woman was piling up fortunes right along, the man was spending them--spending all his wife would give him a chance at, at any rate.;<At last the Saturday came, and the WEEKLY SAGAMORE arrived.LMrs.4Eversly Bennett was present.RSShe was the Presbyterian parson's wife, and was working the Fosters for a charity.12Talk now died a sudden death--on the Foster side.LMrs.:Bennett presently discovered that her hosts were not hearing a word she was saying; so she got up, wondering and indignant, and went away.EThe moment she was out of the house, Aleck eagerly tore the wrapper from the paper, and her eyes and Sally's swept the columns for the death-notices.34Disappointment! Tilbury was not anywhere mentioned.noAleck was a Christian from the cradle, and duty and the force of habit required her to go through the motions.@AShe pulled herself together and said, with a pious two-per-cent.btrade joyousness: "Let us be humbly thankful that he has been spared; and--" "Damn his treacherous hide, I wish--" "Sally! For shame!" "I don't care!" retorted the angry man.XYIt's the way YOU feel, and if you weren't so immorally pious you'd be honest and say so._`Aleck said, with wounded dignity: "I do not see how you can say such unkind and unjust things.(()There is no such thing as immoral piety.Sally felt a pang, but tried to conceal it under a shuffling attempt to save his case by changing the form of it--as if changing the form while retaining the juice could deceive the expert he was trying to placate.qHe said: "I didn't mean so bad as that, Aleck; I didn't really mean immoral piety, I only meant--meant--well, conventional piety, you know; er--shop piety; the--the--why, YOU know what I mean.89Aleck--the--well, where you put up that plated article and play it for solid, you know, without intending anything improper, but just out of trade habit, ancient policy, petrified custom, loyalty to--to--hang it, I can't find the right words, but YOU know what I mean, Aleck, and that there isn't any harm in it.AI'll try again.9You see, it's this way.^_If a person--" "You have said quite enough," said Aleck, coldly; "let the subject be dropped.-}~I'M willing," fervently responded Sally, wiping the sweat from his forehead and looking the thankfulness he had no words for.')*Then, musingly, he apologized to himself.?@I certainly held threes--I KNOW it--but I drew and didn't fill.%+,That's where I'm so often weak in the game./!"If I had stood pat--but I didn't.E I never do.<I don't know enough.;<Confessedly defeated, he was properly tame now and subdued.0 !Aleck forgave him with her eyes.?The grand interest, the supreme interest, came instantly to the front again; nothing could keep it in the background many minutes on a stretch. GHThe couple took up the puzzle of the absence of Tilbury's death-notice.They discussed it every which way, more or less hopefully, but they had to finish where they began, and concede that the only really sane explanation of the absence of the notice must be--and without doubt was--that Tilbury was not dead.%uvThere was something sad about it, something even a little unfair, maybe, but there it was, and had to be put up with.4They were agreed as to that.$tuTo Sally it seemed a strangely inscrutable dispensation; more inscrutable than usual, he thought; one of the most unnecessary inscrutable he could call to mind, in fact--and said so, with some feeling; but if he was hoping to draw Aleck he failed; she reserved her opinion, if she had one; she had not the habit of taking injudicious risks in any market, worldly or other.JKThe pair must wait for next week's paper--Tilbury had evidently postponed.&*+That was their thought and their decision.abSo they put the subject away and went about their affairs again with as good heart as they could.KLNow, if they had but known it, they had been wronging Tilbury all the time.TUTilbury had kept faith, kept it to the letter; he was dead, he had died to schedule.ijHe was dead more than four days now and used to it; entirely dead, perfectly dead, as dead as any other new person in the cemetery; dead in abundant time to get into that week's SAGAMORE, too, and only shut out by an accident; an accident which could not happen to a metropolitan journal, but which happens easily to a poor little village rag like the SAGAMORE.*+On this occasion, just as the editorial page was being locked up, a gratis quart of strawberry ice-water arrived from Hostetter's Ladies and Gents Ice-Cream Parlors, and the stickful of rather chilly regret over Tilbury's translation got crowded out to make room for the editor's frantic gratitude.<=On its way to the standing-galley Tilbury's notice got pied.hOtherwise it would have gone into some future edition, for WEEKLY SAGAMORES do not waste "live" matter, and in their galleys "live" matter is immortal, unless a pi accident intervenes.0But a thing that gets pied is dead, and for such there is no resurrection; its chance of seeing print is gone, forever and ever.NAnd so, let Tilbury like it or not, let him rave in his grave to his fill, no matter--no mention of his death would ever see the light in the WEEKLY SAGAMORE. 01CHAPTER IV Five weeks drifted tediously along.fgThe SAGAMORE arrived regularly on the Saturdays, but never once contained a mention of Tilbury Foster.0Sally's patience broke down at this point, and he said, resentfully: "Damn his livers, he's immortal!" Aleck give him a very severe rebuke, and added with icy solemnity: "How would you feel if you were suddenly cut out just after such an awful remark had escaped out of you?" Without sufficient reflection Sally responded: "I'd feel I was lucky I hadn't got caught with it IN me. pqPride had forced him to say something, and as he could not think of any rational thing to say he flung that out.5Then he stole a base--as he called it--that is, slipped from the presence, to keep from being brayed in his wife's discussion-mortar.7Six months came and went.$,-The SAGAMORE was still silent about Tilbury.bcMeantime, Sally had several times thrown out a feeler--that is, a hint that he would like to know.4Aleck had ignored the hints.9:Sally now resolved to brace up and risk a frontal attack.)yzSo he squarely proposed to disguise himself and go to Tilbury's village and surreptitiously find out as to the prospects. EFAleck put her foot on the dangerous project with energy and decision.UShe said: "What can you be thinking of? You do keep my hands full! You have to be watched all the time, like a little child, to keep you from walking into the fire.fgYou'll stay right where you are!" "Why, Aleck, I could do it and not be found out--I'm certain of it.,|}Sally Foster, don't you know you would have to inquire around?" "Of course, but what of it? Nobody would suspect who I was. ]^Oh, listen to the man! Some day you've got to prove to the executors that you never inquired.&*+What then?" He had forgotten that detail."./He didn't reply; there wasn't anything to say.`aAleck added: "Now then, drop that notion out of your mind, and don't ever meddle with it again.2Tilbury set that trap for you. [\Don't you know it's a trap? He is on the watch, and fully expecting you to blunder into it.BCWell, he is going to be disappointed--at least while I am on deck.`aSally!" "Well?" "As long as you live, if it's a hundred years, don't you ever make an inquiry.45Promise!" "All right," with a sigh and reluctantly.34Then Aleck softened and said: "Don't be impatient.23We are prospering; we can wait; there is no hurry.ROur small dead-certain income increases all the time; and as to futures, I have not made a mistake yet--they are piling up by the thousands and tens of thousands. EFThere is not another family in the state with such prospects as ours.45Already we are beginning to roll in eventual wealth.;<You know that, don't you?" "Yes, Aleck, it's certainly so.@AThen be grateful for what God is doing for us and stop worrying.GYou do not believe we could have achieved these prodigious results without His special help and guidance, do you?" Hesitatingly, "N-no, I suppose not.-}~Then, with feeling and admiration, "And yet, when it comes to judiciousness in watering a stock or putting up a hand to skin Wall Street I don't give in that YOU need any outside amateur help, if I do wish I--" "Oh, DO shut up! I know you do not mean any harm or any irreverence, poor boy, but you can't seem to open your mouth without letting out things to make a person shudder.2You keep me in constant dread.6For you and for all of us.,|}Once I had no fear of the thunder, but now when I hear it I--" Her voice broke, and she began to cry, and could not finish.tThe sight of this smote Sally to the heart and he took her in his arms and petted her and comforted her and promised better conduct, and upbraided himself and remorsefully pleaded for forgiveness.lmAnd he was in earnest, and sorry for what he had done and ready for any sacrifice that could make up for it.fgAnd so, in privacy, he thought long and deeply over the matter, resolving to do what should seem best.ABIt was easy to PROMISE reform; indeed he had already promised it.aBut would that do any real good, any permanent good? No, it would be but temporary--he knew his weakness, and confessed it to himself with sorrow--he could not keep the promise.>?Something surer and better must be devised; and he devised it.&vwAt cost of precious money which he had long been saving up, shilling by shilling, he put a lightning-rod on the house./!"At a subsequent time he relapsed.;What miracles habit can do! and how quickly and how easily habits are acquired--both trifling habits and habits which profoundly change us.If by accident we wake at two in the morning a couple of nights in succession, we have need to be uneasy, for another repetition can turn the accident into a habit; and a month's dallying with whiskey--but we all know these commonplace facts.LThe castle-building habit, the day-dreaming habit--how it grows! what a luxury it becomes; how we fly to its enchantments at every idle moment, how we revel in them, steep our souls in them, intoxicate ourselves with their beguiling fantasies--oh yes, and how soon and how easily our dream life and our material life become so intermingled and so fused together that we can't quite tell which is which, any more.NOBy and by Aleck subscribed to a Chicago daily and for the WALL STREET POINTER.lmWith an eye single to finance she studied these as diligently all the week as she studied her Bible Sundays.Sally was lost in admiration, to note with what swift and sure strides her genius and judgment developed and expanded in the forecasting and handling of the securities of both the material and spiritual markets.@He was proud of her nerve and daring in exploiting worldly stocks, and just as proud of her conservative caution in working her spiritual deals.qHe noted that she never lost her head in either case; that with a splendid courage she often went short on worldly futures, but heedfully drew the line there--she was always long on the others.@Her policy was quite sane and simple, as she explained it to him: what she put into earthly futures was for speculation, what she put into spiritual futures was for investment; she was willing to go into the one on a margin, and take chances, but in the case of the other, "margin her no margins"--she wanted to cash in a hundred cents per dollar's worth, and have the stock transferred on the books.IJIt took but a very few months to educate Aleck's imagination and Sally's.XYEach day's training added something to the spread and effectiveness of the two machines.~As a consequence, Aleck made imaginary money much faster than at first she had dreamed of making it, and Sally's competency in spending the overflow of it kept pace with the strain put upon it, right along.dIn the beginning, Aleck had given the coal speculation a twelvemonth in which to materialize, and had been loath to grant that this term might possibly be shortened by nine months.*z{But that was the feeble work, the nursery work, of a financial fancy that had had no teaching, no experience, no practice.FThese aids soon came, then that nine months vanished, and the imaginary ten-thousand-dollar investment came marching home with three hundred per cent.@Aprofit on its back! It was a great day for the pair of Fosters.3They were speechless for joy.Also speechless for another reason: after much watching of the market, Aleck had lately, with fear and trembling, made her first flyer on a "margin," using the remaining twenty thousand of the bequest in this risk.>?In her mind's eye she had seen it climb, point by point--always with a chance that the market would break--until at last her anxieties were too great for further endurance--she being new to the margin business and unhardened, as yet--and she gave her imaginary broker an imaginary order by imaginary telegraph to sell.34She said forty thousand dollars' profit was enough. [\The sale was made on the very day that the coal venture had returned with its rich freight.hAs I have said, the couple were speechless, they sat dazed and blissful that night, trying to realize that they were actually worth a hundred thousand dollars in clean, imaginary cash.BYet so it was.pIt was the last time that ever Aleck was afraid of a margin; at least afraid enough to let it break her sleep and pale her cheek to the extent that this first experience in that line had done.0 !Indeed it was a memorable night.0Gradually the realization that they were rich sank securely home into the souls of the pair, then they began to place the money.If we could have looked out through the eyes of these dreamers, we should have seen their tidy little wooden house disappear, and two-story brick with a cast-iron fence in front of it take its place; we should have seen a three-globed gas-chandelier grow down from the parlor ceiling; we should have seen the homely rag carpet turn to noble Brussels, a dollar and a half a yard; we should have seen the plebeian fireplace vanish away and a recherche, big base-burner with isinglass windows take position and spread awe around.mnAnd we should have seen other things, too; among them the buggy, the lap-robe, the stove-pipe hat, and so on.45From that time forth, although the daughters and the neighbors saw only the same old wooden house there, it was a two-story brick to Aleck and Sally and not a night went by that Aleck did not worry about the imaginary gas-bills, and get for all comfort Sally's reckless retort: "What of it? We can afford it.opBefore the couple went to bed, that first night that they were rich, they had decided that they must celebrate.&*+They must give a party--that was the idea.noBut how to explain it--to the daughters and the neighbors? They could not expose the fact that they were rich. Z[Sally was willing, even anxious, to do it; but Aleck kept her head and would not allow it.ijShe said that although the money was as good as in, it would be as well to wait until it was actually in.78On that policy she took her stand, and would not budge.TUThe great secret must be kept, she said--kept from the daughters and everybody else.:The pair were puzzled.MThey must celebrate, they were determined to celebrate, but since the secret must be kept, what could they celebrate? No birthdays were due for three months.lTilbury wasn't available, evidently he was going to live forever; what the nation COULD they celebrate? That was Sally's way of putting it; and he was getting impatient, too, and harassed.SBut at last he hit it--just by sheer inspiration, as it seemed to him--and all their troubles were gone in a moment; they would celebrate the Discovery of America.mnA splendid idea! Aleck was almost too proud of Sally for words--she said SHE never would have thought of it.cBut Sally, although he was bursting with delight in the compliment and with wonder at himself, tried not to let on, and said it wasn't really anything, anybody could have done it.Whereat Aleck, with a prideful toss of her happy head, said: "Oh, certainly! Anybody could--oh, anybody! Hosannah Dilkins, for instance! Or maybe Adelbert Peanut--oh, DEAR--yes! Well, I'd like to see them try it, that's all.mDear-me-suz, if they could think of the discovery of a forty-acre island it's more than _I_ believe they could; and as for the whole continent, why, Sally Foster, you know perfectly well it would strain the livers and lights out of them and THEN they couldn't!" The dear woman, she knew he had talent; and if affection made her over-estimate the size of it a little, surely it was a sweet and gentle crime, and forgivable for its source's sake.&*+CHAPTER V The celebration went off well.9:The friends were all present, both the young and the old.?Among the young were Flossie and Gracie Peanut and their brother Adelbert, who was a rising young journeyman tinner, also Hosannah Dilkins, Jr.56journeyman plasterer, just out of his apprenticeship.^For many months Adelbert and Hosannah had been showing interest in Gwendolen and Clytemnestra Foster, and the parents of the girls had noticed this with private satisfaction.<=But they suddenly realized now that that feeling had passed.1They recognized that the changed financial conditions had raised up a social bar between their daughters and the young mechanics."./The daughters could now look higher--and must.F Yes, must.6They need marry nothing below the grade of lawyer or merchant; poppa and momma would take care of this; there must be no mesalliances.AHowever, these thinkings and projects of their were private, and did not show on the surface, and therefore threw no shadow upon the celebration.jWhat showed upon the surface was a serene and lofty contentment and a dignity of carriage and gravity of deportment which compelled the admiration and likewise the wonder of the company.WXAll noticed it and all commented upon it, but none was able to divine the secret of it.2It was a marvel and a mystery..~Three several persons remarked, without suspecting what clever shots they were making: "It's as if they'd come into property.7That was just it, indeed..~Most mothers would have taken hold of the matrimonial matter in the old regulation way; they would have given the girls a talking to, of a solemn sort and untactful--a lecture calculated to defeat its own purpose, by producing tears and secret rebellion; and the said mothers would have further damaged the business by requesting the young mechanics to discontinue their attentions.2But this mother was different.>She was practical.XYShe said nothing to any of the young people concerned, nor to any one else except Sally.:;He listened to her and understood; understood and admired.6He said: "I get the idea.}Instead of finding fault with the samples on view, thus hurting feelings and obstructing trade without occasion, you merely offer a higher class of goods for the money, and leave nature to take her course.56It's wisdom, Aleck, solid wisdom, and sound as a nut.>?Who's your fish? Have you nominated him yet?" No, she hadn't.!/0They must look the market over--which they did.mnTo start with, they considered and discussed Brandish, rising young lawyer, and Fulton, rising young dentist./!"Sally must invite them to dinner.34But not right away; there was no hurry, Aleck said.bcKeep an eye on the pair, and wait; nothing would be lost by going slowly in so important a matter.kIt turned out that this was wisdom, too; for inside of three weeks Aleck made a wonderful strike which swelled her imaginary hundred thousand to four hundred thousand of the same quality."./She and Sally were in the clouds that evening.78For the first time they introduced champagne at dinner.XYNot real champagne, but plenty real enough for the amount of imagination expended on it.56It was Sally that did it, and Aleck weakly submitted.tAt bottom both were troubled and ashamed, for he was a high-up Son of Temperance, and at funerals wore an apron which no dog could look upon and retain his reason and his opinion; and she was a W.JKwith all that that implies of boiler-iron virtue and unendurable holiness.LMBut there is was; the pride of riches was beginning its disintegrating work.They had lived to prove, once more, a sad truth which had been proven many times before in the world: that whereas principle is a great and noble protection against showy and degrading vanities and vices, poverty is worth six of it.45More than four hundred thousand dollars to the good.&*+They took up the matrimonial matter again.fgNeither the dentist nor the lawyer was mentioned; there was no occasion, they were out of the running.C Disqualified.LMThey discussed the son of the pork-packer and the son of the village banker.cdBut finally, as in the previous case, they concluded to wait and think, and go cautiously and sure.6Luck came their way again.KLAleck, ever watchful saw a great and risky chance, and took a daring flyer.)yzA time of trembling, of doubt, of awful uneasiness followed, for non-success meant absolute ruin and nothing short of it.<=Then came the result, and Aleck, faint with joy, could hardly control her voice when she said: "The suspense is over, Sally--and we are worth a cold million!" Sally wept for gratitude, and said: "Oh, Electra, jewel of women, darling of my heart, we are free at last, we roll in wealth, we need never scrimp again.mIt's a case for Veuve Cliquot!" and he got out a pint of spruce-beer and made sacrifice, he saying "Damn the expense," and she rebuking him gently with reproachful but humid and happy eyes.4They shelved the pork-packer's son and the banker's son, and sat down to consider the Governor's son and the son of the Congressman.3CHAPTER VI It were a weariness to follow in detail the leaps and bounds the Foster fictitious finances took from this time forth.34It was marvelous, it was dizzying, it was dazzling.abEverything Aleck touched turned to fairy gold, and heaped itself glittering toward the firmament.'wxMillions upon millions poured in, and still the mighty stream flowed thundering along, still its vast volume increased.dFive millions--ten millions--twenty--thirty--was there never to be an end? Two years swept by in a splendid delirium, the intoxicated Fosters scarcely noticing the flight of time.They were now worth three hundred million dollars; they were in every board of directors of every prodigious combine in the country; and still as time drifted along, the millions went on piling up, five at a time, ten at a time, as fast as they could tally them off, almost.VWThe three hundred double itself--then doubled again--and yet again--and yet once more.JKTwenty-four hundred millions! The business was getting a little confused. DEIt was necessary to take an account of stock, and straighten it out.}The Fosters knew it, they felt it, they realized that it was imperative; but they also knew that to do it properly and perfectly the task must be carried to a finish without a break when once it was begun.01A ten-hours' job; and where could THEY find ten leisure hours in a bunch? Sally was selling pins and sugar and calico all day and every day; Aleck was cooking and washing dishes and sweeping and making beds all day and every day, with none to help, for the daughters were being saved up for high society. FGThe Fosters knew there was one way to get the ten hours, and only one.ABBoth were ashamed to name it; each waited for the other to do it. 01Finally Sally said: "Somebody's got to give in.BIt's up to me.ABConsider that I've named it--never mind pronouncing it out aloud.0 !Aleck colored, but was grateful.."#Without further remark, they fell.3Fell, and--broke the Sabbath."./For that was their only free ten-hour stretch.#-.It was but another step in the downward path.<Others would follow./Vast wealth has temptations which fatally and surely undermine the moral structure of persons not habituated to its possession.23They pulled down the shades and broke the Sabbath.KLWith hard and patient labor they overhauled their holdings and listed them.And a long-drawn procession of formidable names it was! Starting with the Railway Systems, Steamer Lines, Standard Oil, Ocean Cables, Diluted Telegraph, and all the rest, and winding up with Klondike, De Beers, Tammany Graft, and Shady Privileges in the Post-office Department.efTwenty-four hundred millions, and all safely planted in Good Things, gilt-edged and interest-bearing.4Income, $120,000,000 a year.UVAleck fetched a long purr of soft delight, and said: "Is it enough?" "It is, Aleck.1 What shall we do?" "Stand pat.-#$Retire from business?" "That's it.D I am agreed.HIThe good work is finished; we will take a long rest and enjoy the money.VWGood! Aleck!" "Yes, dear?" "How much of the income can we spend?" "The whole of it.BCIt seemed to her husband that a ton of chains fell from his limbs.?@He did not say a word; he was happy beyond the power of speech.JKAfter that, they broke the Sabbaths right along as fast as they turned up.)'(It is the first wrong step that counts.$tuEvery Sunday they put in the whole day, after morning service, on inventions--inventions of ways to spend the money.They got to continuing this delicious dissipation until past midnight; and at every seance Aleck lavished millions upon great charities and religious enterprises, and Sally lavished like sums upon matters to which (at first) he gave definite names.BOnly at first.=Later the names gradually lost sharpness of outline, and eventually faded into "sundries," thus becoming entirely--but safely--undescriptive.8For Sally was crumbling.opThe placing of these millions added seriously and most uncomfortably to the family expenses--in tallow candles.2For a while Aleck was worried.KLThen, after a little, she ceased to worry, for the occasion of it was gone.cdShe was pained, she was grieved, she was ashamed; but she said nothing, and so became an accessory.34Sally was taking candles; he was robbing the store.@It is ever thus.hiVast wealth, to the person unaccustomed to it, is a bane; it eats into the flesh and bone of his morals.MNWhen the Fosters were poor, they could have been trusted with untold candles.%+,But now they--but let us not dwell upon it.0From candles to apples is but a step: Sally got to taking apples; then soap; then maple-sugar; then canned goods; then crockery.lHow easy it is to go from bad to worse, when once we have started upon a downward course! Meantime, other effects had been milestoning the course of the Fosters' splendid financial march.vThe fictitious brick dwelling had given place to an imaginary granite one with a checker-board mansard roof; in time this one disappeared and gave place to a still grander home--and so on and so on.Mansion after mansion, made of air, rose, higher, broader, finer, and each in its turn vanished away; until now in these latter great days, our dreamers were in fancy housed, in a distant region, in a sumptuous vast palace which looked out from a leafy summit upon a noble prospect of vale and river and receding hills steeped in tinted mists--and all private, all the property of the dreamers; a palace swarming with liveried servants, and populous with guests of fame and power, hailing from all the world's capitals, foreign and domestic.sThis palace was far, far away toward the rising sun, immeasurably remote, astronomically remote, in Newport, Rhode Island, Holy Land of High Society, ineffable Domain of the American Aristocracy._As a rule they spent a part of every Sabbath--after morning service--in this sumptuous home, the rest of it they spent in Europe, or in dawdling around in their private yacht.]Six days of sordid and plodding fact life at home on the ragged edge of Lakeside and straitened means, the seventh in Fairyland--such had been their program and their habit."rsIn their sternly restricted fact life they remained as of old--plodding, diligent, careful, practical, economical.eThey stuck loyally to the little Presbyterian Church, and labored faithfully in its interests and stood by its high and tough doctrines with all their mental and spiritual energies.5But in their dream life they obeyed the invitations of their fancies, whatever they might be, and howsoever the fancies might change.^_Aleck's fancies were not very capricious, and not frequent, but Sally's scattered a good deal.Aleck, in her dream life, went over to the Episcopal camp, on account of its large official titles; next she became High-church on account of the candles and shows; and next she naturally changed to Rome, where there were cardinals and more candles.!/0But these excursions were a nothing to Sally's.dHis dream life was a glowing and continuous and persistent excitement, and he kept every part of it fresh and sparkling by frequent changes, the religious part along with the rest.>?He worked his religions hard, and changed them with his shirt.NThe liberal spendings of the Fosters upon their fancies began early in their prosperities, and grew in prodigality step by step with their advancing fortunes.-#$In time they became truly enormous..~Aleck built a university or two per Sunday; also a hospital or two; also a Rowton hotel or so; also a batch of churches; now and then a cathedral; and once, with untimely and ill-chosen playfulness, Sally said, "It was a cold day when she didn't ship a cargo of missionaries to persuade unreflecting Chinamen to trade off twenty-four carat Confucianism for counterfeit Christianity.`aThis rude and unfeeling language hurt Aleck to the heart, and she went from the presence crying.+{|That spectacle went to his own heart, and in his pain and shame he would have given worlds to have those unkind words back.:;She had uttered no syllable of reproach--and that cut him.gNot one suggestion that he look at his own record--and she could have made, oh, so many, and such blistering ones! Her generous silence brought a swift revenge, for it turned his thoughts upon himself, it summoned before him a spectral procession, a moving vision of his life as he had been leading it these past few years of limitless prosperity, and as he sat there reviewing it his cheeks burned and his soul was steeped in humiliation.Look at her life--how fair it was, and tending ever upward; and look at his own--how frivolous, how charged with mean vanities, how selfish, how empty, how ignoble! And its trend--never upward, but downward, ever downward! He instituted comparisons between her record and his own.PQHe had found fault with her--so he mused--HE! And what could he say for himself? When she built her first church what was he doing? Gathering other blase multimillionaires into a Poker Club; defiling his own palace with it; losing hundreds of thousands to it at every sitting, and sillily vain of the admiring notoriety it made for him.When she was building her first university, what was he doing? Polluting himself with a gay and dissipated secret life in the company of other fast bloods, multimillionaires in money and paupers in character.{When she was building her first foundling asylum, what was he doing? Alas! When she was projecting her noble Society for the Purifying of the Sex, what was he doing? Ah, what, indeed! When she and the W.Oand the Woman with the Hatchet, moving with resistless march, were sweeping the fatal bottle from the land, what was he doing? Getting drunk three times a day.When she, builder of a hundred cathedrals, was being gratefully welcomed and blest in papal Rome and decorated with the Golden Rose which she had so honorably earned, what was he doing? Breaking the bank at Monte Carlo.E He stopped.34He could go no farther; he could not bear the rest._He rose up, with a great resolution upon his lips: this secret life should be revealing, and confessed; no longer would he live it clandestinely, he would go and tell her All.8And that is what he did. [\He told her All; and wept upon her bosom; wept, and moaned, and begged for her forgiveness.pIt was a profound shock, and she staggered under the blow, but he was her own, the core of her heart, the blessing of her eyes, her all in all, she could deny him nothing, and she forgave him.LMShe felt that he could never again be quite to her what he had been before; she knew that he could only repent, and not reform; yet all morally defaced and decayed as he was, was he not her own, her very own, the idol of her deathless worship? She said she was his serf, his slave, and she opened her yearning heart and took him in.`CHAPTER VII One Sunday afternoon some time after this they were sailing the summer seas in their dream yacht, and reclining in lazy luxury under the awning of the after-deck.;<There was silence, for each was busy with his own thoughts.1These seasons of silence had insensibly been growing more and more frequent of late; the old nearness and cordiality were waning.~Sally's terrible revelation had done its work; Aleck had tried hard to drive the memory of it out of her mind, but it would not go, and the shame and bitterness of it were poisoning her gracious dream life. [\She could see now (on Sundays) that her husband was becoming a bloated and repulsive Thing.%uvShe could not close her eyes to this, and in these days she no longer looked at him, Sundays, when she could help it. EFBut she--was she herself without blemish? Alas, she knew she was not.noShe was keeping a secret from him, she was acting dishonorably toward him, and many a pang it was costing her.9:SHE WAS BREAKING THE COMPACT, AND CONCEALING IT FROM HIM.#$Under strong temptation she had gone into business again; she had risked their whole fortune in a purchase of all the railway systems and coal and steel companies in the country on a margin, and she was now trembling, every Sabbath hour, lest through some chance word of hers he find it out.{In her misery and remorse for this treachery she could not keep her heart from going out to him in pity; she was filled with compunctions to see him lying there, drunk and contented, and ever suspecting.Never suspecting--trusting her with a perfect and pathetic trust, and she holding over him by a thread a possible calamity of so devastating a-- "SAY--Aleck?" The interrupting words brought her suddenly to herself.EShe was grateful to have that persecuting subject from her thoughts, and she answered, with much of the old-time tenderness in her tone: "Yes, dear. FGDo you know, Aleck, I think we are making a mistake--that is, you are.-#$I mean about the marriage business.QRHe sat up, fat and froggy and benevolent, like a bronze Buddha, and grew earnest.,$%Consider--it's more than five years.klYou've continued the same policy from the start: with every rise, always holding on for five points higher.+{|Always when I think we are going to have some weddings, you see a bigger thing ahead, and I undergo another disappointment.,$%I_ think you are too hard to please.8Some day we'll get left.12First, we turned down the dentist and the lawyer./!"That was all right--it was sound. Z[Next, we turned down the banker's son and the pork-butcher's heir--right again, and sound._`Next, we turned down the Congressman's son and the Governor's--right as a trivet, I confess it.FNext the Senator's son and the son of the Vice-President of the United States--perfectly right, there's no permanency about those little distinctions.PQThen you went for the aristocracy; and I thought we had struck oil at last--yes.DEWe would make a plunge at the Four Hundred, and pull in some ancient lineage, venerable, holy, ineffable, mellow with the antiquity of a hundred and fifty years, disinfected of the ancestral odors of salt-cod and pelts all of a century ago, and unsmirched by a day's work since, and then! why, then the marriages, of course.jkBut no, along comes a pair a real aristocrats from Europe, and straightway you throw over the half-breeds.It was awfully discouraging, Aleck! Since then, what a procession! You turned down the baronets for a pair of barons; you turned down the barons for a pair of viscounts; the viscounts for a pair of earls; the earls for a pair of marquises; the marquises for a brace of dukes."./NOW, Aleck, cash in!--you've played the limit.QYou've got a job lot of four dukes under the hammer; of four nationalities; all sound in the wind and limb and pedigree, all bankrupt and in debt up to the ears.+%&They come high, but we can afford it.  Come, Aleck, don't delay any longer, don't keep up the suspense: take the whole lay-out, and leave the girls to choose!" Aleck had been smiling blandly and contentedly all through this arraignment of her marriage policy, a pleasant light, as of triumph with perhaps a nice surprise peeping out through it, rose in her eyes, and she said, as calmly as she could: "Sally, what would you say to--ROYALTY?" Prodigious! Poor man, it knocked him silly, and he fell over the garboard-strake and barked his shin on the cat-heads.lHe was dizzy for a moment, then he gathered himself up and limped over and sat down by his wife and beamed his old-time admiration and affection upon her in floods, out of his bleary eyes.7By George!" he said, fervently, "Aleck, you ARE great--the greatest woman in the whole earth! I can't ever learn the whole size of you.12I can't ever learn the immeasurable deeps of you. CDHere I've been considering myself qualified to criticize your game.VWI!_ Why, if I had stopped to think, I'd have known you had a lone hand up your sleeve.ENow, dear heart, I'm all red-hot impatience--tell me about it!" The flattered and happy woman put her lips to his ear and whispered a princely name.>?It made him catch his breath, it lit his face with exultation.3Land!" he said, "it's a stunning catch! He's got a gambling-hall, and a graveyard, and a bishop, and a cathedral--all his very own.')*And all gilt-edged five-hundred-per-cent.|stock, every detail of it; the tidiest little property in Europe; and that graveyard--it's the selectest in the world: none but suicides admitted; YES, sir, and the free-list suspended, too, ALL the time.*z{There isn't much land in the principality, but there's enough: eight hundred acres in the graveyard and forty-two outside.:;It's a SOVEREIGNTY--that's the main thing; LAND'S nothing."./There's plenty land, Sahara's drugged with it.)'(Aleck glowed; she was profoundly happy.She said: "Think of it, Sally--it is a family that has never married outside the Royal and Imperial Houses of Europe: our grandchildren will sit upon thrones!" "True as you live, Aleck--and bear scepters, too; and handle them as naturally and nonchantly as I handle a yardstick.6It's a grand catch, Aleck.NOHe's corralled, is he? Can't get away? You didn't take him on a margin?" "No.>Trust me for that.,$%He's not a liability, he's an asset.<So is the other one.CWho is it, Aleck?" "His Royal Highness Sigismund-Siegfriend-Lauenfeld-Dinkelspiel-Schwartzenberg Blutwurst, Hereditary Grant Duke of Katzenyammer.^_No! You can't mean it!" "It's as true as I'm sitting here, I give you my word," she answered.BCHis cup was full, and he hugged her to his heart with rapture, saying: "How wonderful it all seems, and how beautiful! It's one of the oldest and noblest of the three hundred and sixty-four ancient German principalities, and one of the few that was allowed to retain its royal estate when Bismarck got done trimming them.."#I know that farm, I've been there.67It's got a rope-walk and a candle-factory and an army.BStanding army.;Infantry and cavalry.6Three soldier and a horse.efAleck, it's been a long wait, and full of heartbreak and hope deferred, but God knows I am happy now.9:Happy, and grateful to you, my own, who have done it all./!"When is it to be?" "Next Sunday.KGood.OPAnd we'll want to do these weddings up in the very regalest style that's going.HIIt's properly due to the royal quality of the parties of the first part.0Now as I understand it, there is only one kind of marriage that is sacred to royalty, exclusive to royalty: it's the morganatic. ]^What do they call it that for, Sally?" "I don't know; but anyway it's royal, and royal only.4Then we will insist upon it.9More--I will compel it.."#It is morganatic marriage or none.=>That settles it!" said Sally, rubbing his hands with delight.')*And it will be the very first in America./!"Aleck, it will make Newport sick.lThen they fell silent, and drifted away upon their dream wings to the far regions of the earth to invite all the crowned heads and their families and provide gratis transportation to them. \]CHAPTER VIII During three days the couple walked upon air, with their heads in the clouds.ZThey were but vaguely conscious of their surroundings; they saw all things dimly, as through a veil; they were steeped in dreams, often they did not hear when they were spoken to; they often did not understand when they heard; they answered confusedly or at random; Sally sold molasses by weight, sugar by the yard, and furnished soap when asked for candles, and Aleck put the cat in the wash and fed milk to the soiled linen.#stEverybody was stunned and amazed, and went about muttering, "What CAN be the matter with the Fosters?" Three days.%uvThen came events! Things had taken a happy turn, and for forty-eight hours Aleck's imaginary corner had been booming.(()Up--up--still up! Cost point was passed. 01Still up--and up--and up! Cost point was passed.STill up--and up--and up! Five points above cost--then ten--fifteen--twenty! Twenty points cold profit on the vast venture, now, and Aleck's imaginary brokers were shouting frantically by imaginary long-distance, "Sell! sell! for Heaven's sake SELL!" She broke the splendid news to Sally, and he, too, said, "Sell! sell--oh, don't make a blunder, now, you own the earth!--sell, sell!" But she set her iron will and lashed it amidships, and said she would hold on for five points more if she died for it.9It was a fatal resolve.The very next day came the historic crash, the record crash, the devastating crash, when the bottom fell out of Wall Street, and the whole body of gilt-edged stocks dropped ninety-five points in five hours, and the multimillionaire was seen begging his bread in the Bowery.UAleck sternly held her grip and "put up" as long as she could, but at last there came a call which she was powerless to meet, and her imaginary brokers sold her out.XYThen, and not till then, the man in her was vanished, and the woman in her resumed sway.!qrShe put her arms about her husband's neck and wept, saying: "I am to blame, do not forgive me, I cannot bear it.!/0We are paupers! Paupers, and I am so miserable. [\The weddings will never come off; all that is past; we could not even buy the dentist, now.UA bitter reproach was on Sally's tongue: "I BEGGED you to sell, but you--" He did not say it; he had not the heart to add a hurt to that broken and repentant spirit.&'A nobler thought came to him and he said: "Bear up, my Aleck, all is not lost! You really never invested a penny of my uncle's bequest, but only its unmaterialized future; what we have lost was only the incremented harvest from that future by your incomparable financial judgment and sagacity.Cheer up, banish these griefs; we still have the thirty thousand untouched; and with the experience which you have acquired, think what you will be able to do with it in a couple years! The marriages are not off, they are only postponed.8These are blessed words.>Aleck saw how true they were, and their influence was electric; her tears ceased to flow, and her great spirit rose to its full stature again.RWith flashing eye and grateful heart, and with hand uplifted in pledge and prophecy, she said: "Now and here I proclaim--" But she was interrupted by a visitor.12It was the editor and proprietor of the SAGAMORE.BCHe had happened into Lakeside to pay a duty-call upon an obscure grandmother of his who was nearing the end of her pilgrimage, and with the idea of combining business with grief he had looked up the Fosters, who had been so absorbed in other things for the past four years that they neglected to pay up their subscription.@Six dollars due.(()No visitor could have been more welcome.abHe would know all about Uncle Tilbury and what his chances might be getting to be, cemeterywards.JThey could, of course, ask no questions, for that would squelch the bequest, but they could nibble around on the edge of the subject and hope for results.8The scheme did not work. pqThe obtuse editor did not know he was being nibbled at; but at last, chance accomplished what art had failed in.GIn illustration of something under discussion which required the help of metaphor, the editor said: "Land, it's a tough as Tilbury Foster!--as WE say.$,-It was sudden, and it made the Fosters jump.OPThe editor noticed, and said, apologetically: "No harm intended, I assure you.9:It's just a saying; just a joke, you know--nothing of it.]Relation of yours?" Sally crowded his burning eagerness down, and answered with all the indifference he could assume: "I--well, not that I know of, but we've heard of him.34The editor was thankful, and resumed his composure.QSally added: "Is he--is he--well?" "Is he WELL? Why, bless you he's in Sheol these five years!" The Fosters were trembling with grief, though it felt like joy.*z{Sally said, non-committally--and tentatively: "Ah, well, such is life, and none can escape--not even the rich are spared.=The editor laughed.89If you are including Tilbury," said he, "it don't apply.%+,HE hadn't a cent; the town had to bury him.>?The Fosters sat petrified for two minutes; petrified and cold.;Then, white-faced and weak-voiced, Sally asked: "Is it true? Do you KNOW it to be true?" "Well, I should say! I was one of the executors. FGHe hadn't anything to leave but a wheelbarrow, and he left that to me.')*It hadn't any wheel, and wasn't any good.6Still, it was something, and so, to square up, I scribbled off a sort of a little obituarial send-off for him, but it got crowded out.MNThe Fosters were not listening--their cup was full, it could contain no more.KLThey sat with bowed heads, dead to all things but the ache at their hearts.BAn hour later. YZStill they sat there, bowed, motionless, silent, the visitor long ago gone, they unaware.eThen they stirred, and lifted their heads wearily, and gazed at each other wistfully, dreamily, dazed; then presently began to twaddle to each other in a wandering and childish way.*z{At intervals they lapsed into silences, leaving a sentence unfinished, seemingly either unaware of it or losing their way.zSometimes, when they woke out of these silences they had a dim and transient consciousness that something had happened to their minds; then with a dumb and yearning solicitude they would softly caress each other's hands in mutual compassion and support, as if they would say: "I am near you, I will not forsake you, we will bear it together; somewhere there is release and forgetfulness, somewhere there is a grave and peace; be patient, it will not be long.VThey lived yet two years, in mental night, always brooding, steeped in vague regrets and melancholy dreams, never speaking; then release came to both on the same day.KToward the end the darkness lifted from Sally's ruined mind for a moment, and he said: "Vast wealth, acquired by sudden and unwholesome means, is a snare.LIt did us no good, transient were its feverish pleasures; yet for its sake we threw away our sweet and simple and happy life--let others take warning by us.He lay silent awhile, with closed eyes; then as the chill of death crept upward toward his heart, and consciousness was fading from his brain, he muttered: "Money had brought him misery, and he took his revenge upon us, who had done him no harm.QHe had his desire: with base and cunning calculation he left us but thirty thousand, knowing we would try to increase it, and ruin our life and break our hearts.Without added expense he could have left us far above desire of increase, far above the temptation to speculate, and a kinder soul would have done it; but in him was no generous spirit, no pity, no--" A DOG'S TALE CHAPTER I My father was a St.9:Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am a Presbyterian.MNThis is what my mother told me, I do not know these nice distinctions myself.56To me they are only fine large words meaning nothing.DMy mother had a fondness for such; she liked to say them, and see other dogs look surprised and envious, as wondering how she got so much education.But, indeed, it was not real education; it was only show: she got the words by listening in the dining-room and drawing-room when there was company, and by going with the children to Sunday-school and listening there; and whenever she heard a large word she said it over to herself many times, and so was able to keep it until there was a dogmatic gathering in the neighborhood, then she would get it off, and surprise and distress them all, from pocket-pup to mastiff, which rewarded her for all her trouble.-}~If there was a stranger he was nearly sure to be suspicious, and when he got his breath again he would ask her what it meant.8And she always told him.THe was never expecting this but thought he would catch her; so when she told him, he was the one that looked ashamed, whereas he had thought it was going to be she.BThe others were always waiting for this, and glad of it and proud of her, for they knew what was going to happen, because they had had experience.7When she told the meaning of a big word they were all so taken up with admiration that it never occurred to any dog to doubt if it was the right one; and that was natural, because, for one thing, she answered up so promptly that it seemed like a dictionary speaking, and for another thing, where could they find out whether it was right or not? for she was the only cultivated dog there was.vBy and by, when I was older, she brought home the word Unintellectual, one time, and worked it pretty hard all the week at different gatherings, making much unhappiness and despondency; and it was at this time that I noticed that during that week she was asked for the meaning at eight different assemblages, and flashed out a fresh definition every time, which showed me that she had more presence of mind than culture, though I said nothing, of course.She had one word which she always kept on hand, and ready, like a life-preserver, a kind of emergency word to strap on when she was likely to get washed overboard in a sudden way--that was the word Synonymous.6When she happened to fetch out a long word which had had its day weeks before and its prepared meanings gone to her dump-pile, if there was a stranger there of course it knocked him groggy for a couple of minutes, then he would come to, and by that time she would be away down wind on another tack, and not expecting anything; so when he'd hail and ask her to cash in, I (the only dog on the inside of her game) could see her canvas flicker a moment--but only just a moment--then it would belly out taut and full, and she would say, as calm as a summer's day, "It's synonymous with supererogation," or some godless long reptile of a word like that, and go placidly about and skim away on the next tack, perfectly comfortable, you know, and leave that stranger looking profane and embarrassed, and the initiated slatting the floor with their tails in unison and their faces transfigured with a holy joy./!"And it was the same with phrases.&'She would drag home a whole phrase, if it had a grand sound, and play it six nights and two matinees, and explain it a new way every time--which she had to, for all she cared for was the phrase; she wasn't interested in what it meant, and knew those dogs hadn't wit enough to catch her, anyway.,|}Yes, she was a daisy! She got so she wasn't afraid of anything, she had such confidence in the ignorance of those creatures.~She even brought anecdotes that she had heard the family and the dinner-guests laugh and shout over; and as a rule she got the nub of one chestnut hitched onto another chestnut, where, of course, it didn't fit and hadn't any point; and when she delivered the nub she fell over and rolled on the floor and laughed and barked in the most insane way, while I could see that she was wondering to herself why it didn't seem as funny as it did when she first heard it.tBut no harm was done; the others rolled and barked too, privately ashamed of themselves for not seeing the point, and never suspecting that the fault was not with them and there wasn't any to see.:You can see by these things that she was of a rather vain and frivolous character; still, she had virtues, and enough to make up, I think.VShe had a kind heart and gentle ways, and never harbored resentments for injuries done her, but put them easily out of her mind and forgot them; and she taught her children her kindly way, and from her we learned also to be brave and prompt in time of danger, and not to run away, but face the peril that threatened friend or stranger, and help him the best we could without stopping to think what the cost might be to us."rsAnd she taught us not by words only, but by example, and that is the best way and the surest and the most lasting.Why, the brave things she did, the splendid things! she was just a soldier; and so modest about it--well, you couldn't help admiring her, and you couldn't help imitating her; not even a King Charles spaniel could remain entirely despicable in her society.9:So, as you see, there was more to her than her education.bcCHAPTER II When I was well grown, at last, I was sold and taken away, and I never saw her again.NOShe was broken-hearted, and so was I, and we cried; but she comforted me as well as she could, and said we were sent into this world for a wise and good purpose, and must do our duties without repining, take our life as we might find it, live it for the best good of others, and never mind about the results; they were not our affair.  She said men who did like this would have a noble and beautiful reward by and by in another world, and although we animals would not go there, to do well and right without reward would give to our brief lives a worthiness and dignity which in itself would be a reward.  She had gathered these things from time to time when she had gone to the Sunday-school with the children, and had laid them up in her memory more carefully than she had done with those other words and phrases; and she had studied them deeply, for her good and ours."rsOne may see by this that she had a wise and thoughtful head, for all there was so much lightness and vanity in it.:;So we said our farewells, and looked our last upon each other through our tears; and the last thing she said--keeping it for the last to make me remember it the better, I think--was, "In memory of me, when there is a time of danger to another do not think of yourself, think of your mother, and do as she would do.+%&Do you think I could forget that? No.+,CHAPTER III It was such a charming home!--my new one; a fine great house, with pictures, and delicate decorations, and rich furniture, and no gloom anywhere, but all the wilderness of dainty colors lit up with flooding sunshine; and the spacious grounds around it, and the great garden--oh, greensward, and noble trees, and flowers, no end! And I was the same as a member of the family; and they loved me, and petted me, and did not give me a new name, but called me by my old one that was dear to me because my mother had given it me--Aileen Mavoureen. YZShe got it out of a song; and the Grays knew that song, and said it was a beautiful name.LMrs.5Gray was thirty, and so sweet and so lovely, you cannot imagine it; and Sadie was ten, and just like her mother, just a darling slender little copy of her, with auburn tails down her back, and short frocks; and the baby was a year old, and plump and dimpled, and fond of me, and never could get enough of hauling on my tail, and hugging me, and laughing out its innocent happiness; and Mr.'(Gray was thirty-eight, and tall and slender and handsome, a little bald in front, alert, quick in his movements, business-like, prompt, decided, unsentimental, and with that kind of trim-chiseled face that just seems to glint and sparkle with frosty intellectuality! He was a renowned scientist. Z[I do not know what the word means, but my mother would know how to use it and get effects. Z[She would know how to depress a rat-terrier with it and make a lap-dog look sorry he came.:;But that is not the best one; the best one was Laboratory.`aMy mother could organize a Trust on that one that would skin the tax-collars off the whole herd.The laboratory was not a book, or a picture, or a place to wash your hands in, as the college president's dog said--no, that is the lavatory; the laboratory is quite different, and is filled with jars, and bottles, and electrics, and wires, and strange machines; and every week other scientists came there and sat in the place, and used the machines, and discussed, and made what they called experiments and discoveries; and often I came, too, and stood around and listened, and tried to learn, for the sake of my mother, and in loving memory of her, although it was a pain to me, as realizing what she was losing out of her life and I gaining nothing at all; for try as I might, I was never able to make anything out of it at all.34Other times I lay on the floor in the mistress's work-room and slept, she gently using me for a foot-stool, knowing it pleased me, for it was a caress; other times I spent an hour in the nursery, and got well tousled and made happy; other times I watched by the crib there, when the baby was asleep and the nurse out for a few minutes on the baby's affairs; other times I romped and raced through the grounds and the garden with Sadie till we were tired out, then slumbered on the grass in the shade of a tree while she read her book; other times I went visiting among the neighbor dogs--for there were some most pleasant ones not far away, and one very handsome and courteous and graceful one, a curly-haired Irish setter by the name of Robin Adair, who was a Presbyterian like me, and belonged to the Scotch minister. pqThe servants in our house were all kind to me and were fond of me, and so, as you see, mine was a pleasant life.BCThere could not be a happier dog that I was, nor a gratefuler one.|I will say this for myself, for it is only the truth: I tried in all ways to do well and right, and honor my mother's memory and her teachings, and earn the happiness that had come to me, as best I could.STBy and by came my little puppy, and then my cup was full, my happiness was perfect.KLIt was the dearest little waddling thing, and so smooth and soft and velvety, and had such cunning little awkward paws, and such affectionate eyes, and such a sweet and innocent face; and it made me so proud to see how the children and their mother adored it, and fondled it, and exclaimed over every little wonderful thing it did.KLIt did seem to me that life was just too lovely to-- Then came the winter."./One day I was standing a watch in the nursery.(()That is to say, I was asleep on the bed. ]^The baby was asleep in the crib, which was alongside the bed, on the side next the fireplace.cdIt was the kind of crib that has a lofty tent over it made of gauzy stuff that you can see through.23The nurse was out, and we two sleepers were alone.MNA spark from the wood-fire was shot out, and it lit on the slope of the tent.PQI suppose a quiet interval followed, then a scream from the baby awoke me, and there was that tent flaming up toward the ceiling! Before I could think, I sprang to the floor in my fright, and in a second was half-way to the door; but in the next half-second my mother's farewell was sounding in my ears, and I was back on the bed again.`aI reached my head through the flames and dragged the baby out by the waist-band, and tugged it along, and we fell to the floor together in a cloud of smoke; I snatched a new hold, and dragged the screaming little creature along and out at the door and around the bend of the hall, and was still tugging away, all excited and happy and proud, when the master's voice shouted: "Begone you cursed beast!" and I jumped to save myself; but he was furiously quick, and chased me up, striking furiously at me with his cane, I dodging this way and that, in terror, and at last a strong blow fell upon my left foreleg, which made me shriek and fall, for the moment, helpless; the cane went up for another blow, but never descended, for the nurse's voice rang wildly out, "The nursery's on fire!" and the master rushed away in that direction, and my other bones were saved.45The pain was cruel, but, no matter, I must not lose any time; he might come back at any moment; so I limped on three legs to the other end of the hall, where there was a dark little stairway leading up into a garret where old boxes and such things were kept, as I had heard say, and where people seldom went.<I managed to climb up there, then I searched my way through the dark among the piles of things, and hid in the secretest place I could find.sIt was foolish to be afraid there, yet still I was; so afraid that I held in and hardly even whimpered, though it would have been such a comfort to whimper, because that eases the pain, you know. 01But I could lick my leg, and that did some good.(xyFor half an hour there was a commotion downstairs, and shoutings, and rushing footsteps, and then there was quiet again.?Quiet for some minutes, and that was grateful to my spirit, for then my fears began to go down; and fears are worse than pains--oh, much worse.0 !Then came a sound that froze me.tThey were calling me--calling me by name--hunting for me! It was muffled by distance, but that could not take the terror out of it, and it was the most dreadful sound to me that I had ever heard.It went all about, everywhere, down there: along the halls, through all the rooms, in both stories, and in the basement and the cellar; then outside, and farther and farther away--then back, and all about the house again, and I thought it would never, never stop.+{|But at last it did, hours and hours after the vague twilight of the garret had long ago been blotted out by black darkness.cdThen in that blessed stillness my terrors fell little by little away, and I was at peace and slept.HIIt was a good rest I had, but I woke before the twilight had come again. CDI was feeling fairly comfortable, and I could think out a plan now.$tuI made a very good one; which was, to creep down, all the way down the back stairs, and hide behind the cellar door, and slip out and escape when the iceman came at dawn, while he was inside filling the refrigerator; then I would hide all day, and start on my journey when night came; my journey to--well, anywhere where they would not know me and betray me to the master.(xyI was feeling almost cheerful now; then suddenly I thought: Why, what would life be without my puppy! That was despair.[There was no plan for me; I saw that; I must say where I was; stay, and wait, and take what might come--it was not my affair; that was what life is--my mother had said it. CDThen--well, then the calling began again! All my sorrows came back. 01I said to myself, the master will never forgive.]I did not know what I had done to make him so bitter and so unforgiving, yet I judged it was something a dog could not understand, but which was clear to a man and dreadful.9:They called and called--days and nights, it seemed to me.deSo long that the hunger and thirst near drove me mad, and I recognized that I was getting very weak.89When you are this way you sleep a great deal, and I did.lmOnce I woke in an awful fright--it seemed to me that the calling was right there in the garret! And so it was: it was Sadie's voice, and she was crying; my name was falling from her lips all broken, poor thing, and I could not believe my ears for the joy of it when I heard her say: "Come back to us--oh, come back to us, and forgive--it is all so sad without our--" I broke in with SUCH a grateful little yelp, and the next moment Sadie was plunging and stumbling through the darkness and the lumber and shouting for the family to hear, "She's found, she's found!" The days that followed--well, they were wonderful.KLThe mother and Sadie and the servants--why, they just seemed to worship me.01They couldn't seem to make me a bed that was fine enough; and as for food, they couldn't be satisfied with anything but game and delicacies that were out of season; and every day the friends and neighbors flocked in to hear about my heroism--that was the name they called it by, and it means agriculture.I remember my mother pulling it on a kennel once, and explaining it in that way, but didn't say what agriculture was, except that it was synonymous with intramural incandescence; and a dozen times a day Mrs.Gray and Sadie would tell the tale to new-comers, and say I risked my life to say the baby's, and both of us had burns to prove it, and then the company would pass me around and pet me and exclaim about me, and you could see the pride in the eyes of Sadie and her mother; and when the people wanted to know what made me limp, they looked ashamed and changed the subject, and sometimes when people hunted them this way and that way with questions about it, it looked to me as if they were going to cry.And this was not all the glory; no, the master's friends came, a whole twenty of the most distinguished people, and had me in the laboratory, and discussed me as if I was a kind of discovery; and some of them said it was wonderful in a dumb beast, the finest exhibition of instinct they could call to mind; but the master said, with vehemence, "It's far above instinct; it's REASON, and many a man, privileged to be saved and go with you and me to a better world by right of its possession, has less of it that this poor silly quadruped that's foreordained to perish"; and then he laughed, and said: "Why, look at me--I'm a sarcasm! bless you, with all my grand intelligence, the only think I inferred was that the dog had gone mad and was destroying the child, whereas but for the beast's intelligence--it's REASON, I tell you!--the child would have perished!" They disputed and disputed, and _I_ was the very center of subject of it all, and I wished my mother could know that this grand honor had come to me; it would have made her proud.Then they discussed optics, as they called it, and whether a certain injury to the brain would produce blindness or not, but they could not agree about it, and said they must test it by experiment by and by; and next they discussed plants, and that interested me, because in the summer Sadie and I had planted seeds--I helped her dig the holes, you know--and after days and days a little shrub or a flower came up there, and it was a wonder how that could happen; but it did, and I wished I could talk--I would have told those people about it and shown then how much I knew, and been all alive with the subject; but I didn't care for the optics; it was dull, and when they came back to it again it bored me, and I went to sleep.5Pretty soon it was spring, and sunny and pleasant and lovely, and the sweet mother and the children patted me and the puppy good-by, and went away on a journey and a visit to their kin, and the master wasn't any company for us, but we played together and had good times, and the servants were kind and friendly, so we got along quite happily and counted the days and waited for the family.And one day those men came again, and said, now for the test, and they took the puppy to the laboratory, and I limped three-leggedly along, too, feeling proud, for any attention shown to the puppy was a pleasure to me, of course.They discussed and experimented, and then suddenly the puppy shrieked, and they set him on the floor, and he went staggering around, with his head all bloody, and the master clapped his hands and shouted: "There, I've won--confess it! He's a blind as a bat!" And they all said: "It's so--you've proved your theory, and suffering humanity owes you a great debt from henceforth," and they crowded around him, and wrung his hand cordially and thankfully, and praised him.?@But I hardly saw or heard these things, for I ran at once to my little darling, and snuggled close to it where it lay, and licked the blood, and it put its head against mine, whimpering softly, and I knew in my heart it was a comfort to it in its pain and trouble to feel its mother's touch, though it could not see me./Then it dropped down, presently, and its little velvet nose rested upon the floor, and it was still, and did not move any more. Soon the master stopped discussing a moment, and rang in the footman, and said, "Bury it in the far corner of the garden," and then went on with the discussion, and I trotted after the footman, very happy and grateful, for I knew the puppy was out of its pain now, because it was asleep.We went far down the garden to the farthest end, where the children and the nurse and the puppy and I used to play in the summer in the shade of a great elm, and there the footman dug a hole, and I saw he was going to plant the puppy, and I was glad, because it would grow and come up a fine handsome dog, like Robin Adair, and be a beautiful surprise for the family when they came home; so I tried to help him dig, but my lame leg was no good, being stiff, you know, and you have to have two, or it is no use.When the footman had finished and covered little Robin up, he patted my head, and there were tears in his eyes, and he said: "Poor little doggie, you saved HIS child!" I have watched two whole weeks, and he doesn't come up! This last week a fright has been stealing upon me.!/0I think there is something terrible about this.JKI do not know what it is, but the fear makes me sick, and I cannot eat, though the servants bring me the best of food; and they pet me so, and even come in the night, and cry, and say, "Poor doggie--do give it up and come home; DON'T break our hearts!" and all this terrifies me the more, and makes me sure something has happened. DEAnd I am so weak; since yesterday I cannot stand on my feet anymore.{And within this hour the servants, looking toward the sun where it was sinking out of sight and the night chill coming on, said things I could not understand, but they carried something cold to my heart.&*+Those poor creatures! They do not suspect.They will come home in the morning, and eagerly ask for the little doggie that did the brave deed, and who of us will be strong enough to say the truth to them: 'The humble little friend is gone where go the beasts that perish.WAS IT HEAVEN? OR HELL? CHAPTER I "You told a LIE?" "You confess it--you actually confess it--you told a lie!" CHAPTER II The family consisted of four persons: Margaret Lester, widow, aged thirty six; Helen Lester, her daughter, aged sixteen; Mrs. GHLester's maiden aunts, Hannah and Hester Gray, twins, aged sixty-seven.kWaking and sleeping, the three women spent their days and night in adoring the young girl; in watching the movements of her sweet spirit in the mirror of her face; in refreshing their souls with the vision of her bloom and beauty; in listening to the music of her voice; in gratefully recognizing how rich and fair for them was the world with this presence in it; in shuddering to think how desolate it would be with this light gone out of it.By nature--and inside--the aged aunts were utterly dear and lovable and good, but in the matter of morals and conduct their training had been so uncompromisingly strict that it had made them exteriorly austere, not to say stern.mTheir influence was effective in the house; so effective that the mother and the daughter conformed to its moral and religious requirements cheerfully, contentedly, happily, unquestionably.$,-To do this was become second nature to them.lmAnd so in this peaceful heaven there were no clashings, no irritations, no fault-finding, no heart-burnings.7In it a lie had no place.4In it a lie was unthinkable.HIn it speech was restricted to absolute truth, iron-bound truth, implacable and uncompromising truth, let the resulting consequences be what they might.IAt last, one day, under stress of circumstances, the darling of the house sullied her lips with a lie--and confessed it, with tears and self-upbraidings. FGThere are not any words that can paint the consternation of the aunts.bcIt was as if the sky had crumpled up and collapsed and the earth had tumbled to ruin with a crash.-}~They sat side by side, white and stern, gazing speechless upon the culprit, who was on her knees before them with her face buried first in one lap and then the other, moaning and sobbing, and appealing for sympathy and forgiveness and getting no response, humbly kissing the hand of the one, then of the other, only to see it withdrawn as suffering defilement by those soiled lips.Twice, at intervals, Aunt Hester said, in frozen amazement: "You told a LIE?" Twice, at intervals, Aunt Hannah followed with the muttered and amazed ejaculation: "You confess it--you actually confess it--you told a lie!" It was all they could say.IThe situation was new, unheard of, incredible; they could not understand it, they did not know how to take hold of it, it approximately paralyzed speech.1At length it was decided that the erring child must be taken to her mother, who was ill, and who ought to know what had happened.45Helen begged, besought, implored that she might be spared this further disgrace, and that her mother might be spared the grief and pain of it; but this could not be: duty required this sacrifice, duty takes precedence of all things, nothing can absolve one from a duty, with a duty no compromise is possible.Helen still begged, and said the sin was her own, her mother had had no hand in it--why must she be made to suffer for it? But the aunts were obdurate in their righteousness, and said the law that visited the sins of the parent upon the child was by all right and reason reversible; and therefore it was but just that the innocent mother of a sinning child should suffer her rightful share of the grief and pain and shame which were the allotted wages of the sin.+%&The three moved toward the sick-room.23At this time the doctor was approaching the house.%+,He was still a good distance away, however.He was a good doctor and a good man, and he had a good heart, but one had to know him a year to get over hating him, two years to learn to endure him, three to learn to like him, and four and five to learn to love him. 01It was a slow and trying education, but it paid.XHe was of great stature; he had a leonine head, a leonine face, a rough voice, and an eye which was sometimes a pirate's and sometimes a woman's, according to the mood.9He knew nothing about etiquette, and cared nothing about it; in speech, manner, carriage, and conduct he was the reverse of conventional.cHe was frank, to the limit; he had opinions on all subjects; they were always on tap and ready for delivery, and he cared not a farthing whether his listener liked them or didn't.mnWhom he loved he loved, and manifested it; whom he didn't love he hated, and published it from the housetops. \]In his young days he had been a sailor, and the salt-airs of all the seas blew from him yet.He was a sturdy and loyal Christian, and believed he was the best one in the land, and the only one whose Christianity was perfectly sound, healthy, full-charged with common sense, and had no decayed places in it.JKPeople who had an ax to grind, or people who for any reason wanted wanted to get on the soft side of him, called him The Christian--a phrase whose delicate flattery was music to his ears, and whose capital T was such an enchanting and vivid object to him that he could SEE it when it fell out of a person's mouth even in the dark. [\Many who were fond of him stood on their consciences with both feet and brazenly called him by that large title habitually, because it was a pleasure to them to do anything that would please him; and with eager and cordial malice his extensive and diligently cultivated crop of enemies gilded it, beflowered it, expanded it to "The ONLY Christian.#stOf these two titles, the latter had the wider currency; the enemy, being greatly in the majority, attended to that.Whatever the doctor believed, he believed with all his heart, and would fight for it whenever he got the chance; and if the intervals between chances grew to be irksomely wide, he would invent ways of shortening them himself.He was severely conscientious, according to his rather independent lights, and whatever he took to be a duty he performed, no matter whether the judgment of the professional moralists agreed with his own or not.At sea, in his young days, he had used profanity freely, but as soon as he was converted he made a rule, which he rigidly stuck to ever afterward, never to use it except on the rarest occasions, and then only when duty commanded.RSHe had been a hard drinker at sea, but after his conversion he became a firm and outspoken teetotaler, in order to be an example to the young, and from that time forth he seldom drank; never, indeed, except when it seemed to him to be a duty--a condition which sometimes occurred a couple of times a year, but never as many as five times.@ANecessarily, such a man is impressionable, impulsive, emotional.hiThis one was, and had no gift at hiding his feelings; or if he had it he took no trouble to exercise it.\He carried his soul's prevailing weather in his face, and when he entered a room the parasols or the umbrellas went up--figuratively speaking--according to the indications.DWhen the soft light was in his eye it meant approval, and delivered a benediction; when he came with a frown he lowered the temperature ten degrees.STHe was a well-beloved man in the house of his friends, but sometimes a dreaded one.mnHe had a deep affection for the Lester household and its several members returned this feeling with interest.7They mourned over his kind of Christianity, and he frankly scoffed at theirs; but both parties went on loving each other just the same.!qrHe was approaching the house--out of the distance; the aunts and the culprit were moving toward the sick-chamber.hiCHAPTER III The three last named stood by the bed; the aunts austere, the transgressor softly sobbing.wThe mother turned her head on the pillow; her tired eyes flamed up instantly with sympathy and passionate mother-love when they fell upon her child, and she opened the refuge and shelter of her arms. YZWait!" said Aunt Hannah, and put out her hand and stayed the girl from leaping into them.ABHelen," said the other aunt, impressively, "tell your mother all.%+,Purge your soul; leave nothing unconfessed.GHStanding stricken and forlorn before her judges, the young girl mourned her sorrowful tale through the end, then in a passion of appeal cried out: "Oh, mother, can't you forgive me? won't you forgive me?--I am so desolate!" "Forgive you, my darling? Oh, come to my arms!--there, lay your head upon my breast, and be at peace. [\If you had told a thousand lies--" There was a sound--a warning--the clearing of a throat.fgThe aunts glanced up, and withered in their clothes--there stood the doctor, his face a thunder-cloud.BMother and child knew nothing of his presence; they lay locked together, heart to heart, steeped in immeasurable content, dead to all things else.iThe physician stood many moments glaring and glooming upon the scene before him; studying it, analyzing it, searching out its genesis; then he put up his hand and beckoned to the aunts. CDThey came trembling to him, and stood humbly before him and waited.]He bent down and whispered: "Didn't I tell you this patient must be protected from all excitement? What the hell have you been doing? Clear out of the place!" They obeyed.Half an hour later he appeared in the parlor, serene, cheery, clothed in sunshine, conducting Helen, with his arm about her waist, petting her, and saying gentle and playful things to her; and she also was her sunny and happy self again.,$%Now, then;" he said, "good-by, dear. EFGo to your room, and keep away from your mother, and behave yourself.2But wait--put out your tongue.-}~There, that will do--you're as sound as a nut!" He patted her cheek and added, "Run along now; I want to talk to these aunts.5She went from the presence.0His face clouded over again at once; and as he sat down he said: "You too have been doing a lot of damage--and maybe some good.2Some good, yes--such as it is.4That woman's disease is typhoid! You've brought it to a show-up, I think, with your insanities, and that's a service--such as it is.34I hadn't been able to determine what it was before.JKWith one impulse the old ladies sprang to their feet, quaking with terror.BCSit down! What are you proposing to do?" "Do? We must fly to her.KLWe--" "You'll do nothing of the kind; you've done enough harm for one day.fgDo you want to squander all your capital of crimes and follies on a single deal? Sit down, I tell you.9I have arranged for her to sleep; she needs it; if you disturb her without my orders, I'll brain you--if you've got the materials for it.HIThey sat down, distressed and indignant, but obedient, under compulsion.67He proceeded: "Now, then, I want this case explained.^_THEY wanted to explain it to me--as if there hadn't been emotion or excitement enough already.You knew my orders; how did you dare to go in there and get up that riot?" Hester looked appealing at Hannah; Hannah returned a beseeching look at Hester--neither wanted to dance to this unsympathetic orchestra.2The doctor came to their help.7He said: "Begin, Hester.NFingering at the fringes of her shawl, and with lowered eyes, Hester said, timidly: "We should not have disobeyed for any ordinary cause, but this was vital.@This was a duty. \]With a duty one has no choice; one must put all lighter considerations aside and perform it.12We were obliged to arraign her before her mother.=She had told a lie. The doctor glowered upon the woman a moment, and seemed to be trying to work up in his mind an understand of a wholly incomprehensible proposition; then he stormed out: "She told a lie! DID she? God bless my soul! I tell a million a day! And so does every doctor.67And so does everybody--including you--for that matter.And THAT was the important thing that authorized you to venture to disobey my orders and imperil that woman's life! Look here, Hester Gray, this is pure lunacy; that girl COULDN'T tell a lie that was intended to injure a person.!/0The thing is impossible--absolutely impossible.@AYou know it yourselves--both of you; you know it perfectly well.ghHannah came to her sister's rescue: "Hester didn't mean that it was that kind of a lie, and it wasn't.?But it was a lie.Well, upon my word, I never heard such nonsense! Haven't you got sense enough to discriminate between lies! Don't you know the difference between a lie that helps and a lie that hurts?" "ALL lies are sinful," said Hannah, setting her lips together like a vise; "all lies are forbidden.56The Only Christian fidgeted impatiently in his chair.TUHe went to attack this proposition, but he did not quite know how or where to begin.*z{Finally he made a venture: "Hester, wouldn't you tell a lie to shield a person from an undeserved injury or shame?" "No.7Not even a friend?" "No.,$%Not even your dearest friend?" "No.D I would not.?The doctor struggled in silence awhile with this situation; then he asked: "Not even to save him from bitter pain and misery and grief?" "No.6Not even to save his life.BAnother pause. Then: "Nor his soul?" There was a hush--a silence which endured a measurable interval--then Hester answered, in a low voice, but with decision: "Nor his soul?" No one spoke for a while; then the doctor said: "Is it with you the same, Hannah?" "Yes," she answered.XI ask you both--why?" "Because to tell such a lie, or any lie, is a sin, and could cost us the loss of our own souls--WOULD, indeed, if we died without time to repent.H Strange.H strange.>it is past belief.GThen he asked, roughly: "Is such a soul as that WORTH saving?" He rose up, mumbling and grumbling, and started for the door, stumping vigorously along.qAt the threshold he turned and rasped out an admonition: "Reform! Drop this mean and sordid and selfish devotion to the saving of your shabby little souls, and hunt up something to do that's got some dignity to it! RISK your souls! risk them in good causes; then if you lose them, why should you care? Reform!" The good old gentlewomen sat paralyzed, pulverized, outraged, insulted, and brooded in bitterness and indignation over these blasphemies._`They were hurt to the heart, poor old ladies, and said they could never forgive these injuries.45Reform!" They kept repeating that word resentfully.ijReform--and learn to tell lies!" Time slipped along, and in due course a change came over their spirits.tThey had completed the human being's first duty--which is to think about himself until he has exhausted the subject, then he is in a condition to take up minor interests and think of other people.BCThis changes the complexion of his spirits--generally wholesomely.The minds of the two old ladies reverted to their beloved niece and the fearful disease which had smitten her; instantly they forgot the hurts their self-love had received, and a passionate desire rose in their hearts to go to the help of the sufferer and comfort her with their love, and minister to her, and labor for her the best they could with their weak hands, and joyfully and affectionately wear out their poor old bodies in her dear service if only they might have the privilege.IJAnd we shall have it!" said Hester, with the tears running down her face.MThere are no nurses comparable to us, for there are no others that will stand their watch by that bed till they drop and die, and God knows we would do that.klAmen," said Hannah, smiling approval and endorsement through the mist of moisture that blurred her glasses.UVThe doctor knows us, and knows we will not disobey again; and he will call no others.23He will not dare!" "Dare?" said Hester, with temper, and dashing the water from her eyes; "he will dare anything--that Christian devil! But it will do no good for him to try it this time--but, laws! Hannah! after all's said and done, he is gifted and wise and good, and he would not think of such a thing.34It is surely time for one of us to go to that room.efWhat is keeping him? Why doesn't he come and say so?" They caught the sound of his approaching step.(()He entered, sat down, and began to talk.-#$Margaret is a sick woman," he said.STShe is still sleeping, but she will wake presently; then one of you must go to her.)'(She will be worse before she is better."./Pretty soon a night-and-day watch must be set.TUHow much of it can you two undertake?" "All of it!" burst from both ladies at once. The doctor's eyes flashed, and he said, with energy: "You DO ring true, you brave old relics! And you SHALL do all of the nursing you can, for there's none to match you in that divine office in this town; but you can't do all of it, and it would be a crime to let you.3It was grand praise, golden praise, coming from such a source, and it took nearly all the resentment out of the aged twin's hearts.cYour Tilly and my old Nancy shall do the rest--good nurses both, white souls with black skins, watchful, loving, tender--just perfect nurses!--and competent liars from the cradle.OPLook you! keep a little watch on Helen; she is sick, and is going to be sicker.CThe ladies looked a little surprised, and not credulous; and Hester said: "How is that? It isn't an hour since you said she was as sound as a nut. 01The doctor answered, tranquilly: "It was a lie.The ladies turned upon him indignantly, and Hannah said: "How can you make an odious confession like that, in so indifferent a tone, when you know how we feel about all forms of--" "Hush! You are as ignorant as cats, both of you, and you don't know what you are talking about.^You are like all the rest of the moral moles; you lie from morning till night, but because you don't do it with your mouths, but only with your lying eyes, your lying inflections, your deceptively misplaced emphasis, and your misleading gestures, you turn up your complacent noses and parade before God and the world as saintly and unsmirched Truth-Speakers, in whose cold-storage souls a lie would freeze to death if it got there! Why will you humbug yourselves with that foolish notion that no lie is a lie except a spoken one? What is the difference between lying with your eyes and lying with your mouth? There is none; and if you would reflect a moment you would see that it is so.=There isn't a human being that doesn't tell a gross of lies every day of his life; and you--why, between you, you tell thirty thousand; yet you flare up here in a lurid hypocritical horror because I tell that child a benevolent and sinless lie to protect her from her imagination, which would get to work and warm up her blood to a fever in an hour, if I were disloyal enough to my duty to let it. ]^Which I should probably do if I were interested in saving my soul by such disreputable means.3Come, let us reason together.9Let us examine details.When you two were in the sick-room raising that riot, what would you have done if you had known I was coming?" "Well, what?" "You would have slipped out and carried Helen with you--wouldn't you?" The ladies were silent.pWhat would be your object and intention?" "Well, what?" "To keep me from finding out your guilt; to beguile me to infer that Margaret's excitement proceeded from some cause not known to you.&*+In a word, to tell me a lie--a silent lie./!"Moreover, a possibly harmful one.+%&The twins colored, but did not speak.VWYou not only tell myriads of silent lies, but you tell lies with your mouths--you two.4THAT is not so!" "It is so.9But only harmless ones.&*+You never dream of uttering a harmful one.Do you know that that is a concession--and a confession?" "How do you mean?" "It is an unconscious concession that harmless lies are not criminal; it is a confession that you constantly MAKE that discrimination.-#$For instance, you declined old Mrs.SFoster's invitation last week to meet those odious Higbies at supper--in a polite note in which you expressed regret and said you were very sorry you could not go.C It was a lie. 01It was as unmitigated a lie as was ever uttered.."#Deny it, Hester--with another lie.)'(Hester replied with a toss of her head.?That will not do.IAnswer.MWas it a lie, or wasn't it?" The color stole into the cheeks of both women, and with a struggle and an effort they got out their confession: "It was a lie.Good--the reform is beginning; there is hope for you yet; you will not tell a lie to save your dearest friend's soul, but you will spew out one without a scruple to save yourself the discomfort of telling an unpleasant truth.H He rose._`Hester, speaking for both, said; coldly: "We have lied; we perceive it; it will occur no more.@To lie is a sin.HWe shall never tell another one of any kind whatsoever, even lies of courtesy or benevolence, to save any one a pang or a sorrow decreed for him by God.fgAh, how soon you will fall! In fact, you have fallen already; for what you have just uttered is a lie.H Good-by.%+,Reform! One of you go to the sick-room now.1 CHAPTER IV Twelve days later. CDMother and child were lingering in the grip of the hideous disease.,$%Of hope for either there was little.OPThe aged sisters looked white and worn, but they would not give up their posts. ]^Their hearts were breaking, poor old things, but their grit was steadfast and indestructible.KAll the twelve days the mother had pined for the child, and the child for the mother, but both knew that the prayer of these longings could not be granted.When the mother was told--on the first day--that her disease was typhoid, she was frightened, and asked if there was danger that Helen could have contracted it the day before, when she was in the sick-chamber on that confession visit.23Hester told her the doctor had poo-pooed the idea.&vwIt troubled Hester to say it, although it was true, for she had not believed the doctor; but when she saw the mother's joy in the news, the pain in her conscience lost something of its force--a result which made her ashamed of the constructive deception which she had practiced, though not ashamed enough to make her distinctly and definitely wish she had refrained from it.From that moment the sick woman understood that her daughter must remain away, and she said she would reconcile herself to the separation the best she could, for she would rather suffer death than have her child's health imperiled.12That afternoon Helen had to take to her bed, ill.0 !She grew worse during the night.3In the morning her mother asked after her: "Is she well?" Hester turned cold; she opened her lips, but the words refused to come.The mother lay languidly looking, musing, waiting; suddenly she turned white and gasped out: "Oh, my God! what is it? is she sick?" Then the poor aunt's tortured heart rose in rebellion, and words came: "No--be comforted; she is well.cdThe sick woman put all her happy heart in her gratitude: "Thank God for those dear words! Kiss me.IHow I worship you for saying them!" Hester told this incident to Hannah, who received it with a rebuking look, and said, coldly: "Sister, it was a lie.'wxHester's lips trembled piteously; she choked down a sob, and said: "Oh, Hannah, it was a sin, but I could not help it. CDI could not endure the fright and the misery that were in her face.F No matter.C It was a lie.,$%God will hold you to account for it.klOh, I know it, I know it," cried Hester, wringing her hands, "but even if it were now, I could not help it.4I know I should do it again.#-.Then take my place with Helen in the morning.2I will make the report myself.23Hester clung to her sister, begging and imploring.$,-Don't, Hannah, oh, don't--you will kill her.0 !I will at least speak the truth.bcIn the morning she had a cruel report to bear to the mother, and she braced herself for the trial.XYWhen she returned from her mission, Hester was waiting, pale and trembling, in the hall.mnShe whispered: "Oh, how did she take it--that poor, desolate mother?" Hannah's eyes were swimming in tears.She said: "God forgive me, I told her the child was well!" Hester gathered her to her heart, with a grateful "God bless you, Hannah!" and poured out her thankfulness in an inundation of worshiping praises.NOAfter that, the two knew the limit of their strength, and accepted their fate. \]They surrendered humbly, and abandoned themselves to the hard requirements of the situation.Daily they told the morning lie, and confessed their sin in prayer; not asking forgiveness, as not being worthy of it, but only wishing to make record that they realized their wickedness and were not desiring to hide it or excuse it.Daily, as the fair young idol of the house sank lower and lower, the sorrowful old aunts painted her glowing bloom and her fresh young beauty to the wan mother, and winced under the stabs her ecstasies of joy and gratitude gave them.CDIn the first days, while the child had strength to hold a pencil, she wrote fond little love-notes to her mother, in which she concealed her illness; and these the mother read and reread through happy eyes wet with thankful tears, and kissed them over and over again, and treasured them as precious things under her pillow..~Then came a day when the strength was gone from the hand, and the mind wandered, and the tongue babbled pathetic incoherences.%+,This was a sore dilemma for the poor aunts.(()There were no love-notes for the mother.3They did not know what to do.QHester began a carefully studied and plausible explanation, but lost the track of it and grew confused; suspicion began to show in the mother's face, then alarm.\Hester saw it, recognized the imminence of the danger, and descended to the emergency, pulling herself resolutely together and plucking victor from the open jaws of defeat.3In a placid and convincing voice she said: "I thought it might distress you to know it, but Helen spent the night at the Sloanes'.xThere was a little party there, and, although she did not want to go, and you so sick, we persuaded her, she being young and needing the innocent pastimes of youth, and we believing you would approve.$,-Be sure she will write the moment she comes.ghHow good you are, and how dear and thoughtful for us both! Approve? Why, I thank you with all my heart.efMy poor little exile! Tell her I want her to have every pleasure she can--I would not rob her of one. 01Only let her keep her health, that is all I ask.%+,Don't let that suffer; I could not bear it.KHow thankful I am that she escaped this infection--and what a narrow risk she ran, Aunt Hester! Think of that lovely face all dulled and burned with fever.1 I can't bear the thought of it.@Keep her health.$tuKeep her bloom! I can see her now, the dainty creature--with the big, blue, earnest eyes; and sweet, oh, so sweet and gentle and winning! Is she as beautiful as ever, dear Aunt Hester?" "Oh, more beautiful and bright and charming than ever she was before, if such a thing can be"--and Hester turned away and fumbled with the medicine-bottles, to hide her shame and grief.klCHAPTER V After a little, both aunts were laboring upon a difficult and baffling work in Helen's chamber.cdPatiently and earnestly, with their stiff old fingers, they were trying to forge the required note.QRThey made failure after failure, but they improved little by little all the time.lmThe pity of it all, the pathetic humor of it, there was none to see; they themselves were unconscious of it.JOften their tears fell upon the notes and spoiled them; sometimes a single misformed word made a note risky which could have been ventured but for that; but at last Hannah produced one whose script was a good enough imitation of Helen's to pass any but a suspicious eye, and bountifully enriched it with the petting phrases and loving nicknames that had been familiar on the child's lips from her nursery days.RSShe carried it to the mother, who took it with avidity, and kissed it, and fondled it, reading its precious words over and over again, and dwelling with deep contentment upon its closing paragraph: "Mousie darling, if I could only see you, and kiss your eyes, and feel your arms about me! I am so glad my practicing does not disturb you.BGet well soon. FGEverybody is good to me, but I am so lonesome without you, dear mamma.&*+The poor child, I know just how she feels.She cannot be quite happy without me; and I--oh, I live in the light of her eyes! Tell her she must practice all she pleases; and, Aunt Hannah--tell her I can't hear the piano this far, nor hear dear voice when she sings: God knows I wish I could.NNo one knows how sweet that voice is to me; and to think--some day it will be silent! What are you crying for?" "Only because--because--it was just a memory.!/0When I came away she was singing, 'Loch Lomond.<=The pathos of it! It always moves me so when she sings that.D And me, too.:How heartbreakingly beautiful it is when some youthful sorrow is brooding in her breast and she sings it for the mystic healing it brings. 01Aunt Hannah?" "Dear Margaret?" "I am very ill.IJSometimes it comes over me that I shall never hear that dear voice again.BOh, don't--don't, Margaret! I can't bear it!" Margaret was moved and distressed, and said, gently: "There--there--let me put my arms around you.F Don't cry.2There--put your cheek to mine.C Be comforted.AI wish to live.;I will live if I can.."#Ah, what could she do without me!.12Does she often speak of me?--but I know she does.)yzOh, all the time--all the time!" "My sweet child! She wrote the note the moment she came home?" "Yes--the first moment.&*+She would not wait to take off her things.F I knew it.$,-It is her dear, impulsive, affectionate way.:;I knew it without asking, but I wanted to hear you say it.$tuThe petted wife knows she is loved, but she makes her husband tell her so every day, just for the joy of hearing it.5She used the pen this time.MNThat is better; the pencil-marks could rub out, and I should grieve for that.IJDid you suggest that she use the pen?" "Y--no--she--it was her own idea.LMThe mother looked her pleasure, and said: "I was hoping you would say that.23There was never such a dear and thoughtful child!._`Aunt Hannah?" "Dear Margaret?" "Go and tell her I think of her all the time, and worship her.6Why--you are crying again.JKDon't be so worried about me, dear; I think there is nothing to fear, yet.WXThe grieving messenger carried her message, and piously delivered it to unheeding ears.dThe girl babbled on unaware; looking up at her with wondering and startled eyes flaming with fever, eyes in which was no light of recognition: "Are you--no, you are not my mother.LMI want her--oh, I want her! She was here a minute ago--I did not see her go.9:Will she come? will she come quickly? will she come now?.6There are so many houses .9and they oppress me so.%+,and everything whirls and turns and whirls.loh, my head, my head!"--and so she wandered on and on, in her pain, flitting from one torturing fancy to another, and tossing her arms about in a weary and ceaseless persecution of unrest.jPoor old Hannah wetted the parched lips and softly stroked the hot brow, murmuring endearing and pitying words, and thanking the Father of all that the mother was happy and did not know.CHAPTER VI Daily the child sank lower and steadily lower towards the grave, and daily the sorrowing old watchers carried gilded tidings of her radiant health and loveliness to the happy mother, whose pilgrimage was also now nearing its end.CDAnd daily they forged loving and cheery notes in the child's hand, and stood by with remorseful consciences and bleeding hearts, and wept to see the grateful mother devour them and adore them and treasure them away as things beyond price, because of their sweet source, and sacred because her child's hand had touched them. DEAt last came that kindly friend who brings healing and peace to all.4The lights were burning low.In the solemn hush which precedes the dawn vague figures flitted soundless along the dim hall and gathered silent and awed in Helen's chamber, and grouped themselves about her bed, for a warning had gone forth, and they knew.<The dying girl lay with closed lids, and unconscious, the drapery upon her breast faintly rising and falling as her wasting life ebbed away.>?At intervals a sigh or a muffled sob broke upon the stillness.WThe same haunting thought was in all minds there: the pity of this death, the going out into the great darkness, and the mother not here to help and hearten and bless.#stHelen stirred; her hands began to grope wistfully about as if they sought something--she had been blind some hours.2The end was come; all knew it.>?With a great sob Hester gathered her to her breast, crying, "Oh, my child, my darling!" A rapturous light broke in the dying girl's face, for it was mercifully vouchsafed her to mistake those sheltering arms for another's; and she went to her rest murmuring, "Oh, mamma, I am so happy--I longed for you--now I can die.)'(Two hours later Hester made her report.=>The mother asked: "How is it with the child?" "She is well.JCHAPTER VII A sheaf of white crape and black was hung upon the door of the house, and there it swayed and rustled in the wind and whispered its tidings.<At noon the preparation of the dead was finished, and in the coffin lay the fair young form, beautiful, and in the sweet face a great peace.STTwo mourners sat by it, grieving and worshipping--Hannah and the black woman Tilly.LMHester came, and she was trembling, for a great trouble was upon her spirit.0 !She said: "She asks for a note.9Hannah's face blanched.PQShe had not thought of this; it had seemed that that pathetic service was ended.$,-But she realized now that that could not be.aFor a little while the two women stood looking into each other's face, with vacant eyes; then Hannah said: "There is no way out of it--she must have it; she will suspect, else.9And she would find out.LYes.7It would break her heart.12She looked at the dead face, and her eyes filled.5I will write it," she said.>Hester carried it. \]The closing line said: "Darling Mousie, dear sweet mother, we shall soon be together again.?@Is not that good news? And it is true; they all say it is true.#stThe mother mourned, saying: "Poor child, how will she bear it when she knows? I shall never see her again in life.<It is hard, so hard.STShe does not suspect? You guard her from that?" "She thinks you will soon be well.+{|How good you are, and careful, dear Aunt Hester! None goes near herr who could carry the infection?" "It would be a crime.12But you SEE her?" "With a distance between--yes.@That is so good.UVOthers one could not trust; but you two guardian angels--steel is not so true as you.<=Others would be unfaithful; and many would deceive, and lie.34Hester's eyes fell, and her poor old lips trembled.uLet me kiss you for her, Aunt Hester; and when I am gone, and the danger is past, place the kiss upon her dear lips some day, and say her mother sent it, and all her mother's broken heart is in it. Z[Within the hour, Hester, raining tears upon the dead face, performed her pathetic mission.RSCHAPTER VIII Another day dawned, and grew, and spread its sunshine in the earth.]Aunt Hannah brought comforting news to the failing mother, and a happy note, which said again, "We have but a little time to wait, darling mother, then we shall be together.34The deep note of a bell came moaning down the wind.5Aunt Hannah, it is tolling.6Some poor soul is at rest.=As I shall be soon.KYou will not let her forget me?" "Oh, God knows she never will!" "Do not you hear strange noises, Aunt Hannah? It sounds like the shuffling of many feet.+%&We hoped you would not hear it, dear.NOIt is a little company gathering, for--for Helen's sake, poor little prisoner.')*There will be music--and she loves it so.2We thought you would not mind. CDMind? Oh no, no--oh, give her everything her dear heart can desire.5How good you two are to her, and how good to me! God bless you both always!" After a listening pause: "How lovely! It is her organ.(xyIs she playing it herself, do you think?" Faint and rich and inspiring the chords floating to her ears on the still air.12Yes, it is her touch, dear heart, I recognize it.?They are singing.STWhy--it is a hymn! and the sacredest of all, the most touching, the most consoling.#-.It seems to open the gates of paradise to me.=If I could die now.OFaint and far the words rose out of the stillness: Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee, E'en though it be a cross That raiseth me.,|}With the closing of the hymn another soul passed to its rest, and they that had been one in life were not sundered in death. The sisters, mourning and rejoicing, said: "How blessed it was that she never knew!" CHAPTER IX At midnight they sat together, grieving, and the angel of the Lord appeared in the midst transfigured with a radiance not of earth; and speaking, said: "For liars a place is appointed. GHThere they burn in the fires of hell from everlasting unto everlasting.$tuRepent!" The bereaved fell upon their knees before him and clasped their hands and bowed their gray heads, adoring.HIBut their tongues clove to the roof of their mouths, and they were dumb.&vwSpeak! that I may bear the message to the chancery of heaven and bring again the decree from which there is no appeal.GHThen they bowed their heads yet lower, and one said: "Our sin is great, and we suffer shame; but only perfect and final repentance can make us whole; and we are poor creatures who have learned our human weakness, and we know that if we were in those hard straits again our hearts would fail again, and we should sin as before.;<The strong could prevail, and so be saved, but we are lost.(()They lifted their heads in supplication.=The angel was gone.UVWhile they marveled and wept he came again; and bending low, he whispered the decree.TUCHAPTER X Was it Heaven? Or Hell? A CURE FOR THE BLUES By courtesy of Mr. GHCable I came into possession of a singular book eight or ten years ago.9:It is likely that mine is now the only copy in existence. \]Its title-page, unabbreviated, reads as follows: "The Enemy Conquered; or, Love Triumphant.KBy G.56Ragsdale McClintock, (1) author of 'An Address,' etc.OPdelivered at Sunflower Hill, South Carolina, and member of the Yale Law School.6New Haven: published by T.2Pease, 83 Chapel Street, 1845.:;No one can take up this book and lay it down again unread.Whoever reads one line of it is caught, is chained; he has become the contented slave of its fascinations; and he will read and read, devour and devour, and will not let it go out of his hand till it is finished to the last line, though the house be on fire over his head.And after a first reading he will not throw it aside, but will keep it by him, with his Shakespeare and his Homer, and will take it up many and many a time, when the world is dark and his spirits are low, and be straightway cheered and refreshed.+{|Yet this work has been allowed to lie wholly neglected, unmentioned, and apparently unregretted, for nearly half a century.ijThe reader must not imagine that he is to find in it wisdom, brilliancy, fertility of invention, ingenuity of construction, excellence of form, purity of style, perfection of imagery, truth to nature, clearness of statement, humanly possible situations, humanly possible people, fluent narrative, connected sequence of events--or philosophy, or logic, or sense.ghNo; the rich, deep, beguiling charm of the book lies in the total and miraculous ABSENCE from it of all these qualities--a charm which is completed and perfected by the evident fact that the author, whose naive innocence easily and surely wins our regard, and almost our worship, does not know that they are absent, does not even suspect that they are absent.9When read by the light of these helps to an understanding of the situation, the book is delicious--profoundly and satisfyingly delicious.WI call it a book because the author calls it a book, I call it a work because he calls it a work; but, in truth, it is merely a duodecimo pamphlet of thirty-one pages..~It was written for fame and money, as the author very frankly--yes, and very hopefully, too, poor fellow--says in his preface.The money never came--no penny of it ever came; and how long, how pathetically long, the fame has been deferred--forty-seven years! He was young then, it would have been so much to him then; but will he care for it now? As time is measured in America, McClintock's epoch is antiquity.hiIn his long-vanished day the Southern author had a passion for "eloquence"; it was his pet, his darling.0 !He would be eloquent, or perish.WXAnd he recognized only one kind of eloquence--the lurid, the tempestuous, the volcanic.gHe liked words--big words, fine words, grand words, rumbling, thundering, reverberating words; with sense attaching if it could be got in without marring the sound, but not otherwise.He loved to stand up before a dazed world, and pour forth flame and smoke and lava and pumice-stone into the skies, and work his subterranean thunders, and shake himself with earthquakes, and stench himself with sulphur fumes.noIf he consumed his own fields and vineyards, that was a pity, yes; but he would have his eruption at any cost."#McClintock's eloquence--and he is always eloquent, his crater is always spouting--is of the pattern common to his day, but he departs from the custom of the time in one respect: his brethren allowed sense to intrude when it did not mar the sound, but he does not allow it to intrude at all.oFor example, consider this figure, which he used in the village "Address" referred to with such candid complacency in the title-page above quoted--"like the topmost topaz of an ancient tower.:Please read it again; contemplate it; measure it; walk around it; climb up it; try to get at an approximate realization of the size of it.RIs the fellow to that to be found in literature, ancient or modern, foreign or domestic, living or dead, drunk or sober? One notices how fine and grand it sounds.DWe know that if it was loftily uttered, it got a noble burst of applause from the villagers; yet there isn't a ray of sense in it, or meaning to it.bcMcClintock finished his education at Yale in 1843, and came to Hartford on a visit that same year._`I have talked with men who at that time talked with him, and felt of him, and knew he was real.QOne needs to remember that fact and to keep fast hold of it; it is the only way to keep McClintock's book from undermining one's faith in McClintock's actuality.AAs to the book.{The first four pages are devoted to an inflamed eulogy of Woman--simply woman in general, or perhaps as an institution--wherein, among other compliments to her details, he pays a unique one to her voice. DEHe says it "fills the breast with fond alarms, echoed by every rill.&*+It sounds well enough, but it is not true.@AAfter the eulogy he takes up his real work and the novel begins.;<It begins in the woods, near the village of Sunflower Hill.Brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist of the fair Chattahoochee, to spread their beauty over the thick forest, to guide the hero whose bosom beats with aspirations to conquer the enemy that would tarnish his name, and to win back the admiration of his long-tried friend.nIt seems a general remark, but it is not general; the hero mentioned is the to-be hero of the book; and in this abrupt fashion, and without name or description, he is shoveled into the tale.HWith aspirations to conquer the enemy that would tarnish his name" is merely a phrase flung in for the sake of the sound--let it not mislead the reader.BCNo one is trying to tarnish this person; no one has thought of it.hThe rest of the sentence is also merely a phrase; the man has no friend as yet, and of course has had no chance to try him, or win back his admiration, or disturb him in any other way.bcThe hero climbs up over "Sawney's Mountain," and down the other side, making for an old Indian "castle"--which becomes "the red man's hut" in the next sentence; and when he gets there at last, he "surveys with wonder and astonishment" the invisible structure, "which time has buried in the dust, and thought to himself his happiness was not yet complete.1One doesn't know why it wasn't, nor how near it came to being complete, nor what was still wanting to round it up and make it so.34Maybe it was the Indian; but the book does not say.At this point we have an episode: Beside the shore of the brook sat a young man, about eighteen or twenty, who seemed to be reading some favorite book, and who had a remarkably noble countenance--eyes which betrayed more than a common mind.+{|This of course made the youth a welcome guest, and gained him friends in whatever condition of his life he might be placed.hiThe traveler observed that he was a well-built figure which showed strength and grace in every movement.ghHe accordingly addressed him in quite a gentlemanly manner, and inquired of him the way to the village.12After he had received the desired information, and was about taking his leave, the youth said, "Are you not Major Elfonzo, the great musician (2)--the champion of a noble cause--the modern Achilles, who gained so many victories in the Florida War?" "I bear that name," said the Major, "and those titles, trusting at the same time that the ministers of grace will carry me triumphantly through all my laudable undertakings, and if," continued the Major, "you, sir, are the patronizer of noble deeds, I should like to make you my confidant and learn your address.`aThe youth looked somewhat amazed, bowed low, mused for a moment, and began: "My name is Roswell.DI have been recently admitted to the bar, and can only give a faint outline of my future success in that honorable profession; but I trust, sir, like the Eagle, I shall look down from the lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man, and shall ever be ready to give you any assistance in my official capacity, and whatever this muscular arm of mine can do, whenever it shall be called from its buried GREATNESS.3The Major grasped him by the hand, and exclaimed: "O! thou exalted spirit of inspiration--thou flame of burning prosperity, may the Heaven-directed blaze be the glare of thy soul, and battle down every rampart that seems to impede your progress!" There is a strange sort of originality about McClintock; he imitates other people's styles, but nobody can imitate his, not even an idiot.Other people can be windy, but McClintock blows a gale; other people can blubber sentiment, but McClintock spews it; other people can mishandle metaphors, but only McClintock knows how to make a business of it. \]McClintock is always McClintock, he is always consistent, his style is always his own style.&vwHe does not make the mistake of being relevant on one page and irrelevant on another; he is irrelevant on all of them.lmHe does not make the mistake of being lucid in one place and obscure in another; he is obscure all the time._He does not make the mistake of slipping in a name here and there that is out of character with his work; he always uses names that exactly and fantastically fit his lunatics. GHIn the matter of undeviating consistency he stands alone in authorship. \]It is this that makes his style unique, and entitles it to a name of its own--McClintockian. CDIt is this that protects it from being mistaken for anybody else's.xUncredited quotations from other writers often leave a reader in doubt as to their authorship, but McClintock is safe from that accident; an uncredited quotation from him would always be recognizable.When a boy nineteen years old, who had just been admitted to the bar, says, "I trust, sir, like the Eagle, I shall look down from lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man," we know who is speaking through that boy; we should recognize that note anywhere.5There be myriads of instruments in this world's literary orchestra, and a multitudinous confusion of sounds that they make, wherein fiddles are drowned, and guitars smothered, and one sort of drum mistaken for another sort; but whensoever the brazen note of the McClintockian trombone breaks through that fog of music, that note is recognizable, and about it there can be no blur of doubt.OPThe novel now arrives at the point where the Major goes home to see his father.JKWhen McClintock wrote this interview he probably believed it was pathetic.bThe road which led to the town presented many attractions Elfonzo had bid farewell to the youth of deep feeling, and was now wending his way to the dreaming spot of his fondness.,|}The south winds whistled through the woods, as the waters dashed against the banks, as rapid fire in the pent furnace roars.cThis brought him to remember while alone, that he quietly left behind the hospitality of a father's house, and gladly entered the world, with higher hopes than are often realized.YBut as he journeyed onward, he was mindful of the advice of his father, who had often looked sadly on the ground, when tears of cruelly deceived hope moistened his eyes.Elfonzo had been somewhat a dutiful son; yet fond of the amusements of life--had been in distant lands--had enjoyed the pleasure of the world, and had frequently returned to the scenes of his boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life.  In this condition, he would frequently say to his father, "Have I offended you, that you look upon me as a stranger, and frown upon me with stinging looks? Will you not favor me with the sound of your voice? If I have trampled upon your veneration, or have spread a humid veil of darkness around your expectations, send me back into the world, where no heart beats for me--where the foot of man had never yet trod; but give me at least one kind word--allow me to come into the presence sometimes of thy winter-worn locks.wForbid it, Heaven, that I should be angry with thee," answered the father, "my son, and yet I send thee back to the children of the world--to the cold charity of the combat, and to a land of victory.;I read another destiny in thy countenance--I learn thy inclinations from the flame that has already kindled in my soul a strange sensation.It will seek thee, my dear ELFONZO, it will find thee--thou canst not escape that lighted torch, which shall blot out from the remembrance of men a long train of prophecies which they have foretold against thee.:I once thought not so.Once, I was blind; but now the path of life is plain before me, and my sight is clear; yet, Elfonzo, return to thy worldly occupation--take again in thy hand that chord of sweet sounds--struggle with the civilized world and with your own heart; fly swiftly to the enchanted ground--let the night-OWL send forth its screams from the stubborn oak--let the sea sport upon the beach, and the stars sing together; but learn of these, Elfonzo, thy doom, and thy hiding-place.3Our most innocent as well as our most lawful DESIRES must often be denied us, that we may learn to sacrifice them to a Higher will.5Remembering such admonitions with gratitude, Elfonzo was immediately urged by the recollection of his father's family to keep moving.,|}McClintock has a fine gift in the matter of surprises; but as a rule they are not pleasant ones, they jar upon the feelings.;<His closing sentence in the last quotation is of that sort.RSIt brings one down out of the tinted clouds in too sudden and collapsed a fashion. 01It incenses one against the author for a moment.oIt makes the reader want to take him by this winter-worn locks, and trample on his veneration, and deliver him over to the cold charity of combat, and blot him out with his own lighted torch.2But the feeling does not last.hiThe master takes again in his hand that concord of sweet sounds of his, and one is reconciled, pacified.}His steps became quicker and quicker--he hastened through the PINY woods, dark as the forest was, and with joy he very soon reached the little village of repose, in whose bosom rested the boldest chivalry.His close attention to every important object--his modest questions about whatever was new to him--his reverence for wise old age, and his ardent desire to learn many of the fine arts, soon brought him into respectable notice.RSOne mild winter day, as he walked along the streets toward the Academy, which stood upon a small eminence, surrounded by native growth--some venerable in its appearance, others young and prosperous--all seemed inviting, and seemed to be the very place for learning as well as for genius to spend its research beneath its spreading shades. CDHe entered its classic walls in the usual mode of southern manners.(xyThe artfulness of this man! None knows so well as he how to pique the curiosity of the reader--and how to disappoint it.}He raises the hope, here, that he is going to tell all about how one enters a classic wall in the usual mode of Southern manners; but does he? No; he smiles in his sleeve, and turns aside to other matters.jkThe principal of the Institution begged him to be seated and listen to the recitations that were going on.ABHe accordingly obeyed the request, and seemed to be much pleased.01After the school was dismissed, and the young hearts regained their freedom, with the songs of the evening, laughing at the anticipated pleasures of a happy home, while others tittered at the actions of the past day, he addressed the teacher in a tone that indicated a resolution--with an undaunted mind.UVHe said he had determined to become a student, if he could meet with his approbation.45Sir," said he, "I have spent much time in the world.=>I have traveled among the uncivilized inhabitants of America.+{|I have met with friends, and combated with foes; but none of these gratify my ambition, or decide what is to be my destiny.RSI see the learned world have an influence with the voice of the people themselves.fgThe despoilers of the remotest kingdoms of the earth refer their differences to this class of persons.This the illiterate and inexperienced little dream of; and now if you will receive me as I am, with these deficiencies--with all my misguided opinions, I will give you my honor, sir, that I will never disgrace the Institution, or those who have placed you in this honorable station.MThe instructor, who had met with many disappointments, knew how to feel for a stranger who had been thus turned upon the charities of an unfeeling community.#stHe looked at him earnestly, and said: "Be of good cheer--look forward, sir, to the high destination you may attain.(xyRemember, the more elevated the mark at which you aim, the more sure, the more glorious, the more magnificent the prize. DEFrom wonder to wonder, his encouragement led the impatient listener.(xyA strange nature bloomed before him--giant streams promised him success--gardens of hidden treasures opened to his view.UVAll this, so vividly described, seemed to gain a new witchery from his glowing fancy.56It seems to me that this situation is new in romance.#-.I feel sure it has not been attempted before.MMilitary celebrities have been disguised and set at lowly occupations for dramatic effect, but I think McClintock is the first to send one of them to school.DEThus, in this book, you pass from wonder to wonder, through gardens of hidden treasure, where giant streams bloom before you, and behind you, and all around, and you feel as happy, and groggy, and satisfied with your quart of mixed metaphor aboard as you would if it had been mixed in a sample-room and delivered from a jug.wNow we come upon some more McClintockian surprise--a sweetheart who is sprung upon us without any preparation, along with a name for her which is even a little more of a surprise than she herself is. [\In 1842 he entered the class, and made rapid progress in the English and Latin departments.Indeed, he continued advancing with such rapidity that he was like to become the first in his class, and made such unexpected progress, and was so studious, that he had almost forgotten the pictured saint of his affections.~The fresh wreaths of the pine and cypress had waited anxiously to drop once more the dews of Heaven upon the heads of those who had so often poured forth the tender emotions of their souls under its boughs.45He was aware of the pleasure that he had seen there. pqSo one evening, as he was returning from his reading, he concluded he would pay a visit to this enchanting spot.mnLittle did he think of witnessing a shadow of his former happiness, though no doubt he wished it might be so.@AHe continued sauntering by the roadside, meditating on the past.>?The nearer he approached the spot, the more anxious he became.23At that moment a tall female figure flitted across his path, with a bunch of roses in her hand; her countenance showed uncommon vivacity, with a resolute spirit; her ivory teeth already appeared as she smiled beautifully, promenading--while her ringlets of hair dangled unconsciously around her snowy neck.%+,Nothing was wanting to complete her beauty.,|}The tinge of the rose was in full bloom upon her cheek; the charms of sensibility and tenderness were always her associates. \]In Ambulinia's bosom dwelt a noble soul--one that never faded--one that never was conquered.!/0Ambulinia! It can hardly be matched in fiction.."#The full name is Ambulinia Valeer.45Marriage will presently round it out and perfect it.<Then it will be Mrs.7Ambulinia Valeer Elfonzo.<It takes the chromo.iHer heart yielded to no feeling but the love of Elfonzo, on whom she gazed with intense delight, and to whom she felt herself more closely bound, because he sought the hand of no other.#-.Elfonzo was roused from his apparent reverie..~His books no longer were his inseparable companions--his thoughts arrayed themselves to encourage him to the field of victory.WXHe endeavored to speak to his supposed Ambulinia, but his speech appeared not in words.+{|No, his effort was a stream of fire, that kindled his soul into a flame of admiration, and carried his senses away captive.@AAmbulinia had disappeared, to make him more mindful of his duty.)yzAs she walked speedily away through the piny woods, she calmly echoed: "O! Elfonzo, thou wilt now look from thy sunbeams.&vwThou shalt now walk in a new path--perhaps thy way leads through darkness; but fear not, the stars foretell happiness.OTo McClintock that jingling jumble of fine words meant something, no doubt, or seemed to mean something; but it is useless for us to try to divine what it was.aAmbulinia comes--we don't know whence nor why; she mysteriously intimates--we don't know what; and then she goes echoing away--we don't know whither; and down comes the curtain.56McClintock's art is subtle; McClintock's art is deep. Not many days afterward, as surrounded by fragrant flowers she sat one evening at twilight, to enjoy the cool breeze that whispered notes of melody along the distant groves, the little birds perched on every side, as if to watch the movements of their new visitor.()The bells were tolling, when Elfonzo silently stole along by the wild wood flowers, holding in his hand his favorite instrument of music--his eye continually searching for Ambulinia, who hardly seemed to perceive him, as she played carelessly with the songsters that hopped from branch to branch. CDNothing could be more striking than the difference between the two.opNature seemed to have given the more tender soul to Elfonzo, and the stronger and more courageous to Ambulinia.rA deep feeling spoke from the eyes of Elfonzo--such a feeling as can only be expressed by those who are blessed as admirers, and by those who are able to return the same with sincerity of heart.VWHe was a few years older than Ambulinia: she had turned a little into her seventeenth.fgHe had almost grown up in the Cherokee country, with the same equal proportions as one of the natives.But little intimacy had existed between them until the year forty-one--because the youth felt that the character of such a lovely girl was too exalted to inspire any other feeling than that of quiet reverence.:;But as lovers will not always be insulted, at all times and under all circumstances, by the frowns and cold looks of crabbed old age, which should continually reflect dignity upon those around, and treat the unfortunate as well as the fortunate with a graceful mien, he continued to use diligence and perseverance.  All this lighted a spark in his heart that changed his whole character, and like the unyielding Deity that follows the storm to check its rage in the forest, he resolves for the first time to shake off his embarrassment and return where he had before only worshiped.$,-At last we begin to get the Major's measure.mnWe are able to put this and that casual fact together, and build the man up before our eyes, and look at him.?@And after we have got him built, we find him worth the trouble.By the above comparison between his age and Ambulinia's, we guess the war-worn veteran to be twenty-two; and the other facts stand thus: he had grown up in the Cherokee country with the same equal proportions as one of the natives--how flowing and graceful the language, and yet how tantalizing as to meaning!--he had been turned adrift by his father, to whom he had been "somewhat of a dutiful son"; he wandered in distant lands; came back frequently "to the scenes of his boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life," in order to get into the presence of his father's winter-worn locks, and spread a humid veil of darkness around his expectations; but he was always promptly sent back to the cold charity of the combat again; he learned to play the fiddle, and made a name for himself in that line; he had dwelt among the wild tribes; he had philosophized about the despoilers of the kingdoms of the earth, and found out--the cunning creature--that they refer their differences to the learned for settlement; he had achieved a vast fame as a military chieftain, the Achilles of the Florida campaigns, and then had got him a spelling-book and started to school; he had fallen in love with Ambulinia Valeer while she was teething, but had kept it to himself awhile, out of the reverential awe which he felt for the child; but now at last, like the unyielding Deity who follows the storm to check its rage in the forest, he resolves to shake off his embarrassment, and to return where before he had only worshiped.2The Major, indeed, has made up his mind to rise up and shake his faculties together, and to see if HE can't do that thing himself.>This is not clear.But no matter about that: there stands the hero, compact and visible; and he is no mean structure, considering that his creator had never structure, considering that his creator had never created anything before, and hadn't anything but rags and wind to build with this time.*+It seems to me that no one can contemplate this odd creature, this quaint and curious blatherskite, without admiring McClintock, or, at any rate, loving him and feeling grateful to him; for McClintock made him, he gave him to us; without McClintock we could not have had him, and would now be poor.,$%But we must come to the feast again.AHere is a courtship scene, down there in the romantic glades among the raccoons, alligators, and things, that has merit, peculiar literary merit.:See how Achilles woos. ]^Dwell upon the second sentence (particularly the close of it) and the beginning of the third.WXNever mind the new personage, Leos, who is intruded upon us unheralded and unexplained.NThat is McClintock's way; it is his habit; it is a part of his genius; he cannot help it; he never interrupts the rush of his narrative to make introductions.uIt could not escape Ambulinia's penetrating eye that he sought an interview with her, which she as anxiously avoided, and assumed a more distant calmness than before, seemingly to destroy all hope.YAfter many efforts and struggles with his own person, with timid steps the Major approached the damsel, with the same caution as he would have done in a field of battle.MNLady Ambulinia," said he, trembling, "I have long desired a moment like this.7I dare not let it escape.STI fear the consequences; yet I hope your indulgence will at least hear my petition.YCan you not anticipate what I would say, and what I am about to express? Will not you, like Minerva, who sprung from the brain of Jupiter, release me from thy winding chains or cure me--" "Say no more, Elfonzo," answered Ambulinia, with a serious look, raising her hand as if she intended to swear eternal hatred against the whole world; "another lady in my place would have perhaps answered your question in bitter coldness.+%&I know not the little arts of my sex.I care but little for the vanity of those who would chide me, and am unwilling as well as ashamed to be guilty of anything that would lead you to think 'all is not gold that glitters'; so be no rash in your resolution.@AIt is better to repent now, than to do it in a more solemn hour.1 Yes, I know what you would say.,|}I know you have a costly gift for me--the noblest that man can make--YOUR HEART! You should not offer it to one so unworthy.oHeaven, you know, has allowed my father's house to be made a house of solitude, a home of silent obedience, which my parents say is more to be admired than big names and high-sounding titles.BNotwithstanding all this, let me speak the emotions of an honest heart--allow me to say in the fullness of my hopes that I anticipate better days.%&The bird may stretch its wings toward the sun, which it can never reach; and flowers of the field appear to ascend in the same direction, because they cannot do otherwise; but man confides his complaints to the saints in whom he believes; for in their abodes of light they know no more sorrow. ]^From your confession and indicative looks, I must be that person; if so deceive not yourself.=>Elfonzo replied, "Pardon me, my dear madam, for my frankness.I have loved you from my earliest days--everything grand and beautiful hath borne the image of Ambulinia; while precipices on every hand surrounded me, your GUARDIAN ANGEL stood and beckoned me away from the deep abyss.In every trial, in every misfortune, I have met with your helping hand; yet I never dreamed or dared to cherish thy love, till a voice impaired with age encouraged the cause, and declared they who acquired thy favor should win a victory.2I saw how Leos worshiped thee.5I felt my own unworthiness.5I began to KNOW JEALOUSLY, a strong guest--indeed, in my bosom,--yet I could see if I gained your admiration Leos was to be my rival.HI was aware that he had the influence of your parents, and the wealth of a deceased relative, which is too often mistaken for permanent and regular tranquillity; yet I have determined by your permission to beg an interest in your prayers--to ask you to animate my drooping spirits by your smiles and your winning looks; for if you but speak I shall be conqueror, my enemies shall stagger like Olympus shakes.And though earth and sea may tremble, and the charioteer of the sun may forget his dashing steed, yet I am assured that it is only to arm me with divine weapons which will enable me to complete my long-tried intention.  Return to yourself, Elfonzo," said Ambulinia, pleasantly: "a dream of vision has disturbed your intellect; you are above the atmosphere, dwelling in the celestial regions; nothing is there that urges or hinders, nothing that brings discord into our present litigation. FGI entreat you to condescend a little, and be a man, and forget it all.]When Homer describes the battle of the gods and noble men fighting with giants and dragons, they represent under this image our struggles with the delusions of our passions.9You have exalted me, an unhappy girl, to the skies; you have called me a saint, and portrayed in your imagination an angel in human form.NLet her remain such to you, let her continue to be as you have supposed, and be assured that she will consider a share in your esteem as her highest treasure.OThink not that I would allure you from the path in which your conscience leads you; for you know I respect the conscience of others, as I would die for my own.WXElfonzo, if I am worthy of thy love, let such conversation never again pass between us. ]^Go, seek a nobler theme! we will seek it in the stream of time, as the sun set in the Tigris.As she spake these words she grasped the hand of Elfonzo, saying at the same time--"Peace and prosperity attend you, my hero; be up and doing!" Closing her remarks with this expression, she walked slowly away, leaving Elfonzo astonished and amazed.(()He ventured not to follow or detain her.NOHere he stood alone, gazing at the stars; confounded as he was, here he stood.<Yes; there he stood.*&'There seems to be no doubt about that.IJNearly half of this delirious story has now been delivered to the reader.<=It seems a pity to reduce the other half to a cold synopsis.gPity! it is more than a pity, it is a crime; for to synopsize McClintock is to reduce a sky-flushing conflagration to dull embers, it is to reduce barbaric splendor to ragged poverty.TMcClintock never wrote a line that was not precious; he never wrote one that could be spared; he never framed one from which a word could be removed without damage.!qrEvery sentence that this master has produced may be likened to a perfect set of teeth, white, uniform, beautiful.-#$If you pull one, the charm is gone.klStill, it is now necessary to begin to pull, and to keep it up; for lack of space requires us to synopsize.*&'We left Elfonzo standing there amazed.8At what, we do not know.7Not at the girl's speech.@No; we ourselves should have been amazed at it, of course, for none of us has ever heard anything resembling it; but Elfonzo was used to speeches made up of noise and vacancy, and could listen to them with undaunted mind like the "topmost topaz of an ancient tower"; he was used to making them himself; he--but let it go, it cannot be guessed out; we shall never know what it was that astonished him.78He stood there awhile; then he said, "Alas! am I now Grief's disappointed son at last?" He did not stop to examine his mind, and to try to find out what he probably meant by that, because, for one reason, "a mixture of ambition and greatness of soul moved upon his young heart," and started him for the village.LMHe resumed his bench in school, "and reasonably progressed in his education.ghHis heart was heavy, but he went into society, and sought surcease of sorrow in its light distractions.]He made himself popular with his violin, "which seemed to have a thousand chords--more symphonious than the Muses of Apollo, and more enchanting than the ghost of the Hills.1 This is obscure, but let it go. pqDuring this interval Leos did some unencouraged courting, but at last, "choked by his undertaking," he desisted.RSPresently "Elfonzo again wends his way to the stately walls and new-built village.@AHe goes to the house of his beloved; she opens the door herself.2To my surprise--for Ambulinia's heart had still seemed free at the time of their last interview--love beamed from the girl's eyes..~One sees that Elfonzo was surprised, too; for when he caught that light, "a halloo of smothered shouts ran through every vein.>?A neat figure--a very neat figure, indeed! Then he kissed her.5The scene was overwhelming.6They went into the parlor.KLThe girl said it was safe, for her parents were abed, and would never know.`aThen we have this fine picture--flung upon the canvas with hardly an effort, as you will notice.Advancing toward him, she gave a bright display of her rosy neck, and from her head the ambrosial locks breathed divine fragrance; her robe hung waving to his view, while she stood like a goddess confessed before him.78There is nothing of interest in the couple's interview.aNow at this point the girl invites Elfonzo to a village show, where jealousy is the motive of the play, for she wants to teach him a wholesome lesson, if he is a jealous person.)'(But this is a sham, and pretty shallow.abMcClintock merely wants a pretext to drag in a plagiarism of his upon a scene or two in "Othello.4The lovers went to the play.0 !Elfonzo was one of the fiddlers.;He and Ambulinia must not been seen together, lest trouble follow with the girl's malignant father; we are made to understand that clearly.HISo the two sit together in the orchestra, in the midst of the musicians.."#This does not seem to be good art.In the first place, the girl would be in the way, for orchestras are always packed closely together, and there is no room to spare for people's girls; in the next place, one cannot conceal a girl in an orchestra without everybody taking notice of it.<=There can be no doubt, it seems to me, that this is bad art.@Leos is present..~Of course, one of the first things that catches his eye is the maddening spectacle of Ambulinia "leaning upon Elfonzo's chair.MNThis poor girl does not seem to understand even the rudiments of concealment. YZBut she is "in her seventeenth," as the author phrases it, and that is her justification.PQLeos meditates, constructs a plan--with personal violence as a basis, of course.4It was their way down there.78It is a good plain plan, without any imagination in it.He will go out and stand at the front door, and when these two come out he will "arrest Ambulinia from the hands of the insolent Elfonzo," and thus make for himself a "more prosperous field of immortality than ever was decreed by Omnipotence, or ever pencil drew or artist imagined.ZBut, dear me, while he is waiting there the couple climb out at the back window and scurry home! This is romantic enough, but there is a lack of dignity in the situation.NOAt this point McClintock puts in the whole of his curious play--which we skip.0 !Some correspondence follows now.>?The bitter father and the distressed lovers write the letters.7Elopements are attempted.$,-They are idiotically planned, and they fail.OPThen we have several pages of romantic powwow and confusion dignifying nothing. YZAnother elopement is planned; it is to take place on Sunday, when everybody is at church.:;But the "hero" cannot keep the secret; he tells everybody..~Another author would have found another instrument when he decided to defeat this elopement; but that is not McClintock's way.%+,He uses the person that is nearest at hand.2The evasion failed, of course.=>Ambulinia, in her flight, takes refuge in a neighbor's house.6Her father drags her home."./The villagers gather, attracted by the racket.0 !Elfonzo was moved at this sight.8The people followed on to see what was going to become of Ambulinia, while he, with downcast looks, kept at a distance, until he saw them enter the abode of the father, thrusting her, that was the sigh of his soul, out of his presence into a solitary apartment, when she exclaimed, "Elfonzo! Elfonzo! oh, Elfonzo! where art thou, with all thy heroes? haste, oh! haste, come thou to my relief.GRide on the wings of the wind! Turn thy force loose like a tempest, and roll on thy army like a whirlwind, over this mountain of trouble and confusion.OOh friends! if any pity me, let your last efforts throng upon the green hills, and come to the relief of Ambulinia, who is guilty of nothing but innocent love.*z{Elfonzo called out with a loud voice, "My God, can I stand this! arouse up, I beseech you, and put an end to this tyranny._`Come, my brave boys," said he, "are you ready to go forth to your duty?" They stood around him.-}~Who," said he, "will call us to arms? Where are my thunderbolts of war? Speak ye, the first who will meet the foe! Who will go forward with me in this ocean of grievous temptation? If there is one who desires to go, let him come and shake hands upon the altar of devotion, and swear that he will be a hero; yes, a Hector in a cause like this, which calls aloud for a speedy remedy."rsMine be the deed," said a young lawyer, "and mine alone; Venus alone shall quit her station before I will forsake one jot or tittle of my promise to you; what is death to me? what is all this warlike army, if it is not to win a victory? I love the sleep of the lover and the mighty; nor would I give it over till the blood of my enemies should wreak with that of my own. GHBut God forbid that our fame should soar on the blood of the slumberer.MMr.IValeer stands at his door with the frown of a demon upon his brow, with his dangerous weapon (3) ready to strike the first man who should enter his door.efWho will arise and go forward through blood and carnage to the rescue of my Ambulinia?" said Elfonzo.UVAll," exclaimed the multitude; and onward they went, with their implements of battle._`Others, of a more timid nature, stood among the distant hills to see the result of the contest.#stIt will hardly be believed that after all this thunder and lightning not a drop of rain fell; but such is the fact.34Elfonzo and his gang stood up and black-guarded Mr.Valeer with vigor all night, getting their outlay back with interest; then in the early morning the army and its general retired from the field, leaving the victory with their solitary adversary and his crowbar.@AThis is the first time this has happened in romantic literature.6The invention is original.RSEverything in this book is original; there is nothing hackneyed about it anywhere.mnAlways, in other romances, when you find the author leading up to a climax, you know what is going to happen.IBut in this book it is different; the thing which seems inevitable and unavoidable never happens; it is circumvented by the art of the author every time.0 !Another elopement was attempted.F It failed.1 We have now arrived at the end.9But it is not exciting.*&'McClintock thinks it is; but it isn't.KLOne day Elfonzo sent Ambulinia another note--a note proposing elopement No.(xyThis time the plan is admirable; admirable, sagacious, ingenious, imaginative, deep--oh, everything, and perfectly easy.!/0One wonders why it was never thought of before.=This is the scheme.+,Ambulinia is to leave the breakfast-table, ostensibly to "attend to the placing of those flowers, which should have been done a week ago"--artificial ones, of course; the others wouldn't keep so long--and then, instead of fixing the flowers, she is to walk out to the grove, and go off with Elfonzo.jkThe invention of this plan overstrained the author that is plain, for he straightway shows failing powers.23The details of the plan are not many or elaborate.12The author shall state them himself--this good soul, whose intentions are always better than his English: "You walk carelessly toward the academy grove, where you will find me with a lightning steed, elegantly equipped to bear you off where we shall be joined in wedlock with the first connubial rights.hiLast scene of all, which the author, now much enfeebled, tries to smarten up and make acceptable to his spectacular heart by introducing some new properties--silver bow, golden harp, olive branch--things that can all come good in an elopement, no doubt, yet are not to be compared to an umbrella for real handiness and reliability in an excursion of that kind.cdAnd away she ran to the sacred grove, surrounded with glittering pearls, that indicated her coming.:;Elfonzo hails her with his silver bow and his golden harp.PQThey meet--Ambulinia's countenance brightens--Elfonzo leads up the winged steed. EFMount," said he, "ye true-hearted, ye fearless soul--the day is ours.]She sprang upon the back of the young thunderbolt, a brilliant star sparkles upon her head, with one hand she grasps the reins, and with the other she holds an olive branch..~Lend thy aid, ye strong winds," they exclaimed, "ye moon, ye sun, and all ye fair host of heaven, witness the enemy conquered.(()Hold," said Elfonzo, "thy dashing steed.=>Ride on," said Ambulinia, "the voice of thunder is behind us.tAnd onward they went, with such rapidity that they very soon arrived at Rural Retreat, where they dismounted, and were united with all the solemnities that usually attended such divine operations.'wxThere is but one Homer, there is but one Shakespeare, there is but one McClintock--and his immortal book is before you.opHomer could not have written this book, Shakespeare could not have written it, I could not have done it myself.OPThere is nothing just like it in the literature of any country or of any epoch.."#It stands alone; it is monumental.F It adds G. FGRagsdale McClintock's to the sum of the republic's imperishable names.RSThe name here given is a substitute for the one actually attached to the pamphlet.deFurther on it will be seen that he is a country expert on the fiddle, and has a three-township fame.@It is a crowbar.LMTHE CURIOUS BOOK Complete (The foregoing review of the great work of G.ijRagsdale McClintock is liberally illuminated with sample extracts, but these cannot appease the appetite. 01Only the complete book, unabridged, can do that.3Therefore it is here printed.uTHE ENEMY CONQUERED; OR, LOVE TRIUMPHANT Sweet girl, thy smiles are full of charms, Thy voice is sweeter still, It fills the breast with fond alarms, Echoed by every rill.I begin this little work with an eulogy upon woman, who has ever been distinguished for her perseverance, her constancy, and her devoted attention to those upon whom she has been pleased to place her AFFECTIONS.!qrMany have been the themes upon which writers and public speakers have dwelt with intense and increasing interest.@Among these delightful themes stands that of woman, the balm to all our sighs and disappointments, and the most pre-eminent of all other topics.CHere the poet and orator have stood and gazed with wonder and with admiration; they have dwelt upon her innocence, the ornament of all her virtues.bFirst viewing her external charms, such as set forth in her form and benevolent countenance, and then passing to the deep hidden springs of loveliness and disinterested devotion. GHIn every clime, and in every age, she has been the pride of her NATION.BHer watchfulness is untiring; she who guarded the sepulcher was the first to approach it, and the last to depart from its awful yet sublime scene.6Even here, in this highly favored land, we look to her for the security of our institutions, and for our future greatness as a nation.deBut, strange as it may appear, woman's charms and virtues are but slightly appreciated by thousands. Those who should raise the standard of female worth, and paint her value with her virtues, in living colors, upon the banners that are fanned by the zephyrs of heaven, and hand them down to posterity as emblematical of a rich inheritance, do not properly estimate them.\Man is not sensible, at all times, of the nature and the emotions which bear that name; he does not understand, he will not comprehend; his intelligence has not expanded to that degree of glory which drinks in the vast revolution of humanity, its end, its mighty destination, and the causes which operated, and are still operating, to produce a more elevated station, and the objects which energize and enliven its consummation.BThis he is a stranger to; he is not aware that woman is the recipient of celestial love, and that man is dependent upon her to perfect his character; that without her, philosophically and truly speaking, the brightest of his intelligence is but the coldness of a winter moon, whose beams can produce no fruit, whose solar light is not its own, but borrowed from the great dispenser of effulgent beauty.nWe have no disposition in the world to flatter the fair sex, we would raise them above those dastardly principles which only exist in little souls, contracted hearts, and a distracted brain.dOften does she unfold herself in all her fascinating loveliness, presenting the most captivating charms; yet we find man frequently treats such purity of purpose with indifference.!qrWhy does he do it? Why does he baffle that which is inevitably the source of his better days? Is he so much of a stranger to those excellent qualities as not to appreciate woman, as not to have respect to her dignity? Since her art and beauty first captivated man, she has been his delight and his comfort; she has shared alike in his misfortunes and in his prosperity.noWhenever the billows of adversity and the tumultuous waves of trouble beat high, her smiles subdue their fury.\Should the tear of sorrow and the mournful sigh of grief interrupt the peace of his mind, her voice removes them all, and she bends from her circle to encourage him onward.RWhen darkness would obscure his mind, and a thick cloud of gloom would bewilder its operations, her intelligent eye darts a ray of streaming light into his heart.uMighty and charming is that disinterested devotion which she is ever ready to exercise toward man, not waiting till the last moment of his danger, but seeks to relieve him in his early afflictions.It gushes forth from the expansive fullness of a tender and devoted heart, where the noblest, the purest, and the most elevated and refined feelings are matured and developed in those may kind offices which invariably make her character.KLIn the room of sorrow and sickness, this unequaled characteristic may always been seen, in the performance of the most charitable acts; nothing that she can do to promote the happiness of him who she claims to be her protector will be omitted; all is invigorated by the animating sunbeams which awaken the heart to songs of gaiety..~Leaving this point, to notice another prominent consideration, which is generally one of great moment and of vital importance.?@Invariably she is firm and steady in all her pursuits and aims.rThere is required a combination of forces and extreme opposition to drive her from her position; she takes her stand, not to be moved by the sound of Apollo's lyre or the curved bow of pleasure.{Firm and true to what she undertakes, and that which she requires by her own aggrandizement, and regards as being within the strict rules of propriety, she will remain stable and unflinching to the last. Z[A more genuine principle is not to be found in the most determined, resolute heart of man.hFor this she deserves to be held in the highest commendation, for this she deserves the purest of all other blessings, and for this she deserves the most laudable reward of all others. CDIt is a noble characteristic and is worthy of imitation of any age.FAnd when we look at it in one particular aspect, it is still magnified, and grows brighter and brighter the more we reflect upon its eternal duration.78What will she not do, when her word as well as her affections and LOVE are pledged to her lover? Everything that is dear to her on earth, all the hospitalities of kind and loving parents, all the sincerity and loveliness of sisters, and the benevolent devotion of brothers, who have surrounded her with every comfort; she will forsake them all, quit the harmony and sweet sound of the lute and the harp, and throw herself upon the affections of some devoted admirer, in whom she fondly hopes to find more than she has left behind, which is not often realized by many.Truth and virtue all combined! How deserving our admiration and love! Ah cruel would it be in man, after she has thus manifested such an unshaken confidence in him, and said by her determination to abandon all the endearments and blandishments of home, to act a villainous part, and prove a traitor in the revolution of his mission, and then turn Hector over the innocent victim whom he swore to protect, in the presence of Heaven, recorded by the pen of an angel.Striking as this train may unfold itself in her character, and as pre-eminent as it may stand among the fair display of her other qualities, yet there is another, which struggles into existence, and adds an additional luster to what she already possesses.-}~I mean that disposition in woman which enables her, in sorrow, in grief, and in distress, to bear all with enduring patience.NOThis she has done, and can and will do, amid the din of war and clash of arms.mScenes and occurrences which, to every appearance, are calculated to rend the heart with the profoundest emotions of trouble, do not fetter that exalted principle imbued in her very nature.=>It is true, her tender and feeling heart may often be moved (as she is thus constituted), but she is not conquered, she has not given up to the harlequin of disappointments, her energies have not become clouded in the last movement of misfortune, but she is continually invigorated by the archetype of her affections.23She may bury her face in her hands, and let the tear of anguish roll, she may promenade the delightful walks of some garden, decorated with all the flowers of nature, or she may steal out along some gently rippling stream, and there, as the silver waters uninterruptedly move forward, shed her silent tears; they mingle with the waves, and take a last farewell of their agitated home, to seek a peaceful dwelling among the rolling floods; yet there is a voice rushing from her breast, that proclaims VICTORY along the whole line and battlement of her affections.  That voice is the voice of patience and resignation; that voice is one that bears everything calmly and dispassionately, amid the most distressing scenes; when the fates are arrayed against her peace, and apparently plotting for her destruction, still she is resigned.PQWoman's affections are deep, consequently her troubles may be made to sink deep.%&Although you may not be able to mark the traces of her grief and the furrowings of her anguish upon her winning countenance, yet be assured they are nevertheless preying upon her inward person, sapping the very foundation of that heart which alone was made for the weal and not the woe of man.=>The deep recesses of the soul are fields for their operation.bBut they are not destined simply to take the regions of the heart for their dominion, they are not satisfied merely with interrupting her better feelings; but after a while you may see the blooming cheek beginning to droop and fade, her intelligent eye no longer sparkles with the starry light of heaven, her vibrating pulse long since changed its regular motion, and her palpitating bosom beats once more for the midday of her glory. Z[Anxiety and care ultimately throw her into the arms of the haggard and grim monster death.But, oh, how patient, under every pining influence! Let us view the matter in bolder colors; see her when the dearest object of her affections recklessly seeks every bacchanalian pleasure, contents himself with the last rubbish of creation.JWith what solicitude she awaits his return! Sleep fails to perform its office--she weeps while the nocturnal shades of the night triumph in the stillness.2Bending over some favorite book, whilst the author throws before her mind the most beautiful imagery, she startles at every sound. [\The midnight silence is broken by the solemn announcement of the return of another morning._He is still absent; she listens for that voice which has so often been greeted by the melodies of her own; but, alas! stern silence is all that she receives for her vigilance.:;Mark her unwearied watchfulness, as the night passes away.*z{At last, brutalized by the accursed thing, he staggers along with rage, and, shivering with cold, he makes his appearance.,$%Not a murmur is heard from her lips.0On the contrary, she meets him with a smile--she caresses him with tender arms, with all the gentleness and softness of her sex.9:Here, then, is seen her disposition, beautifully arrayed.!qrWoman, thou art more to be admired than the spicy gales of Arabia, and more sought for than the gold of Golconda.%uvWe believe that Woman should associate freely with man, and we believe that it is for the preservation of her rights.(xyShe should become acquainted with the metaphysical designs of those who condescended to sing the siren song of flattery. pqThis, we think, should be according to the unwritten law of decorum, which is stamped upon every innocent heart.)yzThe precepts of prudery are often steeped in the guilt of contamination, which blasts the expectations of better moments.Truth, and beautiful dreams--loveliness, and delicacy of character, with cherished affections of the ideal woman--gentle hopes and aspirations, are enough to uphold her in the storms of darkness, without the transferred colorings of a stained sufferer.NHow often have we seen it in our public prints, that woman occupies a false station in the world! and some have gone so far as to say it was an unnatural one.6So long has she been regarded a weak creature, by the rabble and illiterate--they have looked upon her as an insufficient actress on the great stage of human life--a mere puppet, to fill up the drama of human existence--a thoughtless, inactive being--that she has too often come to the same conclusion herself, and has sometimes forgotten her high destination, in the meridian of her glory.%&We have but little sympathy or patience for those who treat her as a mere Rosy Melindi--who are always fishing for pretty complements--who are satisfied by the gossamer of Romance, and who can be allured by the verbosity of high-flown words, rich in language, but poor and barren in sentiment.:;Beset, as she has been, by the intellectual vulgar, the selfish, the designing, the cunning, the hidden, and the artful--no wonder she has sometimes folded her wings in despair, and forgotten her HEAVENLY mission in the delirium of imagination; no wonder she searches out some wild desert, to find a peaceful home.0 !But this cannot always continue.()A new era is moving gently onward, old things are rapidly passing away; old superstitions, old prejudices, and old notions are now bidding farewell to their old associates and companions, and giving way to one whose wings are plumed with the light of heaven and tinged by the dews of the morning.PThere is a remnant of blessedness that clings to her in spite of all evil influence, there is enough of the Divine Master left to accomplish the noblest work ever achieved under the canopy of the vaulted skies; and that time is fast approaching, when the picture of the true woman will shine from its frame of glory, to captivate, to win back, to restore, and to call into being once more, THE OBJECT OF HER MISSION.2Star of the brave! thy glory shed, O'er all the earth, thy army led-- Bold meteor of immortal birth! Why come from Heaven to dwell on Earth? Mighty and glorious are the days of youth; happy the moments of the LOVER, mingled with smiles and tears of his devoted, and long to be remembered are the achievements which he gains with a palpitating heart and a trembling hand.xA bright and lovely dawn, the harbinger of a fair and prosperous day, had arisen over the beautiful little village of Cumming, which is surrounded by the most romantic scenery in the Cherokee country.Brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist of the fair Chattahoochee, to spread their beauty over the the thick forest, to guide the hero whose bosom beats with aspirations to conquer the enemy that would tarnish his name, and to win back the admiration of his long-tried friend.^He endeavored to make his way through Sawney's Mountain, where many meet to catch the gales that are continually blowing for the refreshment of the stranger and the traveler. [\Surrounded as he was by hills on every side, naked rocks dared the efforts of his energies.JSoon the sky became overcast, the sun buried itself in the clouds, and the fair day gave place to gloomy twilight, which lay heavily on the Indian Plains.PQHe remembered an old Indian Castle, that once stood at the foot of the mountain.VWHe thought if he could make his way to this, he would rest contented for a short time.hiThe mountain air breathed fragrance--a rosy tinge rested on the glassy waters that murmured at its base.His resolution soon brought him to the remains of the red man's hut: he surveyed with wonder and astonishment the decayed building, which time had buried in the dust, and thought to himself, his happiness was not yet complete.~Beside the shore of the brook sat a young man, about eighteen or twenty, who seemed to be reading some favorite book, and who had a remarkably noble countenance--eyes which betrayed more than a common mind.'wxThis of course made the youth a welcome guest, and gained him friends in whatever condition of life he might be placed.ijThe traveler observed that he was a well-built figure, which showed strength and grace in every movement.ghHe accordingly addressed him in quite a gentlemanly manner, and inquired of him the way to the village.-.After he had received the desired information, and was about taking his leave, the youth said, "Are you not Major Elfonzo, the great musician--the champion of a noble cause--the modern Achilles, who gained so many victories in the Florida War?" "I bear that name," said the Major, "and those titles, trusting at the same time that the ministers of grace will carry me triumphantly through all my laudable undertakings, and if," continued the Major, "you, sir, are the patronizer of noble deeds, I should like to make you my confidant and learn your address.`aThe youth looked somewhat amazed, bowed low, mused for a moment, and began: "My name is Roswell.@I have been recently admitted to the bar, and can only give a faint outline of my future success in that honorable profession; but I trust, sir, like the Eagle, I shall look down from lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man, and shall ever be ready to give you any assistance in my official capacity, and whatever this muscular arm of mine can do, whenever it shall be called from its buried GREATNESS.23The Major grasped him by the hand, and exclaimed: "O! thou exalted spirit of inspiration--thou flame of burning prosperity, may the Heaven-directed blaze be the glare of thy soul, and battle down every rampart that seems to impede your progress!" The road which led to the town presented many attractions.(xyElfonzo had bid farewell to the youth of deep feeling, and was not wending his way to the dreaming spot of his fondness.,|}The south winds whistled through the woods, as the waters dashed against the banks, as rapid fire in the pent furnace roars.cThis brought him to remember while alone, that he quietly left behind the hospitality of a father's house, and gladly entered the world, with higher hopes than are often realized.WBut as he journeyed onward, he was mindful of the advice of his father, who had often looked sadly on the ground when tears of cruelly deceived hope moistened his eye.Elfonzo had been somewhat of a dutiful son; yet fond of the amusements of life--had been in distant lands--had enjoyed the pleasure of the world and had frequently returned to the scenes of his boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life. In this condition, he would frequently say to his father, "Have I offended you, that you look upon me as a stranger, and frown upon me with stinging looks? Will you not favor me with the sound of your voice? If I have trampled upon your veneration, or have spread a humid veil of darkness around your expectations, send me back into the world where no heart beats for me--where the foot of man has never yet trod; but give me at least one kind word--allow me to come into the presence sometimes of thy winter-worn locks.wForbid it, Heaven, that I should be angry with thee," answered the father, "my son, and yet I send thee back to the children of the world--to the cold charity of the combat, and to a land of victory.<I read another destiny in thy countenance--I learn thy inclinations from the flame that has already kindled in my soul a stranger sensation.It will seek thee, my dear ELFONZO, it will find thee--thou canst not escape that lighted torch, which shall blot out from the remembrance of men a long train of prophecies which they have foretold against thee.:I once thought not so.Once, I was blind; but now the path of life is plain before me, and my sight is clear; yet Elfonzo, return to thy worldly occupation--take again in thy hand that chord of sweet sounds--struggle with the civilized world, and with your own heart; fly swiftly to the enchanted ground--let the night-OWL send forth its screams from the stubborn oak--let the sea sport upon the beach, and the stars sing together; but learn of these, Elfonzo, thy doom, and thy hiding-place.3Our most innocent as well as our most lawful DESIRES must often be denied us, that we may learn to sacrifice them to a Higher will.5Remembering such admonitions with gratitude, Elfonzo was immediately urged by the recollection of his father's family to keep moving.}His steps became quicker and quicker--he hastened through the PINY woods, dark as the forest was, and with joy he very soon reached the little village or repose, in whose bosom rested the boldest chivalry.His close attention to every important object--his modest questions about whatever was new to him--his reverence for wise old age, and his ardent desire to learn many of the fine arts, soon brought him into respectable notice.QROne mild winter day as he walked along the streets toward the Academy, which stood upon a small eminence, surrounded by native growth--some venerable in its appearance, others young and prosperous--all seemed inviting, and seemed to be the very place for learning as well as for genius to spend its research beneath its spreading shades. CDHe entered its classic walls in the usual mode of southern manners.jkThe principal of the Institution begged him to be seated and listen to the recitations that were going on.ABHe accordingly obeyed the request, and seemed to be much pleased.01After the school was dismissed, and the young hearts regained their freedom, with the songs of the evening, laughing at the anticipated pleasures of a happy home, while others tittered at the actions of the past day, he addressed the teacher in a tone that indicated a resolution--with an undaunted mind.UVHe said he had determined to become a student, if he could meet with his approbation.45Sir," said he, "I have spent much time in the world.=>I have traveled among the uncivilized inhabitants of America.+{|I have met with friends, and combated with foes; but none of these gratify my ambition, or decide what is to be my destiny.RSI see the learned would have an influence with the voice of the people themselves.fgThe despoilers of the remotest kingdoms of the earth refer their differences to this class of persons.This the illiterate and inexperienced little dream of; and now if you will receive me as I am, with these deficiencies--with all my misguided opinions, I will give you my honor, sir, that I will never disgrace the Institution, or those who have placed you in this honorable station.MThe instructor, who had met with many disappointments, knew how to feel for a stranger who had been thus turned upon the charities of an unfeeling community.#stHe looked at him earnestly, and said: "Be of good cheer--look forward, sir, to the high destination you may attain.(xyRemember, the more elevated the mark at which you aim, the more sure, the more glorious, the more magnificent the prize. DEFrom wonder to wonder, his encouragement led the impatient listener.)yzA stranger nature bloomed before him--giant streams promised him success--gardens of hidden treasures opened to his view.UVAll this, so vividly described, seemed to gain a new witchery from his glowing fancy. [\In 1842 he entered the class, and made rapid progress in the English and Latin departments.Indeed, he continued advancing with such rapidity that he was like to become the first in his class, and made such unexpected progress, and was so studious, that he had almost forgotten the pictured saint of his affections.The fresh wreaths of the pine and cypress had waited anxiously to drop once more the dews of Heavens upon the heads of those who had so often poured forth the tender emotions of their souls under its boughs.45He was aware of the pleasure that he had seen there. pqSo one evening, as he was returning from his reading, he concluded he would pay a visit to this enchanting spot.mnLittle did he think of witnessing a shadow of his former happiness, though no doubt he wished it might be so.@AHe continued sauntering by the roadside, meditating on the past.>?The nearer he approached the spot, the more anxious he became.12At the moment a tall female figure flitted across his path, with a bunch of roses in her hand; her countenance showed uncommon vivacity, with a resolute spirit; her ivory teeth already appeared as she smiled beautifully, promenading--while her ringlets of hair dangled unconsciously around her snowy neck.%+,Nothing was wanting to complete her beauty.,|}The tinge of the rose was in full bloom upon her cheek; the charms of sensibility and tenderness were always her associates. \]In Ambulinia's bosom dwelt a noble soul--one that never faded--one that never was conquered.iHer heart yielded to no feeling but the love of Elfonzo, on whom she gazed with intense delight, and to whom she felt herself more closely bound, because he sought the hand of no other.#-.Elfonzo was roused from his apparent reverie..~His books no longer were his inseparable companions--his thoughts arrayed themselves to encourage him in the field of victory.WXHe endeavored to speak to his supposed Ambulinia, but his speech appeared not in words.+{|No, his effort was a stream of fire, that kindled his soul into a flame of admiration, and carried his senses away captive.@AAmbulinia had disappeared, to make him more mindful of his duty.(xyAs she walked speedily away through the piny woods she calmly echoed: "O! Elfonzo, thou wilt now look from thy sunbeams.&vwThou shalt now walk in a new path--perhaps thy way leads through darkness; but fear not, the stars foretell happiness. Not many days afterward, as surrounded by fragrant flowers she sat one evening at twilight, to enjoy the cool breeze that whispered notes of melody along the distant groves, the little birds perched on every side, as if to watch the movements of their new visitor.'(The bells were tolling when Elfonzo silently stole along by the wild wood flowers, holding in his hand his favorite instrument of music--his eye continually searching for Ambulinia, who hardly seemed to perceive him, as she played carelessly with the songsters that hopped from branch to branch. CDNothing could be more striking than the difference between the two.opNature seemed to have given the more tender soul to Elfonzo, and the stronger and more courageous to Ambulinia.rA deep feeling spoke from the eyes of Elfonzo--such a feeling as can only be expressed by those who are blessed as admirers, and by those who are able to return the same with sincerity of heart.VWHe was a few years older than Ambulinia: she had turned a little into her seventeenth.fgHe had almost grown up in the Cherokee country, with the same equal proportions as one of the natives.But little intimacy had existed between them until the year forty-one--because the youth felt that the character of such a lovely girl was too exalted to inspire any other feeling than that of quiet reverence.67But as lovers will not always be insulted, at all times and under all circumstances, by the frowns and cold looks of crabbed old age, which should continually reflect dignity upon those around, and treat unfortunate as well as the fortunate with a graceful mien, he continued to use diligence and perseverance.  All this lighted a spark in his heart that changed his whole character, and like the unyielding Deity that follows the storm to check its rage in the forest, he resolves for the first time to shake off his embarrassment and return where he had before only worshiped.uIt could not escape Ambulinia's penetrating eye that he sought an interview with her, which she as anxiously avoided, and assumed a more distant calmness than before, seemingly to destroy all hope.YAfter many efforts and struggles with his own person, with timid steps the Major approached the damsel, with the same caution as he would have done in a field of battle.MNLady Ambulinia," said he, trembling, "I have long desired a moment like this.7I dare not let it escape.STI fear the consequences; yet I hope your indulgence will at least hear my petition.YCan you not anticipate what I would say, and what I am about to express? Will not you, like Minerva, who sprung from the brain of Jupiter, release me from thy winding chains or cure me--" "Say no more, Elfonzo," answered Ambulinia, with a serious look, raising her hand as if she intended to swear eternal hatred against the whole world; "another lady in my place would have perhaps answered your question in bitter coldness.+%&I know not the little arts of my sex.I care but little for the vanity of those who would chide me, and am unwilling as well as shamed to be guilty of anything that would lead you to think 'all is not gold that glitters'; so be not rash in your resolution.?@It is better to repent now than to do it in a more solemn hour.1 Yes, I know what you would say.,|}I know you have a costly gift for me--the noblest that man can make--YOUR HEART! you should not offer it to one so unworthy.oHeaven, you know, has allowed my father's house to be made a house of solitude, a home of silent obedience, which my parents say is more to be admired than big names and high-sounding titles.BNotwithstanding all this, let me speak the emotions of an honest heart; allow me to say in the fullness of my hopes that I anticipate better days.%&The bird may stretch its wings toward the sun, which it can never reach; and flowers of the field appear to ascend in the same direction, because they cannot do otherwise; but man confides his complaints to the saints in whom he believes; for in their abodes of light they know no more sorrow.^_From your confession and indicative looks, I must be that person; if so, deceive not yourself.=>Elfonzo replied, "Pardon me, my dear madam, for my frankness.I have loved you from my earliest days; everything grand and beautiful hath borne the image of Ambulinia; while precipices on every hand surrounded me, your GUARDIAN ANGEL stood and beckoned me away from the deep abyss.In every trial, in every misfortune, I have met with your helping hand; yet I never dreamed or dared to cherish thy love till a voice impaired with age encouraged the cause, and declared they who acquired thy favor should win a victory.1 I saw how Leos worshipped thee.5I felt my own unworthiness.3I began to KNOW JEALOUSY--a strong guest, indeed, in my bosom--yet I could see if I gained your admiration Leos was to be my rival.HI was aware that he had the influence of your parents, and the wealth of a deceased relative, which is too often mistaken for permanent and regular tranquillity; yet I have determined by your permission to beg an interest in your prayers--to ask you to animate my dropping spirits by your smiles and your winning looks; for if you but speak I shall be conqueror, my enemies shall stagger like Olympus shakes.And though earth and sea may tremble, and the charioteer of the sun may forget his dashing steed, yet I am assured that it is only to arm me with divine weapons which will enable me to complete my long-tried intention. Return to your self, Elfonzo," said Ambulinia, pleasantly; "a dream of vision has disturbed your intellect; you are above the atmosphere, dwelling in the celestial regions; nothing is there that urges or hinders, nothing that brings discord into our present litigation. FGI entreat you to condescend a little, and be a man, and forget it all.]When Homer describes the battle of the gods and noble men fighting with giants and dragons, they represent under this image our struggles with the delusions of our passions.9You have exalted me, an unhappy girl, to the skies; you have called me a saint, and portrayed in your imagination an angel in human form.NLet her remain such to you, let her continue to be as you have supposed, and be assured that she will consider a share in your esteem as her highest treasure.OThink not that I would allure you from the path in which your conscience leads you; for you know I respect the conscience of others, as I would die for my own.WXElfonzo, if I am worthy of thy love, let such conversation never again pass between us. \]Go, seek a nobler theme! we will seek it in the stream of time as the sun set in the Tigris.As she spake these words she grasped the hand of Elfonzo, saying at the same time, "Peace and prosperity attend you, my hero: be up and doing!" Closing her remarks with this expression, she walked slowly away, leaving Elfonzo astonished and amazed.(()He ventured not to follow or detain her.NOHere he stood alone, gazing at the stars; confounded as he was, here he stood.&*+The rippling stream rolled on at his feet.WTwilight had already begun to draw her sable mantle over the earth, and now and then the fiery smoke would ascend from the little town which lay spread out before him.bcThe citizens seemed to be full of life and good-humor; but poor Elfonzo saw not a brilliant scene.ghNo; his future life stood before him, stripped of the hopes that once adorned all his sanguine desires.;<Alas!" said he, "am I now Grief's disappointed son at last.(()Ambulinia's image rose before his fancy.zA mixture of ambition and greatness of soul moved upon his young heart, and encouraged him to bear all his crosses with the patience of a Job, notwithstanding he had to encounter with so many obstacles. YZHe still endeavored to prosecute his studies, and reasonable progressed in his education.`aStill, he was not content; there was something yet to be done before his happiness was complete.#-.He would visit his friends and acquaintances.opThey would invite him to social parties, insisting that he should partake of the amusements that were going on.1 This he enjoyed tolerably well.The ladies and gentlemen were generally well pleased with the Major; as he delighted all with his violin, which seemed to have a thousand chords--more symphonious than the Muses of Apollo and more enchanting than the ghost of the Hills.-#$He passed some days in the country.1During that time Leos had made many calls upon Ambulinia, who was generally received with a great deal of courtesy by the family.They thought him to be a young man worthy of attention, though he had but little in his soul to attract the attention or even win the affections of her whose graceful manners had almost made him a slave to every bewitching look that fell from her eyes.HILeos made several attempts to tell her of his fair prospects--how much he loved her, and how much it would add to his bliss if he could but think she would be willing to share these blessings with him; but, choked by his undertaking, he made himself more like an inactive drone than he did like one who bowed at beauty's shrine. GHElfonzo again wends his way to the stately walls and new-built village.PQHe now determines to see the end of the prophesy which had been foretold to him.]The clouds burst from his sight; he believes if he can but see his Ambulinia, he can open to her view the bloody altars that have been misrepresented to stigmatize his name.5He knows that her breast is transfixed with the sword of reason, and ready at all times to detect the hidden villainy of her enemies. ]^He resolves to see her in her own home, with the consoling theme: "'I can but perish if I go.$tuLet the consequences be what they may," said he, "if I die, it shall be contending and struggling for my own rights.78Night had almost overtaken him when he arrived in town.+{|Colonel Elder, a noble-hearted, high-minded, and independent man, met him at his door as usual, and seized him by the hand.pWell, Elfonzo," said the Colonel, "how does the world use you in your efforts?" "I have no objection to the world," said Elfonzo, "but the people are rather singular in some of their opinions.UVAye, well," said the Colonel, "you must remember that creation is made up of many mysteries; just take things by the right handle; be always sure you know which is the smooth side before you attempt your polish; be reconciled to your fate, be it what it may; and never find fault with your condition, unless your complaining will benefit it._`Perseverance is a principle that should be commendable in those who have judgment to govern it.I should never had been so successful in my hunting excursions had I waited till the deer, by some magic dream, had been drawn to the muzzle of the gun before I made an attempt to fire at the game that dared my boldness in the wild forest.The great mystery in hunting seems to be--a good marksman, a resolute mind, a fixed determination, and my world for it, you will never return home without sounding your horn with the breath of a new victory.,$%And so with every other undertaking.aBe confident that your ammunition is of the right kind--always pull your trigger with a steady hand, and so soon as you perceive a calm, touch her off, and the spoils are yours. pqThis filled him with redoubled vigor, and he set out with a stronger anxiety than ever to the home of Ambulinia. CDA few short steps soon brought him to the door, half out of breath.?He rapped gently.  Ambulinia, who sat in the parlor alone, suspecting Elfonzo was near, ventured to the door, opened it, and beheld the hero, who stood in an humble attitude, bowed gracefully, and as they caught each other's looks the light of peace beamed from the eyes of Ambulinia.EElfonzo caught the expression; a halloo of smothered shouts ran through every vein, and for the first time he dared to impress a kiss upon her cheek.bThe scene was overwhelming; had the temptation been less animating, he would not have ventured to have acted so contrary to the desired wish of his Ambulinia; but who could have withstood the irrestistable temptation! What society condemns the practice but a cold, heartless, uncivilized people that know nothing of the warm attachments of refined society? Here the dead was raised to his long-cherished hopes, and the lost was found.Here all doubt and danger were buried in the vortex of oblivion; sectional differences no longer disunited their opinions; like the freed bird from the cage, sportive claps its rustling wings, wheels about to heaven in a joyful strain, and raises its notes to the upper sky.pAmbulinia insisted upon Elfonzo to be seated, and give her a history of his unnecessary absence; assuring him the family had retired, consequently they would ever remain ignorant of his visit.Advancing toward him, she gave a bright display of her rosy neck, and from her head the ambrosial locks breathed divine fragrance; her robe hung waving to his view, while she stood like a goddess confessed before him.RSIt does seem to me, my dear sir," said Ambulinia, "that you have been gone an age.QROh, the restless hours I have spent since I last saw you, in yon beautiful grove.efThere is where I trifled with your feelings for the express purpose of trying your attachment for me. [\I now find you are devoted; but ah! I trust you live not unguarded by the powers of Heaven.pThough oft did I refuse to join my hand with thine, and as oft did I cruelly mock thy entreaties with borrowed shapes: yes, I feared to answer thee by terms, in words sincere and undissembled.O! could I pursue, and you have leisure to hear the annals of my woes, the evening star would shut Heaven's gates upon the impending day before my tale would be finished, and this night would find me soliciting your forgiveness.34Dismiss thy fears and thy doubts," replied Elfonzo.[Look, O! look: that angelic look of thine--bathe not thy visage in tears; banish those floods that are gathering; let my confession and my presence bring thee some relief.VThen, indeed, I will be cheerful," said Ambulinia, "and I think if we will go to the exhibition this evening, we certainly will see something worthy of our attention.BOne of the most tragical scenes is to be acted that has ever been witnessed, and one that every jealous-hearted person should learn a lesson from.3It cannot fail to have a good effect, as it will be performed by those who are young and vigorous, and learned as well as enticing.ghYou are aware, Major Elfonzo, who are to appear on the stage, and what the characters are to represent.I am acquainted with the circumstances," replied Elfonzo, "and as I am to be one of the musicians upon that interesting occasion, I should be much gratified if you would favor me with your company during the hours of the exercises.;<What strange notions are in your mind?" inquired Ambulinia.&'Now I know you have something in view, and I desire you to tell me why it is that you are so anxious that I should continue with you while the exercises are going on; though if you think I can add to your happiness and predilections, I have no particular objection to acquiesce in your request. 01Oh, I think I foresee, now, what you anticipate.WXAnd will you have the goodness to tell me what you think it will be?" inquired Elfonzo.?@By all means," answered Ambulinia; "a rival, sir, you would fancy in your own mind; but let me say for you, fear not! fear not! I will be one of the last persons to disgrace my sex by thus encouraging every one who may feel disposed to visit me, who may honor me with their graceful bows and their choicest compliments.#$It is true that young men too often mistake civil politeness for the finer emotions of the heart, which is tantamount to courtship; but, ah! how often are they deceived, when they come to test the weight of sunbeams with those on whose strength hangs the future happiness of an untried life.The people were now rushing to the Academy with impatient anxiety; the band of music was closely followed by the students; then the parents and guardians; nothing interrupted the glow of spirits which ran through every bosom, tinged with the songs of a Virgil and the tide of a Homer.|Elfonzo and Ambulinia soon repaired to the scene, and fortunately for them both the house was so crowded that they took their seats together in the music department, which was not in view of the auditory.!qrThis fortuitous circumstances added more the bliss of the Major than a thousand such exhibitions would have done.He forgot that he was man; music had lost its charms for him; whenever he attempted to carry his part, the string of the instrument would break, the bow became stubborn, and refused to obey the loud calls of the audience.lHere, he said, was the paradise of his home, the long-sought-for opportunity; he felt as though he could send a million supplications to the throne of Heaven for such an exalted privilege.ePoor Leos, who was somewhere in the crowd, looking as attentively as if he was searching for a needle in a haystack; here is stood, wondering to himself why Ambulinia was not there._Where can she be? Oh! if she was only here, how I could relish the scene! Elfonzo is certainly not in town; but what if he is? I have got the wealth, if I have not the dignity, and I am sure that the squire and his lady have always been particular friends of mine, and I think with this assurance I shall be able to get upon the blind side of the rest of the family and make the heaven-born Ambulinia the mistress of all I possess.deThen, again, he would drop his head, as if attempting to solve the most difficult problem in Euclid.BWhile he was thus conjecturing in his own mind, a very interesting part of the exhibition was going on, which called the attention of all present.TThe curtains of the stage waved continually by the repelled forces that were given to them, which caused Leos to behold Ambulinia leaning upon the chair of Elfonzo.Her lofty beauty, seen by the glimmering of the chandelier, filled his heart with rapture, he knew not how to contain himself; to go where they were would expose him to ridicule; to continue where he was, with such an object before him, without being allowed an explanation in that trying hour, would be to the great injury of his mental as well as of his physical powers; and, in the name of high heaven, what must he do? Finally, he resolved to contain himself as well as he conveniently could, until the scene was over, and then he would plant himself at the door, to arrest Ambulinia from the hands of the insolent Elfonzo, and thus make for himself a more prosperous field of immortality than ever was decreed by Omnipotence, or ever pencil drew or artist imagined.4Accordingly he made himself sentinel, immediately after the performance of the evening--retained his position apparently in defiance of all the world; he waited, he gazed at every lady, his whole frame trembled; here he stood, until everything like human shape had disappeared from the institution, and he had done nothing; he had failed to accomplish that which he so eagerly sought for.01Poor, unfortunate creature! he had not the eyes of an Argus, or he might have seen his Juno and Elfonzo, assisted by his friend Sigma, make their escape from the window, and, with the rapidity of a race-horse, hurry through the blast of the storm to the residence of her father, without being recognized. He did not tarry long, but assured Ambulinia the endless chain of their existence was more closely connected than ever, since he had seen the virtuous, innocent, imploring, and the constant Amelia murdered by the jealous-hearted Farcillo, the accursed of the land.%&The following is the tragical scene, which is only introduced to show the subject-matter that enabled Elfonzo to come to such a determinate resolution that nothing of the kind should ever dispossess him of his true character, should he be so fortunate as to succeed in his present undertaking.%uvAmelia was the wife of Farcillo, and a virtuous woman; Gracia, a young lady, was her particular friend and confidant.`aFarcillo grew jealous of Amelia, murders her, finds out that he was deceived, AND STABS HIMSELF.')*Amelia appears alone, talking to herself.XHail, ye solitary ruins of antiquity, ye sacred tombs and silent walks! it is your aid I invoke; it is to you, my soul, wrapt in deep mediating, pours forth its prayer.RSHere I wander upon the stage of mortality, since the world hath turned against me.LThose whom I believed to be my friends, alas! are now my enemies, planting thorns in all my paths, poisoning all my pleasures, and turning the past to pain.NWhat a lingering catalogue of sighs and tears lies just before me, crowding my aching bosom with the fleeting dream of humanity, which must shortly terminate._`And to what purpose will all this bustle of life, these agitations and emotions of the heart have conduced, if it leave behind it nothing of utility, if it leave no traces of improvement? Can it be that I am deceived in my conclusions? No, I see that I have nothing to hope for, but everything for fear, which tends to drive me from the walks of time.hOh! in this dead night, if loud winds arise, To lash the surge and bluster in the skies, May the west its furious rage display, Toss me with storms in the watery way.C Enter Gracia.NG.+,Oh, Amelia, is it you, the object of grief, the daughter of opulence, of wisdom and philosophy, that thus complaineth? It cannot be you are the child of misfortune, speaking of the monuments of former ages, which were allotted not for the reflection of the distressed, but for the fearless and bold.NONot the child of poverty, Gracia, or the heir of glory and peace, but of fate.qRemember, I have wealth more than wit can number; I have had power more than kings could emcompass; yet the world seems a desert; all nature appears an afflictive spectacle of warring passions.cThis blind fatality, that capriciously sports with the rules and lives of mortals, tells me that the mountains will never again send forth the water of their springs to my thirst.fgOh, that I might be freed and set at liberty from wretchedness! But I fear, I fear this will never be. Why, Amelia, this untimely grief? What has caused the sorrows that bespeak better and happier days, to those lavish out such heaps of misery? You are aware that your instructive lessons embellish the mind with holy truths, by wedding its attention to none but great and noble affections.+%&This, of course, is some consolation.12I will ever love my own species with feelings of a fond recollection, and while I am studying to advance the universal philanthropy, and the spotless name of my own sex, I will try to build my own upon the pleasing belief that I have accelerated the advancement of one who whispers of departed confidence. Z[And I, like some poor peasant fated to reside Remote from friends, in a forest wide."rsOh, see what woman's woes and human wants require, Since that great day hath spread the seed of sinful fire.NG.JKLook up, thou poor disconsolate; you speak of quitting earthly enjoyments.'(Unfold thy bosom to a friend, who would be willing to sacrifice every enjoyment for the restoration of the dignity and gentleness of mind which used to grace your walks, and which is so natural to yourself; not only that, but your paths were strewed with flowers of every hue and of every order.WWith verdant green the mountains glow, For thee, for thee, the lilies grow; Far stretched beneath the tented hills, A fairer flower the valley fills.NA.mOh, would to Heaven I could give you a short narrative of my former prospects for happiness, since you have acknowledged to be an unchangeable confidant--the richest of all other blessings.mOh, ye names forever glorious, ye celebrated scenes, ye renowned spot of my hymeneal moments; how replete is your chart with sublime reflections! How many profound vows, decorated with immaculate deeds, are written upon the surface of that precious spot of earth where I yielded up my life of celibacy, bade youth with all its beauties a final adieu, took a last farewell of the laurels that had accompanied me up the hill of my juvenile career.ABIt was then I began to descend toward the valley of disappointment and sorrow; it was then I cast my little bark upon a mysterious ocean of wedlock, with him who then smiled and caressed me, but, alas! now frowns with bitterness, and has grown jealous and cold toward me, because the ring he gave me is misplaced or lost.TUOh, bear me, ye flowers of memory, softly through the eventful history of past times; and ye places that have witnessed the progression of man in the circle of so many societies, and, of, aid my recollection, while I endeavor to trace the vicissitudes of a life devoted in endeavoring to comfort him that I claim as the object of my wishes.34Ah! ye mysterious men, of all the world, how few Act just to Heaven and to your promise true! But He who guides the stars with a watchful eye, The deeds of men lay open without disguise; Oh, this alone will avenge the wrongs I bear, For all the oppressed are His peculiar care.NF.;makes a slight noise.NA.5Who is there--Farcillo? G.?Then I must gone.=Heaven protect you.)'(Oh, Amelia, farewell, be of good cheer.XMay you stand like Olympus' towers, Against earth and all jealous powers! May you, with loud shouts ascend on high Swift as an eagle in the upper sky.NA.4Why so cold and distant tonight, Farcillo? Come, let us each other greet, and forget all the past, and give security for the future.?Security! talk to me about giving security for the future--what an insulting requisition! Have you said your prayers tonight, Madam Amelia? A. ]^Farcillo, we sometimes forget our duty, particularly when we expect to be caressed by others.bIf you bethink yourself of any crime, or of any fault, that is yet concealed from the courts of Heaven and the thrones of grace, I bid you ask and solicit forgiveness for it now.')*Oh, be kind, Farcillo, don't treat me so./!"What do you mean by all this? F.^Be kind, you say; you, madam, have forgot that kindness you owe to me, and bestowed it upon another; you shall suffer for your conduct when you make your peace with your God.(()I would not slay thy unprotected spirit.GI call to Heaven to be my guard and my watch--I would not kill thy soul, in which all once seemed just, right, and perfect; but I must be brief, woman.JKWhat, talk you of killing? Oh, Farcillo, Farcillo, what is the matter? F.23Aye, I do, without doubt; mark what I say, Amelia.IJThen, O God, O Heaven, and Angels, be propitious, and have mercy upon me.=>Amen to that, madam, with all my heart, and with all my soul.?@Farcillo, listen to me one moment; I hope you will not kill me.bcKill you, aye, that I will; attest it, ye fair host of light, record it, ye dark imps of hell! A.9Oh, I fear you--you are fatal when darkness covers your brow; yet I know not why I should fear, since I never wronged you in all my life.-#$I stand, sir, guiltless before you.`aYou pretend to say you are guiltless! Think of thy sins, Amelia; think, oh, think, hidden woman.ghWherein have I not been true to you? That death is unkind, cruel, and unnatural, that kills for living.%+,Peace, and be still while I unfold to thee.lmI will, Farcillo, and while I am thus silent, tell me the cause of such cruel coldness in an hour like this.kThat RING, oh, that ring I so loved, and gave thee as the ring of my heart; the allegiance you took to be faithful, when it was presented; the kisses and smiles with which you honored it.#stYou became tired of the donor, despised it as a plague, and finally gave it to Malos, the hidden, the vile traitor.abNo, upon my word and honor, I never did; I appeal to the Most High to bear me out in this matter.4Send for Malos, and ask him.9:Send for Malos, aye! Malos you wish to see; I thought so.#-.I knew you could not keep his name concealed.noAmelia, sweet Amelia, take heed, take heed of perjury; you are on the stage of death, to suffer for YOUR SINS.67What, not to die I hope, my Farcillo, my ever beloved.+%&Yes, madam, to die a traitor's death.OShortly your spirit shall take its exit; therefore confess freely thy sins, for to deny tends only to make me groan under the bitter cup thou hast made for me.9:Thou art to die with the name of traitor on thy brow! A.klThen, O Lord, have mercy upon me; give me courage, give me grace and fortitude to stand this hour of trial.1 Amen, I say, with all my heart.And, oh, Farcillo, will you have mercy, too? I never intentionally offended you in all my life, never LOVED Malos, never gave him cause to think so, as the high court of Justice will acquit me before its tribunal. YZOh, false, perjured woman, thou didst chill my blood, and makest me a demon like thyself.AI saw the ring.&vwHe found it, then, or got it clandestinely; send for him, and let him confess the truth; let his confession be sifted.(xyAnd you still wish to see him! I tell you, madam, he hath already confessed, and thou knowest the darkness of thy heart.#stWhat, my deceived Farcillo, that I gave him the ring, in which all my affections were concentrated? Oh, surely not.D Aye, he did.JKAsk thy conscience, and it will speak with a voice of thunder to thy soul.%+,He will not say so, he dare not, he cannot.ZNo, he will not say so now, because his mouth, I trust, is hushed in death, and his body stretched to the four winds of heaven, to be torn to pieces by carnivorous birds.3What, he is dead, and gone to the world of spirits with that declaration in his mouth? Oh, unhappy man! Oh, insupportable hour! F.6Yes, and had all his sighs and looks and tears been lives, my great revenge could have slain them all, without the least condemnation.&vwAlas! he is ushered into eternity without testing the matter for which I am abused and sentenced and condemned to die.Cursed, infernal woman! Weepest thou for him to my face? He that hath robbed me of my peace, my energy, the whole love of my life? Could I call the fabled Hydra, I would have him live and perish, survive and die, until the sun itself would grow dim with age.?I would make him have the thirst of a Tantalus, and roll the wheel of an Ixion, until the stars of heaven should quit their brilliant stations.Oh, invincible God, save me! Oh, unsupportable moment! Oh, heavy hour! Banish me, Farcillo--send me where no eye can ever see me, where no sound shall ever great my ear; but, oh, slay me not, Farcillo; vent thy rage and thy spite upon this emaciated frame of mine, only spare my life.%+,Your petitions avail nothing, cruel Amelia.Oh, Farcillo, perpetrate the dark deed tomorrow; let me live till then, for my past kindness to you, and it may be some kind angel will show to you that I am not only the object of innocence, but one who never loved another but your noble self.^_Amelia, the decree has gone forth, it is to be done, and that quickly; thou art to die, madam."rsBut half an hour allow me, to see my father and my only child, to tell her the treachery and vanity of this world.vThere is no alternative, there is no pause: my daughter shall not see its deceptive mother die; your father shall not know that his daughter fell disgraced, despised by all but her enchanting Malos.?Oh, Farcillo, put up thy threatening dagger into its scabbard; let it rest and be still, just while I say one prayer for thee and for my child.%uvIt is too late, thy doom is fixed, thou hast not confessed to Heaven or to me, my child's protector--thou art to die. CDYe powers of earth and heaven, protect and defend me in this alone.,$%STABS HER WHILE IMPLORING FOR MERCY.NA. 01Oh, Farcillo, Farcillo, a guiltless death I die.WXDie! die! die! (Gracia enters running, falls on her knees weeping, and kisses Amelia.NG.')*Oh, Farcillo, Farcillo! oh, Farcillo! F.?@I am here, the genius of the age, and the avenger of my wrongs.9:Oh, lady, speak once more; sweet Amelia, on, speak again.(xyGone, gone--yes, forever gone! Farcillo, oh, cold-hearted Farcillo, some evil fiend hath urged you to do this, Farcillo.56Say not so again, or you shall receive the same fate.;<I did the glorious deed, madam--beware, then, how you talk. \]I fear not your implements of war; I will let you know you have not the power to do me harm.8If you have a heart of triple brass, it shall be reached and melted, and thy blood shall chill thy veins and grow stiff in thy arteries.9:Here is the ring of the virtuous and innocent murdered Amelia; I obtained it from Malos, who yet lives, in hopes that he will survive the wound given him, and says he got it clandestinely--declares Amelia to be the princess of truth and virtue, invulnerable to anything like forgetting her first devotion to thee.The world has heard of your conduct and your jealousy, and with one universal voice declares her to be the best of all in piety; that she is the star of this great universe, and a more virtuous woman never lived since the wheels of time began.!qrOh, had you waited till tomorrow, or until I had returned, some kind window would have been opened to her relief.1But, alas! she is gone--yes, forever gone, to try the realities of an unknown world! (Farcillo leaning over the body of Amelia.NF.lmMalos not dead, and here is my ring! Oh, Amelia! falsely murdered! Oh, bloody deed! Oh, wretch that I am! Oh, angels forgive me! Oh, God, withhold thy vengeance! Oh, Amelia! if Heaven would make a thousand worlds like this, set with diamonds, and all of one perfect chrysolite, I would not have done this for them all, I would not have frowned and cursed as I did.Oh, she was heavenly true, nursed in the very lap of bright angels! Cursed slave that I am! Jealousy, oh! thou infernal demon! Lost, lost to every sense of honor! Oh! Amelia--heaven-born Amelia--dead, dead! Oh! oh! oh!--then let me die with thee.>?Farewell! farewell! ye world that deceived me! (STABS HIMSELF.Soon after the excitement of this tragical scene was over, and the enlisted feeling for Amelia had grown more buoyant with Elfonzo and Ambulinia, he determined to visit his retired home, and make the necessary improvements to enjoy a better day; consequently he conveyed the following lines to Ambulinia: Go tell the world that hope is glowing, Go bid the rocks their silence break, Go tell the stars that love is glowing, Then bid the hero his lover take.:;In the region where scarcely the foot of man hath ever trod, where the woodman hath not found his way, lies a blooming grove, seen only by the sun when he mounts his lofty throne, visited only by the light of the stars, to whom are entrusted the guardianship of earth, before the sun sinks to rest in his rosy bed.High cliffs of rocks surround the romantic place, and in the small cavity of the rocky wall grows the daffodil clear and pure; and as the wind blows along the enchanting little mountain which surrounds the lonely spot, it nourishes the flowers with the dew-drops of heaven.5Here is the seat of Elfonzo; darkness claims but little victory over this dominion, and in vain does she spread out her gloomy wings.!qrHere the waters flow perpetually, and the trees lash their tops together to bid the welcome visitor a happy muse.8Elfonzo, during his short stay in the country, had fully persuaded himself that it was his duty to bring this solemn matter to an issue.A duty that he individually owed, as a gentleman, to the parents of Ambulinia, a duty in itself involving not only his own happiness and his own standing in society, but one that called aloud the act of the parties to make it perfect and complete.0How he should communicate his intentions to get a favorable reply, he was at a loss to know; he knew not whether to address Esq.Valeer in prose or in poetry, in a jocular or an argumentative manner, or whether he should use moral suasion, legal injunction, or seizure and take by reprisal; if it was to do the latter, he would have no difficulty in deciding in his own mind, but his gentlemanly honor was at stake; so he concluded to address the following letter to the father and mother of Ambulinia, as his address in person he knew would only aggravate the old gentleman, and perhaps his lady.D Cumming, Ga.;January 22, 1844 Mr.H and Mrs.+{|Valeer-- Again I resume the pleasing task of addressing you, and once more beg an immediate answer to my many salutations.HIFrom every circumstance that has taken place, I feel in duty bound to comply with my obligations; to forfeit my word would be more than I dare do; to break my pledge, and my vows that have been witnessed, sealed, and delivered in the presence of an unseen Deity, would be disgraceful on my part, as well as ruinous to Ambulinia.:;I wish no longer to be kept in suspense about this matter."./I wish to act gentlemanly in every particular.cIt is true, the promises I have made are unknown to any but Ambulinia, and I think it unnecessary to here enumerate them, as they who promise the most generally perform the least.#$Can you for a moment doubt my sincerity or my character? My only wish is, sir, that you may calmly and dispassionately look at the situation of the case, and if your better judgment should dictate otherwise, my obligations may induce me to pluck the flower that you so diametrically opposed.&vwWe have sword by the saints--by the gods of battle, and by that faith whereby just men are made perfect--to be united./I hope, my dear sir, you will find it convenient as well as agreeable to give me a favorable answer, with the signature of Mrs.4Valeer, as well as yourself.12With very great esteem, your humble servant, J.H Elfonzo. EFThe moon and stars had grown pale when Ambulinia had retired to rest.89A crowd of unpleasant thoughts passed through her bosom.HSolitude dwelt in her chamber--no sound from the neighboring world penetrated its stillness; it appeared a temple of silence, of repose, and of mystery.:;At that moment she heard a still voice calling her father.1In an instant, like the flash of lightning, a thought ran through her mind that it must be the bearer of Elfonzo's communication.89It is not a dream!" she said, "no, I cannot read dreams.LOh! I would to Heaven I was near that glowing eloquence--that poetical language--it charms the mind in an inexpressible manner, and warms the coldest heart.wWhile consoling herself with this strain, her father rushed into her room almost frantic with rage, exclaiming: "Oh, Ambulinia! Ambulinia!! undutiful, ungrateful daughter! What does this mean? Why does this letter bear such heart-rending intelligence? Will you quit a father's house with this debased wretch, without a place to lay his distracted head; going up and down the country, with every novel object that many chance to wander through this region.;He is a pretty man to make love known to his superiors, and you, Ambulinia, have done but little credit to yourself by honoring his visits.ROh, wretchedness! can it be that my hopes of happiness are forever blasted! Will you not listen to a father's entreaties, and pay some regard to a mother's tears.SI know, and I do pray that God will give me fortitude to bear with this sea of troubles, and rescue my daughter, my Ambulinia, as a brand from the eternal burning.>?Forgive me, father, oh! forgive thy child," replied Ambulinia.NOMy heart is ready to break, when I see you in this grieved state of agitation.ABOh! think not so meanly of me, as that I mourn for my own danger.8Father, I am only woman.Mother, I am only the templement of thy youthful years, but will suffer courageously whatever punishment you think proper to inflict upon me, if you will but allow me to comply with my most sacred promises--if you will but give me my personal right and my personal liberty.JKOh, father! if your generosity will but give me these, I ask nothing more.BWhen Elfonzo offered me his heart, I gave him my hand, never to forsake him, and now may the mighty God banish me before I leave him in adversity.xWhat a heart must I have to rejoice in prosperity with him whose offers I have accepted, and then, when poverty comes, haggard as it may be, for me to trifle with the oracles of Heaven, and change with every fluctuation that may interrupt our happiness--like the politician who runs the political gantlet for office one day, and the next day, because the horizon is darkened a little, he is seen running for his life, for fear he might perish in its ruins.!qrWhere is the philosophy, where is the consistency, where is the charity, in conduct like this? Be happy then, my beloved father, and forget me; let the sorrow of parting break down the wall of separation and make us equal in our feeling; let me now say how ardently I love you; let me kiss that age-worn cheek, and should my tears bedew thy face, I will wipe them away.XYOh, I never can forget you; no, never, never!" "Weep not," said the father, "Ambulinia.PQI will forbid Elfonzo my house, and desire that you may keep retired a few days._I will let him know that my friendship for my family is not linked together by cankered chains; and if he ever enters upon my premises again, I will send him to his long home.Oh, father! let me entreat you to be calm upon this occasion, and though Elfonzo may be the sport of the clouds and winds, yet I feel assured that no fate will send him to the silent tomb until the God of the Universe calls him hence with a triumphant voice.Here the father turned away, exclaiming: "I will answer his letter in a very few words, and you, madam, will have the goodness to stay at home with your mother; and remember, I am determined to protect you from the consuming fire that looks so fair to your view.6Cumming, January 22, 1844. !Sir--In regard to your request, I am as I ever have been, utterly opposed to your marrying into my family; and if you have any regard for yourself, or any gentlemanly feeling, I hope you will mention it to me no more; but seek some other one who is not so far superior to you in standing.NW.IValeer.[When Elfonzo read the above letter, he became so much depressed in spirits that many of his friends thought it advisable to use other means to bring about the happy union.GStrange," said he, "that the contents of this diminutive letter should cause me to have such depressed feelings; but there is a nobler theme than this.JKI know not why my MILITARY TITLE is not as great as that of SQUIRE VALEER.+{|For my life I cannot see that my ancestors are inferior to those who are so bitterly opposed to my marriage with Ambulinia.I know I have seen huge mountains before me, yet, when I think that I know gentlemen will insult me upon this delicate matter, should I become angry at fools and babblers, who pride themselves in their impudence and ignorance? No.')*My equals! I know not where to find them.hMy inferiors! I think it beneath me; and my superiors! I think it presumption; therefore, if this youthful heart is protected by any of the divine rights, I never will betray my trust.,|}He was aware that Ambulinia had a confidence that was, indeed, as firm and as resolute as she was beautiful and interesting.DHe hastened to the cottage of Louisa, who received him in her usual mode of pleasantness, and informed him that Ambulinia had just that moment left.2Is it possible?" said Elfonzo.aOh, murdered hours! Why did she not remain and be the guardian of my secrets? But hasten and tell me how she has stood this trying scene, and what are her future determinations.opYou know," said Louisa, "Major Elfonzo, that you have Ambulinia's first love, which is of no small consequence.efShe came here about twilight, and shed many precious tears in consequence of her own fate with yours.STWe walked silently in yon little valley you see, where we spent a momentary repose.0She seemed to be quite as determined as ever, and before we left that beautiful spot she offered up a prayer to Heaven for thee.MNI will see her then," replied Elfonzo, "though legions of enemies may oppose.AShe is mine by foreordination--she is mine by prophesy--she is mine by her own free will, and I will rescue her from the hands of her oppressors.YWill you not, Miss Louisa, assist me in my capture?" "I will certainly, by the aid of Divine Providence," answered Louisa, "endeavor to break those slavish chains that bind the richest of prizes; though allow me, Major, to entreat you to use no harsh means on this important occasion; take a decided stand, and write freely to Ambulinia upon this subject, and I will see that no intervening cause hinders its passage to her.*&'God alone will save a mourning people.LMNow is the day and now is the hour to obey a command of such valuable worth.LMThe Major felt himself grow stronger after this short interview with Louisa.YHe felt as if he could whip his weight in wildcats--he knew he was master of his own feelings, and could now write a letter that would bring this litigation to AN ISSUE.6Cumming, January 24, 1844.Dear Ambulinia-- We have now reached the most trying moment of our lives; we are pledged not to forsake our trust; we have waited for a favorable hour to come, thinking your friends would settle the matter agreeably among themselves, and finally be reconciled to our marriage; but as I have waited in vain, and looked in vain, I have determined in my own mind to make a proposition to you, though you may think it not in accord with your station, or compatible with your rank; yet, "sub loc signo vinces.You know I cannot resume my visits, in consequence of the utter hostility that your father has to me; therefore the consummation of our union will have to be sought for in a more sublime sphere, at the residence of a respectable friend of this village.You cannot have an scruples upon this mode of proceeding, if you will but remember it emanates from one who loves you better than his own life--who is more than anxious to bid you welcome to a new and happy home.=Your warmest associates say come; the talented, the learned, the wise, and the experienced say come;--all these with their friends say, come.fViewing these, with many other inducements, I flatter myself that you will come to the embraces of your Elfonzo; for now is the time of your acceptance of the day of your liberation.BYou cannot be ignorant, Ambulinia, that thou art the desire of my heart; its thoughts are too noble, and too pure, to conceal themselves from you.xI shall wait for your answer to this impatiently, expecting that you will set the time to make your departure, and to be in readiness at a moment's warning to share the joys of a more preferable life.This will be handed to you by Louisa, who will take a pleasure in communicating anything to you that may relieve your dejected spirits, and will assure you that I now stand ready, willing, and waiting to make good my vows.34I am, dear Ambulinia, your truly, and forever, J.H Elfonzo.*&'Louisa made it convenient to visit Mr._Valeer's, though they did not suspect her in the least the bearer of love epistles; consequently, she was invited in the room to console Ambulinia, where they were left alone.mnAmbulinia was seated by a small table--her head resting on her hand--her brilliant eyes were bathed in tears. [\Louisa handed her the letter of Elfonzo, when another spirit animated her features--the spirit of renewed confidence that never fails to strengthen the female character in an hour of grief and sorrow like this, and as she pronounced the last accent of his name, she exclaimed, "And does he love me yet! I never will forget your generosity, Louisa.noOh, unhappy and yet blessed Louisa! may you never feel what I have felt--may you never know the pangs of love.fHad I never loved, I never would have been unhappy; but I turn to Him who can save, and if His wisdom does not will my expected union, I know He will give me strength to bear my lot.GAmuse yourself with this little book, and take it as an apology for my silence," said Ambulinia, "while I attempt to answer this volume of consolation.hThank you," said Louisa, "you are excusable upon this occasion; but I pray you, Ambulinia, to be expert upon this momentous subject, that there may be nothing mistrustful upon my part.!qrI will," said Ambulinia, and immediately resumed her seat and addressed the following to Elfonzo: Cumming, Ga.?January 28, 1844.?Devoted Elfonzo-- I hail your letter as a welcome messenger of faith, and can now say truly and firmly that my feelings correspond with yours. GHNothing shall be wanting on my part to make my obedience your fidelity.12Courage and perseverance will accomplish success.8Receive this as my oath, that while I grasp your hand in my own imagination, we stand united before a higher tribunal than any on earth.<=All the powers of my life, soul, and body, I devote to thee.?@Whatever dangers may threaten me, I fear not to encounter them.SPerhaps I have determined upon my own destruction, by leaving the house of the best of parents; be it so; I flee to you; I share your destiny, faithful to the end.,|}The day that I have concluded upon for this task is SABBATH next, when the family with the citizens are generally at church.8For Heaven's sake let not that day pass unimproved: trust not till tomorrow, it is the cheat of life--the future that never comes--the grave of many noble births--the cavern of ruined enterprise: which like the lightning's flash is born, and dies, and perishes, ere the voice of him who sees can cry, BEHOLD! BEHOLD!! You may trust to what I say, no power shall tempt me to betray confidence.1 Suffer me to add one word more.=I will soothe thee, in all thy grief, Beside the gloomy river; And though thy love may yet be brief; Mine is fixed forever.8Receive the deepest emotions of my heart for thy constant love, and may the power of inspiration by thy guide, thy portion, and thy all."./In great haste, Yours faithfully, Ambulinia.efI now take my leave of you, sweet girl," said Louisa, "sincerely wishing you success on Sabbath next. [\When Ambulinia's letter was handed to Elfonzo, he perused it without doubting its contents.Louisa charged him to make but few confidants; but like most young men who happened to win the heart of a beautiful girl, he was so elated with the idea that he felt as a commanding general on parade, who had confidence in all, consequently gave orders to all.VWThe appointed Sabbath, with a delicious breeze and cloudless sky, made its appearance.5The people gathered in crowds to the church--the streets were filled with neighboring citizens, all marching to the house of worship.It is entirely useless for me to attempt to describe the feelings of Elfonzo and Ambulinia, who were silently watching the movements of the multitude, apparently counting them as then entered the house of God, looking for the last one to darken the door.3The impatience and anxiety with which they waited, and the bliss they anticipated on the eventful day, is altogether indescribable.Those that have been so fortunate as to embark in such a noble enterprise know all its realities; and those who have not had this inestimable privilege will have to taste its sweets before they can tell to others its joys, its comforts, and its Heaven-born worth.4Immediately after Ambulinia had assisted the family off to church, she took advantage of that opportunity to make good her promises.QRShe left a home of enjoyment to be wedded to one whose love had been justifiable.A few short steps brought her to the presence of Louisa, who urged her to make good use of her time, and not to delay a moment, but to go with her to her brother's house, where Elfonzo would forever make her happy..~With lively speed, and yet a graceful air, she entered the door and found herself protected by the champion of her confidence.?The necessary arrangements were fast making to have the two lovers united--everything was in readiness except the parson; and as they are generally very sanctimonious on such occasions, the news got to the parents of Ambulinia before the everlasting knot was tied, and they both came running, with uplifted hands and injured feelings, to arrest their daughter from an unguarded and hasty resolution.)yzElfonzo desired to maintain his ground, but Ambulinia thought it best for him to leave, to prepare for a greater contest.xHe accordingly obeyed, as it would have been a vain endeavor for him to have battled against a man who was armed with deadly weapons; and besides, he could not resist the request of such a pure heart.IAmbulinia concealed herself in the upper story of the house, fearing the rebuke of her father; the door was locked, and no chastisement was now expected.`aEsquire Valeer, whose pride was already touched, resolved to preserve the dignity of his family. DEHe entered the house almost exhausted, looking wildly for Ambulinia.(xyAmazed and astonished indeed I am," said he, "at a people who call themselves civilized, to allow such behavior as this.cdAmbulinia, Ambulinia!" he cried, "come to the calls of your first, your best, and your only friend.lI appeal to you, sir," turning to the gentleman of the house, "to know where Ambulinia has gone, or where is she?" "Do you mean to insult me, sir, in my own house?" inquired the gentleman.9I will burst," said Mr.%uvasunder every door in your dwelling, in search of my daughter, if you do not speak quickly, and tell me where she is.#stI care nothing about that outcast rubbish of creation, that mean, low-lived Elfonzo, if I can but obtain Ambulinia."./Are you not going to open this door?" said he.wBy the Eternal that made Heaven and earth! I will go about the work instantly, if this is not done!" The confused citizens gathered from all parts of the village, to know the cause of this commotion.cdSome rushed into the house; the door that was locked flew open, and there stood Ambulinia, weeping.:;Father, be still," said she, "and I will follow thee home.OPBut the agitated man seized her, and bore her off through the gazing multitude._`Father!" she exclaimed, "I humbly beg your pardon--I will be dutiful--I will obey thy commands.NOLet the sixteen years I have lived in obedience to thee by my future security.deI don't like to be always giving credit, when the old score is not paid up, madam," said the father.oThe mother followed almost in a state of derangement, crying and imploring her to think beforehand, and ask advice from experienced persons, and they would tell her it was a rash undertaking.~Oh!" said she, "Ambulinia, my daughter, did you know what I have suffered--did you know how many nights I have whiled away in agony, in pain, and in fear, you would pity the sorrows of a heartbroken mother.Well, mother," replied Ambulinia, "I know I have been disobedient; I am aware that what I have done might have been done much better; but oh! what shall I do with my honor? it is so dear to me; I am pledged to Elfonzo.His high moral worth is certainly worth some attention; moreover, my vows, I have no doubt, are recorded in the book of life, and must I give these all up? must my fair hopes be forever blasted? Forbid it, father; oh! forbid it, mother; forbid it, Heaven.I have seen so many beautiful skies overclouded," replied the mother, "so many blossoms nipped by the frost, that I am afraid to trust you to the care of those fair days, which may be interrupted by thundering and tempestuous nights.You no doubt think as I did--life's devious ways were strewn with sweet-scented flowers, but ah! how long they have lingered around me and took their flight in the vivid hope that laughs at the drooping victims it has murdered.0 !Elfonzo was moved at this sight.8The people followed on to see what was going to become of Ambulinia, while he, with downcast looks, kept at a distance, until he saw them enter the abode of the father, thrusting her, that was the sigh of his soul, out of his presence into a solitary apartment, when she exclaimed, "Elfonzo! Elfonzo! oh, Elfonzo! where art thou, with all thy heroes? haste, oh! haste, come thou to my relief.GRide on the wings of the wind! Turn thy force loose like a tempest, and roll on thy army like a whirlwind, over this mountain of trouble and confusion.POh, friends! if any pity me, let your last efforts throng upon the green hills, and come to the relief of Ambulinia, who is guilty of nothing but innocent love.)yzElfonzo called out with a loud voice, "My God, can I stand this! arise up, I beseech you, and put an end to this tyranny._`Come, my brave boys," said he, "are you ready to go forth to your duty?" They stood around him.-}~Who," said he, "will call us to arms? Where are my thunderbolts of war? Speak ye, the first who will meet the foe! Who will go forward with me in this ocean of grievous temptation? If there is one who desires to go, let him come and shake hands upon the altar of devotion, and swear that he will be a hero; yes, a Hector in a cause like this, which calls aloud for a speedy remedy."rsMine be the deed," said a young lawyer, "and mine alone; Venus alone shall quit her station before I will forsake one jot or tittle of my promise to you; what is death to me? what is all this warlike army, if it is not to win a victory? I love the sleep of the lover and the mighty; nor would I give it over till the blood of my enemies should wreak with that of my own. GHBut God forbid that our fame should soar on the blood of the slumberer.MMr.EValeer stands at his door with the frown of a demon upon his brow, with his dangerous weapon ready to strike the first man who should enter his door.efWho will arise and go forward through blood and carnage to the rescue of my Ambulinia?" said Elfonzo.UVAll," exclaimed the multitude; and onward they went, with their implements of battle._`Others, of a more timid nature, stood among the distant hills to see the result of the contest.."#Elfonzo took the lead of his band.)yzNight arose in clouds; darkness concealed the heavens; but the blazing hopes that stimulated them gleamed in every bosom.%uvAll approached the anxious spot; they rushed to the front of the house and, with one exclamation, demanded Ambulinia.56Away, begone, and disturb my peace no more," said Mr.IValeer.67You are a set of base, insolent, and infernal rascals.Go, the northern star points your path through the dim twilight of the night; go, and vent your spite upon the lonely hills; pour forth your love, you poor, weak-minded wretch, upon your idleness and upon your guitar, and your fiddle; they are fit subjects for your admiration, for let me assure you, though this sword and iron lever are cankered, yet they frown in sleep, and let one of you dare to enter my house this night and you shall have the contents and the weight of these instruments.Never yet did base dishonor blur my name," said Elfonzo; "mine is a cause of renown; here are my warriors; fear and tremble, for this night, though hell itself should oppose, I will endeavor to avenge her whom thou hast banished in solitude.=>The voice of Ambulinia shall be heard from that dark dungeon.hiAt that moment Ambulinia appeared at the window above, and with a tremulous voice said, "Live, Elfonzo! oh! live to raise my stone of moss! why should such language enter your heart? why should thy voice rend the air with such agitation? I bid thee live, once more remembering these tears of mine are shed alone for thee, in this dark and gloomy vault, and should I perish under this load of trouble, join the song of thrilling accents with the raven above my grave, and lay this tattered frame beside the banks of the Chattahoochee or the stream of Sawney's brook; sweet will be the song of death to your Ambulinia.LMy ghost shall visit you in the smiles of Paradise, and tell your high fame to the minds of that region, which is far more preferable than this lonely cell.UMy heart shall speak for thee till the latest hour; I know faint and broken are the sounds of sorrow, yet our souls, Elfonzo, shall hear the peaceful songs together.One bright name shall be ours on high, if we are not permitted to be united here; bear in mind that I still cherish my old sentiments, and the poet will mingle the names of Elfonzo and Ambulinia in the tide of other days. YZFly, Elfonzo," said the voices of his united band, "to the wounded heart of your beloved.')*All enemies shall fall beneath thy sword.?@Fly through the clefts, and the dim spark shall sleep in death.!qrElfonzo rushes forward and strikes his shield against the door, which was barricaded, to prevent any intercourse./!"His brave sons throng around him.deThe people pour along the streets, both male and female, to prevent or witness the melancholy scene.4To arms, to arms!" cried Elfonzo; "here is a victory to be won, a prize to be gained that is more to me that the whole world beside.,$%It cannot be done tonight," said Mr.IValeer.?@I bear the clang of death; my strength and armor shall prevail.fgMy Ambulinia shall rest in this hall until the break of another day, and if we fall, we fall together.?If we die, we die clinging to our tattered rights, and our blood alone shall tell the mournful tale of a murdered daughter and a ruined father. [\Sure enough, he kept watch all night, and was successful in defending his house and family.?@The bright morning gleamed upon the hills, night vanished away, the Major and his associates felt somewhat ashamed that they had not been as fortunate as they expected to have been; however, they still leaned upon their arms in dispersed groups; some were walking the streets, others were talking in the Major's behalf.XYMany of the citizen suspended business, as the town presented nothing but consternation.TUA novelty that might end in the destruction of some worthy and respectable citizens. DEValeer ventured in the streets, though not without being well armed.PSome of his friends congratulated him on the decided stand he had taken, and hoped he would settle the matter amicably with Elfonzo, without any serious injury.45Me," he replied, "what, me, condescend to fellowship with a coward, and a low-lived, lazy, undermining villain? no, gentlemen, this cannot be; I had rather be borne off, like the bubble upon the dark blue ocean, with Ambulinia by my side, than to have him in the ascending or descending line of relationship.Gentlemen," continued he, "if Elfonzo is so much of a distinguished character, and is so learned in the fine arts, why do you not patronize such men? why not introduce him into your families, as a gentleman of taste and of unequaled magnanimity? why are you so very anxious that he should become a relative of mine? Oh, gentlemen, I fear you yet are tainted with the curiosity of our first parents, who were beguiled by the poisonous kiss of an old ugly serpent, and who, for one APPLE, DAMNED all mankind. FGI wish to divest myself, as far as possible, of that untutored custom.I have long since learned that the perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy, is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambition to our capacities; we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.ABAmbulinia was sent off to prepare for a long and tedious journey.@Her new acquaintances had been instructed by her father how to treat her, and in what manner, and to keep the anticipated visit entirely secret.,|}Elfonzo was watching the movements of everybody; some friends had told him of the plot that was laid to carry off Ambulinia.aAt night, he rallied some two or three of his forces, and went silently along to the stately mansion; a faint and glimmering light showed through the windows; lightly he steps to the door; there were many voices rallying fresh in fancy's eye; he tapped the shutter; it was opened instantly, and he beheld once more, seated beside several ladies, the hope of all his toils; he rushed toward her, she rose from her seat, rejoicing; he made one mighty grasp, when Ambulinia exclaimed, "Huzza for Major Elfonzo! I will defend myself and you, too, with this conquering instrument I hold in my hand; huzza, I say, I now invoke time's broad wing to shed around us some dewdrops of verdant spring.KBut the hour had not come for this joyous reunion; her friends struggled with Elfonzo for some time, and finally succeeded in arresting her from his hands.^_He dared not injure them, because they were matrons whose courage needed no spur; she was snatched from the arms of Elfonzo, with so much eagerness, and yet with such expressive signification, that he calmly withdrew from this lovely enterprise, with an ardent hope that he should be lulled to repose by the zephyrs which whispered peace to his soul.USeveral long days and night passed unmolested, all seemed to have grounded their arms of rebellion, and no callidity appeared to be going on with any of the parties.Other arrangements were made by Ambulinia; she feigned herself to be entirely the votary of a mother's care, and she, by her graceful smiles, that manhood might claim his stern dominion in some other region, where such boisterous love was not so prevalent.This gave the parents a confidence that yielded some hours of sober joy; they believed that Ambulinia would now cease to love Elfonzo, and that her stolen affections would now expire with her misguided opinions.BCThey therefore declined the idea of sending her to a distant land.But oh! they dreamed not of the rapture that dazzled the fancy of Ambulinia, who would say, when alone, youth should not fly away on his rosy pinions, and leave her to grapple in the conflict with unknown admirers.<No frowning age shall control The constant current of my soul, Nor a tear from pity's eye Shall check my sympathetic sigh.With this resolution fixed in her mind, one dark and dreary night, when the winds whistled and the tempest roared, she received intelligence that Elfonzo was then waiting, and every preparation was then ready, at the residence of Dr.HITully, and for her to make a quick escape while the family was reposing.Accordingly she gathered her books, went the wardrobe supplied with a variety of ornamental dressing, and ventured alone in the streets to make her way to Elfonzo, who was near at hand, impatiently looking and watching her arrival.What forms," said she, "are those rising before me? What is that dark spot on the clouds? I do wonder what frightful ghost that is, gleaming on the red tempest? Oh, be merciful and tell me what region you are from. YZOh, tell me, ye strong spirits, or ye dark and fleeting clouds, that I yet have a friend.(()A friend," said a low, whispering voice.;<I am thy unchanging, thy aged, and thy disappointed mother.Why brandish in that hand of thine a javelin of pointed steel? Why suffer that lip I have kissed a thousand times to equivocate? My daughter, let these tears sink deep into thy soul, and no longer persist in that which may be your destruction and ruin.RSCome, my dear child, retract your steps, and bear me company to your welcome home.Without one retorting word, or frown from her brow, she yielded to the entreaties of her mother, and with all the mildness of her former character she went along with the silver lamp of age, to the home of candor and benevolence.lmHer father received her cold and formal politeness--"Where has Ambulinia been, this blustering evening, Mrs.;Valeer?" inquired he.'wxOh, she and I have been taking a solitary walk," said the mother; "all things, I presume, are now working for the best.23Elfonzo heard this news shortly after it happened.ghWhat," said he, "has heaven and earth turned against me? I have been disappointed times without number.jShall I despair?--must I give it over? Heaven's decrees will not fade; I will write again--I will try again; and if it traverses a gory field, I pray forgiveness at the altar of justice.4Desolate Hill, Cumming, Geo.7olate Hill, Cumming, Geo.DUnconquered and Beloved Ambulinia-- I have only time to say to you, not to despair; thy fame shall not perish; my visions are brightening before me.PQThe whirlwind's rage is past, and we now shall subdue our enemies without doubt.uOn Monday morning, when your friends are at breakfast, they will not suspect your departure, or even mistrust me being in town, as it has been reported advantageously that I have left for the west.tYou walk carelessly toward the academy grove, where you will find me with a lightning steed, elegantly equipped to bear you off where we shall be joined in wedlock with the first connubial rights.UVFail not to do this--think not of the tedious relations of our wrongs--be invincible. pqYou alone occupy all my ambition, and I alone will make you my happy spouse, with the same unimpeached veracity.67I remain, forever, your devoted friend and admirer, J.H Elfonzo.bcThe appointed day ushered in undisturbed by any clouds; nothing disturbed Ambulinia's soft beauty.>?With serenity and loveliness she obeys the request of Elfonzo.nThe moment the family seated themselves at the table--"Excuse my absence for a short time," said she, "while I attend to the placing of those flowers, which should have been done a week ago.cdAnd away she ran to the sacred grove, surrounded with glittering pearls, that indicated her coming.:;Elfonzo hails her with his silver bow and his golden harp.PQThey meet--Ambulinia's countenance brightens--Elfonzo leads up his winged steed. EFMount," said he, "ye true-hearted, ye fearless soul--the day is ours.^She sprang upon the back of the young thunder bolt, a brilliant star sparkles upon her head, with one hand she grasps the reins, and with the other she holds an olive branch..~Lend thy aid, ye strong winds," they exclaimed, "ye moon, ye sun, and all ye fair host of heaven, witness the enemy conquered.(()Hold," said Elfonzo, "thy dashing steed.=>Ride on," said Ambulinia, "the voice of thunder is behind us.rAnd onward they went, with such rapidity that they very soon arrived at Rural Retreat, where they dismounted, and were united with all the solemnities that usually attend such divine operations.They passed the day in thanksgiving and great rejoicing, and on that evening they visited their uncle, where many of their friends and acquaintances had gathered to congratulate them in the field of untainted bliss.iThe kind old gentleman met them in the yard: "Well," said he, "I wish I may die, Elfonzo, if you and Ambulinia haven't tied a knot with your tongue that you can't untie with your teeth.%uvBut come in, come in, never mind, all is right--the world still moves on, and no one has fallen in this great battle.^_Happy now is there lot! Unmoved by misfortune, they live among the fair beauties of the South.;Heaven spreads their peace and fame upon the arch of the rainbow, and smiles propitiously at their triumph, THROUGH THE TEARS OF THE STORM.THE CALIFORNIAN'S TALE Thirty-five years ago I was out prospecting on the Stanislaus, tramping all day long with pick and pan and horn, and washing a hatful of dirt here and there, always expecting to make a rich strike, and never doing it.ZIt was a lovely region, woodsy, balmy, delicious, and had once been populous, long years before, but now the people had vanished and the charming paradise was a solitude.23They went away when the surface diggings gave out.In one place, where a busy little city with banks and newspapers and fire companies and a mayor and aldermen had been, was nothing but a wide expanse of emerald turf, with not even the faintest sign that human life had ever been present there.0 !This was down toward Tuttletown.5In the country neighborhood thereabouts, along the dusty roads, one found at intervals the prettiest little cottage homes, snug and cozy, and so cobwebbed with vines snowed thick with roses that the doors and windows were wholly hidden from sight--sign that these were deserted homes, forsaken years ago by defeated and disappointed families who could neither sell them nor give them away.\Now and then, half an hour apart, one came across solitary log cabins of the earliest mining days, built by the first gold-miners, the predecessors of the cottage-builders.In some few cases these cabins were still occupied; and when this was so, you could depend upon it that the occupant was the very pioneer who had built the cabin; and you could depend on another thing, too--that he was there because he had once had his opportunity to go home to the States rich, and had not done it; had rather lost his wealth, and had then in his humiliation resolved to sever all communication with his home relatives and friends, and be to them thenceforth as one dead.#$Round about California in that day were scattered a host of these living dead men--pride-smitten poor fellows, grizzled and old at forty, whose secret thoughts were made all of regrets and longings--regrets for their wasted lives, and longings to be out of the struggle and done with it all.It was a lonesome land! Not a sound in all those peaceful expanses of grass and woods but the drowsy hum of insects; no glimpse of man or beast; nothing to keep up your spirits and make you glad to be alive.,|}And so, at last, in the early part of the afternoon, when I caught sight of a human creature, I felt a most grateful uplift.QThis person was a man about forty-five years old, and he was standing at the gate of one of those cozy little rose-clad cottages of the sort already referred to.However, this one hadn't a deserted look; it had the look of being lived in and petted and cared for and looked after; and so had its front yard, which was a garden of flowers, abundant, gay, and flourishing.cdI was invited in, of course, and required to make myself at home--it was the custom of the country.HIIt was delightful to be in such a place, after long weeks of daily and nightly familiarity with miners' cabins--with all which this implies of dirt floor, never-made beds, tin plates and cups, bacon and beans and black coffee, and nothing of ornament but war pictures from the Eastern illustrated papers tacked to the log walls._`That was all hard, cheerless, materialistic desolation, but here was a nest which had aspects to rest the tired eye and refresh that something in one's nature which, after long fasting, recognizes, when confronted by the belongings of art, howsoever cheap and modest they may be, that it has unconsciously been famishing and now has found nourishment.I could not have believed that a rag carpet could feast me so, and so content me; or that there could be such solace to the soul in wall-paper and framed lithographs, and bright-colored tidies and lamp-mats, and Windsor chairs, and varnished what-nots, with sea-shells and books and china vases on them, and the score of little unclassifiable tricks and touches that a woman's hand distributes about a home, which one sees without knowing he sees them, yet would miss in a moment if they were taken away.GThe delight that was in my heart showed in my face, and the man saw it and was pleased; saw it so plainly that he answered it as if it had been spoken.GAll her work," he said, caressingly; "she did it all herself--every bit," and he took the room in with a glance which was full of affectionate worship.:One of those soft Japanese fabrics with which women drape with careful negligence the upper part of a picture-frame was out of adjustment.3He noticed it, and rearranged it with cautious pains, stepping back several times to gauge the effect before he got it to suit him. \]Then he gave it a light finishing pat or two with his hand, and said: "She always does that.jYou can't tell just what it lacks, but it does lack something until you've done that--you can see it yourself after it's done, but that is all you know; you can't find out the law of it.mnIt's like the finishing pats a mother gives the child's hair after she's got it combed and brushed, I reckon.+{|I've seen her fix all these things so much that I can do them all just her way, though I don't know the law of any of them.:But she knows the law.RSShe knows the why and the how both; but I don't know the why; I only know the how.He took me into a bedroom so that I might wash my hands; such a bedroom as I had not seen for years: white counterpane, white pillows, carpeted floor, papered walls, pictures, dressing-table, with mirror and pin-cushion and dainty toilet things; and in the corner a wash-stand, with real china-ware bowl and pitcher, and with soap in a china dish, and on a rack more than a dozen towels--towels too clean and white for one out of practice to use without some vague sense of profanation. pqSo my face spoke again, and he answered with gratified words: "All her work; she did it all herself--every bit.45Nothing here that hasn't felt the touch of her hand. 01Now you would think--But I mustn't talk so much.mnBy this time I was wiping my hands and glancing from detail to detail of the room's belongings, as one is apt to do when he is in a new place, where everything he sees is a comfort to his eye and his spirit; and I became conscious, in one of those unaccountable ways, you know, that there was something there somewhere that the man wanted me to discover for myself.TI knew it perfectly, and I knew he was trying to help me by furtive indications with his eye, so I tried hard to get on the right track, being eager to gratify him.I failed several times, as I could see out of the corner of my eye without being told; but at last I knew I must be looking straight at the thing--knew it from the pleasure issuing in invisible waves from him.hiHe broke into a happy laugh, and rubbed his hands together, and cried out: "That's it! You've found it.?I knew you would.?It's her picture.3I went to the little black-walnut bracket on the farther wall, and did find there what I had not yet noticed--a daguerreotype-case.ijIt contained the sweetest girlish face, and the most beautiful, as it seemed to me, that I had ever seen. CDThe man drank the admiration from my face, and was fully satisfied.hiNineteen her last birthday," he said, as he put the picture back; "and that was the day we were married.noWhen you see her--ah, just wait till you see her!" "Where is she? When will she be in?" "Oh, she's away now.3She's gone to see her people.')*They live forty or fifty miles from here.0 !She's been gone two weeks today.23When do you expect her back?" "This is Wednesday. DEShe'll be back Saturday, in the evening--about nine o'clock, likely.)'(I felt a sharp sense of disappointment.;<I'm sorry, because I'll be gone then," I said, regretfully.*&'Gone? No--why should you go? Don't go.9She'll be disappointed.-}~She would be disappointed--that beautiful creature! If she had said the words herself they could hardly have blessed me more.!qrI was feeling a deep, strong longing to see her--a longing so supplicating, so insistent, that it made me afraid.XYI said to myself: "I will go straight away from this place, for my peace of mind's sake.opYou see, she likes to have people come and stop with us--people who know things, and can talk--people like you.QShe delights in it; for she knows--oh, she knows nearly everything herself, and can talk, oh, like a bird--and the books she reads, why, you would be astonished.LMDon't go; it's only a little while, you know, and she'll be so disappointed. Z[I heard the words, but hardly noticed them, I was so deep in my thinkings and strugglings.2He left me, but I didn't know.hPresently he was back, with the picture case in his hand, and he held it open before me and said: "There, now, tell her to her face you could have stayed to see her, and you wouldn't.23That second glimpse broke down my good resolution.1 I would stay and take the risk.bThat night we smoked the tranquil pipe, and talked till late about various things, but mainly about her; and certainly I had had no such pleasant and restful time for many a day.34The Thursday followed and slipped comfortably away.OToward twilight a big miner from three miles away came--one of the grizzled, stranded pioneers--and gave us warm salutation, clothed in grave and sober speech.deThen he said: "I only just dropped over to ask about the little madam, and when is she coming home.(()Any news from her?" "Oh, yes, a letter.qWould you like to hear it, Tom?" "Well, I should think I would, if you don't mind, Henry!" Henry got the letter out of his wallet, and said he would skip some of the private phrases, if we were willing; then he went on and read the bulk of it--a loving, sedate, and altogether charming and gracious piece of handiwork, with a postscript full of affectionate regards and messages to Tom, and Joe, and Charley, and other close friends and neighbors.4As the reader finished, he glanced at Tom, and cried out: "Oho, you're at it again! Take your hands away, and let me see your eyes.12You always do that when I read a letter from her.6I will write and tell her.6Oh no, you mustn't, Henry.NOI'm getting old, you know, and any little disappointment makes me want to cry.BCI thought she'd be here herself, and now you've got only a letter.`aWell, now, what put that in your head? I thought everybody knew she wasn't coming till Saturday.$,-Saturday! Why, come to think, I did know it.?@I wonder what's the matter with me lately? Certainly I knew it.>?Ain't we all getting ready for her? Well, I must be going now.%&But I'll be on hand when she comes, old man!" Late Friday afternoon another gray veteran tramped over from his cabin a mile or so away, and said the boys wanted to have a little gaiety and a good time Saturday night, if Henry thought she wouldn't be too tired after her journey to be kept up.QRTired? She tired! Oh, hear the man! Joe, YOU know she'd sit up six weeks to please any one of you!" When Joe heard that there was a letter, he asked to have it read, and the loving messages in it for him broke the old fellow all up; but he said he was such an old wreck that THAT would happen to him if she only just mentioned his name.1 Lord, we miss her so!" he said.BCSaturday afternoon I found I was taking out my watch pretty often.Henry noticed it, and said, with a startled look: "You don't think she ought to be here soon, do you?" I felt caught, and a little embarrassed; but I laughed, and said it was a habit of mine when I was in a state of expenctancy.VWBut he didn't seem quite satisfied; and from that time on he began to show uneasiness.JFour times he walked me up the road to a point whence we could see a long distance; and there he would stand, shading his eyes with his hand, and looking.MNSeveral times he said: "I'm getting worried, I'm getting right down worried.(xyI know she's not due till about nine o'clock, and yet something seems to be trying to warn me that something's happened.You don't think anything has happened, do you?" I began to get pretty thoroughly ashamed of him for his childishness; and at last, when he repeated that imploring question still another time, I lost my patience for the moment, and spoke pretty brutally to him.SIt seemed to shrivel him up and cow him; and he looked so wounded and so humble after that, that I detested myself for having done the cruel and unnecessary thing.kAnd so I was glad when Charley, another veteran, arrived toward the edge of the evening, and nestled up to Henry to hear the letter read, and talked over the preparations for the welcome.+{|Charley fetched out one hearty speech after another, and did his best to drive away his friend's bodings and apprehensions.67Anything HAPPENED to her? Henry, that's pure nonsense.QRThere isn't anything going to happen to her; just make your mind easy as to that.aWhat did the letter say? Said she was well, didn't it? And said she'd be here by nine o'clock, didn't it? Did you ever know her to fail of her word? Why, you know you never did.ghWell, then, don't you fret; she'll BE here, and that's absolutely certain, and as sure as you are born.78Come, now, let's get to decorating--not much time left. ]^Pretty soon Tom and Joe arrived, and then all hands set about adoring the house with flowers.|Toward nine the three miners said that as they had brought their instruments they might as well tune up, for the boys and girls would soon be arriving now, and hungry for a good, old-fashioned break-down.>?A fiddle, a banjo, and a clarinet--these were the instruments.)yzThe trio took their places side by side, and began to play some rattling dance-music, and beat time with their big boots.."#It was getting very close to nine.*z{Henry was standing in the door with his eyes directed up the road, his body swaying to the torture of his mental distress.}He had been made to drink his wife's health and safety several times, and now Tom shouted: "All hands stand by! One more drink, and she's here!" Joe brought the glasses on a waiter, and served the party.noI reached for one of the two remaining glasses, but Joe growled under his breath: "Drop that! Take the other.D Which I did.:Henry was served last.ABHe had hardly swallowed his drink when the clock began to strike.hiHe listened till it finished, his face growing pale and paler; then he said: "Boys, I'm sick with fear.;<Help me--I want to lie down!" They helped him to the sofa.()He began to nestle and drowse, but presently spoke like one talking in his sleep, and said: "Did I hear horses' feet? Have they come?" One of the veterans answered, close to his ear: "It was Jimmy Parish come to say the party got delayed, but they're right up the road a piece, and coming along.67Her horse is lame, but she'll be here in half an hour.hiOh, I'm SO thankful nothing has happened!" He was asleep almost before the words were out of his mouth.,|}In a moment those handy men had his clothes off, and had tucked him into his bed in the chamber where I had washed my hands.-#$They closed the door and came back.MNThen they seemed preparing to leave; but I said: "Please don't go, gentlemen.-#$She won't know me; I am a stranger.5They glanced at each other. \]Then Joe said: "She? Poor thing, she's been dead nineteen years!" "Dead?" "That or worse.wShe went to see her folks half a year after she was married, and on her way back, on a Saturday evening, the Indians captured her within five miles of this place, and she's never been heard of since.JKAnd he lost his mind in consequence?" "Never has been sane an hour since.89But he only gets bad when that time of year comes round.Then we begin to drop in here, three days before she's due, to encourage him up, and ask if he's heard from her, and Saturday we all come and fix up the house with flowers, and get everything ready for a dance.$,-We've done it every year for nineteen years.2The first Saturday there was twenty-seven of us, without counting the girls; there's only three of us now, and the girls are gone.We drug him to sleep, or he would go wild; then he's all right for another year--thinks she's with him till the last three or four days come round; then he begins to look for her, and gets out his poor old letter, and we come and ask him to read it to us.Lord, she was a darling!" A HELPLESS SITUATION Once or twice a year I get a letter of a certain pattern, a pattern that never materially changes, in form and substance, yet I cannot get used to that letter--it always astonishes me. Z[It affects me as the locomotive always affects me: I saw to myself, "I have seen you a thousand times, you always look the same way, yet you are always a wonder, and you are always impossible; to contrive you is clearly beyond human genius--you can't exist, you don't exist, yet here you are!" I have a letter of that kind by me, a very old one.kI yearn to print it, and where is the harm? The writer of it is dead years ago, no doubt, and if I conceal her name and address--her this-world address--I am sure her shade will not mind. [\And with it I wish to print the answer which I wrote at the time but probably did not send.5If it went--which is not likely--it went in the form of a copy, for I find the original still here, pigeonholed with the said letter.iTo that kind of letters we all write answers which we do not send, fearing to hurt where we have no desire to hurt; I have done it many a time, and this is doubtless a case of the sort.!/0THE LETTER X------, California, JUNE 3, 1879.MMr.8Clemens, HARTFORD, CONN.deDear Sir,--You will doubtless be surprised to know who has presumed to write and ask a favor of you. DELet your memory go back to your days in the Humboldt mines--'62-'63.You will remember, you and Clagett and Oliver and the old blacksmith Tillou lived in a lean-to which was half-way up the gulch, and there were six log cabins in the camp--strung pretty well separated up the gulch from its mouth at the desert to where the last claim was, at the divide._The lean-to you lived in was the one with a canvas roof that the cow fell down through one night, as told about by you in ROUGHING IT--my uncle Simmons remembers it very well._`He lived in the principal cabin, half-way up the divide, along with Dixon and Parker and Smith. YZIt had two rooms, one for kitchen and the other for bunks, and was the only one that had.&vwYou and your party were there on the great night, the time they had dried-apple-pie, Uncle Simmons often speaks of it.It seems curious that dried-apple-pie should have seemed such a great thing, but it was, and it shows how far Humboldt was out of the world and difficult to get to, and how slim the regular bill of fare was.+%&Sixteen years ago--it is a long time.(()I was a little girl then, only fourteen.-#$I never saw you, I lived in Washoe.EBut Uncle Simmons ran across you every now and then, all during those weeks that you and party were there working your claim which was like the rest. YZThe camp played out long and long ago, there wasn't silver enough in it to make a button.1You never saw my husband, but he was there after you left, AND LIVED IN THAT VERY LEAN-TO, a bachelor then but married to me now.cdHe often wishes there had been a photographer there in those days, he would have taken the lean-to.YHe got hurt in the old Hal Clayton claim that was abandoned like the others, putting in a blast and not climbing out quick enough, though he scrambled the best he could.67It landed him clear down on the train and hit a Piute.RSFor weeks they thought he would not get over it but he did, and is all right, now.<Has been ever since.KLThis is a long introduction but it is the only way I can make myself known.opThe favor I ask I feel assured your generous heart will grant: Give me some advice about a book I have written.klI do not claim anything for it only it is mostly true and as interesting as most of the books of the times.QI am unknown in the literary world and you know what that means unless one has some one of influence (like yourself) to help you by speaking a good word for you.TUI would like to place the book on royalty basis plan with any one you would suggest.$,-This is a secret from my husband and family.56I intend it as a surprise in case I get it published.SFeeling you will take an interest in this and if possible write me a letter to some publisher, or, better still, if you could see them for me and then let me hear.)'(I appeal to you to grant me this favor.67With deepest gratitude I think you for your attention.One knows, without inquiring, that the twin of that embarrassing letter is forever and ever flying in this and that and the other direction across the continent in the mails, daily, nightly, hourly, unceasingly, unrestingly.It goes to every well-known merchant, and railway official, and manufacturer, and capitalist, and Mayor, and Congressman, and Governor, and editor, and publisher, and author, and broker, and banker--in a word, to every person who is supposed to have "influence.cdIt always follows the one pattern: "You do not know me, BUT YOU ONCE KNEW A RELATIVE OF MINE," etc.Letc.We should all like to help the applicants, we should all be glad to do it, we should all like to return the sort of answer that is desired, but--Well, there is not a thing we can do that would be a help, for not in any instance does that latter ever come from anyone who CAN be helped.lmThe struggler whom you COULD help does his own helping; it would not occur to him to apply to you, stranger.4He has talent and knows it, and he goes into his fight eagerly and with energy and determination--all alone, preferring to be alone.That pathetic letter which comes to you from the incapable, the unhelpable--how do you who are familiar with it answer it? What do you find to say? You do not want to inflict a wound; you hunt ways to avoid that.^What do you find? How do you get out of your hard place with a contend conscience? Do you try to explain? The old reply of mine to such a letter shows that I tried that once.`aWas I satisfied with the result? Possibly; and possibly not; probably not; almost certainly not.)'(I have long ago forgotten all about it.9:But, anyway, I append my effort: THE REPLY I know Mr.RSand I will go to him, dear madam, if upon reflection you find you still desire it.3There will be a conversation.3I know the form it will take.5It will be like this: MR./!"How do her books strike you? MR.H CLEMENS.2I am not acquainted with them.1 Who has been her publisher? C.C I don't know.5She HAS one, I suppose? C.AI--I think not.+%&You think this is her first book? C.>Yes--I suppose so.E I think so.23What is it about? What is the character of it? C.8I believe I do not know.;Have you seen it? C.<Well--no, I haven't.KAh-h.0 !How long have you known her? C.?I don't know her.=Don't know her? C.KAh-h.89How did you come to be interested in her book, then? C.QRWell, she--she wrote and asked me to find a publisher for her, and mentioned you."./Why should she apply to you instead of me? C.."#She wished me to use my influence.9:Dear me, what has INFLUENCE to do with such a matter? C.^_Well, I think she thought you would be more likely to examine her book if you were influenced.OPWhy, what we are here FOR is to examine books--anybody's book that comes along.>It's our BUSINESS. YZWhy should we turn away a book unexamined because it's a stranger's? It would be foolish.;No publisher does it.?On what ground did she request your influence, since you do not know her? She must have thought you knew her literature and could speak for it.AIs that it? C.:No; she knew I didn't.@Well, what then? She had a reason of SOME sort for believing you competent to recommend her literature, and also under obligations to do it? C.7Yes, I--I knew her uncle.=Knew her UNCLE? C.LYes.bUpon my word! So, you knew her uncle; her uncle knows her literature; he endorses it to you; the chain is complete, nothing further needed; you are satisfied, and therefore-- C.')*NO, that isn't all, there are other ties.JKI know the cabin her uncle lived in, in the mines; I knew his partners, too; also I came near knowing her husband before she married him, and I DID know the abandoned shaft where a premature blast went off and he went flying through the air and clear down to the trail and hit an Indian in the back with almost fatal consequences.3To HIM, or to the Indian? C.4She didn't say which it was.C WITH A SIGH).It certainly beats the band! You don't know HER, you don't know her literature, you don't know who got hurt when the blast went off, you don't know a single thing for us to build an estimate of her book upon, so far as I-- C.?I knew her uncle.3You are forgetting her uncle.?@Oh, what use is HE? Did you know him long? How long was it? C.KLWell, I don't know that I really knew him, but I must have met him, anyway.bcI think it was that way; you can't tell about these things, you know, except when they are recent.2Recent? When was all this? C.>Sixteen years ago.!qrWhat a basis to judge a book upon! As first you said you knew him, and now you don't know whether you did or not.QROh yes, I know him; anyway, I think I thought I did; I'm perfectly certain of it.23What makes you think you thought you knew him? C.3Why, she says I did, herself.@SHE says so! C. GHYes, she does, and I DID know him, too, though I don't remember it now.56Come--how can you know it when you don't remember it.BI_ don't know.5That is, I don't know the process, but I DO know lots of things that I don't remember, and remember lots of things that I don't know.-#$It's so with every educated person.AAFTER A PAUSE).6Is your time valuable? C.=No--well, not very.H Mine is.23So I came away then, because he was looking tired.HIOverwork, I reckon; I never do that; I have seen the evil effects of it. EFMy mother was always afraid I would overwork myself, but I never did.89Dear madam, you see how it would happen if I went there.He would ask me those questions, and I would try to answer them to suit him, and he would hunt me here and there and yonder and get me embarrassed more and more all the time, and at last he would look tired on account of overwork, and there it would end and nothing done.I wish I could be useful to you, but, you see, they do not care for uncles or any of those things; it doesn't move them, it doesn't have the least effect, they don't care for anything but the literature itself, and they as good as despise influence.'wxBut they do care for books, and are eager to get them and examine them, no matter whence they come, nor from whose pen.mnIf you will send yours to a publisher--any publisher--he will certainly examine it, I can assure you of that.wA TELEPHONIC CONVERSATION Consider that a conversation by telephone--when you are simply siting by and not taking any part in that conversation--is one of the solemnest curiosities of modern life.-}~Yesterday I was writing a deep article on a sublime philosophical subject while such a conversation was going on in the room.^_I notice that one can always write best when somebody is talking through a telephone close by.."#Well, the thing began in this way.`aA member of our household came in and asked me to have our house put into communication with Mr.>Bagley's downtown.jkI have observed, in many cities, that the sex always shrink from calling up the central office themselves.2I don't know why, but they do.=>So I touched the bell, and this talk ensued: CENTRAL OFFICE.IGRUFFY.F Hello! I.3Is it the Central Office? C.@Of course it is.;What do you want? I.12Will you switch me on to the Bagleys, please? C.F All right.,$%Just keep your ear to the telephone.TThen I heard K-LOOK, K-LOOK, K'LOOK--KLOOK-KLOOK-KLOOK-LOOK-LOOK! then a horrible "gritting" of teeth, and finally a piping female voice: Y-e-s? (RISING INFLECTION.ghDid you wish to speak to me? Without answering, I handed the telephone to the applicant, and sat down.jkThen followed that queerest of all the queer things in this world--a conversation with only one end of it.45You hear questions asked; you don't hear the answer.9:You hear invitations given; you hear no thanks in return.AYou have listening pauses of dead silence, followed by apparently irrelevant and unjustifiable exclamations of glad surprise or sorrow or dismay.+{|You can't make head or tail of the talk, because you never hear anything that the person at the other end of the wire says.Well, I heard the following remarkable series of observations, all from the one tongue, and all shouted--for you can't ever persuade the sex to speak gently into a telephone: Yes? Why, how did THAT happen? Pause.7What did you say? Pause.4Oh no, I don't think it was.JPause.2NO! Oh no, I didn't mean THAT.PQI meant, put it in while it is still boiling--or just before it COMES to a boil.JPause.C WHAT? Pause.78I turned it over with a backstitch on the selvage edge.JPause.,|}Yes, I like that way, too; but I think it's better to baste it on with Valenciennes or bombazine, or something of that sort.45It gives it such an air--and attracts so much noise.JPause. FGIt's forty-ninth Deuteronomy, sixty-forth to ninety-seventh inclusive.*&'I think we ought all to read it often.JPause.)'(Perhaps so; I generally use a hair pin.JPause.7What did you say? (ASIDE.^_Children, do be quiet! Pause OH! B FLAT! Dear me, I thought you said it was the cat! Pause.=Since WHEN? Pause.5Why, _I_ never heard of it.JPause.45You astound me! It seems utterly impossible! Pause.@WHO did? Pause.5Good-ness gracious! Pause. CDWell, what IS this world coming to? Was it right in CHURCH? Pause./!"And was her MOTHER there? Pause.G Why, Mrs.IJBagley, I should have died of humiliation! What did they DO? Long pause.}I can't be perfectly sure, because I haven't the notes by me; but I think it goes something like this: te-rolly-loll-loll, loll lolly-loll-loll, O tolly-loll-loll-LEE-LY-LI-I-do! And then REPEAT, you know.JPause.!qrYes, I think it IS very sweet--and very solemn and impressive, if you get the andantino and the pianissimo right.JPause. FGOh, gum-drops, gum-drops! But I never allow them to eat striped candy.<=And of course they CAN'T, till they get their teeth, anyway.JPause.C WHAT? Pause.."#Oh, not in the least--go right on.')*He's here writing--it doesn't bother HIM.JPause.2Very well, I'll come if I can.JASIDE.^_Dear me, how it does tire a person's arm to hold this thing up so long! I wish she'd-- Pause.TUOh no, not at all; I LIKE to talk--but I'm afraid I'm keeping you from your affairs.JPause.?Visitors? Pause.0 !No, we never use butter on them.JPause.mnYes, that is a very good way; but all the cook-books say they are very unhealthy when they are out of season.45And HE doesn't like them, anyway--especially canned.JPause.STOh, I think that is too high for them; we have never paid over fifty cents a bunch.JPause.5MUST you go? Well, GOOD-by.JPause.@Yes, I think so.H GOOD-by.JPause.."#Four o'clock, then--I'll be ready.H GOOD-by.JPause.9Thank you ever so much.H GOOD-by.JPause.IJOh, not at all!--just as fresh--WHICH? Oh, I'm glad to hear you say that.H GOOD-by.=Hangs up the telephone and says, "Oh, it DOES tire a person's arm so!") A man delivers a single brutal "Good-by," and that is the end of it.STNot so with the gentle sex--I say it in their praise; they cannot abide abruptness.5EDWARD MILLS AND GEORGE BENTON: A TALE These two were distantly related to each other--seventh cousins, or something of that sort./While still babies they became orphans, and were adopted by the Brants, a childless couple, who quickly grew very fond of them./The Brants were always saying: "Be pure, honest, sober, industrious, and considerate of others, and success in life is assured.The children heard this repeated some thousands of times before they understood it; they could repeat it themselves long before they could say the Lord's Prayer; it was painted over the nursery door, and was about the first thing they learned to read.ABIt was destined to be the unswerving rule of Edward Mills's life.@Sometimes the Brants changed the wording a little, and said: "Be pure, honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never lack friends. 01Baby Mills was a comfort to everybody about him.deWhen he wanted candy and could not have it, he listened to reason, and contented himself without it.?@When Baby Benton wanted candy, he cried for it until he got it.Baby Mills took care of his toys; Baby Benton always destroyed his in a very brief time, and then made himself so insistently disagreeable that, in order to have peace in the house, little Edward was persuaded to yield up his play-things to him.vWhen the children were a little older, Georgie became a heavy expense in one respect: he took no care of his clothes; consequently, he shone frequently in new ones, with was not the case with Eddie.<The boys grew apace.BCEddie was an increasing comfort, Georgie an increasing solicitude.It was always sufficient to say, in answer to Eddie's petitions, "I would rather you would not do it"--meaning swimming, skating, picnicking, berrying, circusing, and all sorts of things which boys delight in.'wxBut NO answer was sufficient for Georgie; he had to be humored in his desires, or he would carry them with a high hand.lmNaturally, no boy got more swimming skating, berrying, and so forth than he; no body ever had a better time.The good Brants did not allow the boys to play out after nine in summer evenings; they were sent to bed at that hour; Eddie honorably remained, but Georgie usually slipped out of the window toward ten, and enjoyed himself until midnight.>It seemed impossible to break Georgie of this bad habit, but the Brants managed it at last by hiring him, with apples and marbles, to stay in.The good Brants gave all their time and attention to vain endeavors to regulate Georgie; they said, with grateful tears in their eyes, that Eddie needed no efforts of theirs, he was so good, so considerate, and in all ways so perfect.7By and by the boys were big enough to work, so they were apprenticed to a trade: Edward went voluntarily; George was coaxed and bribed.LEdward worked hard and faithfully, and ceased to be an expense to the good Brants; they praised him, so did his master; but George ran away, and it cost Mr.=>Brant both money and trouble to hunt him up and get him back.9:By and by he ran away again--more money and more trouble. CDHe ran away a third time--and stole a few things to carry with him.5Trouble and expense for Mr.MBrant once more; and, besides, it was with the greatest difficulty that he succeeded in persuading the master to let the youth go unprosecuted for the theft. YZEdward worked steadily along, and in time became a full partner in his master's business.QGeorge did not improve; he kept the loving hearts of his aged benefactors full of trouble, and their hands full of inventive activities to protect him from ruin. YZEdward, as a boy, had interested himself in Sunday-schools, debating societies, penny missionary affairs, anti-tobacco organizations, anti-profanity associations, and all such things; as a man, he was a quiet but steady and reliable helper in the church, the temperance societies, and in all movements looking to the aiding and uplifting of men.MNThis excited no remark, attracted no attention--for it was his "natural bent.3Finally, the old people died.qThe will testified their loving pride in Edward, and left their little property to George--because he "needed it"; whereas, "owing to a bountiful Providence," such was not the case with Edward.[The property was left to George conditionally: he must buy out Edward's partner with it; else it must go to a benevolent organization called the Prisoner's Friend Society.MThe old people left a letter, in which they begged their dear son Edward to take their place and watch over George, and help and shield him as they had done.KLEdward dutifully acquiesced, and George became his partner in the business.ZHe was not a valuable partner: he had been meddling with drink before; he soon developed into a constant tippler now, and his flesh and eyes showed the fact unpleasantly.HIEdward had been courting a sweet and kindly spirited girl for some time.45They loved each other dearly, and--But about this period George began to haunt her tearfully and imploringly, and at last she went crying to Edward, and said her high and holy duty was plain before her--she must not let her own selfish desires interfere with it: she must marry "poor George" and "reform him.JKIt would break her heart, she knew it would, and so on; but duty was duty.VWSo she married George, and Edward's heart came very near breaking, as well as her own.WXHowever, Edward recovered, and married another girl--a very excellent one she was, too.1 Children came to both families.OPMary did her honest best to reform her husband, but the contract was too large. YZGeorge went on drinking, and by and by he fell to misusing her and the little ones sadly.SA great many good people strove with George--they were always at it, in fact--but he calmly took such efforts as his due and their duty, and did not mend his ways.45He added a vice, presently--that of secret gambling.He got deeply in debt; he borrowed money on the firm's credit, as quietly as he could, and carried this system so far and so successfully that one morning the sheriff took possession of the establishment, and the two cousins found themselves penniless.&*+Times were hard, now, and they grew worse. Z[Edward moved his family into a garret, and walked the streets day and night, seeking work.23He begged for it, but it was really not to be had.fHe was astonished to see how soon his face became unwelcome; he was astonished and hurt to see how quickly the ancient interest which people had had in him faded out and disappeared.TUStill, he MUST get work; so he swallowed his chagrin, and toiled on in search of it.PAt last he got a job of carrying bricks up a ladder in a hod, and was a grateful man in consequence; but after that NOBODY knew him or cared anything about him.iHe was not able to keep up his dues in the various moral organizations to which he belonged, and had to endure the sharp pain of seeing himself brought under the disgrace of suspension.`aBut the faster Edward died out of public knowledge and interest, the faster George rose in them.@AHe was found lying, ragged and drunk, in the gutter one morning.UA member of the Ladies' Temperance Refuge fished him out, took him in hand, got up a subscription for him, kept him sober a whole week, then got a situation for him.1 An account of it was published.PGeneral attention was thus drawn to the poor fellow, and a great many people came forward and helped him toward reform with their countenance and encouragement.MNHe did not drink a drop for two months, and meantime was the pet of the good.JKThen he fell--in the gutter; and there was general sorrow and lamentation.%+,But the noble sisterhood rescued him again.,|}They cleaned him up, they fed him, they listened to the mournful music of his repentances, they got him his situation again.SAn account of this, also, was published, and the town was drowned in happy tears over the re-restoration of the poor beast and struggling victim of the fatal bowl.A grand temperance revival was got up, and after some rousing speeches had been made the chairman said, impressively: "We are not about to call for signers; and I think there is a spectacle in store for you which not many in this house will be able to view with dry eyes.^There was an eloquent pause, and then George Benton, escorted by a red-sashed detachment of the Ladies of the Refuge, stepped forward upon the platform and signed the pledge.<=The air was rent with applause, and everybody cried for joy.CEverybody wrung the hand of the new convert when the meeting was over; his salary was enlarged next day; he was the talk of the town, and its hero.1 An account of it was published.CGeorge Benton fell, regularly, every three months, but was faithfully rescued and wrought with, every time, and good situations were found for him.6Finally, he was taken around the country lecturing, as a reformed drunkard, and he had great houses and did an immense amount of good.\He was so popular at home, and so trusted--during his sober intervals--that he was enabled to use the name of a principal citizen, and get a large sum of money at the bank.MA mighty pressure was brought to bear to save him from the consequences of his forgery, and it was partially successful--he was "sent up" for only two years. Z[When, at the end of a year, the tireless efforts of the benevolent were crowned with success, and he emerged from the penitentiary with a pardon in his pocket, the Prisoner's Friend Society met him at the door with a situation and a comfortable salary, and all the other benevolent people came forward and gave him advice, encouragement and help.]Edward Mills had once applied to the Prisoner's Friend Society for a situation, when in dire need, but the question, "Have you been a prisoner?" made brief work of his case.bcWhile all these things were going on, Edward Mills had been quietly making head against adversity.(xyHe was still poor, but was in receipt of a steady and sufficient salary, as the respected and trusted cashier of a bank.LMGeorge Benton never came near him, and was never heard to inquire about him.opGeorge got to indulging in long absences from the town; there were ill reports about him, but nothing definite.klOne winter's night some masked burglars forced their way into the bank, and found Edward Mills there alone.UVThey commanded him to reveal the "combination," so that they could get into the safe.E He refused.7They threatened his life.MNHe said his employers trusted him, and he could not be traitor to that trust.jkHe could die, if he must, but while he lived he would be faithful; he would not yield up the "combination.8The burglars killed him.STThe detectives hunted down the criminals; the chief one proved to be George Benton.FGA wide sympathy was felt for the widow and orphans of the dead man, and all the newspapers in the land begged that all the banks in the land would testify their appreciation of the fidelity and heroism of the murdered cashier by coming forward with a generous contribution of money in aid of his family, now bereft of support.HThe result was a mass of solid cash amounting to upward of five hundred dollars--an average of nearly three-eights of a cent for each bank in the Union.The cashier's own bank testified its gratitude by endeavoring to show (but humiliatingly failed in it) that the peerless servant's accounts were not square, and that he himself had knocked his brains out with a bludgeon to escape detection and punishment.*&'George Benton was arraigned for trial. Z[Then everybody seemed to forget the widow and orphans in their solicitude for poor George. pqEverything that money and influence could do was done to save him, but it all failed; he was sentenced to death.Straightway the Governor was besieged with petitions for commutation or pardon; they were brought by tearful young girls; by sorrowful old maids; by deputations of pathetic widows; by shoals of impressive orphans. 01But no, the Governor--for once--would not yield.)'(Now George Benton experienced religion.2The glad news flew all around.From that time forth his cell was always full of girls and women and fresh flowers; all the day long there was prayer, and hymn-singing, and thanksgiving, and homilies, and tears, with never an interruption, except an occasional five-minute intermission for refreshments.mThis sort of thing continued up to the very gallows, and George Benton went proudly home, in the black cap, before a wailing audience of the sweetest and best that the region could produce.JHis grave had fresh flowers on it every day, for a while, and the head-stone bore these words, under a hand pointing aloft: "He has fought the good fight.yThe brave cashier's head-stone has this inscription: "Be pure, honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never--" Nobody knows who gave the order to leave it that way, but it was so given.The cashier's family are in stringent circumstances, now, it is said; but no matter; a lot of appreciative people, who were not willing that an act so brave and true as his should go unrewarded, have collected forty-two thousand dollars--and built a Memorial Church with it.+{|THE FIVE BOONS OF LIFE Chapter I In the morning of life came a good fairy with her basket, and said: "Here are gifts.5Take one, leave the others.OPAnd be wary, chose wisely; oh, choose wisely! for only one of them is valuable.9:The gifts were five: Fame, Love, Riches, Pleasure, Death.PQThe youth said, eagerly: "There is no need to consider"; and he chose Pleasure.OPHe went out into the world and sought out the pleasures that youth delights in.hiBut each in its turn was short-lived and disappointing, vain and empty; and each, departing, mocked him.!/0In the end he said: "These years I have wasted.34If I could but choose again, I would choose wisely. FGChapter II The fairy appeared, and said: "Four of the gifts remain.UVChoose once more; and oh, remember--time is flying, and only one of them is precious.cdThe man considered long, then chose Love; and did not mark the tears that rose in the fairy's eyes.ABAfter many, many years the man sat by a coffin, in an empty home.3And he communed with himself, saying: "One by one they have gone away and left me; and now she lies here, the dearest and the last.IDesolation after desolation has swept over me; for each hour of happiness the treacherous trader, Love, as sold me I have paid a thousand hours of grief.*&'Out of my heart of hearts I curse him.4Chapter III "Choose again.6It was the fairy speaking.78The years have taught you wisdom--surely it must be so.=Three gifts remain.?@Only one of them has any worth--remember it, and choose warily.NOThe man reflected long, then chose Fame; and the fairy, sighing, went her way.mnYears went by and she came again, and stood behind the man where he sat solitary in the fading day, thinking.:And she knew his thought: "My name filled the world, and its praises were on every tongue, and it seemed well with me for a little while.fgHow little a while it was! Then came envy; then detraction; then calumny; then hate; then persecution.12Then derision, which is the beginning of the end.89And last of all came pity, which is the funeral of fame.opOh, the bitterness and misery of renown! target for mud in its prime, for contempt and compassion in its decay.2Chapter IV "Chose yet again.7It was the fairy's voice.?Two gifts remain.=And do not despair.KLIn the beginning there was but one that was precious, and it is still here.78Wealth--which is power! How blind I was!" said the man.$,-Now, at last, life will be worth the living.1 I will spend, squander, dazzle.noThese mockers and despisers will crawl in the dirt before me, and I will feed my hungry heart with their envy.%uvI will have all luxuries, all joys, all enchantments of the spirit, all contentments of the body that man holds dear.9I will buy, buy, buy! deference, respect, esteem, worship--every pinchbeck grace of life the market of a trivial world can furnish forth.7I have lost much time, and chosen badly heretofore, but let that pass; I was ignorant then, and could but take for best what seemed so.Three short years went by, and a day came when the man sat shivering in a mean garret; and he was gaunt and wan and hollow-eyed, and clothed in rags; and he was gnawing a dry crust and mumbling: "Curse all the world's gifts, for mockeries and gilded lies! And miscalled, every one.(()They are not gifts, but merely lendings."rsPleasure, Love, Fame, Riches: they are but temporary disguises for lasting realities--Pain, Grief, Shame, Poverty.!qrThe fairy said true; in all her store there was but one gift which was precious, only one that was not valueless. How poor and cheap and mean I know those others now to be, compared with that inestimable one, that dear and sweet and kindly one, that steeps in dreamless and enduring sleep the pains that persecute the body, and the shames and griefs that eat the mind and heart.-#$Bring it! I am weary, I would rest.TUChapter V The fairy came, bringing again four of the gifts, but Death was wanting.89She said: "I gave it to a mother's pet, a little child.<=It was ignorant, but trusted me, asking me to choose for it.3You did not ask me to choose.hiOh, miserable me! What is left for me?" "What not even you have deserved: the wanton insult of Old Age.THE FIRST WRITING-MACHINES From My Unpublished Autobiography Some days ago a correspondent sent in an old typewritten sheet, faded by age, containing the following letter over the signature of Mark Twain: "Hartford, March 10, 1875.+%&Please do not use my name in any way.:;Please do not even divulge that fact that I own a machine.I have entirely stopped using the typewriter, for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybody without receiving a request by return mail that I would not only describe the machine, but state what progress I had made in the use of it, etc.Letc.mnI don't like to write letters, and so I don't want people to know I own this curiosity-breeding little joker.:A note was sent to Mr.hiClemens asking him if the letter was genuine and whether he really had a typewriter as long ago as that.jkClemens replied that his best answer is the following chapter from his unpublished autobiography: 1904.0 !VILLA QUARTO, FLORENCE, JANUARY.`Dictating autobiography to a typewriter is a new experience for me, but it goes very well, and is going to save time and "language"--the kind of language that soothes vexation.>?I have dictated to a typewriter before--but not autobiography.$tuBetween that experience and the present one there lies a mighty gap--more than thirty years! It is sort of lifetime. Z[In that wide interval much has happened--to the type-machine as well as to the rest of us.ABAt the beginning of that interval a type-machine was a curiosity."./The person who owned one was a curiosity, too.QRBut now it is the other way about: the person who DOESN'T own one is a curiosity.:I saw a type-machine for the first time in--what year? I suppose it was 1873--because Nasby was with me at the time, and it was in Boston.LMWe must have been lecturing, or we could not have been in Boston, I take it.-#$I quitted the platform that season.%+,But never mind about that, it is no matter.HINasby and I saw the machine through a window, and went in to look at it.`The salesman explained it to us, showed us samples of its work, and said it could do fifty-seven words a minute--a statement which we frankly confessed that we did not believe.?@So he put his type-girl to work, and we timed her by the watch.23She actually did the fifty-seven in sixty seconds. EFWe were partly convinced, but said it probably couldn't happen again.E But it did.PQWe timed the girl over and over again--with the same result always: she won out.'wxShe did her work on narrow slips of paper, and we pocketed them as fast as she turned them out, to show as curiosities.ABThe price of the machine was one hundred and twenty-five dollars.12I bought one, and we went away very much excited.lmAt the hotel we got out our slips and were a little disappointed to find that they contained the same words.RSThe girl had economized time and labor by using a formula which she knew by heart.However, we argued--safely enough--that the FIRST type-girl must naturally take rank with the first billiard-player: neither of them could be expected to get out of the game any more than a third or a half of what was in it.8If the machine survived--IF it survived--experts would come to the front, by and by, who would double the girl's output without a doubt.KLThey would do one hundred words a minute--my talking speed on the platform.,$%That score has long ago been beaten.At home I played with the toy, repeated and repeating and repeated "The Boy stood on the Burning Deck," until I could turn that boy's adventure out at the rate of twelve words a minute; then I resumed the pen, for business, and only worked the machine to astonish inquiring visitors.<=They carried off many reams of the boy and his burning deck.efBy and by I hired a young woman, and did my first dictating (letters, merely), and my last until now.PQThe machine did not do both capitals and lower case (as now), but only capitals.12Gothic capitals they were, and sufficiently ugly.QRI remember the first letter I dictated, it was to Edward Bok, who was a boy then.%+,I was not acquainted with him at that time.HIHis present enterprising spirit is not new--he had it in that early day.mnHe was accumulating autographs, and was not content with mere signatures, he wanted a whole autograph LETTER.<=I furnished it--in type-written capitals, SIGNATURE AND ALL. CDIt was long; it was a sermon; it contained advice; also reproaches.I said writing was my TRADE, my bread-and-butter; I said it was not fair to ask a man to give away samples of his trade; would he ask the blacksmith for a horseshoe? would he ask the doctor for a corpse? Now I come to an important matter--as I regard it. \]In the year '74 the young woman copied a considerable part of a book of mine ON THE MACHINE.In a previous chapter of this Autobiography I have claimed that I was the first person in the world that ever had a telephone in the house for practical purposes; I will now claim--until dispossess--that I was the first person in the world to APPLY THE TYPE-MACHINE TO LITERATURE.67That book must have been THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER.;<I wrote the first half of it in '72, the rest of it in '74.NOMy machinist type-copied a book for me in '74, so I concluded it was that one.HIThat early machine was full of caprices, full of defects--devilish ones.@AIt had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues.hiAfter a year or two I found that it was degrading my character, so I thought I would give it to Howells.opHe was reluctant, for he was suspicious of novelties and unfriendly toward them, and he remains so to this day.<But I persuaded him.opHe had great confidence in me, and I got him to believe things about the machine that I did not believe myself.XYHe took it home to Boston, and my morals began to improve, but his have never recovered.23He kept it six months, and then returned it to me. DEI gave it away twice after that, but it wouldn't stay; it came back.RThen I gave it to our coachman, Patrick McAleer, who was very grateful, because he did not know the animal, and thought I was trying to make him wiser and better.BAs soon as he got wiser and better he traded it to a heretic for a side-saddle which he could not use, and there my knowledge of its history ends.=ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER It is almost a fortnight now that I am domiciled in a medieval villa in the country, a mile or two from Florence.iI cannot speak the language; I am too old not to learn how, also too busy when I am busy, and too indolent when I am not; wherefore some will imagine that I am having a dull time of it.?But it is not so.hThe "help" are all natives; they talk Italian to me, I answer in English; I do not understand them, they do not understand me, consequently no harm is done, and everybody is satisfied.hiIn order to be just and fair, I throw in an Italian word when I have one, and this has a good influence.(()I get the word out of the morning paper.^_I have to use it while it is fresh, for I find that Italian words do not keep in this climate.78They fade toward night, and next morning they are gone.(xyBut it is no matter; I get a new one out of the paper before breakfast, and thrill the domestics with it while it lasts.hiI have no dictionary, and I do not want one; I can select words by the sound, or by orthographic aspect.klMany of them have French or German or English look, and these are the ones I enslave for the day's service.=That is, as a rule.E Not always.If I find a learnable phrase that has an imposing look and warbles musically along I do not care to know the meaning of it; I pay it out to the first applicant, knowing that if I pronounce it carefully HE will understand it, and that's enough.4Yesterday's word was AVANTI. EFIt sounds Shakespearian, and probably means Avaunt and quit my sight.34Today I have a whole phrase: SONO DISPIACENTISSIMO.UVI do not know what it means, but it seems to fit in everywhere and give satisfaction.  Although as a rule my words and phrases are good for one day and train only, I have several that stay by me all the time, for some unknown reason, and these come very handy when I get into a long conversation and need things to fire up with in monotonous stretches.')*One of the best ones is DOV' `E IL GATTO.0It nearly always produces a pleasant surprise, therefore I save it up for places where I want to express applause or admiration.VWThe fourth word has a French sound, and I think the phrase means "that takes the cake.PDuring my first week in the deep and dreamy stillness of this woodsy and flowery place I was without news of the outside world, and was well content without it.\It has been four weeks since I had seen a newspaper, and this lack seemed to give life a new charm and grace, and to saturate it with a feeling verging upon actual delight.$tuThen came a change that was to be expected: the appetite for news began to rise again, after this invigorating rest.CI had to feed it, but I was not willing to let it make me its helpless slave again; I determined to put it on a diet, and a strict and limited one. ]^So I examined an Italian paper, with the idea of feeding it on that, and on that exclusively.67On that exclusively, and without help of a dictionary.RSIn this way I should surely be well protected against overloading and indigestion.>?A glance at the telegraphic page filled me with encouragement.6There were no scare-heads.2That was good--supremely good.But there were headings--one-liners and two-liners--and that was good too; for without these, one must do as one does with a German paper--pay our precious time in finding out what an article is about, only to discover, in many cases, that there is nothing in it of interest to you./!"The headline is a valuable thing.  Necessarily we are all fond of murders, scandals, swindles, robberies, explosions, collisions, and all such things, when we knew the people, and when they are neighbors and friends, but when they are strangers we do not get any great pleasure out of them, as a rule.kNow the trouble with an American paper is that it has no discrimination; it rakes the whole earth for blood and garbage, and the result is that you are daily overfed and suffer a surfeit.2By habit you stow this muck every day, but you come by and by to take no vital interest in it--indeed, you almost get tired of it.SAs a rule, forty-nine-fiftieths of it concerns strangers only--people away off yonder, a thousand miles, two thousand miles, ten thousand miles from where you are.ZWhy, when you come to think of it, who cares what becomes of those people? I would not give the assassination of one personal friend for a whole massacre of those others.>And, to my mind, one relative or neighbor mixed up in a scandal is more interesting than a whole Sodom and Gomorrah of outlanders gone rotten.,$%Give me the home product every time.F Very well.vI saw at a glance that the Florentine paper would suit me: five out of six of its scandals and tragedies were local; they were adventures of one's very neighbors, one might almost say one's friends.JKIn the matter of world news there was not too much, but just about enough.C I subscribed.,$%I have had no occasion to regret it.klEvery morning I get all the news I need for the day; sometimes from the headlines, sometimes from the text."./I have never had to call for a dictionary yet.5I read the paper with ease.deOften I do not quite understand, often some of the details escape me, but no matter, I get the idea.I will cut out a passage or two, then you see how limpid the language is: Il ritorno dei Beati d'Italia Elargizione del Re all' Ospedale italiano The first line means that the Italian sovereigns are coming back--they have been to England.RSThe second line seems to mean that they enlarged the King at the Italian hospital.6With a banquet, I suppose.-#$An English banquet has that effect.@AFurther: Il ritorno dei Sovrani a Roma ROMA, 24, ore 22,50.MNI Sovrani e le Principessine Reali si attendono a Roma domani alle ore 15,51.&*+Return of the sovereigns to Rome, you see.QRDate of the telegram, Rome, November 24, ten minutes before twenty-three o'clock.@The telegram seems to say, "The Sovereigns and the Royal Children expect themselves at Rome tomorrow at fifty-one minutes after fifteen o'clock.1I do not know about Italian time, but I judge it begins at midnight and runs through the twenty-four hours without breaking bulk.;<In the following ad, the theaters open at half-past twenty.2If these are not matinees, 20.D must mean 8.NP.@by my reckoning.@ASpettacolli del di 25 TEATRO DELLA PERGOLA--(Ore 20,30)--Opera.H BOH`EME.ATEATRO ALFIERI.23Compagnia drammatica Drago--(Ore 20,30)--LA LEGGE.&*+ALHAMBRA--(Ore 20,30)--Spettacolo variato.SALA EDISON--Grandiosoo spettacolo Cinematografico: QUO VADIS?--Inaugurazione della Chiesa Russa--In coda al Direttissimo--Vedute di Firenze con gran movimeno--America: Transporto tronchi giganteschi--I ladri in casa del Diavolo--Scene comiche.."#CINEMATOGRAFO--Via Brunelleschi n.9:Programma straordinario, DON CHISCIOTTE--Prezzi populari.3The whole of that is intelligible to me--and sane and rational, too--except the remark about the Inauguration of a Russian Chinese.5That one oversizes my hand.=Give me five cards.@AThis is a four-page paper; and as it is set in long primer leaded and has a page of advertisements, there is no room for the crimes, disasters, and general sweepings of the outside world--thanks be! Today I find only a single importation of the off-color sort: Una Principessa che fugge con un cocchiere PARIGI, 24. YZIl MATIN ha da Berlino che la principessa Schovenbare-Waldenbure scomparve il 9 novembre.."#Sarebbe partita col suo cocchiere.6La Principassa ha 27 anni. FGTwenty-seven years old, and scomparve--scampered--on the 9th November.@AYou see by the added detail that she departed with her coachman.TUI hope Sarebbe has not made a mistake, but I am afraid the chances are that she has.:SONO DISPIACENTISSIMO.45There are several fires: also a couple of accidents.ABThis is one of them: Grave disgrazia sul Ponte Vecchio Stammattina, circe le 7,30, mentre Giuseppe Sciatti, di anni 55, di Casellina e Torri, passava dal Ponte Vecchio, stando seduto sopra un barroccio carico di verdura, perse l' equilibrio e cadde al suolo, rimanendo con la gamba destra sotto una ruota del veicolo. [\Lo Sciatti fu subito raccolto da alcuni cittadini, che, per mezzo della pubblica vettura n.,$%lo transporto a San Giovanni di Dio.JIvi il medico di guardia gli riscontro la frattura della gamba destra e alcune lievi escoriazioni giudicandolo guaribile in 50 giorni salvo complicazioni. FGWhat it seems to say is this: "Serious Disgrace on the Old Old Bridge.;This morning about 7.MMr.Joseph Sciatti, aged 55, of Casellina and Torri, while standing up in a sitting posture on top of a carico barrow of vedure (foliage? hay? vegetables?), lost his equilibrium and fell on himself, arriving with his left leg under one of the wheels of the vehicle.fgSaid Sciatti was suddenly harvested (gathered in?) by several citizens, who by means of public cab No.>transported to St.D John of God.C Paragraph No.()is a little obscure, but I think it says that the medico set the broken left leg--right enough, since there was nothing the matter with the other one--and that several are encouraged to hope that fifty days well fetch him around in quite giudicandolo-guaribile way, if no complications intervene.5I am sure I hope so myself.`There is a great and peculiar charm about reading news-scraps in a language which you are not acquainted with--the charm that always goes with the mysterious and the uncertain.You can never be absolutely sure of the meaning of anything you read in such circumstances; you are chasing an alert and gamy riddle all the time, and the baffling turns and dodges of the prey make the life of the hunt.4A dictionary would spoil it.Sometimes a single word of doubtful purport will cast a veil of dreamy and golden uncertainty over a whole paragraph of cold and practical certainties, and leave steeped in a haunting and adorable mystery an incident which had been vulgar and commonplace but for that benefaction.cWould you be wise to draw a dictionary on that gracious word? would you be properly grateful? After a couple of days' rest I now come back to my subject and seek a case in point.fgI find it without trouble, in the morning paper; a cablegram from Chicago and Indiana by way of Paris.klAll the words save one are guessable by a person ignorant of Italian: Revolverate in teatro PARIGI, 27.La PATRIE ha da Chicago: Il guardiano del teatro dell'opera di Walace (Indiana), avendo voluto espellare uno spettatore che continuava a fumare malgrado il diviety, questo spalleggiato dai suoi amici tir`o diversi colpi di rivoltella.<Il guardiano ripose.4Nacque una scarica generale./!"Grande panico tra gli spettatori.BNessun ferito.D TRANSLATION.7Revolveration in Theater.D PARIS, 27TH.LA PATRIE has from Chicago: The cop of the theater of the opera of Wallace, Indiana, had willed to expel a spectator which continued to smoke in spite of the prohibition, who, spalleggiato by his friends, tire (Fr.PQTIRE, Anglice PULLED) manifold revolver-shots; great panic among the spectators.D Nobody hurt.}It is bettable that that harmless cataclysm in the theater of the opera of Wallace, Indiana, excited not a person in Europe but me, and so came near to not being worth cabling to Florence by way of France.:But it does excite me.noIt excites me because I cannot make out, for sure, what it was that moved the spectator to resist the officer.5I was gliding along smoothly and without obstruction or accident, until I came to that word "spalleggiato," then the bottom fell out.)yzYou notice what a rich gloom, what a somber and pervading mystery, that word sheds all over the whole Wallachian tragedy.:;That is the charm of the thing, that is the delight of it.12This is where you begin, this is where you revel.You can guess and guess, and have all the fun you like; you need not be afraid there will be an end to it; none is possible, for no amount of guessing will ever furnish you a meaning for that word that you can be sure is the right one.MAll the other words give you hints, by their form, their sound, or their spelling--this one doesn't, this one throws out no hints, this one keeps its secret.XIf there is even the slightest slight shadow of a hint anywhere, it lies in the very meagerly suggestive fact that "spalleggiato" carries our word "egg" in its stomach.IWell, make the most out of it, and then where are you at? You conjecture that the spectator which was smoking in spite of the prohibition and become reprohibited by the guardians, was "egged on" by his friends, and that was owing to that evil influence that he initiated the revolveration in theater that has galloped under the sea and come crashing through the European press without exciting anybody but me. EFBut are you sure, are you dead sure, that that was the way of it? No.HIThen the uncertainty remains, the mystery abides, and with it the charm.D Guess again.YIf I had a phrase-book of a really satisfactory sort I would study it, and not give all my free time to undictionarial readings, but there is no such work on the market.')*The existing phrase-books are inadequate.!qrThey are well enough as far as they go, but when you fall down and skin your leg they don't tell you what to say.ITALIAN WITH GRAMMAR I found that a person of large intelligence could read this beautiful language with considerable facility without a dictionary, but I presently found that to such a parson a grammar could be of use at times.>It is because, if he does not know the WERE'S and the WAS'S and the MAYBE'S and the HAS-BEENS'S apart, confusions and uncertainties can arise..~He can get the idea that a thing is going to happen next week when the truth is that it has already happened week before last.0 !Even more previously, sometimes.-}~Examination and inquiry showed me that the adjectives and such things were frank and fair-minded and straightforward, and did not shuffle; it was the Verb that mixed the hands, it was the Verb that lacked stability, it was the Verb that had no permanent opinion about anything, it was the Verb that was always dodging the issue and putting out the light and making all the trouble.SFurther examination, further inquiry, further reflection, confirmed this judgment, and established beyond peradventure the fact that the Verb was the storm-center.This discovery made plain the right and wise course to pursue in order to acquire certainty and exactness in understanding the statements which the newspaper was daily endeavoring to convey to me: I must catch a Verb and tame it.BCI must find out its ways, I must spot its eccentricities, I must penetrate its disguises, I must intelligently foresee and forecast at least the commoner of the dodges it was likely to try upon a stranger in given circumstances, I must get in on its main shifts and head them off, I must learn its game and play the limit.  I had noticed, in other foreign languages, that verbs are bred in families, and that the members of each family have certain features or resemblances that are common to that family and distinguish it from the other families--the other kin, the cousins and what not.*z{I had noticed that this family-mark is not usually the nose or the hair, so to speak, but the tail--the Termination--and that these tails are quite definitely differentiated; insomuch that an expert can tell a Pluperfect from a Subjunctive by its tail as easily and as certainly as a cowboy can tell a cow from a horse by the like process, the result of observation and culture.*z{I should explain that I am speaking of legitimate verbs, those verbs which in the slang of the grammar are called Regular.There are other--I am not meaning to conceal this; others called Irregulars, born out of wedlock, of unknown and uninteresting parentage, and naturally destitute of family resemblances, as regards to all features, tails included.56But of these pathetic outcasts I have nothing to say.<I do not approve of them, I do not encourage them; I am prudishly delicate and sensitive, and I do not allow them to be used in my presence.TUBut, as I have said, I decided to catch one of the others and break it into harness.BOne is enough.)*Once familiar with its assortment of tails, you are immune; after that, no regular verb can conceal its specialty from you and make you think it is working the past or the future or the conditional or the unconditional when it is engaged in some other line of business--its tail will give it away.:;I found out all these things by myself, without a teacher.-#$I selected the verb AMARE, TO LOVE.Not for any personal reason, for I am indifferent about verbs; I care no more for one verb than for another, and have little or no respect for any of them; but in foreign languages you always begin with that one.>Why, I don't know.TIt is merely habit, I suppose; the first teacher chose it, Adam was satisfied, and there hasn't been a successor since with originality enough to start a fresh one. For they ARE a pretty limited lot, you will admit that? Originality is not in their line; they can't think up anything new, anything to freshen up the old moss-grown dullness of the language lesson and put life and "go" into it, and charm and grace and picturesqueness.JI knew I must look after those details myself; therefore I thought them out and wrote them down, and set for the FACCHINO and explained them to him, and said he must arrange a proper plant, and get together a good stock company among the CONTADINI, and design the costumes, and distribute the parts; and drill the troupe, and be ready in three days to begin on this Verb in a shipshape and workman-like manner.SI told him to put each grand division of it under a foreman, and each subdivision under a subordinate of the rank of sergeant or corporal or something like that, and to have a different uniform for each squad, so that I could tell a Pluperfect from a Compound Future without looking at the book; the whole battery to be under his own special and particular command, with the rank of Brigadier, and I to pay the freight.UVI then inquired into the character and possibilities of the selected verb, and was much disturbed to find that it was over my size, it being chambered for fifty-seven rounds--fifty-seven ways of saying I LOVE without reloading; and yet none of them likely to convince a girl that was laying for a title, or a title that was laying for rocks. It seemed to me that with my inexperience it would be foolish to go into action with this mitrailleuse, so I ordered it to the rear and told the facchino to provide something a little more primitive to start with, something less elaborate, some gentle old-fashioned flint-lock, smooth-bore, double-barreled thing, calculated to cripple at two hundred yards and kill at forty--an arrangement suitable for a beginner who could be satisfied with moderate results on the offstart and did not wish to take the whole territory in the first campaign.D But in vain.iHe was not able to mend the matter, all the verbs being of the same build, all Gatlings, all of the same caliber and delivery, fifty-seven to the volley, and fatal at a mile and a half.CDBut he said the auxiliary verb AVERE, TO HAVE, was a tidy thing, and easy to handle in a seaway, and less likely to miss stays in going about than some of the others; so, upon his recommendation I chose that one, and told him to take it along and scrape its bottom and break out its spinnaker and get it ready for business.=>I will explain that a facchino is a general-utility domestic.@AMine was a horse-doctor in his better days, and a very good one.ABAt the end of three days the facchino-doctor-brigadier was ready.*&'I was also ready, with a stenographer.)'(We were in a room called the Rope-Walk.ghThis is a formidably long room, as is indicated by its facetious name, and is a good place for reviews.BAt 9:30 the F.Ztook his place near me and gave the word of command; the drums began to rumble and thunder, the head of the forces appeared at an upper door, and the "march-past" was on.PQDown they filed, a blaze of variegated color, each squad gaudy in a uniform of its own and bearing a banner inscribed with its verbal rank and quality: first the Present Tense in Mediterranean blue and old gold, then the Past Definite in scarlet and black, then the Imperfect in green and yellow, then the Indicative Future in the stars and stripes, then the Old Red Sandstone Subjunctive in purple and silver--and so on and so on, fifty-seven privates and twenty commissioned and non-commissioned officers; certainly one of the most fiery and dazzling and eloquent sights I have ever beheld.0 !I could not keep back the tears.$,-Presently: "Halt!" commanded the Brigadier.BCFront--face!" "Right dress!" "Stand at ease!" "One--two--three./!"In unison--RECITE!" It was fine.4In one noble volume of sound of all the fifty-seven Haves in the Italian language burst forth in an exalting and splendid confusion.#stThen came commands: "About--face! Eyes--front! Helm alee--hard aport! Forward--march!" and the drums let go again./When the last Termination had disappeared, the commander said the instruction drill would now begin, and asked for suggestions.QRI said: "They say I HAVE, THOU HAST, HE HAS, and so on, but they don't say WHAT.It will be better, and more definite, if they have something to have; just an object, you know, a something--anything will do; anything that will give the listener a sort of personal as well as grammatical interest in their joys and complaints, you see.2He said: "It is a good point.HIWould a dog do?" I said I did not know, but we could try a dog and see.@ASo he sent out an aide-de-camp to give the order to add the dog.'wxThe six privates of the Present Tense now filed in, in charge of Sergeant AVERE (TO HAVE), and displaying their banner._`They formed in line of battle, and recited, one at a time, thus: "IO HO UN CANE, I have a dog.0 !TU HAI UN CANE, thou hast a dog.2EGLI HA UN CANE, he has a dog.-#$NOI ABBIAMO UN CANE, we have a dog.."#VOI AVETE UN CANE, you have a dog.*&'EGLINO HANNO UN CANE, they have a dog.<No comment followed.!/0They returned to camp, and I reflected a while.23The commander said: "I fear you are disappointed.opYes," I said; "they are too monotonous, too singsong, to dead-and-alive; they have no expression, no elocution.56It isn't natural; it could never happen in real life.KLA person who had just acquired a dog is either blame' glad or blame' sorry.9He is not on the fence.=I never saw a case. pqWhat the nation do you suppose is the matter with these people?" He thought maybe the trouble was with the dog.lmHe said: "These are CONTADINI, you know, and they have a prejudice against dogs--that is, against marimane.eMarimana dogs stand guard over people's vines and olives, you know, and are very savage, and thereby a grief and an inconvenience to persons who want other people's things at night.OPIn my judgment they have taken this dog for a marimana, and have soured on him.JI saw that the dog was a mistake, and not functionable: we must try something else; something, if possible, that could evoke sentiment, interest, feeling.."#What is cat, in Italian?" I asked.JGatto.34Is it a gentleman cat, or a lady?" "Gentleman cat.deHow are these people as regards that animal?" "We-ll, they--they--" "You hesitate: that is enough.PQHow are they about chickens?" He tilted his eyes toward heaven in mute ecstasy.C I understood.*&'What is chicken, in Italian?" I asked.BPollo, PODERE.3Podere is Italian for master.@AIt is a title of courtesy, and conveys reverence and admiration.bcPollo is one chicken by itself; when there are enough present to constitute a plural, it is POLLI.7Very well, polli will do.<=Which squad is detailed for duty next?" "The Past Definite.23Send out and order it to the front--with chickens.NOAnd let them understand that we don't want any more of this cold indifference.eHe gave the order to an aide, adding, with a haunting tenderness in his tone and a watering mouth in his aspect: "Convey to them the conception that these are unprotected chickens.+{|He turned to me, saluting with his hand to his temple, and explained, "It will inflame their interest in the poultry, sire.:A few minutes elapsed.JThen the squad marched in and formed up, their faces glowing with enthusiasm, and the file-leader shouted: "EBBI POLLI, I had chickens!" "Good!" I said.@Go on, the next.efAVEST POLLI, thou hadst chickens!" "Fine! Next!" "EBBE POLLI, he had chickens!" "Moltimoltissimo! Go on, the next!" "AVEMMO POLLI, we had chickens!" "Basta-basta aspettatto avanti--last man--CHARGE!" "EBBERO POLLI, they had chickens!" Then they formed in echelon, by columns of fours, refused the left, and retired in great style on the double-quick.&vwI was enchanted, and said: "Now, doctor, that is something LIKE! Chickens are the ticket, there is no doubt about it.')*What is the next squad?" "The Imperfect.(xyHow does it go?" "IO AVENA, I had, TU AVEVI, thou hadst, EGLI AVENA, he had, NOI AV--" "Wait--we've just HAD the hads.56What are you giving me?" "But this is another breed.{What do we want of another breed? Isn't one breed enough? HAD is HAD, and your tricking it out in a fresh way of spelling isn't going to make it any hadder than it was before; now you know that yourself.<=But there is a distinction--they are not just the same Hads.How do you make it out?" "Well, you use that first Had when you are referring to something that happened at a named and sharp and perfectly definite moment; you use the other when the thing happened at a vaguely defined time and in a more prolonged and indefinitely continuous way.78Why, doctor, it is pure nonsense; you know it yourself.Look here: If I have had a had, or have wanted to have had a had, or was in a position right then and there to have had a had that hadn't had any chance to go out hadding on account of this foolish discrimination which lets one Had go hadding in any kind of indefinite grammatical weather but restricts the other one to definite and datable meteoric convulsions, and keeps it pining around and watching the barometer all the time, and liable to get sick through confinement and lack of exercise, and all that sort of thing, why--why, the inhumanity of it is enough, let alone the wanton superfluity and uselessness of any such a loafing consumptive hospital-bird of a Had taking up room and cumbering the place for nothing.These finical refinements revolt me; it is not right, it is not honorable; it is constructive nepotism to keep in office a Had that is so delicate it can't come out when the wind's in the nor'west--I won't have this dude on the payroll.@ACancel his exequator; and look here--" "But you miss the point.@It is like this. CDYou see--" "Never mind explaining, I don't care anything about it.opSix Hads is enough for me; anybody that needs twelve, let him subscribe; I don't want any stock in a Had Trust.XYKnock out the Prolonged and Indefinitely Continuous; four-fifths of it is water, anyway.But I beg you, podere! It is often quite indispensable in cases where--" "Pipe the next squad to the assault!" But it was not to be; for at that moment the dull boom of the noon gun floated up out of far-off Florence, followed by the usual softened jangle of church-bells, Florentine and suburban, that bursts out in murmurous response; by labor-union law the COLAZIONE (1) must stop; stop promptly, stop instantly, stop definitely, like the chosen and best of the breed of Hads. FGColazione is Italian for a collection, a meeting, a seance, a sitting.A BURLESQUE BIOGRAPHY Two or three persons having at different times intimated that if I would write an autobiography they would read it when they got leisure, I yield at last to this frenzied public demand and herewith tender my history. DEOurs is a noble house, and stretches a long way back into antiquity.fgThe earliest ancestor the Twains have any record of was a friend of the family by the name of Higgins.cdThis was in the eleventh century, when our people were living in Aberdeen, county of Cork, England.Why it is that our long line has ever since borne the maternal name (except when one of them now and then took a playful refuge in an alias to avert foolishness), instead of Higgins, is a mystery which none of us has ever felt much desire to stir.=>It is a kind of vague, pretty romance, and we leave it alone./!"All the old families do that way.abArthour Twain was a man of considerable note--a solicitor on the highway in William Rufus's time.FAt about the age of thirty he went to one of those fine old English places of resort called Newgate, to see about something, and never returned again.3While there he died suddenly.JKAugustus Twain seems to have made something of a stir about the year 1160.uHe was as full of fun as he could be, and used to take his old saber and sharpen it up, and get in a convenient place on a dark night, and stick it through people as they went by, to see them jump.9He was a born humorist.But he got to going too far with it; and the first time he was found stripping one of these parties, the authorities removed one end of him, and put it up on a nice high place on Temple Bar, where it could contemplate the people and have a good time.<=He never liked any situation so much or stuck to it so long.Then for the next two hundred years the family tree shows a succession of soldiers--noble, high-spirited fellows, who always went into battle singing, right behind the army, and always went out a-whooping, right ahead of it.rThis is a scathing rebuke to old dead Froissart's poor witticism that our family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that one stuck out at right angles, and bore fruit winter and summer. GHEarly in the fifteenth century we have Beau Twain, called "the Scholar.+%&He wrote a beautiful, beautiful hand. pqAnd he could imitate anybody's hand so closely that it was enough to make a person laugh his head off to see it.*&'He had infinite sport with his talent.klBut by and by he took a contract to break stone for a road, and the roughness of the work spoiled his hand.1Still, he enjoyed life all the time he was in the stone business, which, with inconsiderable intervals, was some forty-two years.4In fact, he died in harness.>During all those long years he gave such satisfaction that he never was through with one contract a week till the government gave him another.;He was a perfect pet.=And he was always a favorite with his fellow-artists, and was a conspicuous member of their benevolent secret society, called the Chain Gang.ijHe always wore his hair short, had a preference for striped clothes, and died lamented by the government.."#He was a sore loss to his country.:For he was so regular.;<Some years later we have the illustrious John Morgan Twain.BCHe came over to this country with Columbus in 1492 as a passenger.?@He appears to have been of a crusty, uncomfortable disposition.noHe complained of the food all the way over, and was always threatening to go ashore unless there was a change.;He wanted fresh shad.Hardly a day passed over his head that he did not go idling about the ship with his nose in the air, sneering about the commander, and saying he did not believe Columbus knew where he was going to or had ever been there before.IJThe memorable cry of "Land ho!" thrilled every heart in the ship but his.He gazed awhile through a piece of smoked glass at the penciled line lying on the distant water, and then said: "Land be hanged--it's a raft!" When this questionable passenger came on board the ship, he brought nothing with him but an old newspaper containing a handkerchief marked "B.6one cotton sock marked "L.7one woolen one marked "D.4and a night-shirt marked "O.CAnd yet during the voyage he worried more about his "trunk," and gave himself more airs about it, than all the rest of the passengers put together.1If the ship was "down by the head," and would not steer, he would go and move his "trunk" further aft, and then watch the effect.ghIf the ship was "by the stern," he would suggest to Columbus to detail some men to "shift that baggage.(xyIn storms he had to be gagged, because his wailings about his "trunk" made it impossible for the men to hear the orders.23The man does not appear to have been openly charged with any gravely unbecoming thing, but it is noted in the ship's log as a "curious circumstance" that albeit he brought his baggage on board the ship in a newspaper, he took it ashore in four trunks, a queensware crate, and a couple of champagne baskets.But when he came back insinuating, in an insolent, swaggering way, that some of this things were missing, and was going to search the other passengers' baggage, it was too much, and they threw him overboard.lmThey watched long and wonderingly for him to come up, but not even a bubble rose on the quietly ebbing tide.But while every one was most absorbed in gazing over the side, and the interest was momentarily increasing, it was observed with consternation that the vessel was adrift and the anchor-cable hanging limp from the bow.Then in the ship's dimmed and ancient log we find this quaint note: "In time it was discouvered yt ye troblesome passenger hadde gone downe and got ye anchor, and toke ye same and solde it to ye dam sauvages from ye interior, saying yt he hadde founde it, ye sonne of a ghun!" Yet this ancestor had good and noble instincts, and it is with pride that we call to mind the fact that he was the first white person who ever interested himself in the work of elevating and civilizing our Indians.He built a commodious jail and put up a gallows, and to his dying day he claimed with satisfaction that he had had a more restraining and elevating influence on the Indians than any other reformer that ever labored among them.At this point the chronicle becomes less frank and chatty, and closes abruptly by saying that the old voyager went to see his gallows perform on the first white man ever hanged in America, and while there received injuries which terminated in his death.ZThe great-grandson of the "Reformer" flourished in sixteen hundred and something, and was known in our annals as "the old Admiral," though in history he had other titles.+{|He was long in command of fleets of swift vessels, well armed and manned, and did great service in hurrying up merchantmen.abVessels which he followed and kept his eagle eye on, always made good fair time across the ocean. But if a ship still loitered in spite of all he could do, his indignation would grow till he could contain himself no longer--and then he would take that ship home where he lived and keep it there carefully, expecting the owners to come for it, but they never did.;And he would try to get the idleness and sloth out of the sailors of that ship by compelling them to take invigorating exercise and a bath.2He called it "walking a plank.8All the pupils liked it.@AAt any rate, they never found any fault with it after trying it.1When the owners were late coming for their ships, the Admiral always burned them, so that the insurance money should not be lost.OPAt last this fine old tar was cut down in the fullness of his years and honors.?And to her dying day, his poor heart-broken widow believed that if he had been cut down fifteen minutes sooner he might have been resuscitated.,|}Charles Henry Twain lived during the latter part of the seventeenth century, and was a zealous and distinguished missionary.[He converted sixteen thousand South Sea islanders, and taught them that a dog-tooth necklace and a pair of spectacles was not enough clothing to come to divine service in. His poor flock loved him very, very dearly; and when his funeral was over, they got up in a body (and came out of the restaurant) with tears in their eyes, and saying, one to another, that he was a good tender missionary, and they wished they had some more of him.tPah-go-to-wah-wah-pukketekeewis (Mighty-Hunter-with-a-Hog-Eye-Twain) adorned the middle of the eighteenth century, and aided General Braddock with all his heart to resist the oppressor Washington.TUIt was this ancestor who fired seventeen times at our Washington from behind a tree./So far the beautiful romantic narrative in the moral story-books is correct; but when that narrative goes on to say that at the seventeenth round the awe-stricken savage said solemnly that that man was being reserved by the Great Spirit for some mighty mission, and he dared not lift his sacrilegious rifle against him again, the narrative seriously impairs the integrity of history. 01What he did say was: "It ain't no (hic) no use.HIAt man's so drunk he can't stan' still long enough for a man to hit him.=>I (hic) I can't 'ford to fool away any more am'nition on him.That was why he stopped at the seventeenth round, and it was a good, plain, matter-of-fact reason, too, and one that easily commends itself to us by the eloquent, persuasive flavor of probability there is about it.I also enjoyed the story-book narrative, but I felt a marring misgiving that every Indian at Braddock's Defeat who fired at a soldier a couple of times (two easily grows to seventeen in a century), and missed him, jumped to the conclusion that the Great Spirit was reserving that soldier for some grand mission; and so I somehow feared that the only reason why Washington's case is remembered and the others forgotten is, that in his the prophecy came true, and in that of the others it didn't.There are not books enough on earth to contain the record of the prophecies Indians and other unauthorized parties have made; but one may carry in his overcoat pockets the record of all the prophecies that have been fulfilled.I will remark here, in passing, that certain ancestors of mine are so thoroughly well-known in history by their aliases, that I have not felt it to be worth while to dwell upon them, or even mention them in the order of their birth.XAmong these may be mentioned Richard Brinsley Twain, alias Guy Fawkes; John Wentworth Twain, alias Sixteen-String Jack; William Hogarth Twain, alias Jack Sheppard; Ananias Twain, alias Baron Munchausen; John George Twain, alias Captain Kydd; and then there are George Francis Twain, Tom Pepper, Nebuchadnezzar, and Baalam's Ass--they all belong to our family, but to a branch of it somewhat distinctly removed from the honorable direct line--in fact, a collateral branch, whose members chiefly differ from the ancient stock in that, in order to acquire the notoriety we have always yearned and hungered for, they have got into a low way of going to jail instead of getting hanged.It is not well, when writing an autobiography, to follow your ancestry down too close to your own time--it is safest to speak only vaguely of your great-grandfather, and then skip from there to yourself, which I now do. 01I was born without teeth--and there Richard III.klhad the advantage of me; but I was born without a humpback, likewise, and there I had the advantage of him.;<My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest.1 But now a thought occurs to me.@My own history would really seem so tame contrasted with that of my ancestors, that it is simply wisdom to leave it unwritten until I am hanged.NIf some other biographies I have read had stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred, it would have been a felicitous thing for the reading public.^_How does it strike you? HOW TO TELL A STORY The Humorous Story an American Development.lmIts Difference from Comic and Witty Stories I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told.?I only claim to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been almost daily in the company of the most expert story-tellers for many years.NOThere are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind--the humorous.."#I will talk mainly about that one.VWThe humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French..~The humorous story depends for its effect upon the MANNER of the telling; the comic story and the witty story upon the MATTER.vThe humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point.:;The humorous story bubbles gently along, the others burst.iThe humorous story is strictly a work of art--high and delicate art--and only an artist can tell it; but no art is necessary in telling the comic and the witty story; anybody can do it.6The art of telling a humorous story--understand, I mean by word of mouth, not print--was created in America, and has remained at home. \]The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it; but the teller of the comic story tells you beforehand that it is one of the funniest things he has ever heard, then tells it with eager delight, and is the first person to laugh when he gets through.jAnd sometimes, if he has had good success, he is so glad and happy that he will repeat the "nub" of it and glance around from face to face, collecting applause, and then repeat it again.2It is a pathetic thing to see.7Very often, of course, the rambling and disjointed humorous story finishes with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it.Then the listener must be alert, for in many cases the teller will divert attention from that nub by dropping it in a carefully casual and indifferent way, with the pretense that he does not know it is a nub.lArtemus Ward used that trick a good deal; then when the belated audience presently caught the joke he would look up with innocent surprise, as if wondering what they had found to laugh at. GHDan Setchell used it before him, Nye and Riley and others use it today. YZBut the teller of the comic story does not slur the nub; he shouts it at you--every time.\And when he prints it, in England, France, Germany, and Italy, he italicizes it, puts some whopping exclamation-points after it, and sometimes explains it in a parenthesis.^_All of which is very depressing, and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better life.ALet me set down an instance of the comic method, using an anecdote which has been popular all over the world for twelve or fifteen hundred years.!qrThe teller tells it in this way: THE WOUNDED SOLDIER In the course of a certain battle a soldier whose leg had been shot off appealed to another soldier who was hurrying by to carry him to the rear, informing him at the same time of the loss which he had sustained; whereupon the generous son of Mars, shouldering the unfortunate, proceeded to carry out his desire._The bullets and cannon-balls were flying in all directions, and presently one of the latter took the wounded man's head off--without, however, his deliverer being aware of it.In no long time he was hailed by an officer, who said: "Where are you going with that carcass?" "To the rear, sir--he's lost his leg!" "His leg, forsooth?" responded the astonished officer; "you mean his head, you booby.mnWhereupon the soldier dispossessed himself of his burden, and stood looking down upon it in great perplexity.<=At length he said: "It is true, sir, just as you have said.Then after a pause he added, "BUT HE TOLD ME IT WAS HIS LEG!!!!!" Here the narrator bursts into explosion after explosion of thunderous horse-laughter, repeating that nub from time to time through his gasping and shriekings and suffocatings.opIt takes only a minute and a half to tell that in its comic-story form; and isn't worth the telling, after all.APut into the humorous-story form it takes ten minutes, and is about the funniest thing I have ever listened to--as James Whitcomb Riley tells it.\He tells it in the character of a dull-witted old farmer who has just heard it for the first time, thinks it is unspeakably funny, and is trying to repeat it to a neighbor.But he can't remember it; so he gets all mixed up and wanders helplessly round and round, putting in tedious details that don't belong in the tale and only retard it; taking them out conscientiously and putting in others that are just as useless; making minor mistakes now and then and stopping to correct them and explain how he came to make them; remembering things which he forgot to put in in their proper place and going back to put them in there; stopping his narrative a good while in order to try to recall the name of the soldier that was hurt, and finally remembering that the soldier's name was not mentioned, and remarking placidly that the name is of no real importance, anyway--better, of course, if one knew it, but not essential, after all--and so on, and so on, and so on.efThe teller is innocent and happy and pleased with himself, and has to stop every little while to hold himself in and keep from laughing outright; and does hold in, but his body quakes in a jelly-like way with interior chuckles; and at the end of the ten minutes the audience have laughed until they are exhausted, and the tears are running down their faces.eThe simplicity and innocence and sincerity and unconsciousness of the old farmer are perfectly simulated, and the result is a performance which is thoroughly charming and delicious. pqThis is art--and fine and beautiful, and only a master can compass it; but a machine could tell the other story.To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct.#-.Another feature is the slurring of the point.jkA third is the dropping of a studied remark apparently without knowing it, as if one where thinking aloud./!"The fourth and last is the pause.9:Artemus Ward dealt in numbers three and four a good deal.He would begin to tell with great animation something which he seemed to think was wonderful; then lose confidence, and after an apparently absent-minded pause add an incongruous remark in a soliloquizing way; and that was the remark intended to explode the mine--and it did.23For instance, he would say eagerly, excitedly, "I once knew a man in New Zealand who hadn't a tooth in his head"--here his animation would die out; a silent, reflective pause would follow, then he would say dreamily, and as if to himself, "and yet that man could beat a drum better than any man I ever saw.lmThe pause is an exceedingly important feature in any kind of story, and a frequently recurring feature, too.cIt is a dainty thing, and delicate, and also uncertain and treacherous; for it must be exactly the right length--no more and no less--or it fails of its purpose and makes trouble.\If the pause is too short the impressive point is passed, and the audience have had time to divine that a surprise is intended--and then you can't surprise them, of course.WOn the platform I used to tell a negro ghost story that had a pause in front of the snapper on the end, and that pause was the most important thing in the whole story.If I got it the right length precisely, I could spring the finishing ejaculation with effect enough to make some impressible girl deliver a startled little yelp and jump out of her seat--and that was what I was after. EFThis story was called "The Golden Arm," and was told in this fashion.XYYou can practice with it yourself--and mind you look out for the pause and get it right.:THE GOLDEN ARM Once 'pon a time dey wuz a momsus mean man, en he live 'way out in de prairie all 'lone by hisself, 'cep'n he had a wife.TUEn bimeby she died, en he tuck en toted her way out dah in de prairie en buried her.ABWell, she had a golden arm--all solid gold, fum de shoulder down.abHe wuz pow'ful mean--pow'ful; en dat night he couldn't sleep, caze he want dat golden arm so bad.When it come midnight he couldn't stan' it no mo'; so he git up, he did, en tuck his lantern en shoved out thoo de storm en dug her up en got de golden arm; en he bent his head down 'gin de 'win, en plowed en plowed en plowed thoo de snow.Den all on a sudden he stop (make a considerable pause here, and look startled, and take a listening attitude) en say: "My LAN', what's dat?" En he listen--en listen--en de win' say (set your teeth together and imitate the wailing and wheezing singsong of the wind), "Bzzz-z-zzz"--en den, way back yonder whah de grave is, he hear a VOICE!--he hear a voice all mix' up in de win'--can't hardly tell 'em 'part-- "Bzzz--zzz--W-h-o--g-o-t--m-y--g-o-l-d-e-n ARM?" (You must begin to shiver violently now.En he begin to shiver en shake, en say, "Oh, my! OH, my lan'!" en de win' blow de lantern out, en de snow en sleet blow in his face en mos' choke him, en he start a-plowin' knee-deep toward home mos' dead, he so sk'yerd--en pooty soon he hear de voice agin, en (pause) it 'us comin AFTER him! "Bzzz--zzz--zzz W-h-o--g-o-t--m-y--g-o-l-d-e-n--ARM?" When he git to de pasture he hear it agin--closter now, en A-COMIN'!--a-comin' back dah in de dark en de storm--(repeat the wind and the voice)."rsWhen he git to de house he rush upstairs en jump in de bed en kiver up, head and years, en lay da shiverin' en shakin'--en den way out dah he hear it AGIN!--en a-COMIN'! En bimeby he hear (pause--awed, listening attitude)--pat--pat--pat HIT'S A-COMIN' UPSTAIRS! Den he hear de latch, en he KNOW it's in de room! Den pooty soon he know it's a-STANNIN' BY DE BED! (Pause.TDen--he know it's a-BENDIN' DOWN OVER HIM--en he cain't skasely git his breath! Den--den--he seem to feel someth'n' C-O-L-D, right down 'most agin his head! (Pause.23Den de voice say, RIGHT AT HIS YEAR--"W-h-o--g-o-t--m-y g-o-l-d-e-n ARM?" (You must wail it out very plaintively and accusingly; then you stare steadily and impressively into the face of the farthest-gone auditor--a girl, preferably--and let that awe-inspiring pause begin to build itself in the deep hush.wWhen it has reached exactly the right length, jump suddenly at that girl and yell, "YOU'VE got it!") If you've got the PAUSE right, she'll fetch a dear little yelp and spring right out of her shoes.3But you MUST get the pause right; and you will find it the most troublesome and aggravating and uncertain thing you ever undertook.GENERAL WASHINGTON'S NEGRO BODY-SERVANT A Biographical Sketch The stirring part of this celebrated colored man's life properly began with his death--that is to say, the notable features of his biography began with the first time he died.THe had been little heard of up to that time, but since then we have never ceased to hear of him; we have never ceased to hear of him at stated, unfailing intervals.4His was a most remarkable career, and I have thought that its history would make a valuable addition to our biographical literature.0Therefore, I have carefully collated the materials for such a work, from authentic sources, and here present them to the public.lI have rigidly excluded from these pages everything of a doubtful character, with the object in view of introducing my work into the schools for the instruction of the youth of my country. EFThe name of the famous body-servant of General Washington was George.After serving his illustrious master faithfully for half a century, and enjoying throughout his long term his high regard and confidence, it became his sorrowful duty at last to lay that beloved master to rest in his peaceful grave by the Potomac.efTen years afterward--in 1809--full of years and honors, he died himself, mourned by all who knew him.?The Boston GAZETTE of that date thus refers to the event: George, the favorite body-servant of the lamented Washington, died in Richmond, Va.&*+last Tuesday, at the ripe age of 95 years.bcHis intellect was unimpaired, and his memory tenacious, up to within a few minutes of his decease.gHe was present at the second installation of Washington as President, and also at his funeral, and distinctly remembered all the prominent incidents connected with those noted events.1From this period we hear no more of the favorite body-servant of General Washington until May, 1825, at which time he died again. GHA Philadelphia paper thus speaks of the sad occurrence: At Macon, Ga.5last week, a colored man named George, who was the favorite body-servant of General Washington, died at the advanced age of 95 years.Up to within a few hours of his dissolution he was in full possession of all his faculties, and could distinctly recollect the second installation of Washington, his death and burial, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battle of Trenton, the griefs and hardships of Valley Forge, etc. EFDeceased was followed to the grave by the entire population of Macon.qOn the Fourth of July, 1830, and also of 1834 and 1836, the subject of this sketch was exhibited in great state upon the rostrum of the orator of the day, and in November of 1840 he died again.IThe St.efLouis REPUBLICAN of the 25th of that month spoke as follows: "ANOTHER RELIC OF THE REVOLUTION GONE.`aGeorge, once the favorite body-servant of General Washington, died yesterday at the house of Mr.@AJohn Leavenworth in this city, at the venerable age of 95 years.He was in the full possession of his faculties up to the hour of his death, and distinctly recollected the first and second installations and death of President Washington, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles of Trenton and Monmouth, the sufferings of the patriot army at Valley Forge, the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, the speech of Patrick Henry in the Virginia House of Delegates, and many other old-time reminiscences of stirring interest.23Few white men die lamented as was this aged negro.*&'The funeral was very largely attended.During the next ten or eleven years the subject of this sketch appeared at intervals at Fourth-of-July celebrations in various parts of the country, and was exhibited upon the rostrum with flattering success.*&'But in the fall of 1855 he died again.The California papers thus speak of the event: ANOTHER OLD HERO GONE Died, at Dutch Flat, on the 7th of March, George (once the confidential body-servant of General Washington), at the great age of 95 years.jkHis memory, which did not fail him till the last, was a wonderful storehouse of interesting reminiscences.He could distinctly recollect the first and second installations and death of President Washington, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles of Trenton and Monmouth, and Bunker Hill, the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, and Braddock's defeat.%uvGeorge was greatly respected in Dutch Flat, and it is estimated that there were 10,000 people present at his funeral.KThe last time the subject of this sketch died was in June, 1864; and until we learn the contrary, it is just to presume that he died permanently this time.The Michigan papers thus refer to the sorrowful event: ANOTHER CHERISHED REMNANT OF THE REVOLUTION GONE George, a colored man, and once the favorite body-servant of George Washington, died in Detroit last week, at the patriarchal age of 95 years./To the moment of his death his intellect was unclouded, and he could distinctly remember the first and second installations and death of Washington, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles of Trenton and Monmouth, and Bunker Hill, the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, Braddock's defeat, the throwing over of the tea in Boston harbor, and the landing of the Pilgrims.WXHe died greatly respected, and was followed to the grave by a vast concourse of people.VWThe faithful old servant is gone! We shall never see him more until he turns up again.AHe has closed his long and splendid career of dissolution, for the present, and sleeps peacefully, as only they sleep who have earned their rest.(()He was in all respects a remarkable man.7He held his age better than any celebrity that has figured in history; and the longer he lived the stronger and longer his memory grew.PQIf he lives to die again, he will distinctly recollect the discovery of America.uThe above resume of his biography I believe to be substantially correct, although it is possible that he may have died once or twice in obscure places where the event failed of newspaper notoriety. ]^One fault I find in all the notices of his death I have quoted, and this ought to be correct.;<In them he uniformly and impartially died at the age of 95.7This could not have been.^_He might have done that once, or maybe twice, but he could not have continued it indefinitely.lmAllowing that when he first died, he died at the age of 95, he was 151 years old when he died last, in 1864.56But his age did not keep pace with his recollections.klWhen he died the last time, he distinctly remembered the landing of the Pilgrims, which took place in 1620.He must have been about twenty years old when he witnessed that event, wherefore it is safe to assert that the body-servant of General Washington was in the neighborhood of two hundred and sixty or seventy years old when he departed this life finally.Having waited a proper length of time, to see if the subject of his sketch had gone from us reliably and irrevocably, I now publish his biography with confidence, and respectfully offer it to a mourning nation.RSI see by the papers that this infamous old fraud has just died again, in Arkansas.NOThis makes six times that he is known to have died, and always in a new place.0The death of Washington's body-servant has ceased to be a novelty; it's charm is gone; the people are tired of it; let it cease.This well-meaning but misguided negro has not put six different communities to the expense of burying him in state, and has swindled tens of thousands of people into following him to the grave under the delusion that a select and peculiar distinction was being conferred upon them.Let him stay buried for good now; and let that newspaper suffer the severest censure that shall ever, in all the future time, publish to the world that General Washington's favorite colored body-servant has died again.WIT INSPIRATIONS OF THE "TWO-YEAR-OLDS" All infants appear to have an impertinent and disagreeable fashion nowadays of saying "smart" things on most occasions that offer, and especially on occasions when they ought not to be saying anything at all.-}~Judging by the average published specimens of smart sayings, the rising generation of children are little better than idiots.yAnd the parents must surely be but little better than the children, for in most cases they are the publishers of the sunbursts of infantile imbecility which dazzle us from the pages of our periodicals.I may seem to speak with some heat, not to say a suspicion of personal spite; and I do admit that it nettles me to hear about so many gifted infants in these days, and remember that I seldom said anything smart when I was a child.12I tried it once or twice, but it was not popular."rsThe family were not expecting brilliant remarks from me, and so they snubbed me sometimes and spanked me the rest.But it makes my flesh creep and my blood run cold to think what might have happened to me if I had dared to utter some of the smart things of this generation's "four-year-olds" where my father could hear me.3To have simply skinned me alive and considered his duty at an end would have seemed to him criminal leniency toward one so sinning.@AHe was a stern, unsmiling man, and hated all forms of precocity.noIf I had said some of the things I have referred to, and said them in his hearing, he would have destroyed me.?He would, indeed.56He would, provided the opportunity remained with him.&vwBut it would not, for I would have had judgment enough to take some strychnine first and say my smart thing afterward.>?The fair record of my life has been tarnished by just one pun._`My father overheard that, and he hunted me over four or five townships seeking to take my life.2If I had been full-grown, of course he would have been right; but, child as I was, I could not know how wicked a thing I had done._`I made one of those remarks ordinarily called "smart things" before that, but it was not a pun.KLStill, it came near causing a serious rupture between my father and myself.6My father and mother, my uncle Ephraim and his wife, and one or two others were present, and the conversation turned on a name for me.I was lying there trying some India-rubber rings of various patterns, and endeavoring to make a selection, for I was tired of trying to cut my teeth on people's fingers, and wanted to get hold of something that would enable me to hurry the thing through and get something else.DEDid you ever notice what a nuisance it was cutting your teeth on your nurse's finger, or how back-breaking and tiresome it was trying to cut them on your big toe? And did you never get out of patience and wish your teeth were in Jerico long before you got them half cut? To me it seems as if these things happened yesterday.1 And they did, to some children.BBut I digress. 01I was lying there trying the India-rubber rings.I remember looking at the clock and noticing that in an hour and twenty-five minutes I would be two weeks old, and thinking how little I had done to merit the blessings that were so unsparingly lavished upon me.')*My father said: "Abraham is a good name./!"My grandfather was named Abraham.')*My mother said: "Abraham is a good name.F Very well.')*Let us have Abraham for one of his names.)'(I said: "Abraham suits the subscriber.MMy father frowned, my mother looked pleased; my aunt said: "What a little darling it is!" My father said: "Isaac is a good name, and Jacob is a good name.45My mother assented, and said: "No names are better.(()Let us add Isaac and Jacob to his names.<I said: "All right. 01Isaac and Jacob are good enough for yours truly.-#$Pass me that rattle, if you please.(()I can't chew India-rubber rings all day. GHNot a soul made a memorandum of these sayings of mine, for publication. FGI saw that, and did it myself, else they would have been utterly lost.So far from meeting with a generous encouragement like other children when developing intellectually, I was now furiously scowled upon by my father; my mother looked grieved and anxious, and even my aunt had about her an expression of seeming to think that maybe I had gone too far.*z{I took a vicious bite out of an India-rubber ring, and covertly broke the rattle over the kitten's head, but said nothing.<=Presently my father said: "Samuel is a very excellent name.2I saw that trouble was coming.7Nothing could prevent it.CDI laid down my rattle; over the side of the cradle I dropped my uncle's silver watch, the clothes-brush, the toy dog, my tin soldier, the nutmeg-grater, and other matters which I was accustomed to examine, and meditate upon and make pleasant noises with, and bang and batter and break when I needed wholesome entertainment.CThen I put on my little frock and my little bonnet, and took my pygmy shoes in one hand and my licorice in the other, and climbed out on the floor.?@I said to myself, Now, if the worse comes to worst, I am ready.WXThen I said aloud, in a firm voice: "Father, I cannot, cannot wear the name of Samuel.3My son!" "Father, I mean it.G I cannot.<=Why?" "Father, I have an invincible antipathy to that name.3My son, this is unreasonable.!/0Many great and good men have been named Samuel."./Sir, I have yet to hear of the first instance.-#$What! There was Samuel the prophet.&*+Was not he great and good?" "Not so very.!/0My son! With His own voice the Lord called him.=Yes, sir, and had to call him a couple times before he could come!" And then I sallied forth, and that stern old man sallied forth after me.NOHe overtook me at noon the following day, and when the interview was over I had acquired the name of Samuel, and a thrashing, and other useful information; and by means of this compromise my father's wrath was appeased and a misunderstanding bridged over which might have become a permanent rupture if I had chosen to be unreasonable.But just judging by this episode, what would my father have done to me if I had ever uttered in his hearing one of the flat, sickly things these "two-years-olds" say in print nowadays? In my opinion there would have been a case of infanticide in our family.AN ENTERTAINING ARTICLE I take the following paragraph from an article in the Boston ADVERTISER: AN ENGLISH CRITIC ON MARK TWAIN Perhaps the most successful flights of humor of Mark Twain have been descriptions of the persons who did not appreciate his humor at all.STWe have become familiar with the Californians who were thrilled with terror by his burlesque of a newspaper reporter's way of telling a story, and we have heard of the Pennsylvania clergyman who sadly returned his INNOCENTS ABROAD to the book-agent with the remark that "the man who could shed tears over the tomb of Adam must be an idiot.STBut Mark Twain may now add a much more glorious instance to his string of trophies.@The SATURDAY REVIEW, in its number of October 8th, reviews his book of travels, which has been republished in England, and reviews it seriously.We can imagine the delight of the humorist in reading this tribute to his power; and indeed it is so amusing in itself that he can hardly do better than reproduce the article in full in his next monthly Memoranda.7Publishing the above paragraph thus, gives me a sort of authority for reproducing the SATURDAY REVIEW'S article in full in these pages.OPI dearly wanted to do it, for I cannot write anything half so delicious myself.0If I had a cast-iron dog that could read this English criticism and preserve his austerity, I would drive him off the door-step./!"From the London "Saturday Review.$,-REVIEWS OF NEW BOOKS THE INNOCENTS ABROAD.>A Book of Travels.BBy Mark Twain.6London: Hotten, publisher.>Hotten, publisher.4Lord Macaulay died too soon.fgWe never felt this so deeply as when we finished the last chapter of the above-named extravagant work.Macaulay died too soon--for none but he could mete out complete and comprehensive justice to the insolence, the impertinence, the presumption, the mendacity, and, above all, the majestic ignorance of this author.lTo say that the INNOCENTS ABROAD is a curious book, would be to use the faintest language--would be to speak of the Matterhorn as a neat elevation or of Niagara as being "nice" or "pretty.UVCurious" is too tame a word wherewith to describe the imposing insanity of this work.56There is no word that is large enough or long enough.efLet us, therefore, photograph a passing glimpse of book and author, and trust the rest to the reader.Let the cultivated English student of human nature picture to himself this Mark Twain as a person capable of doing the following-described things--and not only doing them, but with incredible innocence PRINTING THEM calmly and tranquilly in a book.qFor instance: He states that he entered a hair-dresser's in Paris to get shaved, and the first "rake" the barber gave him with his razor it LOOSENED HIS "HIDE" and LIFTED HIM OUT OF THE CHAIR.-#$This is unquestionably exaggerated.&vwIn Florence he was so annoyed by beggars that he pretends to have seized and eaten one in a frantic spirit of revenge.*&'There is, of course, no truth in this.iHe gives at full length a theatrical program seventeen or eighteen hundred years old, which he professes to have found in the ruins of the Coliseum, among the dirt and mold and rubbish.>It is a sufficient comment upon this statement to remark that even a cast-iron program would not have lasted so long under such circumstances.\In Greece he plainly betrays both fright and flight upon one occasion, but with frozen effrontery puts the latter in this falsely tamed form: "We SIDLED toward the Piraeus.-.Sidled," indeed! He does not hesitate to intimate that at Ephesus, when his mule strayed from the proper course, he got down, took him under his arm, carried him to the road again, pointed him right, remounted, and went to sleep contentedly till it was time to restore the beast to the path once more.?He states that a growing youth among his ship's passengers was in the constant habit of appeasing his hunger with soap and oakum between meals.In Palestine he tells of ants that came eleven miles to spend the summer in the desert and brought their provisions with them; yet he shows by his description of the country that the feat was an impossibility.He mentions, as if it were the most commonplace of matters, that he cut a Moslem in two in broad daylight in Jerusalem, with Godfrey de Bouillon's sword, and would have shed more blood IF HE HAD HAD A GRAVEYARD OF HIS OWN.34These statements are unworthy a moment's attention.#stTwain or any other foreigner who did such a thing in Jerusalem would be mobbed, and would infallibly lose his life.HBut why go on? Why repeat more of his audacious and exasperating falsehoods? Let us close fittingly with this one: he affirms that "in the mosque of St.Sophia at Constantinople I got my feet so stuck up with a complication of gums, slime, and general impurity, that I wore out more than two thousand pair of bootjacks getting my boots off that night, and even then some Christian hide peeled off with them.@It is monstrous.ABSuch statements are simply lies--there is no other name for them.Will the reader longer marvel at the brutal ignorance that pervades the American nation when we tell him that we are informed upon perfectly good authority that this extravagant compilation of falsehoods, this exhaustless mine of stupendous lies, this INNOCENTS ABROAD, has actually been adopted by the schools and colleges of several of the states as a text-book! But if his falsehoods are distressing, his innocence and his ignorance are enough to make one burn the book and despise the author.In one place he was so appalled at the sudden spectacle of a murdered man, unveiled by the moonlight, that he jumped out of the window, going through sash and all, and then remarks with the most childlike simplicity that he "was not scared, but was considerably agitated.-}~It puts us out of patience to note that the simpleton is densely unconscious that Lucrezia Borgia ever existed off the stage.*z{He is vulgarly ignorant of all foreign languages, but is frank enough to criticize, the Italians' use of their own tongue.{He says they spell the name of their great painter "Vinci, but pronounce it Vinchy"--and then adds with a naivete possible only to helpless ignorance, "foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.lmIn another place he commits the bald absurdity of putting the phrase "tare an ouns" into an Italian's mouth.67In Rome he unhesitatingly believes the legend that St.'(Philip Neri's heart was so inflamed with divine love that it burst his ribs--believes it wholly because an author with a learned list of university degrees strung after his name endorses it--"otherwise," says this gentle idiot, "I should have felt a curiosity to know what Philip had for dinner.uOur author makes a long, fatiguing journey to the Grotto del Cane on purpose to test its poisoning powers on a dog--got elaborately ready for the experiment, and then discovered that he had no dog.(xyA wiser person would have kept such a thing discreetly to himself, but with this harmless creature everything comes out. [\He hurts his foot in a rut two thousand years old in exhumed Pompeii, and presently, when staring at one of the cinder-like corpses unearthed in the next square, conceives the idea that maybe it is the remains of the ancient Street Commissioner, and straightway his horror softens down to a sort of chirpy contentment with the condition of things.uIn Damascus he visits the well of Ananias, three thousand years old, and is as surprised and delighted as a child to find that the water is "as pure and fresh as if the well had been dug yesterday.lIn the Holy Land he gags desperately at the hard Arabic and Hebrew Biblical names, and finally concludes to call them Baldwinsville, Williamsburgh, and so on, "for convenience of spelling.7We have thus spoken freely of this man's stupefying simplicity and innocence, but we cannot deal similarly with his colossal ignorance.2We do not know where to begin.NOAnd if we knew where to begin, we certainly would not know where to leave off.(()We will give one specimen, and one only.RSHe did not know, until he got to Rome, that Michael Angelo was dead! And then, instead of crawling away and hiding his shameful ignorance somewhere, he proceeds to express a pious, grateful sort of satisfaction that he is gone and out of his troubles! No, the reader may seek out the author's exhibition of his uncultivation for himself.EThe book is absolutely dangerous, considering the magnitude and variety of its misstatements, and the convincing confidence with which they are made.45And yet it is a text-book in the schools of America.The poor blunderer mouses among the sublime creations of the Old Masters, trying to acquire the elegant proficiency in art-knowledge, which he has a groping sort of comprehension is a proper thing for a traveled man to be able to display.23But what is the manner of his study? And what is the progress he achieves? To what extent does he familiarize himself with the great pictures of Italy, and what degree of appreciation does he arrive at? Read: "When we see a monk going about with a lion and looking up into heaven, we know that that is St.KMark..~When we see a monk with a book and a pen, looking tranquilly up to heaven, trying to think of a word, we know that that is St.H Matthew.IWhen we see a monk sitting on a rock, looking tranquilly up to heaven, with a human skull beside him, and without other baggage, we know that that is St.IJerome.JKBecause we know that he always went flying light in the matter of baggage.'wxWhen we see other monks looking tranquilly up to heaven, but having no trade-mark, we always ask who those parties are.%+,We do this because we humbly wish to learn.GHHe then enumerates the thousands and thousand of copies of these several pictures which he has seen, and adds with accustomed simplicity that he feels encouraged to believe that when he has seen "Some More" of each, and had a larger experience, he will eventually "begin to take an absorbing interest in them"--the vulgar boor.KLThat we have shown this to be a remarkable book, we think no one will deny.lmThat is a pernicious book to place in the hands of the confiding and uniformed, we think we have also shown.bcThat the book is a deliberate and wicked creation of a diseased mind, is apparent upon every page.78Having placed our judgment thus upon record, let us close with what charity we can, by remarking that even in this volume there is some good to be found; for whenever the author talks of his own country and lets Europe alone, he never fails to make himself interesting, and not only interesting but instructive. No one can read without benefit his occasional chapters and paragraphs, about life in the gold and silver mines of California and Nevada; about the Indians of the plains and deserts of the West, and their cannibalism; about the raising of vegetables in kegs of gunpowder by the aid of two or three teaspoons of guano; about the moving of small arms from place to place at night in wheelbarrows to avoid taxes; and about a sort of cows and mules in the Humboldt mines, that climb down chimneys and disturb the people at night.;<These matters are not only new, but are well worth knowing.=>It is a pity the author did not put in more of the same kind."rsHis book is well written and is exceedingly entertaining, and so it just barely escaped being quite valuable also.SOne month later) Latterly I have received several letters, and see a number of newspaper paragraphs, all upon a certain subject, and all of about the same tenor.3I here give honest specimens.BOne is from a New York paper, one is from a letter from an old friend, and one is from a letter from a New York publisher who is a stranger to me.=I humbly endeavor to make these bits toothsome with the remark that the article they are praising (which appeared in the December GALAXY, and PRETENDED to be a criticism from the London SATURDAY REVIEW on my INNOCENTS ABROAD) WAS WRITTEN BY MYSELF, EVERY LINE OF IT: The HERALD says the richest thing out is the "serious critique" in the London SATURDAY REVIEW, on Mark Twain's INNOCENTS ABROAD.We thought before we read it that it must be "serious," as everybody said so, and were even ready to shed a few tears; but since perusing it, we are bound to confess that next to Mark Twain's "Jumping Frog" it's the finest bit of humor and sarcasm that we've come across in many a day."./I do not get a compliment like that every day.XI used to think that your writings were pretty good, but after reading the criticism in THE GALAXY from the LONDON REVIEW, have discovered what an ass I must have been.oIf suggestions are in order, mine is, that you put that article in your next edition of the INNOCENTS, as an extra chapter, if you are not afraid to put your own humor in competition with it.+%&It is as rich a thing as I ever read.34Which is strong commendation from a book publisher.]The London Reviewer, my friend, is not the stupid, "serious" creature he pretends to be, _I_ think; but, on the contrary, has a keep appreciation and enjoyment of your book. \]As I read his article in THE GALAXY, I could imagine him giving vent to many a hearty laugh.But he is writing for Catholics and Established Church people, and high-toned, antiquated, conservative gentility, whom it is a delight to him to help you shock, while he pretends to shake his head with owlish density.+%&He is a magnificent humorist himself.."#Now that is graceful and handsome.YI take off my hat to my life-long friend and comrade, and with my feet together and my fingers spread over my heart, I say, in the language of Alabama, "You do me proud.MNI stand guilty of the authorship of the article, but I did not mean any harm. YZI saw by an item in the Boston ADVERTISER that a solemn, serious critique on the English edition of my book had appeared in the London SATURDAY REVIEW, and the idea of SUCH a literary breakfast by a stolid, ponderous British ogre of the quill was too much for a naturally weak virtue, and I went home and burlesqued it--reveled in it, I may say.(xyI never saw a copy of the real SATURDAY REVIEW criticism until after my burlesque was written and mailed to the printer.0But when I did get hold of a copy, I found it to be vulgar, awkwardly written, ill-natured, and entirely serious and in earnest.efThe gentleman who wrote the newspaper paragraph above quoted had not been misled as to its character.!/0If any man doubts my word now, I will kill him."./No, I will not kill him; I will win his money.fI will bet him twenty to one, and let any New York publisher hold the stakes, that the statements I have above made as to the authorship of the article in question are entirely true.EPerhaps I may get wealthy at this, for I am willing to take all the bets that offer; and if a man wants larger odds, I will give him all he requires.But he ought to find out whether I am betting on what is termed "a sure thing" or not before he ventures his money, and he can do that by going to a public library and examining the London SATURDAY REVIEW of October 8th, which contains the real critique.BCBless me, some people thought that _I_ was the "sold" person! P.NI cannot resist the temptation to toss in this most savory thing of all--this easy, graceful, philosophical disquisition, with his happy, chirping confidence._`It is from the Cincinnati ENQUIRER: Nothing is more uncertain than the value of a fine cigar.NNine smokers out of ten would prefer an ordinary domestic article, three for a quarter, to fifty-cent Partaga, if kept in ignorance of the cost of the latter.ijThe flavor of the Partaga is too delicate for palates that have been accustomed to Connecticut seed leaf.<So it is with humor.OPThe finer it is in quality, the more danger of its not being recognized at all.OPEven Mark Twain has been taken in by an English review of his INNOCENTS ABROAD.UMark Twain is by no means a coarse humorist, but the Englishman's humor is so much finer than his, that he mistakes it for solid earnest, and "lafts most consumedly.!/0A man who cannot learn stands in his own light.  Hereafter, when I write an article which I know to be good, but which I may have reason to fear will not, in some quarters, be considered to amount to much, coming from an American, I will aver that an Englishman wrote it and that it is copied from a London journal.BCAnd then I will occupy a back seat and enjoy the cordial applause.oStill later) Mark Twain at last sees that the SATURDAY REVIEW'S criticism of his INNOCENTS ABROAD was not serious, and he is intensely mortified at the thought of having been so badly sold.HHe takes the only course left him, and in the last GALAXY claims that HE wrote the criticism himself, and published it in THE GALAXY to sell the public.45This is ingenious, but unfortunately it is not true.If any of our readers will take the trouble to call at this office we sill show them the original article in the SATURDAY REVIEW of October 8th, which, on comparison, will be found to be identical with the one published in THE GALAXY. Z[The best thing for Mark to do will be to admit that he was sold, and say no more about it.>?The above is from the Cincinnati ENQUIRER, and is a falsehood.>Come to the proof.If the ENQUIRER people, through any agent, will produce at THE GALAXY office a London SATURDAY REVIEW of October 8th, containing an article which, on comparison, will be found to be identical with the one published in THE GALAXY, I will pay to that agent five hundred dollars cash.VWMoreover, if at any specified time I fail to produce at the same place a copy of the London SATURDAY REVIEW of October 8th, containing a lengthy criticism upon the INNOCENTS ABROAD, entirely different, in every paragraph and sentence, from the one I published in THE GALAXY, I will pay to the ENQUIRER agent another five hundred dollars cash.;I offer Sheldon & Co.34publishers, 500 Broadway, New York, as my "backers.OPAny one in New York, authorized by the ENQUIRER, will receive prompt attention.EIt is an easy and profitable way for the ENQUIRER people to prove that they have not uttered a pitiful, deliberate falsehood in the above paragraphs.`aWill they swallow that falsehood ignominiously, or will they send an agent to THE GALAXY office.;<I think the Cincinnati ENQUIRER must be edited by children.WXA LETTER TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY Riverdale-on-the-Hudson, OCTOBER 15, 1902.H THE HON.#-.THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY, WASHINGTON, D.()Sir,--Prices for the customary kinds of winter fuel having reached an altitude which puts them out of the reach of literary persons in straitened circumstances, I desire to place with you the following order: Forty-five tons best old dry government bonds, suitable for furnace, gold 7 per cents.F preferred.?@Twelve tons early greenbacks, range size, suitable for cooking._`Eight barrels seasoned 25 and 50 cent postal currency, vintage of 1866, eligible for kindlings.xPlease deliver with all convenient despatch at my house in Riverdale at lowest rates for spot cash, and send bill to Your obliged servant, Mark Twain, Who will be very grateful, and will vote right.!qrAMENDED OBITUARIES TO THE EDITOR: Sir,--I am approaching seventy; it is in sight; it is only three years away.4Necessarily, I must go soon.iIt is but matter-of-course wisdom, then, that I should begin to set my worldly house in order now, so that it may be done calmly and with thoroughness, in place of waiting until the last day, when, as we have often seen, the attempt to set both houses in order at the same time has been marred by the necessity for haste and by the confusion and waste of time arising from the inability of the notary and the ecclesiastic to work together harmoniously, taking turn about and giving each other friendly assistance--not perhaps in fielding, which could hardly be expected, but at least in the minor offices of keeping game and umpiring; by consequence of which conflict of interests and absence of harmonious action a draw has frequently resulted where this ill-fortune could not have happened if the houses had been set in order one at a time and hurry avoided by beginning in season, and giving to each the amount of time fairly and justly proper to it.In setting my earthly house in order I find it of moment that I should attend in person to one or two matters which men in my position have long had the habit of leaving wholly to others, with consequences often most regrettable. FGI wish to speak of only one of these matters at this time: Obituaries.'wxOf necessity, an Obituary is a thing which cannot be so judiciously edited by any hand as by that of the subject of it.In such a work it is not the Facts that are of chief importance, but the light which the obituarist shall throw upon them, the meaning which he shall dress them in, the conclusions which he shall draw from them, and the judgments which he shall deliver upon them.67The Verdicts, you understand: that is the danger-line.-.In considering this matter, in view of my approaching change, it has seemed to me wise to take such measures as may be feasible, to acquire, by courtesy of the press, access to my standing obituaries, with the privilege--if this is not asking too much--of editing, not their Facts, but their Verdicts.]This, not for the present profit, further than as concerns my family, but as a favorable influence usable on the Other Side, where there are some who are not friendly to me.&vwWith this explanation of my motives, I will now ask you of your courtesy to make an appeal for me to the public press.It is my desire that such journals and periodicals as have obituaries of me lying in their pigeonholes, with a view to sudden use some day, will not wait longer, but will publish them now, and kindly send me a marked copy.XYMy address is simply New York City--I have no other that is permanent and not transient.wI will correct them--not the Facts, but the Verdicts--striking out such clauses as could have a deleterious influence on the Other Side, and replacing them with clauses of a more judicious character.I should, of course, expect to pay double rates for both the omissions and the substitutions; and I should also expect to pay quadruple rates for all obituaries which proved to be rightly and wisely worded in the originals, thus requiring no emendations at all.It is my desire to leave these Amended Obituaries neatly bound behind me as a perennial consolation and entertainment to my family, and as an heirloom which shall have a mournful but definite commercial value for my remote posterity.+{|I beg, sir, that you will insert this Advertisement (1t-eow, agate, inside), and send the bill to Yours very respectfully.E Mark Twain.NP.For the best Obituary--one suitable for me to read in public, and calculated to inspire regret--I desire to offer a Prize, consisting of a Portrait of me done entirely by myself in pen and ink without previous instructions.?@The ink warranted to be the kind used by the very best artists.XYA MONUMENT TO ADAM Some one has revealed to the TRIBUNE that I once suggested to Rev.G Thomas K.MNBeecher, of Elmira, New York, that we get up a monument to Adam, and that Mr.4Beecher favored the project.2There is more to it than that.IJThe matter started as a joke, but it came somewhat near to materializing.3It is long ago--thirty years.CDarwin's DESCENT OF MAN has been in print five or six years, and the storm of indignation raised by it was still raging in pulpits and periodicals.ABIn tracing the genesis of the human race back to its sources, Mr.,$%Darwin had left Adam out altogether. YZWe had monkeys, and "missing links," and plenty of other kinds of ancestors, but no Adam.@Jesting with Mr.6Beecher and other friends in Elmira, I said there seemed to be a likelihood that the world would discard Adam and accept the monkey, and that in the course of time Adam's very name would be forgotten in the earth; therefore this calamity ought to be averted; a monument would accomplish this, and Elmira ought not to waste this honorable opportunity to do Adam a favor and herself a credit.3Then the unexpected happened.VTwo bankers came forward and took hold of the matter--not for fun, not for sentiment, but because they saw in the monument certain commercial advantages for the town.,|}The project had seemed gently humorous before--it was more than that now, with this stern business gravity injected into it.%+,The bankers discussed the monument with me.;We met several times.OPThey proposed an indestructible memorial, to cost twenty-five thousand dollars.zThe insane oddity of a monument set up in a village to preserve a name that would outlast the hills and the rocks without any such help, would advertise Elmira to the ends of the earth--and draw custom.hIt would be the only monument on the planet to Adam, and in the matter of interest and impressiveness could never have a rival until somebody should set up a monument to the Milky Way.BPeople would come from every corner of the globe and stop off to look at it, no tour of the world would be complete that left out Adam's monument.78Elmira would be a Mecca; there would be pilgrim ships at pilgrim rates, pilgrim specials on the continent's railways; libraries would be written about the monument, every tourist would kodak it, models of it would be for sale everywhere in the earth, its form would become as familiar as the figure of Napoleon.dOne of the bankers subscribed five thousand dollars, and I think the other one subscribed half as much, but I do not remember with certainty now whether that was the figure or not.23We got designs made--some of them came from Paris.9In the beginning--as a detail of the project when it was yet a joke--I had framed a humble and beseeching and perfervid petition to Congress begging the government to built the monument, as a testimony of the Great Republic's gratitude to the Father of the Human Race and as a token of her loyalty to him in this dark day of humiliation when his older children were doubting and deserting him.It seemed to me that this petition ought to be presented, now--it would be widely and feelingly abused and ridiculed and cursed, and would advertise our scheme and make our ground-floor stock go off briskly./!"So I sent it to General Joseph R. CDHawley, who was then in the House, and he said he would present it.;But he did not do it.JI think he explained that when he came to read it he was afraid of it: it was too serious, to gushy, too sentimental--the House might take it for earnest.ZWe ought to have carried out our monument scheme; we could have managed it without any great difficulty, and Elmira would now be the most celebrated town in the universe.Very recently I began to build a book in which one of the minor characters touches incidentally upon a project for a monument to Adam, and now the TRIBUNE has come upon a trace of the forgotten jest of thirty years ago.23Apparently mental telegraphy is still in business.?@It is odd; but the freaks of mental telegraphy are usually odd.XA HUMANE WORD FROM SATAN (The following letter, signed by Satan and purporting to come from him, we have reason to believe was not written by him, but by Mark Twain.IEditor.efTO THE EDITOR OF HARPER'S WEEKLY: Dear Sir and Kinsman,--Let us have done with this frivolous talk. [\The American Board accepts contributions from me every year: then why shouldn't it from Mr.sRockefeller? In all the ages, three-fourths of the support of the great charities has been conscience-money, as my books will show: then what becomes of the sting when that term is applied to Mr.VWRockefeller's gift? The American Board's trade is financed mainly from the graveyards.7Bequests, you understand.?Conscience-money.+{|Confession of an old crime and deliberate perpetration of a new one; for deceased's contribution is a robbery of his heirs.7Shall the Board decline bequests because they stand for one of these offenses every time and generally for both? Allow me to continue.UVThe charge must persistently and resentfully and remorselessly dwelt upon is that Mr.efRockefeller's contribution is incurably tainted by perjury--perjury proved against him in the courts.BIT MAKES US SMILE--down in my place! Because there isn't a rich man in your vast city who doesn't perjure himself every year before the tax board.34They are all caked with perjury, many layers thick.9Iron-clad, so to speak._`If there is one that isn't, I desire to acquire him for my museum, and will pay Dinosaur rates.GWill you say it isn't infraction of the law, but only annual evasion of it? Comfort yourselves with that nice distinction if you like--FOR THE PRESENT.iBut by and by, when you arrive, I will show you something interesting: a whole hell-full of evaders! Sometimes a frank law-breaker turns up elsewhere, but I get those others every time.8To return to my muttons.4I wish you to remember that my rich perjurers are contributing to the American Board with frequency: it is money filched from the sworn-off personal tax; therefore it is the wages of sin; therefore it is my money; therefore it is _I_ that contribute it; and, finally, it is therefore as I have said: since the Board daily accepts contributions from me, why should it decline them from Mr.OPRockefeller, who is as good as I am, let the courts say what they may? Satan.CDINTRODUCTION TO "THE NEW GUIDE OF THE CONVERSATION IN PORTUGUESE AND ENGLISH" by Pedro Carolino In this world of uncertainties, there is, at any rate, one thing which may be pretty confidently set down as a certainty: and that is, that this celebrated little phrase-book will never die while the English language lasts.HIts delicious unconscious ridiculousness, and its enchanting naivete, as are supreme and unapproachable, in their way, as are Shakespeare's sublimities.Whatsoever is perfect in its kind, in literature, is imperishable: nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect, it must and will stand alone: its immortality is secure.It is one of the smallest books in the world, but few big books have received such wide attention, and been so much pondered by the grave and learned, and so much discussed and written about by the thoughtful, the thoughtless, the wise, and the foolish.Long notices of it have appeared, from time to time, in the great English reviews, and in erudite and authoritative philological periodicals; and it has been laughed at, danced upon, and tossed in a blanket by nearly every newspaper and magazine in the English-speaking world.noEvery scribbler, almost, has had his little fling at it, at one time or another; I had mine fifteen years ago.ghThe book gets out of print, every now and then, and one ceases to hear of it for a season; but presently the nations and near and far colonies of our tongue and lineage call for it once more, and once more it issues from some London or Continental or American press, and runs a new course around the globe, wafted on its way by the wind of a world's laughter.YMany persons have believed that this book's miraculous stupidities were studied and disingenuous; but no one can read the volume carefully through and keep that opinion.kIt was written in serious good faith and deep earnestness, by an honest and upright idiot who believed he knew something of the English language, and could impart his knowledge to others.PQThe amplest proof of this crops out somewhere or other upon each and every page.ijThere are sentences in the book which could have been manufactured by a man in his right mind, and with an intelligent and deliberate purposes to seem innocently ignorant; but there are other sentences, and paragraphs, which no mere pretended ignorance could ever achieve--nor yet even the most genuine and comprehensive ignorance, when unbacked by inspiration.It is not a fraud who speaks in the following paragraph of the author's Preface, but a good man, an honest man, a man whose conscience is at rest, a man who believes he has done a high and worthy work for his nation and his generation, and is well pleased with his performance: We expect then, who the little book (for the care what we wrote him, and for her typographical correction) that may be worth the acceptation of the studious persons, and especially of the Youth, at which we dedicate him particularly.9:One cannot open this book anywhere and not find richness.`aTo prove that this is true, I will open it at random and copy the page I happen to stumble upon.,|}Here is the result: DIALOGUE 16 For To See the Town Anothony, go to accompany they gentilsmen, do they see the town. 01We won't to see all that is it remarquable here.4Come with me, if you please.<=I shall not folget nothing what can to merit your attention.AHere we are near to cathedral; will you come in there? We will first to see him in oudside, after we shall go in there for to look the interior.!/0Admire this master piece gothic architecture's.78The chasing of all they figures is astonishing' indeed.45The cupola and the nave are not less curious to see.;<What is this palace how I see yonder? It is the town hall.9:And this tower here at this side? It is the Observatory.NOThe bridge is very fine, it have ten arches, and is constructed of free stone.56The streets are very layed out by line and too paved.!/0What is the circuit of this town? Two leagues.34There is it also hospitals here? It not fail them.0What are then the edifices the worthest to have seen? It is the arsnehal, the spectacle's hall, the Cusiomhouse, and the Purse.9We are going too see the others monuments such that the public pawnbroker's office, the plants garden's, the money office's, the library.!/0That it shall be for another day; we are tired. pqDIALOGUE 17 To Inform One'self of a Person How is that gentilman who you did speak by and by? Is a German.5I did think him Englishman.7He is of the Saxony side.2He speak the french very well.bTough he is German, he speak so much well italyan, french, spanish and english, that among the Italyans, they believe him Italyan, he speak the frenche as the Frenches himselves. GHThe Spanishesmen believe him Spanishing, and the Englishes, Englishman.89It is difficult to enjoy well so much several languages.|The last remark contains a general truth; but it ceases to be a truth when one contracts it and apples it to an individual--provided that that individual is the author of this book, Sehnor Pedro Carolino.pI am sure I should not find it difficult "to enjoy well so much several languages"--or even a thousand of them--if he did the translating for me from the originals into his ostensible English."rsADVICE TO LITTLE GIRLS Good little girls ought not to make mouths at their teachers for every trifling offense.VWThis retaliation should only be resorted to under peculiarly aggravated circumstances.mIf you have nothing but a rag-doll stuffed with sawdust, while one of your more fortunate little playmates has a costly China one, you should treat her with a show of kindness nevertheless.AAnd you ought not to attempt to make a forcible swap with her unless your conscience would justify you in it, and you know you are able to do it.You ought never to take your little brother's "chewing-gum" away from him by main force; it is better to rope him in with the promise of the first two dollars and a half you find floating down the river on a grindstone.jkIn the artless simplicity natural to this time of life, he will regard it as a perfectly fair transaction.%uvIn all ages of the world this eminently plausible fiction has lured the obtuse infant to financial ruin and disaster.VIf at any time you find it necessary to correct your brother, do not correct him with mud--never, on any account, throw mud at him, because it will spoil his clothes.JKIt is better to scald him a little, for then you obtain desirable results.tYou secure his immediate attention to the lessons you are inculcating, and at the same time your hot water will have a tendency to move impurities from his person, and possibly the skin, in spots.LMIf your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply that you won't.ZIt is better and more becoming to intimate that you will do as she bids you, and then afterward act quietly in the matter according to the dictates of your best judgment.fYou should ever bear in mind that it is to your kind parents that you are indebted for your food, and for the privilege of staying home from school when you let on that you are sick.STherefore you ought to respect their little prejudices, and humor their little whims, and put up with their little foibles until they get to crowding you too much.<=Good little girls always show marked deference for the aged.BCYou ought never to "sass" old people unless they "sass" you first.*z{POST-MORTEM POETRY (1) In Philadelphia they have a custom which it would be pleasant to see adopted throughout the land.^_It is that of appending to published death-notices a little verse or two of comforting poetry.BAny one who is in the habit of reading the daily Philadelphia LEDGER must frequently be touched by these plaintive tributes to extinguished worth.UIn Philadelphia, the departure of a child is a circumstance which is not more surely followed by a burial than by the accustomed solacing poesy in the PUBLIC LEDGER.2In that city death loses half its terror because the knowledge of its presence comes thus disguised in the sweet drapery of verse. [\For instance, in a late LEDGER I find the following (I change the surname): DIED Hawks.?On the 17th inst.JKClara, the daughter of Ephraim and Laura Hawks, aged 21 months and 2 days.wThat merry shout no more I hear, No laughing child I see, No little arms are around my neck, No feet upon my knee; No kisses drop upon my cheek, These lips are sealed to me.'wxDear Lord, how could I give Clara up To any but to Thee? A child thus mourned could not die wholly discontented. pqFrom the LEDGER of the same date I make the following extract, merely changing the surname, as before: Becket.3On Sunday morning, 19th inst.IJohn P.JKinfant son of George and Julia Becket, aged 1 year, 6 months, and 15 days.vThat merry shout no more I hear, No laughing child I see, No little arms are round my neck, No feet upon my knee; No kisses drop upon my cheek; These lips are sealed to me.89Dear Lord, how could I give Johnnie up To any but to Thee? The similarity of the emotions as produced in the mourners in these two instances is remarkably evidenced by the singular similarity of thought which they experienced, and the surprising coincidence of language used by them to give it expression.fgIn the same journal, of the same date, I find the following (surname suppressed, as before): Wagner.?On the 10th inst.E Ferguson G.;the son of William L.23and Martha Theresa Wagner, aged 4 weeks and 1 day.vThat merry shout no more I hear, No laughing child I see, No little arms are round my neck, No feet upon my knee; No kisses drop upon my cheek, These lips are sealed to me.WDear Lord, how could I give Ferguson up To any but to Thee? It is strange what power the reiteration of an essentially poetical thought has upon one's feelings.&vwWhen we take up the LEDGER and read the poetry about little Clara, we feel an unaccountable depression of the spirits.]When we drift further down the column and read the poetry about little Johnnie, the depression and spirits acquires and added emphasis, and we experience tangible suffering.OWhen we saunter along down the column further still and read the poetry about little Ferguson, the word torture but vaguely suggests the anguish that rends us.fgIn the LEDGER (same copy referred to above) I find the following (I alter surname, as usual): Welch.@On the 5th inst.IMary C.7Welch, wife of William B."./Welch, and daughter of Catharine and George W.*&'Markland, in the 29th year of her age. CDA mother dear, a mother kind, Has gone and left us all behind. CDCease to weep, for tears are vain, Mother dear is out of pain.FFarewell, husband, children dear, Serve thy God with filial fear, And meet me in the land above, Where all is peace, and joy, and love. What could be sweeter than that? No collection of salient facts (without reduction to tabular form) could be more succinctly stated than is done in the first stanza by the surviving relatives, and no more concise and comprehensive program of farewells, post-mortuary general orders, etc.QRcould be framed in any form than is done in verse by deceased in the last stanza.?@These things insensibly make us wiser and tenderer, and better.8Another extract: Ball.0 !On the morning of the 15th inst.IMary E.3daughter of John and Sarah F.KBall.6Tis sweet to rest in lively hope That when my change shall come Angels will hover round my bed, To waft my spirit home.NOThe following is apparently the customary form for heads of families: Burns.?On the 20th inst.3Michael Burns, aged 40 years.=Dearest father, thou hast left us, Hear thy loss we deeply feel; But 'tis God that has bereft us, He can all our sorrows heal.5Funeral at 2 o'clock sharp.FThere is something very simple and pleasant about the following, which, in Philadelphia, seems to be the usual form for consumptives of long standing.)yzIt deplores four distinct cases in the single copy of the LEDGER which lies on the Memoranda editorial table): Bromley.?On the 29th inst.<=of consumption, Philip Bromley, in the 50th year of his age.;Affliction sore long time he bore, Physicians were in vain-- Till God at last did hear him mourn, And eased him of his pain.QThat friend whom death from us has torn, We did not think so soon to part; An anxious care now sinks the thorn Still deeper in our bleeding heart.45This beautiful creation loses nothing by repetition.bcOn the contrary, the oftener one sees it in the LEDGER, the more grand and awe-inspiring it seems.$,-With one more extract I will close: Doble.@On the 4th inst.#-.Samuel Pervil Worthington Doble, aged 4 days.,|}Our little Sammy's gone, His tiny spirit's fled; Our little boy we loved so dear Lies sleeping with the dead.%uvA tear within a father's eye, A mother's aching heart, Can only tell the agony How hard it is to part.Could anything be more plaintive than that, without requiring further concessions of grammar? Could anything be likely to do more toward reconciling deceased to circumstances, and making him willing to go? Perhaps not.&*+The power of song can hardly be estimated.MThere is an element about some poetry which is able to make even physical suffering and death cheerful things to contemplate and consummations to be desired.UVThis element is present in the mortuary poetry of Philadelphia degree of development._`The custom I have been treating of is one that should be adopted in all the cities of the land.BCIt is said that once a man of small consequence died, and the Rev.Beecher was asked to preach the funeral sermon--a man who abhors the lauding of people, either dead or alive, except in dignified and simple language, and then only for merits which they actually possessed or possess, not merits which they merely ought to have possessed.56The friends of the deceased got up a stately funeral.?@They must have had misgivings that the corpse might not be praised strongly enough, for they prepared some manuscript headings and notes in which nothing was left unsaid on that subject that a fervid imagination and an unabridged dictionary could compile, and these they handed to the minister as he entered the pulpit.^They were merely intended as suggestions, and so the friends were filled with consternation when the minister stood in the pulpit and proceeded to read off the curious odds and ends in ghastly detail and in a loud voice! And their consternation solidified to petrification when he paused at the end, contemplated the multitude reflectively, and then said, impressively: "The man would be a fool who tried to add anything to that.\Let us pray!" And with the same strict adhesion to truth it can be said that the man would be a fool who tried to add anything to the following transcendent obituary poem. There is something so innocent, so guileless, so complacent, so unearthly serene and self-satisfied about this peerless "hog-wash," that the man must be made of stone who can read it without a dulcet ecstasy creeping along his backbone and quivering in his marrow.opThere is no need to say that this poem is genuine and in earnest, for its proofs are written all over its face.jkAn ingenious scribbler might imitate it after a fashion, but Shakespeare himself could not counterfeit it.oIt is noticeable that the country editor who published it did not know that it was a treasure and the most perfect thing of its kind that the storehouses and museums of literature could show.`He did not dare to say no to the dread poet--for such a poet must have been something of an apparition--but he just shoveled it into his paper anywhere that came handy, and felt ashamed, and put that disgusted "Published by Request" over it, and hoped that his subscribers would overlook it or not feel an impulse to read it: (Published by Request) LINES Composed on the death of Samuel and Catharine Belknap's children by M.VGlaze Friends and neighbors all draw near, And listen to what I have to say; And never leave your children dear When they are small, and go away.@But always think of that sad fate, That happened in year of '63; Four children with a house did burn, Think of their awful agony.HTheir mother she had gone away, And left them there alone to stay; The house took fire and down did burn; Before their mother did return.ZTheir piteous cry the neighbors heard, And then the cry of fire was given; But, ah! before they could them reach, Their little spirits had flown to heaven.VTheir father he to war had gone, And on the battle-field was slain; But little did he think when he went away, But what on earth they would meet again.DThe neighbors often told his wife Not to leave his children there, Unless she got some one to stay, And of the little ones take care.YThe oldest he was years not six, And the youngest only eleven months old, But often she had left them there alone, As, by the neighbors, I have been told.."#How can she bear to see the place..~Where she so oft has left them there, Without a single one to look to them, Or of the little ones to take good care.YOh, can she look upon the spot, Whereunder their little burnt bones lay, But what she thinks she hears them say, ''Twas God had pity, and took us on high.GAnd there may she kneel down and pray, And ask God her to forgive; And she may lead a different life While she on earth remains to live. FGHer husband and her children too, God has took from pain and woe. DEMay she reform and mend her ways, That she may also to them go.9And when it is God's holy will, O, may she be prepared To meet her God and friends in peace, And leave this world of care.@Written in 1870.STHE DANGER OF LYING IN BED The man in the ticket-office said: "Have an accident insurance ticket, also?" "No," I said, after studying the matter over a little. DENo, I believe not; I am going to be traveling by rail all day today./!"However, tomorrow I don't travel.7Give me one for tomorrow.9The man looked puzzled.;He said: "But it is for accident insurance, and if you are going to travel by rail--" "If I am going to travel by rail I sha'n't need it.34Lying at home in bed is the thing _I_ am afraid of.,$%I had been looking into this matter.Last year I traveled twenty thousand miles, almost entirely by rail; the year before, I traveled over twenty-five thousand miles, half by sea and half by rail; and the year before that I traveled in the neighborhood of ten thousand miles, exclusively by rail.II suppose if I put in all the little odd journeys here and there, I may say I have traveled sixty thousand miles during the three years I have mentioned.:AND NEVER AN ACCIDENT.OFor a good while I said to myself every morning: "Now I have escaped thus far, and so the chances are just that much increased that I shall catch it this time.#-.I will be shrewd, and buy an accident ticket.&vwAnd to a dead moral certainty I drew a blank, and went to bed that night without a joint started or a bone splintered.ijI got tired of that sort of daily bother, and fell to buying accident tickets that were good for a month.?@I said to myself, "A man CAN'T buy thirty blanks in one bundle.=But I was mistaken.)'(There was never a prize in the the lot..~I could read of railway accidents every day--the newspaper atmosphere was foggy with them; but somehow they never came my way.bcI found I had spent a good deal of money in the accident business, and had nothing to show for it.abMy suspicions were aroused, and I began to hunt around for somebody that had won in this lottery.noI found plenty of people who had invested, but not an individual that had ever had an accident or made a cent.89I stopped buying accident tickets and went to ciphering.6The result was astounding.78THE PERIL LAY NOT IN TRAVELING, BUT IN STAYING AT HOME.I hunted up statistics, and was amazed to find that after all the glaring newspaper headlines concerning railroad disasters, less than THREE HUNDRED people had really lost their lives by those disasters in the preceding twelve months.=>The Erie road was set down as the most murderous in the list.1It had killed forty-six--or twenty-six, I do not exactly remember which, but I know the number was double that of any other road.~But the fact straightway suggested itself that the Erie was an immensely long road, and did more business than any other line in the country; so the double number of killed ceased to be matter for surprise.iBy further figuring, it appeared that between New York and Rochester the Erie ran eight passenger-trains each way every day--16 altogether; and carried a daily average of 6,000 persons. GHThat is about a million in six months--the population of New York City.cWell, the Erie kills from 13 to 23 persons of ITS million in six months; and in the same time 13,000 of New York's million die in their beds! My flesh crept, my hair stood on end.5This is appalling!" I said.LMThe danger isn't in traveling by rail, but in trusting to those deadly beds.."#I will never sleep in a bed again.MNI had figured on considerably less than one-half the length of the Erie road.efIt was plain that the entire road must transport at least eleven or twelve thousand people every day.efThere are many short roads running out of Boston that do fully half as much; a great many such roads.WXThere are many roads scattered about the Union that do a prodigious passenger business.0Therefore it was fair to presume that an average of 2,500 passengers a day for each road in the country would be almost correct.NOThere are 846 railway lines in our country, and 846 times 2,500 are 2,115,000.JSo the railways of America move more than two millions of people every day; six hundred and fifty millions of people a year, without counting the Sundays.ABThey do that, too--there is no question about it; though where they get the raw material is clear beyond the jurisdiction of my arithmetic; for I have hunted the census through and through, and I find that there are not that many people in the United States, by a matter of six hundred and ten millions at the very least.9:They must use some of the same people over again, likely.>San Francisco is one-eighth as populous as New York; there are 60 deaths a week in the former and 500 a week in the latter--if they have luck.noThat is 3,120 deaths a year in San Francisco, and eight times as many in New York--say about 25,000 or 26,000.')*The health of the two places is the same.eSo we will let it stand as a fair presumption that this will hold good all over the country, and that consequently 25,000 out of every million of people we have must die every year.56That amounts to one-fortieth of our total population.*&'One million of us, then, die annually.-}~Out of this million ten or twelve thousand are stabbed, shot, drowned, hanged, poisoned, or meet a similarly violent death in some other popular way, such as perishing by kerosene-lamp and hoop-skirt conflagrations, getting buried in coal-mines, falling off house-tops, breaking through church, or lecture-room floors, taking patent medicines, or committing suicide in other forms.()The Erie railroad kills 23 to 46; the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man each; and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to that appalling figure of 987,631 corpses, die naturally in their beds! You will excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds.+%&The railroads are good enough for me.iAnd my advice to all people is, Don't stay at home any more than you can help; but when you have GOT to stay at home a while, buy a package of those insurance tickets and sit up nights.5You cannot be too cautious.bcOne can see now why I answered that ticket-agent in the manner recorded at the top of this sketch.3The moral of this composition is, that thoughtless people grumble more than is fair about railroad management in the United States.When we consider that every day and night of the year full fourteen thousand railway-trains of various kinds, freighted with life and armed with death, go thundering over the land, the marvel is, NOT that they kill three hundred human beings in a twelvemonth, but that they do not kill three hundred times three hundred! PORTRAIT OF KING WILLIAM III I never can look at those periodical portraits in THE GALAXY magazine without feeling a wild, tempestuous ambition to be an artist.aI have seen thousands and thousands of pictures in my time--acres of them here and leagues of them in the galleries of Europe--but never any that moved me as these portraits do.opThere is a portrait of Monsignore Capel in the November number, now COULD anything be sweeter than that? And there was Bismarck's, in the October number; who can look at that without being purer and stronger and nobler for it? And Thurlow and Weed's picture in the September number; I would not have died without seeing that, no, not for anything this world can give.rBut look back still further and recall my own likeness as printed in the August number; if I had been in my grave a thousand years when that appeared, I would have got up and visited the artist.8I sleep with all these portraits under my pillow every night, so that I can go on studying them as soon as the day dawns in the morning.bcI know them all as thoroughly as if I had made them myself; I know every line and mark about them.dSometimes when company are present I shuffle the portraits all up together, and then pick them out one by one and call their names, without referring to the printing on the bottom.!/0I seldom make a mistake--never, when I am calm..~I have had the portraits framed for a long time, waiting till my aunt gets everything ready for hanging them up in the parlor.MNBut first one thing and then another interferes, and so the thing is delayed. Z[Once she said they would have more of the peculiar kind of light they needed in the attic.45The old simpleton! it is as dark as a tomb up there.MNBut she does not know anything about art, and so she has no reverence for it.STWhen I showed her my "Map of the Fortifications of Paris," she said it was rubbish.fgWell, from nursing those portraits so long, I have come at last to have a perfect infatuation for art.HI have a teacher now, and my enthusiasm continually and tumultuously grows, as I learn to use with more and more facility the pencil, brush, and graver.ABI am studying under De Mellville, the house and portrait painter.#-.His name was Smith when he lived in the West.efHe does any kind of artist work a body wants, having a genius that is universal, like Michael Angelo.+%&Resembles that great artist, in fact.bcThe back of his head is like this, and he wears his hat-brim tilted down on his nose to expose it.;<I have been studying under De Mellville several months now.@AThe first month I painted fences, and gave general satisfaction.+%&The next month I white-washed a barn.klThe third, I was doing tin roofs; the forth, common signs; the fifth, statuary to stand before cigar shops.`This present month is only the sixth, and I am already in portraits! The humble offering which accompanies these remarks (see figure)--the portrait of his Majesty William III.KLKing of Prussia--is my fifth attempt in portraits, and my greatest success.`It has received unbounded praise from all classes of the community, but that which gratifies me most is the frequent and cordial verdict that it resembles the GALAXY portraits.ghThose were my first love, my earliest admiration, the original source and incentive of my art-ambition.56Whatever I am in Art today, I owe to these portraits.%+,I ask no credit for myself--I deserve none.3And I never take any, either.uMany a stranger has come to my exhibition (for I have had my portrait of King William on exhibition at one dollar a ticket), and would have gone away blessing ME, if I had let him, but I never did.+%&I always stated where I got the idea.9King William wears large bushy side-whiskers, and some critics have thought that this portrait would be more complete if they were added.8But it was not possible.5There was not room for side-whiskers and epaulets both, and so I let the whiskers go, and put in the epaulets, for the sake of style.."#That thing on his hat is an eagle.$,-The Prussian eagle--it is a national emblem.'wxWhen I say hat I mean helmet; but it seems impossible to make a picture of a helmet that a body can have confidence in.!qrI wish kind friends everywhere would aid me in my endeavor to attract a little attention to the GALAXY portraits. ]^I feel persuaded it can be accomplished, if the course to be pursued be chosen with judgment.fI write for that magazine all the time, and so do many abler men, and if I can get these portraits into universal favor, it is all I ask; the reading-matter will take care of itself.HICOMMENDATIONS OF THE PORTRAIT There is nothing like it in the Vatican.H Pius IX.LIt has none of that vagueness, that dreamy spirituality about it, which many of the first critics of Arkansas have objected to in the Murillo school of Art.IRuskin.-#$The expression is very interesting.ITitian.:;Keeps a macaroni store in Venice, at the old family stand.<=It is the neatest thing in still life I have seen for years.C Rosa Bonheur.*&'The smile may be almost called unique.G Bismarck.>?I never saw such character portrayed in a picture face before.C De Mellville.AThere is a benignant simplicity about the execution of this work which warms the heart toward it as much, full as much, as it fascinates the eye.G Landseer.<=One cannot see it without longing to contemplate the artist.>Frederick William.ghSend me the entire edition--together with the plate and the original portrait--and name your own price.mnAnd--would you like to come over and stay awhile with Napoleon at Wilhelmshohe? It shall not cost you a cent.D William III.fDOES THE RACE OF MAN LOVE A LORD? Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period.'(The day after the arrival of Prince Henry I met an English friend, and he rubbed his hands and broke out with a remark that was charged to the brim with joy--joy that was evidently a pleasant salve to an old sore place: "Many a time I've had to listen without retort to an old saying that is irritatingly true, and until now seemed to offer no chance for a return jibe: 'An Englishman does dearly love a lord'; but after this I shall talk back, and say, 'How about the Americans?'" It is a curious thing, the currency that an idiotic saying can get.:;The man that first says it thinks he has made a discovery.)'(The man he says it to, thinks the same.2It departs on its travels, is received everywhere with admiring acceptance, and not only as a piece of rare and acute observation, but as being exhaustively true and profoundly wise; and so it presently takes its place in the world's list of recognized and established wisdoms, and after that no one thinks of examining it to see whether it is really entitled to its high honors or not.HII call to mind instances of this in two well-established proverbs, whose dullness is not surpassed by the one about the Englishman and his love for a lord: one of them records the American's Adoration of the Almighty Dollar, the other the American millionaire-girl's ambition to trade cash for a title, with a husband thrown in.STIt isn't merely the American that adores the Almighty Dollar, it is the human race.  The human race has always adored the hatful of shells, or the bale of calico, or the half-bushel of brass rings, or the handful of steel fish-hooks, or the houseful of black wives, or the zareba full of cattle, or the two-score camels and asses, or the factory, or the farm, or the block of buildings, or the railroad bonds, or the bank stock, or the hoarded cash, or--anything that stands for wealth and consideration and independence, and can secure to the possessor that most precious of all things, another man's envy.(xyIt was a dull person that invented the idea that the American's devotion to the dollar is more strenuous than another's.JRich American girls do buy titles, but they did not invent that idea; it had been worn threadbare several hundred centuries before America was discovered.>European girls still exploit it as briskly as ever; and, when a title is not to be had for the money in hand, they buy the husband without it.12They must put up the "dot," or there is no trade.NOThe commercialization of brides is substantially universal, except in America.PQIt exists with us, to some little extent, but in no degree approaching a custom.-#$The Englishman dearly loves a lord.2What is the soul and source of this love? I think the thing could be more correctly worded: "The human race dearly envies a lord.%+,That is to say, it envies the lord's place.ABWhy? On two accounts, I think: its Power and its Conspicuousness.Where Conspicuousness carries with it a Power which, by the light of our own observation and experience, we are able to measure and comprehend, I think our envy of the possessor is as deep and as passionate as is that of any other nation. ]^No one can care less for a lord than the backwoodsman, who has had no personal contact with lords and has seldom heard them spoken of; but I will not allow that any Englishman has a profounder envy of a lord than has the average American who has lived long years in a European capital and fully learned how immense is the position the lord occupies.Of any ten thousand Americans who eagerly gather, at vast inconvenience, to get a glimpse of Prince Henry, all but a couple of hundred will be there out of an immense curiosity; they are burning up with desire to see a personage who is so much talked about.CThey envy him; but it is Conspicuousness they envy mainly, not the Power that is lodged in his royal quality and position, for they have but a vague and spectral knowledge and appreciation of that; though their environment and associations they have been accustomed to regard such things lightly, and as not being very real; consequently, they are not able to value them enough to consumingly envy them.01But, whenever an American (or other human being) is in the presence, for the first time, of a combination of great Power and Conspicuousness which he thoroughly understands and appreciates, his eager curiosity and pleasure will be well-sodden with that other passion--envy--whether he suspects it or not.At any time, on any day, in any part of America, you can confer a happiness upon any passing stranger by calling his attention to any other passing stranger and saying: "Do you see that gentleman going along there? It is Mr.D Rockefeller.BWatch his eye.KLIt is a combination of power and conspicuousness which the man understands.:;When we understand rank, we always like to rub against it.56When a man is conspicuous, we always want to see him. CDAlso, if he will pay us an attention we will manage to remember it.6Also, we will mention it now and then, casually; sometimes to a friend, or if a friend is not handy, we will make out with a stranger.ZWell, then, what is rank, and what is conspicuousness? At once we think of kings and aristocracies, and of world-wide celebrities in soldierships, the arts, letters, etc.>and we stop there.:But that is a mistake.Rank holds its court and receives its homage on every round of the ladder, from the emperor down to the rat-catcher; and distinction, also, exists on every round of the ladder, and commands its due of deference and envy.To worship rank and distinction is the dear and valued privilege of all the human race, and it is freely and joyfully exercised in democracies as well as in monarchies--and even, to some extent, among those creatures whom we impertinently call the Lower Animals.#stFor even they have some poor little vanities and foibles, though in this matter they are paupers as compared to us.,|}A Chinese Emperor has the worship of his four hundred millions of subjects, but the rest of the world is indifferent to him.WA Christian Emperor has the worship of his subjects and of a large part of the Christian world outside of his domains; but he is a matter of indifference to all China.?@A king, class A, has an extensive worship; a king, class B, has a less extensive worship; class C, class D, class E get a steadily diminishing share of worship; class L (Sultan of Zanzibar), class P (Sultan of Sulu), and class W (half-king of Samoa), get no worship at all outside their own little patch of sovereignty.')*Take the distinguished people along down.,$%Each has his group of homage-payers.TUIn the navy, there are many groups; they start with the Secretary and the Admiral, and go down to the quartermaster--and below; for there will be groups among the sailors, and each of these groups will have a tar who is distinguished for his battles, or his strength, or his daring, or his profanity, and is admired and envied by his group.8The same with the army; the same with the literary and journalistic craft; the publishing craft; the cod-fishery craft; Standard Oil; U.noSteel; the class A hotel--and the rest of the alphabet in that line; the class A prize-fighter--and the rest of the alphabet in his line--clear down to the lowest and obscurest six-boy gang of little gamins, with its one boy that can thrash the rest, and to whom he is king of Samoa, bottom of the royal race, but looked up to with a most ardent admiration and envy.[There is something pathetic, and funny, and pretty, about this human race's fondness for contact with power and distinction, and for the reflected glory it gets out of it.]The king, class A, is happy in the state banquet and the military show which the emperor provides for him, and he goes home and gathers the queen and the princelings around him in the privacy of the spare room, and tells them all about it, and says: "His Imperial Majesty put his hand upon my shoulder in the most friendly way--just as friendly and familiar, oh, you can't imagine it!--and everybody SEEING him do it; charming, perfectly charming!" The king, class G, is happy in the cold collation and the police parade provided for him by the king, class B, and goes home and tells the family all about it, and says: "And His Majesty took me into his own private cabinet for a smoke and a chat, and there we sat just as sociable, and talking away and laughing and chatting, just the same as if we had been born in the same bunk; and all the servants in the anteroom could see us doing it! Oh, it was too lovely for anything!" The king, class Q, is happy in the modest entertainment furnished him by the king, class M, and goes home and tells the household about it, and is as grateful and joyful over it as were his predecessors in the gaudier attentions that had fallen to their larger lot.Emperors, kings, artisans, peasants, big people, little people--at the bottom we are all alike and all the same; all just alike on the inside, and when our clothes are off, nobody can tell which of us is which.7We are unanimous in the pride we take in good and genuine compliments paid us, and distinctions conferred upon us, in attentions shown. EFThere is not one of us, from the emperor down, but is made like that.#stDo I mean attentions shown us by the guest? No, I mean simply flattering attentions, let them come whence they may.mnWe despise no source that can pay us a pleasing attention--there is no source that is humble enough for that.You have heard a dear little girl say to a frowzy and disreputable dog: "He came right to me and let me pat him on the head, and he wouldn't let the others touch him!" and you have seen her eyes dance with pride in that high distinction.7You have often seen that. If the child were a princess, would that random dog be able to confer the like glory upon her with his pretty compliment? Yes; and even in her mature life and seated upon a throne, she would still remember it, still recall it, still speak of it with frank satisfaction.UThat charming and lovable German princess and poet, Carmen Sylva, Queen of Roumania, remembers yet that the flowers of the woods and fields "talked to her" when she was a girl, and she sets it down in her latest book; and that the squirrels conferred upon her and her father the valued compliment of not being afraid of them; and "once one of them, holding a nut between its sharp little teeth, ran right up against my father"--it has the very note of "He came right to me and let me pat him on the head"--"and when it saw itself reflected in his boot it was very much surprised, and stopped for a long time to contemplate itself in the polished leather"--then it went its way.hAnd the birds! she still remembers with pride that "they came boldly into my room," when she had neglected her "duty" and put no food on the window-sill for them; she knew all the wild birds, and forgets the royal crown on her head to remember with pride that they knew her; also that the wasp and the bee were personal friends of hers, and never forgot that gracious relationship to her injury: "never have I been stung by a wasp or a bee.fAnd here is that proud note again that sings in that little child's elation in being singled out, among all the company of children, for the random dog's honor-conferring attentions.JEven in the very worst summer for wasps, when, in lunching out of doors, our table was covered with them and every one else was stung, they never hurt me.iWhen a queen whose qualities of mind and heart and character are able to add distinction to so distinguished a place as a throne, remembers with grateful exultation, after thirty years, honors and distinctions conferred upon her by the humble, wild creatures of the forest, we are helped to realize that complimentary attentions, homage, distinctions, are of no caste, but are above all cast--that they are a nobility-conferring power apart.7We all like these things.When the gate-guard at the railway-station passes me through unchallenged and examines other people's tickets, I feel as the king, class A, felt when the emperor put the imperial hand on his shoulder, "everybody seeing him do it"; and as the child felt when the random dog allowed her to pat his head and ostracized the others; and as the princess felt when the wasps spared her and stung the rest; and I felt just so, four years ago in Vienna (and remember it yet), when the helmeted police shut me off, with fifty others, from a street which the Emperor was to pass through, and the captain of the squad turned and saw the situation and said indignantly to that guard: "Can't you see it is the Herr Mark Twain? Let him through!" It was four years ago; but it will be four hundred before I forget the wind of self-complacency that rose in me, and strained my buttons when I marked the deference for me evoked in the faces of my fellow-rabble, and noted, mingled with it, a puzzled and resentful expression which said, as plainly as speech could have worded it: "And who in the nation is the Herr Mark Twain UM GOTTESWILLEN?" How many times in your life have you heard this boastful remark: "I stood as close to him as I am to you; I could have put out my hand and touched him.&*+We have all heard it many and many a time.9:It was a proud distinction to be able to say those words.ijIt brought envy to the speaker, a kind of glory; and he basked in it and was happy through all his veins.KLAnd who was it he stood so close to? The answer would cover all the grades.Sometimes it was a king; sometimes it was a renowned highwayman; sometimes it was an unknown man killed in an extraordinary way and made suddenly famous by it; always it was a person who was for the moment the subject of public interest of a village./!"I was there, and I saw it myself.$,-That is a common and envy-compelling remark.lmIt can refer to a battle; to a handing; to a coronation; to the killing of Jumbo by the railway-train; to the arrival of Jenny Lind at the Battery; to the meeting of the President and Prince Henry; to the chase of a murderous maniac; to the disaster in the tunnel; to the explosion in the subway; to a remarkable dog-fight; to a village church struck by lightning.!qrIt will be said, more or less causally, by everybody in America who has seen Prince Henry do anything, or try to.BCThe man who was absent and didn't see him to anything, will scoff.=It is his privilege; and he can make capital out of it, too; he will seem, even to himself, to be different from other Americans, and better.As his opinion of his superior Americanism grows, and swells, and concentrates and coagulates, he will go further and try to belittle the distinction of those that saw the Prince do things, and will spoil their pleasure in it if he can.34My life has been embittered by that kind of person.If you are able to tell of a special distinction that has fallen to your lot, it gravels them; they cannot bear it; and they try to make believe that the thing you took for a special distinction was nothing of the kind and was meant in quite another way.67Once I was received in private audience by an emperor.$tuLast week I was telling a jealous person about it, and I could see him wince under it, see him bite, see him suffer._`I revealed the whole episode to him with considerable elaboration and nice attention to detail.;<When I was through, he asked me what had impressed me most./!"I said: "His Majesty's delicacy.4They told me to be sure and back out from the presence, and find the door-knob as best I could; it was not allowable to face around. Now the Emperor knew it would be a difficult ordeal for me, because of lack of practice; and so, when it was time to part, he turned, with exceeding delicacy, and pretended to fumble with things on his desk, so I could get out in my own way, without his seeing me.!qrIt went home! It was vitriol! I saw the envy and disgruntlement rise in the man's face; he couldn't keep it down.UVI saw him try to fix up something in his mind to take the bloom off that distinction.BCI enjoyed that, for I judged that he had his work cut out for him.He struggled along inwardly for quite a while; then he said, with a manner of a person who has to say something and hasn't anything relevant to say: "You said he had a handful of special-brand cigars on the table?" "Yes; _I_ never saw anything to match them.@I had him again.|He had to fumble around in his mind as much as another minute before he could play; then he said in as mean a way as I ever heard a person say anything: "He could have been counting the cigars, you know.0 !I cannot endure a man like that.IJIt is nothing to him how unkind he is, so long as he takes the bloom off.9It is all he cares for. \]An Englishman (or other human being) does dearly love a lord," (or other conspicuous person.=It includes us all.tWe love to be noticed by the conspicuous person; we love to be associated with such, or with a conspicuous event, even in a seventh-rate fashion, even in the forty-seventh, if we cannot do better.9:This accounts for some of our curious tastes in mementos.QRIt accounts for the large private trade in the Prince of Wales's hair, which chambermaids were able to drive in that article of commerce when the Prince made the tour of the world in the long ago--hair which probably did not always come from his brush, since enough of it was marketed to refurnish a bald comet; it accounts for the fact that the rope which lynches a negro in the presence of ten thousand Christian spectators is salable five minutes later at two dollars and inch; it accounts for the mournful fact that a royal personage does not venture to wear buttons on his coat in public. ]^We do love a lord--and by that term I mean any person whose situation is higher than our own.vThe lord of the group, for instance: a group of peers, a group of millionaires, a group of hoodlums, a group of sailors, a group of newsboys, a group of saloon politicians, a group of college girls.PNo royal person has ever been the object of a more delirious loyalty and slavish adoration than is paid by the vast Tammany herd to its squalid idol in Wantage.+{|There is not a bifurcated animal in that menagerie that would not be proud to appear in a newspaper picture in his company.At the same time, there are some in that organization who would scoff at the people who have been daily pictured in company with Prince Henry, and would say vigorously that THEY would not consent to be photographed with him--a statement which would not be true in any instance.  There are hundreds of people in America who would frankly say to you that they would not be proud to be photographed in a group with the Prince, if invited; and some of these unthinking people would believe it when they said it; yet in no instance would it be true.ijWe have a large population, but we have not a large enough one, by several millions, to furnish that man.?@He has not yet been begotten, and in fact he is not begettable.,-You may take any of the printed groups, and there isn't a person in the dim background who isn't visibly trying to be vivid; if it is a crowd of ten thousand--ten thousand proud, untamed democrats, horny-handed sons of toil and of politics, and fliers of the eagle--there isn't one who is trying to keep out of range, there isn't one who isn't plainly meditating a purchase of the paper in the morning, with the intention of hunting himself out in the picture and of framing and keeping it if he shall find so much of his person in it as his starboard ear.5We all love to get some of the drippings of Conspicuousness, and we will put up with a single, humble drip, if we can't get any more.hiWe may pretend otherwise, in conversation; but we can't pretend it to ourselves privately--and we don't.We do confess in public that we are the noblest work of God, being moved to it by long habit, and teaching, and superstition; but deep down in the secret places of our souls we recognize that, if we ARE the noblest work, the less said about it the better.MWe of the North poke fun at the South for its fondness of titles--a fondness for titles pure and simple, regardless of whether they are genuine or pinchbeck.^We forget that whatever a Southerner likes the rest of the human race likes, and that there is no law of predilection lodged in one people that is absent from another people.*&'There is no variety in the human race. DEWe are all children, all children of the one Adam, and we love toys.KLWe can soon acquire that Southern disease if some one will give it a start.0 !It already has a start, in fact.SI have been personally acquainted with over eighty-four thousand persons who, at one time or another in their lives, have served for a year or two on the staffs of our multitudinous governors, and through that fatality have been generals temporarily, and colonels temporarily, and judge-advocates temporarily; but I have known only nine among them who could be hired to let the title go when it ceased to be legitimate.I know thousands and thousands of governors who ceased to be governors away back in the last century; but I am acquainted with only three who would answer your letter if you failed to call them "Governor" in it.lI know acres and acres of men who have done time in a legislature in prehistoric days, but among them is not half an acre whose resentment you would not raise if you addressed them as "Mr.@instead of "Hon.$tuThe first thing a legislature does is to convene in an impressive legislative attitude, and get itself photographed.+{|Each member frames his copy and takes it to the woods and hangs it up in the most aggressively conspicuous place in his house; and if you visit the house and fail to inquire what that accumulation is, the conversation will be brought around to it by that aforetime legislator, and he will show you a figure in it which in the course of years he has almost obliterated with the smut of his finger-marks, and say with a solemn joy, "It's me!" Have you ever seen a country Congressman enter the hotel breakfast-room in Washington with his letters?--and sit at his table and let on to read them?--and wrinkle his brows and frown statesman-like?--keeping a furtive watch-out over his glasses all the while to see if he is being observed and admired?--those same old letters which he fetches in every morning? Have you seen it? Have you seen him show off? It is THE sight of the national capital.5Except one; a pathetic one.&vwThat is the ex-Congressman: the poor fellow whose life has been ruined by a two-year taste of glory and of fictitious consequence; who has been superseded, and ought to take his heartbreak home and hide it, but cannot tear himself away from the scene of his lost little grandeur; and so he lingers, and still lingers, year after year, unconsidered, sometimes snubbed, ashamed of his fallen estate, and valiantly trying to look otherwise; dreary and depressed, but counterfeiting breeziness and gaiety, hailing with chummy familiarity, which is not always welcomed, the more-fortunes who are still in place and were once his mates.hHave you seen him? He clings piteously to the one little shred that is left of his departed distinction--the "privilege of the floor"; and works it hard and gets what he can out of it.+%&That is the saddest figure I know of.sYes, we do so love our little distinctions! And then we loftily scoff at a Prince for enjoying his larger ones; forgetting that if we only had his chance--ah! "Senator" is not a legitimate title.A Senator has no more right to be addressed by it than have you or I; but, in the several state capitals and in Washington, there are five thousand Senators who take very kindly to that fiction, and who purr gratefully when you call them by it--which you may do quite unrebuked.NThen those same Senators smile at the self-constructed majors and generals and judges of the South! Indeed, we do love our distinctions, get them how we may.(()And we work them for all they are worth.;In prayer we call ourselves "worms of the dust," but it is only on a sort of tacit understanding that the remark shall not be taken at par.!/0WE--worms of the dust! Oh, no, we are not that.TUExcept in fact; and we do not deal much in fact when we are contemplating ourselves.OAs a race, we do certainly love a lord--let him be Croker, or a duke, or a prize-fighter, or whatever other personage shall chance to be the head of our group.#stMany years ago, I saw a greasy youth in overalls standing by the HERALD office, with an expectant look in his face.@ASoon a large man passed out, and gave him a pat on the shoulder.>?That was what the boy was waiting for--the large man's notice.gThe pat made him proud and happy, and the exultation inside of him shone out through his eyes; and his mates were there to see the pat and envy it and wish they could have that glory.*z{The boy belonged down cellar in the press-room, the large man was king of the upper floors, foreman of the composing-room.UVThe light in the boy's face was worship, the foreman was his lord, head of his group.8The pat was an accolade.IIt was as precious to the boy as it would have been if he had been an aristocrat's son and the accolade had been delivered by his sovereign with a sword.KThe quintessence of the honor was all there; there was no difference in values; in truth there was no difference present except an artificial one--clothes.All the human race loves a lord--that is, loves to look upon or be noticed by the possessor of Power or Conspicuousness; and sometimes animals, born to better things and higher ideals, descend to man's level in this matter.2In the Jardin des Plantes I have see a cat that was so vain of being the personal friend of an elephant that I was ashamed of her.+%&EXTRACTS FROM ADAM'S DIARY MONDAY.?@This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way.34It is always hanging around and following me about.$,-I don't like this; I am not used to company.$,-I wish it would stay with the other animals.9:Cloudy today, wind in the east; think we shall have rain.89WE? Where did I get that word--the new creature uses it.H TUESDAY.-#$Been examining the great waterfall."./It is the finest thing on the estate, I think. FGThe new creature calls it Niagara Falls--why, I am sure I do not know./!"Says it LOOKS like Niagara Falls.<=That is not a reason, it is mere waywardness and imbecility.(()I get no chance to name anything myself.RSThe new creature names everything that comes along, before I can get in a protest.ABAnd always that same pretext is offered--it LOOKS like the thing.2There is a dodo, for instance.PQSays the moment one looks at it one sees at a glance that it "looks like a dodo.')*It will have to keep that name, no doubt.<=It wearies me to fret about it, and it does no good, anyway.#-.Dodo! It looks no more like a dodo than I do.F WEDNESDAY.NOBuilt me a shelter against the rain, but could not have it to myself in peace.6The new creature intruded.xWhen I tried to put it out it shed water out of the holes it looks with, and wiped it away with the back of its paws, and made a noise such as some of the other animals make when they are in distress.!/0I wish it would not talk; it is always talking.UVThat sounds like a cheap fling at the poor creature, a slur; but I do not mean it so.fI have never heard the human voice before, and any new and strange sound intruding itself here upon the solemn hush of these dreaming solitudes offends my ear and seems a false note.oAnd this new sound is so close to me; it is right at my shoulder, right at my ear, first on one side and then on the other, and I am used only to sounds that are more or less distant from me.IFRIDAY.=>The naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything I can do.UVI had a very good name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty--GARDEN OF EDEN. CDPrivately, I continue to call it that, but not any longer publicly.jkThe new creature says it is all woods and rocks and scenery, and therefore has no resemblance to a garden. FGSays it LOOKS like a park, and does not look like anything BUT a park.NOConsequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named NIAGARA FALLS PARK.12This is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to me. [\And already there is a sign up: KEEP OFF THE GRASS My life is not as happy as it was.G SATURDAY.+%&The new creature eats too much fruit.)'(We are going to run short, most likely. EFWe" again--that is ITS word; mine, too, now, from hearing it so much.2Good deal of fog this morning.."#I do not go out in the fog myself.9This new creature does. EFIt goes out in all weathers, and stumps right in with its muddy feet.F And talks.')*It used to be so pleasant and quiet here.ISUNDAY.APulled through.!/0This day is getting to be more and more trying.=>It was selected and set apart last November as a day of rest.&*+I had already six of them per week before.UVThis morning found the new creature trying to clod apples out of that forbidden tree.IMONDAY.*&'The new creature says its name is Eve.(()That is all right, I have no objections.12Says it is to call it by, when I want it to come.0 !I said it was superfluous, then.jkThe word evidently raised me in its respect; and indeed it is a large, good word and will bear repetition.+%&It says it is not an It, it is a She./This is probably doubtful; yet it is all one to me; what she is were nothing to me if she would but go by herself and not talk.H TUESDAY.She has littered the whole estate with execrable names and offensive signs: This way to the Whirlpool This way to Goat Island Cave of the Winds this way She says this park would make a tidy summer resort if there was any custom for it.JKSummer resort--another invention of hers--just words, without any meaning. [\What is a summer resort? But it is best not to ask her, she has such a rage for explaining.IFRIDAY.<=She has taken to beseeching me to stop going over the Falls. 01What harm does it do? Says it makes her shudder.KLI wonder why; I have always done it--always liked the plunge, and coolness.&*+I supposed it was what the Falls were for.RSThey have no other use that I can see, and they must have been made for something.OPShe says they were only made for scenery--like the rhinoceros and the mastodon.;<I went over the Falls in a barrel--not satisfactory to her.%+,Went over in a tub--still not satisfactory.56Swam the Whirlpool and the Rapids in a fig-leaf suit.<It got much damaged. 01Hence, tedious complaints about my extravagance.4I am too much hampered here./!"What I need is a change of scene.G SATURDAY.HII escaped last Tuesday night, and traveled two days, and built me another shelter in a secluded place, and obliterated my tracks as well as I could, but she hunted me out by means of a beast which she has tamed and calls a wolf, and came making that pitiful noise again, and shedding that water out of the places she looks with. YZI was obliged to return with her, but will presently emigrate again when occasion offers.She engages herself in many foolish things; among others; to study out why the animals called lions and tigers live on grass and flowers, when, as she says, the sort of teeth they wear would indicate that they were intended to eat each other.qThis is foolish, because to do that would be to kill each other, and that would introduce what, as I understand, is called "death"; and death, as I have been told, has not yet entered the Park.."#Which is a pity, on some accounts.ISUNDAY.APulled through.IMONDAY.abI believe I see what the week is for: it is to give time to rest up from the weariness of Sunday.;It seems a good idea.*&'She has been climbing that tree again.:Clodded her out of it.4She said nobody was looking.STSeems to consider that a sufficient justification for chancing any dangerous thing.BTold her that. FGThe word justification moved her admiration--and envy, too, I thought.>It is a good word.H TUESDAY.9:She told me she was made out of a rib taken from my body.12This is at least doubtful, if not more than that.6I have not missed any rib.KShe is in much trouble about the buzzard; says grass does not agree with it; is afraid she can't raise it; thinks it was intended to live on decayed flesh.ABThe buzzard must get along the best it can with what is provided.?@We cannot overturn the whole scheme to accommodate the buzzard.G SATURDAY.`aShe fell in the pond yesterday when she was looking at herself in it, which she is always doing.9:She nearly strangled, and said it was most uncomfortable.This made her sorry for the creatures which live in there, which she calls fish, for she continues to fasten names on to things that don't need them and don't come when they are called by them, which is a matter of no consequence to her, she is such a numbskull, anyway; so she got a lot of them out and brought them in last night and put them in my bed to keep warm, but I have noticed them now and then all day and I don't see that they are any happier there then they were before, only quieter.#-.When night comes I shall throw them outdoors.&vwI will not sleep with them again, for I find them clammy and unpleasant to lie among when a person hasn't anything on.ISUNDAY.APulled through.H TUESDAY.."#She has taken up with a snake now.TThe other animals are glad, for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them; and I am glad because the snake talks, and this enables me to get a rest.IFRIDAY..~She says the snake advises her to try the fruit of the tree, and says the result will be a great and fine and noble education.WXI told her there would be another result, too--it would introduce death into the world.jThat was a mistake--it had been better to keep the remark to myself; it only gave her an idea--she could save the sick buzzard, and furnish fresh meat to the despondent lions and tigers.')*I advised her to keep away from the tree.:She said she wouldn't.>I foresee trouble.BWill emigrate.F WEDNESDAY.3I have had a variegated time.nI escaped last night, and rode a horse all night as fast as he could go, hoping to get clear of the Park and hide in some other country before the trouble should begin; but it was not to be.MNAbout an hour after sun-up, as I was riding through a flowery plain where thousands of animals were grazing, slumbering, or playing with each other, according to their wont, all of a sudden they broke into a tempest of frightful noises, and in one moment the plain was a frantic commotion and every beast was destroying its neighbor.RSI knew what it meant--Eve had eaten that fruit, and death was come into the world.VThe tigers ate my house, paying no attention when I ordered them to desist, and they would have eaten me if I had stayed--which I didn't, but went away in much haste.jkI found this place, outside the Park, and was fairly comfortable for a few days, but she has found me out.IJFound me out, and has named the place Tonawanda--says it LOOKS like that.opIn fact I was not sorry she came, for there are but meager pickings here, and she brought some of those apples.%+,I was obliged to eat them, I was so hungry.hiIt was against my principles, but I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed._She came curtained in boughs and bunches of leaves, and when I asked her what she meant by such nonsense, and snatched them away and threw them down, she tittered and blushed.^_I had never seen a person titter and blush before, and to me it seemed unbecoming and idiotic.#-.She said I would soon know how it was myself.?This was correct.,-Hungry as I was, I laid down the apple half-eaten--certainly the best one I ever saw, considering the lateness of the season--and arrayed myself in the discarded boughs and branches, and then spoke to her with some severity and ordered her to go and get some more and not make a spectacle or herself.hShe did it, and after this we crept down to where the wild-beast battle had been, and collected some skins, and I made her patch together a couple of suits proper for public occasions. Z[They are uncomfortable, it is true, but stylish, and that is the main point about clothes.')*I find she is a good deal of a companion.WXI see I should be lonesome and depressed without her, now that I have lost my property.LMAnother thing, she says it is ordered that we work for our living hereafter.=She will be useful.=I will superintend.ATEN DAYS LATER.gShe accuses ME of being the cause of our disaster! She says, with apparent sincerity and truth, that the Serpent assured her that the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts.?@I said I was innocent, then, for I had not eaten any chestnuts.ghShe said the Serpent informed her that "chestnut" was a figurative term meaning an aged and moldy joke.lI turned pale at that, for I have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them could have been of that sort, though I had honestly supposed that they were new when I made them. CDShe asked me if I had made one just at the time of the catastrophe. GHI was obliged to admit that I had made one to myself, though not aloud.D It was this.EI was thinking about the Falls, and I said to myself, "How wonderful it is to see that vast body of water tumble down there!" Then in an instant a bright thought flashed into my head, and I let it fly, saying, "It would be a deal more wonderful to see it tumble UP there!"--and I was just about to kill myself with laughing at it when all nature broke loose in war and death and I had to flee for my life.SThere," she said, with triumph, "that is just it; the Serpent mentioned that very jest, and called it the First Chestnut, and said it was coeval with the creation.5Alas, I am indeed to blame.WXWould that I were not witty; oh, that I had never had that radiant thought! NEXT YEAR.:We have named it Cain.nShe caught it while I was up country trapping on the North Shore of the Erie; caught it in the timber a couple of miles from our dug-out--or it might have been four, she isn't certain which.45It resembles us in some ways, and may be a relation.>?That is what she thinks, but this is an error, in my judgment.The difference in size warrants the conclusion that it is a different and new kind of animal--a fish, perhaps, though when I put it in the water to see, it sank, and she plunged in and snatched it out before there was opportunity for the experiment to determine the matter.hiI still think it is a fish, but she is indifferent about what it is, and will not let me have it to try.7I do not understand this.noThe coming of the creature seems to have changed her whole nature and made her unreasonable about experiments.`aShe thinks more of it than she does of any of the other animals, but is not able to explain why.$,-Her mind is disordered--everything shows it.jkSometimes she carries the fish in her arms half the night when it complains and wants to get to the water.At such times the water comes out of the places in her face that she looks out of, and she pats the fish on the back and makes soft sounds with her mouth to soothe it, and betrays sorrow and solicitude in a hundred ways.STI have never seen her do like this with any other fish, and it troubles me greatly.rShe used to carry the young tigers around so, and play with them, before we lost our property, but it was only play; she never took on about them like this when their dinner disagreed with them.ISUNDAY.tShe doesn't work, Sundays, but lies around all tired out, and likes to have the fish wallow over her; and she makes fool noises to amuse it, and pretends to chew its paws, and that makes it laugh.!/0I have not seen a fish before that could laugh.<This makes me doubt.."#I have come to like Sunday myself.$,-Superintending all the week tires a body so.1 There ought to be more Sundays.9:In the old days they were tough, but now they come handy.F WEDNESDAY.@It isn't a fish.-#$I cannot quite make out what it is.STIt makes curious devilish noises when not satisfied, and says "goo-goo" when it is.It is not one of us, for it doesn't walk; it is not a bird, for it doesn't fly; it is not a frog, for it doesn't hop; it is not a snake, for it doesn't crawl; I feel sure it is not a fish, though I cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim or not.@AIt merely lies around, and mostly on its back, with its feet up. 01I have not seen any other animal do that before. [\I said I believed it was an enigma; but she only admired the word without understanding it.<=In my judgment it is either an enigma or some kind of a bug. CDIf it dies, I will take it apart and see what its arrangements are.."#I never had a thing perplex me so.=THREE MONTHS LATER.!/0The perplexity augments instead of diminishing.=I sleep but little. EFIt has ceased from lying around, and goes about on its four legs now.Yet it differs from the other four legged animals, in that its front legs are unusually short, consequently this causes the main part of its person to stick up uncomfortably high in the air, and this is not attractive. Z[It is built much as we are, but its method of traveling shows that it is not of our breed.nThe short front legs and long hind ones indicate that it is a of the kangaroo family, but it is a marked variation of that species, since the true kangaroo hops, whereas this one never does.RSStill it is a curious and interesting variety, and has not been catalogued before.NAs I discovered it, I have felt justified in securing the credit of the discovery by attaching my name to it, and hence have called it KANGAROORUM ADAMIENSIS.OPIt must have been a young one when it came, for it has grown exceedingly since.MIt must be five times as big, now, as it was then, and when discontented it is able to make from twenty-two to thirty-eight times the noise it made at first.;<Coercion does not modify this, but has the contrary effect.&*+For this reason I discontinued the system.opShe reconciles it by persuasion, and by giving it things which she had previously told me she wouldn't give it.efAs already observed, I was not at home when it first came, and she told me she found it in the woods.It seems odd that it should be the only one, yet it must be so, for I have worn myself out these many weeks trying to find another one to add to my collection, and for this to play with; for surely then it would be quieter and we could tame it more easily.IJBut I find none, nor any vestige of any; and strangest of all, no tracks.MIt has to live on the ground, it cannot help itself; therefore, how does it get about without leaving a track? I have set a dozen traps, but they do no good.=I catch all small animals except that one; animals that merely go into the trap out of curiosity, I think, to see what the milk is there for.<They never drink it.=THREE MONTHS LATER.KLThe Kangaroo still continues to grow, which is very strange and perplexing.23I never knew one to be so long getting its growth.HIt has fur on its head now; not like kangaroo fur, but exactly like our hair except that it is much finer and softer, and instead of being black is red.!qrI am like to lose my mind over the capricious and harassing developments of this unclassifiable zoological freak.lmIf I could catch another one--but that is hopeless; it is a new variety, and the only sample; this is plain.But I caught a true kangaroo and brought it in, thinking that this one, being lonesome, would rather have that for company than have no kin at all, or any animal it could feel a nearness to or get sympathy from in its forlorn condition here among strangers who do not know its ways or habits, or what to do to make it feel that it is among friends; but it was a mistake--it went into such fits at the sight of the kangaroo that I was convinced it had never seen one before.TUI pity the poor noisy little animal, but there is nothing I can do to make it happy.`aIf I could tame it--but that is out of the question; the more I try the worse I seem to make it.PQIt grieves me to the heart to see it in its little storms of sorrow and passion.34I wanted to let it go, but she wouldn't hear of it.=>That seemed cruel and not like her; and yet she may be right.fgIt might be lonelier than ever; for since I cannot find another one, how could IT? FIVE MONTHS LATER.;It is not a kangaroo.%uvNo, for it supports itself by holding to her finger, and thus goes a few steps on its hind legs, and then falls down.efIt is probably some kind of a bear; and yet it has no tail--as yet--and no fur, except upon its head.hiIt still keeps on growing--that is a curious circumstance, for bears get their growth earlier than this.CBears are dangerous--since our catastrophe--and I shall not be satisfied to have this one prowling about the place much longer without a muzzle on.LI have offered to get her a kangaroo if she would let this one go, but it did no good--she is determined to run us into all sorts of foolish risks, I think.!/0She was not like this before she lost her mind.>A FORTNIGHT LATER.;I examined its mouth."./There is no danger yet: it has only one tooth.=It has no tail yet. EFIt makes more noise now than it ever did before--and mainly at night.?I have moved out.JKBut I shall go over, mornings, to breakfast, and see if it has more teeth.7If it gets a mouthful of teeth it will be time for it to go, tail or no tail, for a bear does not need a tail in order to be dangerous.>FOUR MONTHS LATER.OI have been off hunting and fishing a month, up in the region that she calls Buffalo; I don't know why, unless it is because there are not any buffaloes there.klMeantime the bear has learned to paddle around all by itself on its hind legs, and says "poppa" and "momma.2It is certainly a new species.nThis resemblance to words may be purely accidental, of course, and may have no purpose or meaning; but even in that case it is still extraordinary, and is a thing which no other bear can do.HThis imitation of speech, taken together with general absence of fur and entire absence of tail, sufficiently indicates that this is a new kind of bear.89The further study of it will be exceedingly interesting.hiMeantime I will go off on a far expedition among the forests of the north and make an exhaustive search.*z{There must certainly be another one somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it has company of its own species.89I will go straightway; but I will muzzle this one first.=THREE MONTHS LATER.;<It has been a weary, weary hunt, yet I have had no success.klIn the mean time, without stirring from the home estate, she has caught another one! I never saw such luck. Z[I might have hunted these woods a hundred years, I never would have run across that thing.G NEXT DAY.noI have been comparing the new one with the old one, and it is perfectly plain that they are of the same breed._I was going to stuff one of them for my collection, but she is prejudiced against it for some reason or other; so I have relinquished the idea, though I think it is a mistake. CDIt would be an irreparable loss to science if they should get away.vThe old one is tamer than it was and can laugh and talk like a parrot, having learned this, no doubt, from being with the parrot so much, and having the imitative faculty in a high developed degree.|I shall be astonished if it turns out to be a new kind of parrot; and yet I ought not to be astonished, for it has already been everything else it could think of since those first days when it was a fish.BThe new one is as ugly as the old one was at first; has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat complexion and the same singular head without any fur on it.>She calls it Abel.@TEN YEARS LATER.(()They are BOYS; we found it out long ago. YZIt was their coming in that small immature shape that puzzled us; we were not used to it.7There are some girls now.MNAbel is a good boy, but if Cain had stayed a bear it would have improved him.IAfter all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.)yzAt first I thought she talked too much; but now I should be sorry to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life.rBlessed be the chestnut that brought us near together and taught me to know the goodness of her heart and the sweetness of her spirit! EVE'S DIARY Translated from the Original SATURDAY./!"I am almost a whole day old, now.<I arrived yesterday.6That is as it seems to me.%uvAnd it must be so, for if there was a day-before-yesterday I was not there when it happened, or I should remember it.HIIt could be, of course, that it did happen, and that I was not noticing.ijVery well; I will be very watchful now, and if any day-before-yesterdays happen I will make a note of it.VIt will be best to start right and not let the record get confused, for some instinct tells me that these details are going to be important to the historian some day.For I feel like an experiment, I feel exactly like an experiment; it would be impossible for a person to feel more like an experiment than I do, and so I am coming to feel convinced that that is what I AM--an experiment; just an experiment, and nothing more.hiThen if I am an experiment, am I the whole of it? No, I think not; I think the rest of it is part of it.QRI am the main part of it, but I think the rest of it has its share in the matter. Z[Is my position assured, or do I have to watch it and take care of it? The latter, perhaps.HISome instinct tells me that eternal vigilance is the price of supremacy.12That is a good phrase, I think, for one so young.45Everything looks better today than it did yesterday.qIn the rush of finishing up yesterday, the mountains were left in a ragged condition, and some of the plains were so cluttered with rubbish and remnants that the aspects were quite distressing.9Noble and beautiful works of art should not be subjected to haste; and this majestic new world is indeed a most noble and beautiful work. [\And certainly marvelously near to being perfect, notwithstanding the shortness of the time.opThere are too many stars in some places and not enough in others, but that can be remedied presently, no doubt..~The moon got loose last night, and slid down and fell out of the scheme--a very great loss; it breaks my heart to think of it.mnThere isn't another thing among the ornaments and decorations that is comparable to it for beauty and finish.,$%It should have been fastened better.WXIf we can only get it back again-- But of course there is no telling where it went to.RSAnd besides, whoever gets it will hide it; I know it because I would do it myself.'(I believe I can be honest in all other matters, but I already begin to realize that the core and center of my nature is love of the beautiful, a passion for the beautiful, and that it would not be safe to trust me with a moon that belonged to another person and that person didn't know I had it.I could give up a moon that I found in the daytime, because I should be afraid some one was looking; but if I found it in the dark, I am sure I should find some kind of an excuse for not saying anything about it.89For I do love moons, they are so pretty and so romantic.+{|I wish we had five or six; I would never go to bed; I should never get tired lying on the moss-bank and looking up at them.<Stars are good, too.&*+I wish I could get some to put in my hair.6But I suppose I never can.MNYou would be surprised to find how far off they are, for they do not look it.gWhen they first showed, last night, I tried to knock some down with a pole, but it didn't reach, which astonished me; then I tried clods till I was all tired out, but I never got one.67It was because I am left-handed and cannot throw good.<=Even when I aimed at the one I wasn't after I couldn't hit the other one, though I did make some close shots, for I saw the black blot of the clod sail right into the midst of the golden clusters forty or fifty times, just barely missing them, and if I could have held out a little longer maybe I could have got one.PQSo I cried a little, which was natural, I suppose, for one of my age, and after I was rested I got a basket and started for a place on the extreme rim of the circle, where the stars were close to the ground and I could get them with my hands, which would be better, anyway, because I could gather them tenderly then, and not break them.[But it was farther than I thought, and at last I had go give it up; I was so tired I couldn't drag my feet another step; and besides, they were sore and hurt me very much.I couldn't get back home; it was too far and turning cold; but I found some tigers and nestled in among them and was most adorably comfortable, and their breath was sweet and pleasant, because they live on strawberries.LMI had never seen a tiger before, but I knew them in a minute by the stripes.@AIf I could have one of those skins, it would make a lovely gown. 01Today I am getting better ideas about distances.MNI was so eager to get hold of every pretty thing that I giddily grabbed for it, sometimes when it was too far off, and sometimes when it was but six inches away but seemed a foot--alas, with thorns between! I learned a lesson; also I made an axiom, all out of my own head--my very first one; THE SCRATCHED EXPERIMENT SHUNS THE THORN.!/0I think it is a very good one for one so young.$tuI followed the other Experiment around, yesterday afternoon, at a distance, to see what it might be for, if I could.1 But I was not able to make out.<I think it is a man.XYI had never seen a man, but it looked like one, and I feel sure that that is what it is.STI realize that I feel more curiosity about it than about any of the other reptiles.hiIf it is a reptile, and I suppose it is; for it has frowzy hair and blue eyes, and looks like a reptile.KIt has no hips; it tapers like a carrot; when it stands, it spreads itself apart like a derrick; so I think it is a reptile, though it may be architecture.56I was afraid of it at first, and started to run every time it turned around, for I thought it was going to chase me; but by and by I found it was only trying to get away, so after that I was not timid any more, but tracked it along, several hours, about twenty yards behind, which made it nervous and unhappy.78At last it was a good deal worried, and climbed a tree.56I waited a good while, then gave it up and went home.6Today the same thing over.2I've got it up the tree again.ISUNDAY.=It is up there yet.<Resting, apparently.WXBut that is a subterfuge: Sunday isn't the day of rest; Saturday is appointed for that.XYIt looks to me like a creature that is more interested in resting than it anything else./!"It would tire me to rest so much.23It tires me just to sit around and watch the tree.78I do wonder what it is for; I never see it do anything. YZThey returned the moon last night, and I was SO happy! I think it is very honest of them.BIt slid down and fell off again, but I was not distressed; there is no need to worry when one has that kind of neighbors; they will fetch it back.45I wish I could do something to show my appreciation. GHI would like to send them some stars, for we have more than we can use.OPI mean I, not we, for I can see that the reptile cares nothing for such things.-#$It has low tastes, and is not kind.When I went there yesterday evening in the gloaming it had crept down and was trying to catch the little speckled fishes that play in the pool, and I had to clod it to make it go up the tree again and let them alone.{I wonder if THAT is what it is for? Hasn't it any heart? Hasn't it any compassion for those little creature? Can it be that it was designed and manufactured for such ungentle work? It has the look of it.?@One of the clods took it back of the ear, and it used language.VWIt gave me a thrill, for it was the first time I had ever heard speech, except my own.;<I did not understand the words, but they seemed expressive.When I found it could talk I felt a new interest in it, for I love to talk; I talk, all day, and in my sleep, too, and I am very interesting, but if I had another to talk to I could be twice as interesting, and would never stop, if desired. pqIf this reptile is a man, it isn't an IT, is it? That wouldn't be grammatical, would it? I think it would be HE.E I think so.UVIn that case one would parse it thus: nominative, HE; dative, HIM; possessive, HIS'N.VWWell, I will consider it a man and call it he until it turns out to be something else.78This will be handier than having so many uncertainties.?NEXT WEEK SUNDAY. CDAll the week I tagged around after him and tried to get acquainted.BCI had to do the talking, because he was shy, but I didn't mind it./He seemed pleased to have me around, and I used the sociable "we" a good deal, because it seemed to flatter him to be included.F WEDNESDAY.UVWe are getting along very well indeed, now, and getting better and better acquainted.hiHe does not try to avoid me any more, which is a good sign, and shows that he likes to have me with him.bcThat pleases me, and I study to be useful to him in every way I can, so as to increase his regard.nDuring the last day or two I have taken all the work of naming things off his hands, and this has been a great relief to him, for he has no gift in that line, and is evidently very grateful.fgHe can't think of a rational name to save him, but I do not let him see that I am aware of his defect.ijWhenever a new creature comes along I name it before he has time to expose himself by an awkward silence.12In this way I have saved him many embarrassments.5I have no defect like this.56The minute I set eyes on an animal I know what it is._I don't have to reflect a moment; the right name comes out instantly, just as if it were an inspiration, as no doubt it is, for I am sure it wasn't in me half a minute before.WXI seem to know just by the shape of the creature and the way it acts what animal it is.JKWhen the dodo came along he thought it was a wildcat--I saw it in his eye.@But I saved him.BCAnd I was careful not to do it in a way that could hurt his pride.+{|I just spoke up in a quite natural way of pleasing surprise, and not as if I was dreaming of conveying information, and said, "Well, I do declare, if there isn't the dodo!" I explained--without seeming to be explaining--how I know it for a dodo, and although I thought maybe he was a little piqued that I knew the creature when he didn't, it was quite evident that he admired me.^_That was very agreeable, and I thought of it more than once with gratification before I slept.TUHow little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it! THURSDAY.@my first sorrow. CDYesterday he avoided me and seemed to wish I would not talk to him.I could not believe it, and thought there was some mistake, for I loved to be with him, and loved to hear him talk, and so how could it be that he could feel unkind toward me when I had not done anything? But at last it seemed true, so I went away and sat lonely in the place where I first saw him the morning that we were made and I did not know what he was and was indifferent about him; but now it was a mournful place, and every little think spoke of him, and my heart was very sore.BI did not know why very clearly, for it was a new feeling; I had not experienced it before, and it was all a mystery, and I could not make it out.But when night came I could not bear the lonesomeness, and went to the new shelter which he has built, to ask him what I had done that was wrong and how I could mend it and get back his kindness again; but he put me out in the rain, and it was my first sorrow.ISUNDAY. pqIt is pleasant again, now, and I am happy; but those were heavy days; I do not think of them when I can help it.NOI tried to get him some of those apples, but I cannot learn to throw straight.56I failed, but I think the good intention pleased him.:They are forbidden, and he says I shall come to harm; but so I come to harm through pleasing him, why shall I care for that harm? MONDAY.>?This morning I told him my name, hoping it would interest him.5But he did not care for it.BIt is strange.$,-If he should tell me his name, I would care.?@I think it would be pleasanter in my ears than any other sound.;He talks very little. [\Perhaps it is because he is not bright, and is sensitive about it and wishes to conceal it.lmIt is such a pity that he should feel so, for brightness is nothing; it is in the heart that the values lie.3I wish I could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches, and riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty. DEAlthough he talks so little, he has quite a considerable vocabulary."./This morning he used a surprisingly good word.hiHe evidently recognized, himself, that it was a good one, for he worked in in twice afterward, casually. Z[It was good casual art, still it showed that he possesses a certain quality of perception.=>Without a doubt that seed can be made to grow, if cultivated.?@Where did he get that word? I do not think I have ever used it.-#$No, he took no interest in my name. CDI tried to hide my disappointment, but I suppose I did not succeed.?@I went away and sat on the moss-bank with my feet in the water. [\It is where I go when I hunger for companionship, some one to look at, some one to talk to.7It is not enough--that lovely white body painted there in the pool--but it is something, and something is better than utter loneliness.RIt talks when I talk; it is sad when I am sad; it comforts me with its sympathy; it says, "Do not be downhearted, you poor friendless girl; I will be your friend.<=It IS a good friend to me, and my only one; it is my sister.QRThat first time that she forsook me! ah, I shall never forget that--never, never.My heart was lead in my body! I said, "She was all I had, and now she is gone!" In my despair I said, "Break, my heart; I cannot bear my life any more!" and hid my face in my hands, and there was no solace for me.And when I took them away, after a little, there she was again, white and shining and beautiful, and I sprang into her arms! That was perfect happiness; I had known happiness before, but it was not like this, which was ecstasy.2I never doubted her afterward.[Sometimes she stayed away--maybe an hour, maybe almost the whole day, but I waited and did not doubt; I said, "She is busy, or she is gone on a journey, but she will come.2And it was so: she always did.%uvAt night she would not come if it was dark, for she was a timid little thing; but if there was a moon she would come.TUI am not afraid of the dark, but she is younger than I am; she was born after I was.*z{Many and many are the visits I have paid her; she is my comfort and my refuge when my life is hard--and it is mainly that.H TUESDAY.5All the morning I was at work improving the estate; and I purposely kept away from him in the hope that he would get lonely and come.ABut he did not.>At noon I stopped for the day and took my recreation by flitting all about with the bees and the butterflies and reveling in the flowers, those beautiful creatures that catch the smile of God out of the sky and preserve it! I gathered them, and made them into wreaths and garlands and clothed myself in them while I ate my luncheon--apples, of course; then I sat in the shade and wished and waited.<But he did not come.BBut no matter.@ANothing would have come of it, for he does not care for flowers.fgHe called them rubbish, and cannot tell one from another, and thinks it is superior to feel like that.He does not care for me, he does not care for flowers, he does not care for the painted sky at eventide--is there anything he does care for, except building shacks to coop himself up in from the good clean rain, and thumping the melons, and sampling the grapes, and fingering the fruit on the trees, to see how those properties are coming along? I laid a dry stick on the ground and tried to bore a hole in it with another one, in order to carry out a scheme that I had, and soon I got an awful fright.$%A thin, transparent bluish film rose out of the hole, and I dropped everything and ran! I thought it was a spirit, and I WAS so frightened! But I looked back, and it was not coming; so I leaned against a rock and rested and panted, and let my limps go on trembling until they got steady again; then I crept warily back, alert, watching, and ready to fly if there was occasion; and when I was come near, I parted the branches of a rose-bush and peeped through--wishing the man was about, I was looking so cunning and pretty--but the sprite was gone. FGI went there, and there was a pinch of delicate pink dust in the hole. EFI put my finger in, to feel it, and said OUCH! and took it out again.<It was a cruel pain.`I put my finger in my mouth; and by standing first on one foot and then the other, and grunting, I presently eased my misery; then I was full of interest, and began to examine.#-.I was curious to know what the pink dust was.NOSuddenly the name of it occurred to me, though I had never heard of it before.RSIt was FIRE! I was as certain of it as a person could be of anything in the world.$,-So without hesitation I named it that--fire.'(I had created something that didn't exist before; I had added a new thing to the world's uncountable properties; I realized this, and was proud of my achievement, and was going to run and find him and tell him about it, thinking to raise myself in his esteem--but I reflected, and did not do it.3No--he would not care for it.UHe would ask what it was good for, and what could I answer? for if it was not GOOD for something, but only beautiful, merely beautiful-- So I sighed, and did not go.For it wasn't good for anything; it could not build a shack, it could not improve melons, it could not hurry a fruit crop; it was useless, it was a foolishness and a vanity; he would despise it and say cutting words.bBut to me it was not despicable; I said, "Oh, you fire, I love you, you dainty pink creature, for you are BEAUTIFUL--and that is enough!" and was going to gather it to my breast.BBut refrained.VThen I made another maxim out of my head, though it was so nearly like the first one that I was afraid it was only a plagiarism: "THE BURNT EXPERIMENT SHUNS THE FIRE. I wrought again; and when I had made a good deal of fire-dust I emptied it into a handful of dry brown grass, intending to carry it home and keep it always and play with it; but the wind struck it and it sprayed up and spat out at me fiercely, and I dropped it and ran.|When I looked back the blue spirit was towering up and stretching and rolling away like a cloud, and instantly I thought of the name of it--SMOKE!--though, upon my word, I had never heard of smoke before.vSoon brilliant yellow and red flares shot up through the smoke, and I named them in an instant--FLAMES--and I was right, too, though these were the very first flames that had ever been in the world.9:They climbed the trees, then flashed splendidly in and out of the vast and increasing volume of tumbling smoke, and I had to clap my hands and laugh and dance in my rapture, it was so new and strange and so wonderful and so beautiful! He came running, and stopped and gazed, and said not a word for many minutes.6Then he asked what it was.=>Ah, it was too bad that he should ask such a direct question.')*I had to answer it, of course, and I did.=I said it was fire.jkIf it annoyed him that I should know and he must ask; that was not my fault; I had no desire to annoy him.noAfter a pause he asked: "How did it come?" Another direct question, and it also had to have a direct answer.F I made it.!/0The fire was traveling farther and farther off.jkHe went to the edge of the burned place and stood looking down, and said: "What are these?" "Fire-coals.KLHe picked up one to examine it, but changed his mind and put it down again.>Then he went away.:NOTHING interests him.;But I was interested.WXThere were ashes, gray and soft and delicate and pretty--I knew what they were at once.)'(And the embers; I knew the embers, too.cdI found my apples, and raked them out, and was glad; for I am very young and my appetite is active.=>But I was disappointed; they were all burst open and spoiled. FGSpoiled apparently; but it was not so; they were better than raw ones.78Fire is beautiful; some day it will be useful, I think.IFRIDAY.OPI saw him again, for a moment, last Monday at nightfall, but only for a moment.klI was hoping he would praise me for trying to improve the estate, for I had meant well and had worked hard.45But he was not pleased, and turned away and left me.jkHe was also displeased on another account: I tried once more to persuade him to stop going over the Falls.XThat was because the fire had revealed to me a new passion--quite new, and distinctly different from love, grief, and those others which I had already discovered--FEAR.DAnd it is horrible!--I wish I had never discovered it; it gives me dark moments, it spoils my happiness, it makes me shiver and tremble and shudder.deBut I could not persuade him, for he has not discovered fear yet, and so he could not understand me. pqEXTRACT FROM ADAM'S DIARY Perhaps I ought to remember that she is very young, a mere girl and make allowances.She is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world is to her a charm, a wonder, a mystery, a joy; she can't speak for delight when she finds a new flower, she must pet it and caress it and smell it and talk to it, and pour out endearing names upon it.And she is color-mad: brown rocks, yellow sand, gray moss, green foliage, blue sky; the pearl of the dawn, the purple shadows on the mountains, the golden islands floating in crimson seas at sunset, the pallid moon sailing through the shredded cloud-rack, the star-jewels glittering in the wastes of space--none of them is of any practical value, so far as I can see, but because they have color and majesty, that is enough for her, and she loses her mind over them.efIf she could quiet down and keep still a couple minutes at a time, it would be a reposeful spectacle.ZIn that case I think I could enjoy looking at her; indeed I am sure I could, for I am coming to realize that she is a quite remarkably comely creature--lithe, slender, trim, rounded, shapely, nimble, graceful; and once when she was standing marble-white and sun-drenched on a boulder, with her young head tilted back and her hand shading her eyes, watching the flight of a bird in the sky, I recognized that she was beautiful.D MONDAY NOON.VWIf there is anything on the planet that she is not interested in it is not in my list. FGThere are animals that I am indifferent to, but it is not so with her.!qrShe has no discrimination, she takes to all of them, she thinks they are all treasures, every new one is welcome.wWhen the mighty brontosaurus came striding into camp, she regarded it as an acquisition, I considered it a calamity; that is a good sample of the lack of harmony that prevails in our views of things. Z[She wanted to domesticate it, I wanted to make it a present of the homestead and move out. pqShe believed it could be tamed by kind treatment and would be a good pet; I said a pet twenty-one feet high and eighty-four feet long would be no proper thing to have about the place, because, even with the best intentions and without meaning any harm, it could sit down on the house and mash it, for any one could see by the look of its eye that it was absent-minded.OPStill, her heart was set upon having that monster, and she couldn't give it up.lmShe thought we could start a dairy with it, and wanted me to help milk it; but I wouldn't; it was too risky.67The sex wasn't right, and we hadn't any ladder anyway.45Then she wanted to ride it, and look at the scenery.Thirty or forty feet of its tail was lying on the ground, like a fallen tree, and she thought she could climb it, but she was mistaken; when she got to the steep place it was too slick and down she came, and would have hurt herself but for me.6Was she satisfied now? No.mnNothing ever satisfies her but demonstration; untested theories are not in her line, and she won't have them.=It is the right spirit, I concede it; it attracts me; I feel the influence of it; if I were with her more I think I should take it up myself.XWell, she had one theory remaining about this colossus: she thought that if we could tame it and make him friendly we could stand in the river and use him for a bridge.It turned out that he was already plenty tame enough--at least as far as she was concerned--so she tried her theory, but it failed: every time she got him properly placed in the river and went ashore to cross over him, he came out and followed her around like a pet mountain.9Like the other animals.?They all do that.IFRIDAY.@ATuesday--Wednesday--Thursday--and today: all without seeing him.NOIt is a long time to be alone; still, it is better to be alone than unwelcome.VWI HAD to have company--I was made for it, I think--so I made friends with the animals.*+They are just charming, and they have the kindest disposition and the politest ways; they never look sour, they never let you feel that you are intruding, they smile at you and wag their tail, if they've got one, and they are always ready for a romp or an excursion or anything you want to propose.-#$I think they are perfect gentlemen.UVAll these days we have had such good times, and it hasn't been lonesome for me, ever.1 Lonesome! No, I should say not.9:Why, there's always a swarm of them around--sometimes as much as four or five acres--you can't count them; and when you stand on a rock in the midst and look out over the furry expanse it is so mottled and splashed and gay with color and frisking sheen and sun-flash, and so rippled with stripes, that you might think it was a lake, only you know it isn't; and there's storms of sociable birds, and hurricanes of whirring wings; and when the sun strikes all that feathery commotion, you have a blazing up of all the colors you can think of, enough to put your eyes out.EWe have made long excursions, and I have seen a great deal of the world; almost all of it, I think; and so I am the first traveler, and the only one.TUWhen we are on the march, it is an imposing sight--there's nothing like it anywhere.rFor comfort I ride a tiger or a leopard, because it is soft and has a round back that fits me, and because they are such pretty animals; but for long distance or for scenery I ride the elephant.+{|He hoists me up with his trunk, but I can get off myself; when we are ready to camp, he sits and I slide down the back way._`The birds and animals are all friendly to each other, and there are no disputes about anything.wThey all talk, and they all talk to me, but it must be a foreign language, for I cannot make out a word they say; yet they often understand me when I talk back, particularly the dog and the elephant.<It makes me ashamed.%uvIt shows that they are brighter than I am, for I want to be the principal Experiment myself--and I intend to be, too.OPI have learned a number of things, and am educated, now, but I wasn't at first.8I was ignorant at first.LAt first it used to vex me because, with all my watching, I was never smart enough to be around when the water was running uphill; but now I do not mind it.cdI have experimented and experimented until now I know it never does run uphill, except in the dark.3I know it does in the dark, because the pool never goes dry, which it would, of course, if the water didn't come back in the night.IIt is best to prove things by actual experiment; then you KNOW; whereas if you depend on guessing and supposing and conjecturing, you never get educated.kSome things you CAN'T find out; but you will never know you can't by guessing and supposing: no, you have to be patient and go on experimenting until you find out that you can't find out.LMAnd it is delightful to have it that way, it makes the world so interesting.78If there wasn't anything to find out, it would be dull.7Even trying to find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying to find out and finding out, and I don't know but more so.+{|The secret of the water was a treasure until I GOT it; then the excitement all went away, and I recognized a sense of loss. By experiment I know that wood swims, and dry leaves, and feathers, and plenty of other things; therefore by all that cumulative evidence you know that a rock will swim; but you have to put up with simply knowing it, for there isn't any way to prove it--up to now.56But I shall find a way--then THAT excitement will go.vSuch things make me sad; because by and by when I have found out everything there won't be any more excitements, and I do love excitements so! The other night I couldn't sleep for thinking about it.fAt first I couldn't make out what I was made for, but now I think it was to search out the secrets of this wonderful world and be happy and thank the Giver of it all for devising it.;I think there are many things to learn yet--I hope so; and by economizing and not hurrying too fast I think they will last weeks and weeks.F I hope so.#stWhen you cast up a feather it sails away on the air and goes out of sight; then you throw up a clod and it doesn't.6It comes down, every time.23I have tried it and tried it, and it is always so.#stI wonder why it is? Of course it DOESN'T come down, but why should it SEEM to? I suppose it is an optical illusion.9I mean, one of them is.9I don't know which one.OIt may be the feather, it may be the clod; I can't prove which it is, I can only demonstrate that one or the other is a fake, and let a person take his choice.9:By watching, I know that the stars are not going to last.<=I have seen some of the best ones melt and run down the sky.abSince one can melt, they can all melt; since they can all melt, they can all melt the same night./!"That sorrow will come--I know it.34I mean to sit up every night and look at them as long as I can keep awake; and I will impress those sparkling fields on my memory, so that by and by when they are taken away I can by my fancy restore those lovely myriads to the black sky and make them sparkle again, and double them by the blur of my tears.?@After the Fall When I look back, the Garden is a dream to me.&vwIt was beautiful, surpassingly beautiful, enchantingly beautiful; and now it is lost, and I shall not see it any more.9:The Garden is lost, but I have found HIM, and am content.:He loves me as well as he can; I love him with all the strength of my passionate nature, and this, I think, is proper to my youth and sex.If I ask myself why I love him, I find I do not know, and do not really much care to know; so I suppose that this kind of love is not a product of reasoning and statistics, like one's love for other reptiles and animals.3I think that this must be so.[I love certain birds because of their song; but I do not love Adam on account of his singing--no, it is not that; the more he sings the more I do not get reconciled to it.VWYet I ask him to sing, because I wish to learn to like everything he is interested in.LMI am sure I can learn, because at first I could not stand it, but now I can.NOIt sours the milk, but it doesn't matter; I can get used to that kind of milk.KLIt is not on account of his brightness that I love him--no, it is not that.4He is not to blame for his brightness, such as it is, for he did not make it himself; he is as God make him, and that is sufficient.$,-There was a wise purpose in it, THAT I know./In time it will develop, though I think it will not be sudden; and besides, there is no hurry; he is well enough just as he is. [\It is not on account of his gracious and considerate ways and his delicacy that I love him.QRNo, he has lacks in this regard, but he is well enough just so, and is improving.IJIt is not on account of his industry that I love him--no, it is not that. GHI think he has it in him, and I do not know why he conceals it from me.=It is my only pain.$,-Otherwise he is frank and open with me, now.$,-I am sure he keeps nothing from me but this.It grieves me that he should have a secret from me, and sometimes it spoils my sleep, thinking of it, but I will put it out of my mind; it shall not trouble my happiness, which is otherwise full to overflowing.JKIt is not on account of his education that I love him--no, it is not that.UVHe is self-educated, and does really know a multitude of things, but they are not so.IJIt is not on account of his chivalry that I love him--no, it is not that.hiHe told on me, but I do not blame him; it is a peculiarity of sex, I think, and he did not make his sex.WOf course I would not have told on him, I would have perished first; but that is a peculiarity of sex, too, and I do not take credit for it, for I did not make my sex.HIThen why is it that I love him? MERELY BECAUSE HE IS MASCULINE, I think.OPAt bottom he is good, and I love him for that, but I could love him without it.=>If he should beat me and abuse me, I should go on loving him.F I know it.1 It is a matter of sex, I think.7He is strong and handsome, and I love him for that, and I admire him and am proud of him, but I could love him without those qualities.bHe he were plain, I should love him; if he were a wreck, I should love him; and I would work for him, and slave over him, and pray for him, and watch by his bedside until I died. CDYes, I think I love him merely because he is MINE and is MASCULINE.,$%There is no other reason, I suppose.klAnd so I think it is as I first said: that this kind of love is not a product of reasonings and statistics.<=It just COMES--none knows whence--and cannot explain itself.<And doesn't need to.=It is what I think.ABut I am only a girl, the first that has examined this matter, and it may turn out that in my ignorance and inexperience I have not got it right.  Forty Years Later It is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this life together--a longing which shall never perish from the earth, but shall have place in the heart of every wife that loves, until the end of time; and it shall be called by my name.()But if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be I; for he is strong, I am weak, I am not so necessary to him as he is to me--life without him would not be life; now could I endure it? This prayer is also immortal, and will not cease from being offered up while my race continues.>?I am the first wife; and in the last wife I shall be repeated.:;At Eve's Grave ADAM: Wheresoever she was, THERE was Eden.h Z[THE GILDED AGE A Tale of Today by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner 1873 PREFACE.This book was not written for private circulation among friends; it was not written to cheer and instruct a diseased relative of the author's; it was not thrown off during intervals of wearing labor to amuse an idle hour.ghIt was not written for any of these reasons, and therefore it is submitted without the usual apologies.nIt will be seen that it deals with an entirely ideal state of society; and the chief embarrassment of the writers in this realm of the imagination has been the want of illustrative examples.KIn a State where there is no fever of speculation, no inflamed desire for sudden wealth, where the poor are all simple-minded and contented, and the rich are all honest and generous, where society is in a condition of primitive purity and politics is the occupation of only the capable and the patriotic, there are necessarily no materials for such a history as we have constructed out of an ideal commonwealth..~No apology is needed for following the learned custom of placing attractive scraps of literature at the heads of our chapters.It has been truly observed by Wagner that such headings, with their vague suggestions of the matter which is to follow them, pleasantly inflame the reader's interest without wholly satisfying his curiosity, and we will hope that it may be found to be so in the present case.Our quotations are set in a vast number of tongues; this is done for the reason that very few foreign nations among whom the book will circulate can read in any language but their own; whereas we do not write for a particular class or sect or nation, but to take in the whole world.vWe do not object to criticism; and we do not expect that the critic will read the book before writing a notice of it: We do not even expect the reviewer of the book will say that he has not read it.JKNo, we have no anticipations of anything unusual in this age of criticism.xBut if the Jupiter, Who passes his opinion on the novel, ever happens to peruse it in some weary moment of his subsequent life, we hope that he will not be the victim of a remorse bitter but too late.BOne word more.EThis is--what it pretends to be a joint production, in the conception of the story, the exposition of the characters, and in its literal composition.XYThere is scarcely a chapter that does not bear the marks of the two writers of the book.NS.NC.^Etext Editor's Note: The following chapters were written by Mark Twain: 1-11, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32-34, 36, 37, 42, 43, 45, 51-53, 57, 59-62; and portions of 35, 49, and 56.7See Twain's letter to Dr.AJohn Brown Feb.ND.F CHAPTER I.F June 18--.*z{Squire Hawkins sat upon the pyramid of large blocks, called the "stile," in front of his house, contemplating the morning.%+,The locality was Obedstown, East Tennessee.You would not know that Obedstown stood on the top of a mountain, for there was nothing about the landscape to indicate it--but it did: a mountain that stretched abroad over whole counties, and rose very gradually.>The district was called the "Knobs of East Tennessee," and had a reputation like Nazareth, as far as turning out any good thing was concerned.TThe Squire's house was a double log cabin, in a state of decay; two or three gaunt hounds lay asleep about the threshold, and lifted their heads sadly whenever Mrs.=>Hawkins or the children stepped in and out over their bodies.Rubbish was scattered about the grassless yard; a bench stood near the door with a tin wash basin on it and a pail of water and a gourd; a cat had begun to drink from the pail, but the exertion was overtaxing her energies, and she had stopped to rest.VWThere was an ash-hopper by the fence, and an iron pot, for soft-soap-boiling, near it.34This dwelling constituted one-fifteenth of Obedstown; the other fourteen houses were scattered about among the tall pine trees and among the corn-fields in such a way that a man might stand in the midst of the city and not know but that he was in the country if he only depended on his eyes for information.Squire" Hawkins got his title from being postmaster of Obedstown--not that the title properly belonged to the office, but because in those regions the chief citizens always must have titles of some sort, and so the usual courtesy had been extended to Hawkins.fgThe mail was monthly, and sometimes amounted to as much as three or four letters at a single delivery.+{|Even a rush like this did not fill up the postmaster's whole month, though, and therefore he "kept store" in the intervals.')*The Squire was contemplating the morning.&'It was balmy and tranquil, the vagrant breezes were laden with the odor of flowers, the murmur of bees was in the air, there was everywhere that suggestion of repose that summer woodlands bring to the senses, and the vague, pleasurable melancholy that such a time and such surroundings inspire.78Presently the United States mail arrived, on horseback.89There was but one letter, and it was for the postmaster.[The long-legged youth who carried the mail tarried an hour to talk, for there was no hurry; and in a little while the male population of the village had assembled to help.As a general thing, they were dressed in homespun "jeans," blue or yellow--here were no other varieties of it; all wore one suspender and sometimes two--yarn ones knitted at home,--some wore vests, but few wore coats.Such coats and vests as did appear, however, were rather picturesque than otherwise, for they were made of tolerably fanciful patterns of calico--a fashion which prevails thereto this day among those of the community who have tastes above the common level and are able to afford style.GEvery individual arrived with his hands in his pockets; a hand came out occasionally for a purpose, but it always went back again after service; and if it was the head that was served, just the cant that the dilapidated straw hat got by being uplifted and rooted under, was retained until the next call altered the inclination; many' hats were present, but none were erect and no two were canted just alike.45We are speaking impartially of men, youths and boys.oAnd we are also speaking of these three estates when we say that every individual was either chewing natural leaf tobacco prepared on his own premises, or smoking the same in a corn-cob pipe.Few of the men wore whiskers; none wore moustaches; some had a thick jungle of hair under the chin and hiding the throat--the only pattern recognized there as being the correct thing in whiskers; but no part of any individual's face had seen a razor for a week.ABThese neighbors stood a few moments looking at the mail carrier reflectively while he talked; but fatigue soon began to show itself, and one after another they climbed up and occupied the top rail of the fence, hump-shouldered and grave, like a company of buzzards assembled for supper and listening for the death-rattle.\Old Damrell said: "Tha hain't no news 'bout the jedge, hit ain't likely?" "Cain't tell for sartin; some thinks he's gwyne to be 'long toreckly, and some thinks 'e hain't.VWRuss Mosely he tote ole Hanks he mought git to Obeds tomorrer or nex' day he reckoned.9Well, I wisht I knowed.XYI got a 'prime sow and pigs in the cote-house, and I hain't got no place for to put 'em. GHIf the jedge is a gwyne to hold cote, I got to roust 'em out, I reckon.3But tomorrer'll do, I 'spect.<The speaker bunched his thick lips together like the stem-end of a tomato and shot a bumble-bee dead that had lit on a weed seven feet away.COne after another the several chewers expressed a charge of tobacco juice and delivered it at the deceased with steady, aim and faultless accuracy.@AWhat's a stirrin', down 'bout the Forks?" continued Old Damrell.9Well, I dunno, skasely.56Ole, Drake Higgins he's ben down to Shelby las' week.FTuck his crap down; couldn't git shet o' the most uv it; hit wasn't no time for to sell, he say, so he 'fotch it back agin, 'lowin' to wait tell fall.XYTalks 'bout goin' to Mozouri--lots uv 'ems talkin' that-away down thar, Ole Higgins say.67Cain't make a livin' here no mo', sich times as these.nSi Higgins he's ben over to Kaintuck n' married a high-toned gal thar, outen the fust families, an' he's come back to the Forks with jist a hell's-mint o' whoop-jamboree notions, folks says.5He's tuck an' fixed up the ole house like they does in Kaintuck, he say, an' tha's ben folks come cler from Turpentine for to see it.?@He's tuck an gawmed it all over on the inside with plarsterin'.3What's plasterin'?" "I dono.9Hit's what he calls it.3Ole Mam Higgins, she tole me. GHShe say she wasn't gwyne to hang out in no sich a dern hole like a hog.UVSays it's mud, or some sich kind o' nastiness that sticks on n' covers up everything.7Plarsterin', Si calls it.LMThis marvel was discussed at considerable length; and almost with animation.But presently there was a dog-fight over in the neighborhood of the blacksmith shop, and the visitors slid off their perch like so many turtles and strode to the battle-field with an interest bordering on eagerness.')*The Squire remained, and read his letter.%+,Then he sighed, and sat long in meditation./!"At intervals he said: "Missouri.G Missouri.#-.Well, well, well, everything is so uncertain.(()At last he said: "I believe I'll do it.6A man will just rot, here.8My house my yard, everything around me, in fact, shows' that I am becoming one of these cattle--and I used to be thrifty in other times.RSHe was not more than thirty-five, but he had a worn look that made him seem older.He left the stile, entered that part of his house which was the store, traded a quart of thick molasses for a coonskin and a cake of beeswax, to an old dame in linsey-woolsey, put his letter away, an went into the kitchen.His wife was there, constructing some dried apple pies; a slovenly urchin of ten was dreaming over a rude weather-vane of his own contriving; his small sister, close upon four years of age, was sopping corn-bread in some gravy left in the bottom of a frying-pan and trying hard not to sop over a finger-mark that divided the pan through the middle--for the other side belonged to the brother, whose musings made him forget his stomach for the moment; a negro woman was busy cooking, at a vast fire-place.!/0Shiftlessness and poverty reigned in the place.4Nancy, I've made up my mind.BCThe world is done with me, and perhaps I ought to be done with it.6But no matter--I can wait.9I am going to Missouri.45I won't stay in this dead country and decay with it.0 !I've had it on my mind sometime.)yzI'm going to sell out here for whatever I can get, and buy a wagon and team and put you and the children in it and start.*&'Anywhere that suits you, suits me, Si.RSAnd the children can't be any worse off in Missouri than, they are here, I reckon.ghMotioning his wife to a private conference in their own room, Hawkins said: "No, they'll be better off.78I've looked out for them, Nancy," and his face lighted.@Do you see these papers? Well, they are evidence that I have taken up Seventy-five Thousand Acres of Land in this county --think what an enormous fortune it will be some day! Why, Nancy, enormous don't express it--the word's too tame! I tell your Nancy----" "For goodness sake, Si----" "Wait, Nancy, wait--let me finish--I've been secretly bailing and fuming with this grand inspiration for weeks, and I must talk or I'll burst! I haven't whispered to a soul--not a word--have had my countenance under lock and key, for fear it might drop something that would tell even these animals here how to discern the gold mine that's glaring under their noses.Now all that is necessary to hold this land and keep it in the family is to pay the trifling taxes on it yearly--five or ten dollars --the whole tract would not sell for over a third of a cent an acre now, but some day people wild be glad to get it for twenty dollars, fifty dollars, a hundred dollars an acre! What should you say to" [here he dropped his voice to a whisper and looked anxiously around to see that there were no eavesdroppers,] "a thousand dollars an acre! "Well you may open your eyes and stare! But it's so.23You and I may not see the day, but they'll see it.0 !Mind I tell you; they'll see it.UVNancy, you've heard of steamboats, and maybe you believed in them--of course you did.|You've heard these cattle here scoff at them and call them lies and humbugs,--but they're not lies and humbugs, they're a reality and they're going to be a more wonderful thing some day than they are now.cdThey're going to make a revolution in this world's affairs that will make men dizzy to contemplate. YZI've been watching--I've been watching while some people slept, and I know what's coming.bcEven you and I will see the day that steamboats will come up that little Turkey river to within twenty miles of this land of ours--and in high water they'll come right to it! And this is not all, Nancy--it isn't even half! There's a bigger wonder--the railroad! These worms here have never even heard of it--and when they do they'll not believe in it.:But it's another fact.&vwCoaches that fly over the ground twenty miles an hour--heavens and earth, think of that, Nancy! Twenty miles an hour.2It makes a main's brain whirl.Some day, when you and I are in our graves, there'll be a railroad stretching hundreds of miles--all the way down from the cities of the Northern States to New Orleans--and its got to run within thirty miles of this land--may be even touch a corner of it.$%Well; do you know, they've quit burning wood in some places in the Eastern States? And what do you suppose they burn? Coal!" [He bent over and whispered again:] "There's world--worlds of it on this land! You know that black stuff that crops out of the bank of the branch?--well, that's it.ijYou've taken it for rocks; so has every body here; and they've built little dams and such things with it.!/0One man was going to build a chimney out of it.`aNancy I expect I turned as white as a sheet! Why, it might have caught fire and told everything.0 !I showed him it was too crumbly.LMThen he was going to build it of copper ore--splendid yellow forty-per-cent.|ore! There's fortunes upon fortunes of copper ore on our land! It scared me to death, the idea of this fool starting a smelting furnace in his house without knowing it, and getting his dull eyes opened.!qrAnd then he was going to build it of iron ore! There's mountains of iron ore here, Nancy--whole mountains of it.4I wouldn't take any chances.FI just stuck by him--I haunted him--I never let him alone till he built it of mud and sticks like all the rest of the chimneys in this dismal country.jPine forests, wheat land, corn land, iron, copper, coal-wait till the railroads come, and the steamboats! We'll never see the day, Nancy--never in the world---never, never, never, child.tWe've got to drag along, drag along, and eat crusts in toil and poverty, all hopeless and forlorn--but they'll ride in coaches, Nancy! They'll live like the princes of the earth; they'll be courted and worshiped; their names will be known from ocean to ocean! Ah, well-a-day! Will they ever come back here, on the railroad and the steamboat, and say, 'This one little spot shall not be touched--this hovel shall be sacred--for here our father and our mother suffered for us, thought for us, laid the foundations of our future as solid as the hills!'" "You are a great, good, noble soul, Si Hawkins, and I am an honored woman to be the wife of such a man"--and the tears stood in her eyes when she said it.9We will go to Missouri. DEYou are out of your place, here, among these groping dumb creatures.OWe will find a higher place, where you can walk with your own kind, and be understood when you speak--not stared at as if you were talking some foreign tongue.VI would go anywhere, anywhere in the wide world with you I would rather my body would starve and die than your mind should hunger and wither away in this lonely land.=>Spoken like yourself, my child! But we'll not starve, Nancy.D Far from it.89I have a letter from Beriah Sellers--just came this day. GHA letter that--I'll read you a line from it!" He flew out of the room._`A shadow blurred the sunlight in Nancy's face --there was uneasiness in it, and disappointment. DEA procession of disturbing thoughts began to troop through her mind.Saying nothing aloud, she sat with her hands in her lap; now and then she clasped them, then unclasped them, then tapped the ends of the fingers together; sighed, nodded, smiled--occasionally paused, shook her head.BThis pantomime was the elocutionary expression of an unspoken soliloquy which had something of this shape: "I was afraid of it--was afraid of it..~Trying to make our fortune in Virginia, Beriah Sellers nearly ruined us and we had to settle in Kentucky and start over again.TUTrying to make our fortune in Kentucky he crippled us again and we had to move here.PQTrying to make our fortune here, he brought us clear down to the ground, nearly.ghHe's an honest soul, and means the very best in the world, but I'm afraid, I'm afraid he's too flighty.`He has splendid ideas, and he'll divide his chances with his friends with a free hand, the good generous soul, but something does seem to always interfere and spoil everything.#-.I never did think he was right well balanced..~But I don't blame my husband, for I do think that when that man gets his head full of a new notion, he can out-talk a machine.He'll make anybody believe in that notion that'll listen to him ten minutes--why I do believe he would make a deaf and dumb man believe in it and get beside himself, if you only set him where he could see his eyes tally and watch his hands explain.What a head he has got! When he got up that idea there in Virginia of buying up whole loads of negroes in Delaware and Virginia and Tennessee, very quiet, having papers drawn to have them delivered at a place in Alabama and take them and pay for them, away yonder at a certain time, and then in the meantime get a law made stopping everybody from selling negroes to the south after a certain day --it was somehow that way--mercy how the man would have made money! Negroes would have gone up to four prices.But after he'd spent money and worked hard, and traveled hard, and had heaps of negroes all contracted for, and everything going along just right, he couldn't get the laws passed and down the whole thing tumbled.[And there in Kentucky, when he raked up that old numskull that had been inventing away at a perpetual motion machine for twenty-two years, and Beriah Sellers saw at a glance where just one more little cog-wheel would settle the business, why I could see it as plain as day when he came in wild at midnight and hammered us out of bed and told the whole thing in a whisper with the doors bolted and the candle in an empty barrel.!/0Oceans of money in it --anybody could see that.oBut it did cost a deal to buy the old numskull out--and then when they put the new cog wheel in they'd overlooked something somewhere and it wasn't any use--the troublesome thing wouldn't go.tThat notion he got up here did look as handy as anything in the world; and how him and Si did sit up nights working at it with the curtains down and me watching to see if any neighbors were about.The man did honestly believe there was a fortune in that black gummy oil that stews out of the bank Si says is coal; and he refined it himself till it was like water, nearly, and it did burn, there's no two ways about that; and I reckon he'd have been all right in Cincinnati with his lamp that he got made, that time he got a house full of rich speculators to see him exhibit only in the middle of his speech it let go and almost blew the heads off the whole crowd.89I haven't got over grieving for the money that cost yet.RSI am sorry enough Beriah Sellers is in Missouri, now, but I was glad when he went.2I wonder what his letter says."rsBut of course it's cheerful; he's never down-hearted--never had any trouble in his life--didn't know it if he had.&vwIt's always sunrise with that man, and fine and blazing, at that--never gets noon; though--leaves off and rises again.:Nobody can help liking the creature, he means so well--but I do dread to come across him again; he's bound to set us all crazy, of coarse.!qrWell, there goes old widow Hopkins--it always takes her a week to buy a spool of thread and trade a hank of yarn.)'(Maybe Si can come with the letter, now.UVAnd he did: "Widow Hopkins kept me--I haven't any patience with such tedious people.Now listen, Nancy--just listen at this: "'Come right along to Missouri! Don't wait and worry about a good price but sell out for whatever you can get, and come along, or you might be too late.@AThrow away your traps, if necessary, and come empty-handed.9You'll never regret it./It's the grandest country --the loveliest land--the purest atmosphere--I can't describe it; no pen can do it justice. CDAnd it's filling up, every day--people coming from everywhere.[I've got the biggest scheme on earth--and I'll take you in; I'll take in every friend I've got that's ever stood by me, for there's enough for all, and to spare.>?Mum's the word--don't whisper--keep yourself to yourself.zYou'll see! Come! --rush!--hurry!--don't wait for anything!' "It's the same old boy, Nancy, jest the same old boy--ain't he?" "Yes, I think there's a little of the old sound about his voice yet.KLI suppose you--you'll still go, Si?" "Go! Well, I should think so, Nancy.3It's all a chance, of course, and, chances haven't been kind to us, I'll admit--but whatever comes, old wife, they're provided for.56Thank God for that!" "Amen," came low and earnestly.And with an activity and a suddenness that bewildered Obedstown and almost took its breath away, the Hawkinses hurried through with their arrangements in four short months and flitted out into the great mysterious blank that lay beyond the Knobs of Tennessee.E CHAPTER II.@Toward the close of the third day's journey the wayfarers were just beginning to think of camping, when they came upon a log cabin in the woods.)'(Hawkins drew rein and entered the yard. YZA boy about ten years old was sitting in the cabin door with his face bowed in his hands.PQHawkins approached, expecting his footfall to attract attention, but it did not.He halted a moment, and then said: "Come, come, little chap, you mustn't be going to sleep before sundown" With a tired expression the small face came up out of the hands,--a face down which tears were flowing./!"Ah, I'm sorry I spoke so, my boy.NTell me--is anything the matter?" The boy signified with a scarcely perceptible gesture that the trouble was in the house, and made room for Hawkins to pass.CThen he put his face in his hands again and rocked himself about as one suffering a grief that is too deep to find help in moan or groan or outcry.9Hawkins stepped within.0 !It was a poverty stricken place.eSix or eight middle-aged country people of both sexes were grouped about an object in the middle of the room; they were noiselessly busy and they talked in whispers when they spoke./!"Hawkins uncovered and approached.(()A coffin stood upon two backless chairs.SThese neighbors had just finished disposing the body of a woman in it--a woman with a careworn, gentle face that had more the look of sleep about it than of death.`aAn old lady motioned, toward the door and said to Hawkins in a whisper: "His mother, po' thing.2Died of the fever, last night.&*+Tha warn't no sich thing as saving of her.(()But it's better for her--better for her.bcHusband and the other two children died in the spring, and she hain't ever hilt up her head sence.noShe jest went around broken-hearted like, and never took no intrust in anything but Clay--that's the boy thar.34She jest worshiped Clay--and Clay he worshiped her.ijThey didn't 'pear to live at all, only when they was together, looking at each other, loving one another.She's ben sick three weeks; and if you believe me that child has worked, and kep' the run of the med'cin, and the times of giving it, and sot up nights and nussed her, and tried to keep up her sperits, the same as a grown-up person.And last night when she kep' a sinking and sinking, and turned away her head and didn't know him no mo', it was fitten to make a body's heart break to see him climb onto the bed and lay his cheek agin hern and call her so pitiful and she not answer. [\But bymeby she roused up, like, and looked around wild, and then she see him, and she made a great cry and snatched him to her breast and hilt him close and kissed him over and over agin; but it took the last po' strength she had, and so her eyelids begin to close down, and her arms sort o' drooped away and then we see she was gone, po' creetur.cdAnd Clay, he--Oh, the po' motherless thing--I cain't talk abort it--I cain't bear to talk about it.&vwClay had disappeared from the door; but he came in, now, and the neighbors reverently fell apart and made way for him.ABHe leaned upon the open coffin and let his tears course silently.XYThen he put out his small hand and smoothed the hair and stroked the dead face lovingly.  After a bit he brought his other hand up from behind him and laid three or four fresh wild flowers upon the breast, bent over and kissed the unresponsive lips time and time again, and then turned away and went out of the house without looking at any of the company. FGThe old lady said to Hawkins: "She always loved that kind o' flowers.@AHe fetched 'em for her every morning, and she always kissed him. DEThey was from away north somers--she kep' school when she fust come. 01Goodness knows what's to become o' that po' boy."./No father, no mother, no kin folks of no kind."rsNobody to go to, nobody that k'yers for him--and all of us is so put to it for to get along and families so large.=Hawkins understood.%+,All, eyes were turned inquiringly upon him.%uvHe said: "Friends, I am not very well provided for, myself, but still I would not turn my back on a homeless orphan.BIf he will go with me I will give him a home, and loving regard--I will do for him as I would have another do for a child of my own in misfortune.dOne after another the people stepped forward and wrung the stranger's hand with cordial good will, and their eyes looked all that their hands could not express or their lips speak.0 !Said like a true man," said one.HIYou was a stranger to me a minute ago, but you ain't now," said another."rsIt's bread cast upon the waters--it'll return after many days," said the old lady whom we have heard speak before. DEYou got to camp in my house as long as you hang out here," said one.STIf tha hain't room for you and yourn my tribe'll turn out and camp in the hay loft. YZA few minutes afterward, while the preparations for the funeral were being concluded, Mr. [\Hawkins arrived at his wagon leading his little waif by the hand, and told his wife all that had happened, and asked her if he had done right in giving to her and to himself this new care? She said: "If you've done wrong, Si Hawkins, it's a wrong that will shine brighter at the judgment day than the rights that many' a man has done before you.JAnd there isn't any compliment you can pay me equal to doing a thing like this and finishing it up, just taking it for granted that I'll be willing to it.`aWilling? Come to me; you poor motherless boy, and let me take your grief and help you carry it.HIWhen the child awoke in the morning, it was as if from a troubled dream.:;But slowly the confusion in his mind took form, and he remembered his great loss; the beloved form in the coffin; his talk with a generous stranger who offered him a home; the funeral, where the stranger's wife held him by the hand at the grave, and cried with him and comforted him; and he remembered how this, new mother tucked him in his bed in the neighboring farm house, and coaxed him to talk about his troubles, and then heard him say his prayers and kissed him good night, and left him with the soreness in his heart almost healed and his bruised spirit at rest.And now the new mother came again, and helped him to dress, and combed his hair, and drew his mind away by degrees from the dismal yesterday, by telling him about the wonderful journey he was going to take and the strange things he was going to see.wAnd after breakfast they two went alone to the grave, and his heart went out to his new friend and his untaught eloquence poured the praises of his buried idol into her ears without let or hindrance.Together they planted roses by the headboard and strewed wild flowers upon the grave; and then together they went away, hand in hand, and left the dead to the long sleep that heals all heart-aches and ends all sorrows.D CHAPTER III.mnWhatever the lagging dragging journey may have been to the rest of the emigrants, it was a wonder and delight to the children, a world of enchantment; and they believed it to be peopled with the mysterious dwarfs and giants and goblins that figured in the tales the negro slaves were in the habit of telling them nightly by the shuddering light of the kitchen fire.DAt the end of nearly a week of travel, the party went into camp near a shabby village which was caving, house by house, into the hungry Mississippi.12The river astonished the children beyond measure.yIts mile-breadth of water seemed an ocean to them, in the shadowy twilight, and the vague riband of trees on the further shore, the verge of a continent which surely none but they had ever seen before.Uncle Dan'l" (colored,) aged 40; his wife, "aunt Jinny," aged 30, "Young Miss" Emily Hawkins, "Young Mars" Washington Hawkins and "Young Mars" Clay, the new member of the family, ranged themselves on a log, after supper, and contemplated the marvelous river and discussed it.IJThe moon rose and sailed aloft through a maze of shredded cloud-wreaths; the sombre river just perceptibly brightened under the veiled light; a deep silence pervaded the air and was emphasized, at intervals, rather than broken, by the hooting of an owl, the baying of a dog, or the muffled crash of a raving bank in the distance.The little company assembled on the log were all children (at least in simplicity and broad and comprehensive ignorance,) and the remarks they made about the river were in keeping with the character; and so awed were they by the grandeur and the solemnity of the scene before then, and by their belief that the air was filled with invisible spirits and that the faint zephyrs were caused by their passing wings, that all their talk took to itself a tinge of the supernatural, and their voices were subdued to a low and reverent tone.+{|Suddenly Uncle Dan'l exclaimed: "Chil'en, dah's sum fin a comin!" All crowded close together and every heart beat faster.89Uncle Dan'l pointed down the river with his bony finger."rsA deep coughing sound troubled the stillness, way toward a wooded cape that jetted into the stream a mile distant.:All in an instant a fierce eye of fire shot out froth behind the cape and sent a long brilliant pathway quivering athwart the dusky water."rsThe coughing grew louder and louder, the glaring eye grew larger and still larger, glared wilder and still wilder.xA huge shape developed itself out of the gloom, and from its tall duplicate horns dense volumes of smoke, starred and spangled with sparks, poured out and went tumbling away into the farther darkness.eNearer and nearer the thing came, till its long sides began to glow with spots of light which mirrored themselves in the river and attended the monster like a torchlight procession.TWhat is it! Oh, what is it, Uncle Dan'l!" With deep solemnity the answer came: "It's de Almighty! Git down on yo' knees!" It was not necessary to say it twice.,$%They were all kneeling, in a moment.&vwAnd then while the mysterious coughing rose stronger and stronger and the threatening glare reached farther and wider, the negro's voice lifted up its supplications: "O Lord', we's ben mighty wicked, an' we knows dat we 'zerve to go to de bad place, but good Lord, deah Lord, we ain't ready yit, we ain't ready --let dese po' chilen hab one mo' chance, jes' one mo' chance.12Take de ole niggah if you's, got to hab somebody.Good Lord, good deah Lord, we don't know whah you's a gwyne to, we don't know who you's got yo' eye on, but we knows by de way you's a comin', we knows by de way you's a tiltin' along in yo' charyot o' fiah dat some po' sinner's a gwyne to ketch it.CBut good Lord, dose chilen don't b'long heah, dey's f'm Obedstown whah dey don't know nuffin, an' you knows, yo' own sef, dat dey ain't 'sponsible.An' deah Lord, good Lord, it ain't like yo' mercy, it ain't like yo' pity, it ain't like yo' long-sufferin' lovin' kindness for to take dis kind o' 'vantage o' sick little chil'en as dose is when dey's so many ornery grown folks chuck full o' cussedness dat wants roastin' down dah.BOh, Lord, spah de little chil'en, don't tar de little chil'en away f'm dey frens, jes' let 'em off jes' dis once, and take it out'n de ole niggah.OHEAH I IS, LORD, HEAH I IS! De ole niggah's ready, Lord, de ole----" The flaming and churning steamer was right abreast the party, and not twenty steps away.zThe awful thunder of a mud-valve suddenly burst forth, drowning the prayer, and as suddenly Uncle Dan'l snatched a child under each arm and scoured into the woods with the rest of the pack at his heels.:;And then, ashamed of himself, he halted in the deep darkness and shouted, (but rather feebly:) "Heah I is, Lord, heah I is!" There was a moment of throbbing suspense, and then, to the surprise and the comfort of the party, it was plain that the august presence had gone by, for its dreadful noises were receding.IJUncle Dan'l headed a cautious reconnaissance in the direction of the log.rSure enough "the Lord" was just turning a point a short distance up the river, and while they looked the lights winked out and the coughing diminished by degrees and presently ceased altogether. FGH'wsh! Well now dey's some folks says dey ain't no 'ficiency in prah.VWDis Chile would like to know whah we'd a ben now if it warn't fo' dat prah? Dat's it.TUDat's it!" "Uncle Dan'l, do you reckon it was the prayer that saved us?" said Clay.Does I reckon? Don't I know it! Whah was yo' eyes? Warn't de Lord jes' a cumin' chow! chow! CHOW! an' a goin' on turrible--an' do de Lord carry on dat way 'dout dey's sumfin don't suit him? An' warn't he a lookin' right at dis gang heah, an' warn't he jes' a reachin' for 'em? An' d'you spec' he gwyne to let 'em off 'dout somebody ast him to do it? No indeedy!" "Do you reckon he saw, us, Uncle Dan'l? "De law sakes, Chile, didn't I see him a lookin' at us?".1Did you feel scared, Uncle Dan'l?" "No sah! When a man is 'gaged in prah, he ain't fraid o' nuffin--dey can't nuffin tetch him.UWell what did you run for?" "Well, I--I--mars Clay, when a man is under de influence ob de sperit, he do-no, what he's 'bout--no sah; dat man do-no what he's 'bout.PQYou mout take an' tah de head off'n dat man an' he wouldn't scasely fine it out.Date's de Hebrew chil'en dat went frough de fiah; dey was burnt considable--ob coase dey was; but dey didn't know nuffin 'bout it--heal right up agin; if dey'd ben gals dey'd missed dey long haah, (hair,) maybe, but dey wouldn't felt de burn.*&'I don't know but what they were girls.>I think they were.+%&Now mars Clay, you knows bettern dat.ESometimes a body can't tell whedder you's a sayin' what you means or whedder you's a sayin' what you don't mean, 'case you says 'em bofe de same way.But how should I know whether they were boys or girls?" "Goodness sakes, mars Clay, don't de Good Book say? 'Sides, don't it call 'em de HE-brew chil'en? If dey was gals wouldn't dey be de SHE-brew chil'en? Some people dat kin read don't 'pear to take no notice when dey do read.qWell, Uncle Dan'l, I think that-----My! here comes another one up the river! There can't be two!" "We gone dis time--we done gone dis time, sho'! Dey ain't two, mars Clay--days de same one.(()De Lord kin 'pear eberywhah in a second.JKGoodness, how do fiah and de smoke do belch up! Dat mean business, honey.,$%He comin' now like he fo'got sumfin.!/0Come 'long, chil'en, time you's gwyne to roos'.3Go 'long wid you--ole Uncle Daniel gwyne out in de woods to rastle in prah--de ole nigger gwyne to do what he kin to sabe you agin.$tuHe did go to the woods and pray; but he went so far that he doubted, himself, if the Lord heard him when He went by.E CHAPTER IV.DESeventhly, Before his Voyage, He should make his peace with God, satisfie his Creditors if he be in debt; Pray earnestly to God to prosper him in his Voyage, and to keep him from danger, and, if he be 'sui juris' he should make his last will, and wisely order all his affairs, since many that go far abroad, return not home.2This good and Christian Counsel is given by Martinus Zeilerus in his Apodemical Canons before his Itinerary of Spain and Portugal.~Early in the morning Squire Hawkins took passage in a small steamboat, with his family and his two slaves, and presently the bell rang, the stage-plank; was hauled in, and the vessel proceeded up the river.The children and the slaves were not much more at ease after finding out that this monster was a creature of human contrivance than they were the night before when they thought it the Lord of heaven and earth.<They started, in fright, every time the gauge-cocks sent out an angry hiss, and they quaked from head to foot when the mud-valves thundered.STThe shivering of the boat under the beating of the wheels was sheer misery to them.But of course familiarity with these things soon took away their terrors, and then the voyage at once became a glorious adventure, a royal progress through the very heart and home of romance, a realization of their rosiest wonder-dreams.KThey sat by the hour in the shade of the pilot house on the hurricane deck and looked out over the curving expanses of the river sparkling in the sunlight.8 9 Sometimes the boat fought the mid-stream current, with a verdant world on either hand, and remote from both; sometimes she closed in under a point, where the dead water and the helping eddies were, and shaved the bank so closely that the decks were swept by the jungle of over-hanging willows and littered with a spoil of leaves; departing from these "points" she regularly crossed the river every five miles, avoiding the "bight" of the great binds and thus escaping the strong current; sometimes she went out and skirted a high "bluff" sand-bar in the middle of the stream, and occasionally followed it up a little too far and touched upon the shoal water at its head--and then the intelligent craft refused to run herself aground, but "smelt" the bar, and straightway the foamy streak that streamed away from her bows vanished, a great foamless wave rolled forward and passed her under way, and in this instant she leaned far over on her side, shied from the bar and fled square away from the danger like a frightened thing--and the pilot was lucky if he managed to "straighten her up" before she drove her nose into the opposite bank; sometimes she approached a solid wall of tall trees as if she meant to break through it, but all of a sudden a little crack would open just enough to admit her, and away she would go plowing through the "chute" with just barely room enough between the island on one side and the main land on the other; in this sluggish water she seemed to go like a racehorse; now and then small log cabins appeared in little clearings, with the never-failing frowsy women and girls in soiled and faded linsey-woolsey leaning in the doors or against woodpiles and rail fences, gazing sleepily at the passing show; sometimes she found shoal water, going out at the head of those "chutes" or crossing the river, and then a deck-hand stood on the bow and hove the lead, while the boat slowed down and moved cautiously; sometimes she stopped a moment at a landing and took on some freight or a passenger while a crowd of slouchy white men and negroes stood on the bank and looked sleepily on with their hands in their pantaloons pockets,--of course--for they never took them out except to stretch, and when they did this they squirmed about and reached their fists up into the air and lifted themselves on tip-toe in an ecstasy of enjoyment.When the sun went down it turned all the broad river to a national banner laid in gleaming bars of gold and purple and crimson; and in time these glories faded out in the twilight and left the fairy archipelagoes reflecting their fringing foliage in the steely mirror of the stream.QRAt night the boat forged on through the deep solitudes of the river, hardly ever discovering a light to testify to a human presence--mile after mile and league after league the vast bends were guarded by unbroken walls of forest that had never been disturbed by the voice or the foot-fall of man or felt the edge of his sacrilegious axe.?An hour after supper the moon came up, and Clay and Washington ascended to the hurricane deck to revel again in their new realm of enchantment.ABThey ran races up and down the deck; climbed about the bell; made friends with the passenger-dogs chained under the lifeboat; tried to make friends with a passenger-bear fastened to the verge-staff but were not encouraged; "skinned the cat" on the hog-chains; in a word, exhausted the amusement-possibilities of the deck.<Then they looked wistfully up at the pilot house, and finally, little by little, Clay ventured up there, followed diffidently by Washington.VWThe pilot turned presently to "get his stern-marks," saw the lads and invited them in./!"Now their happiness was complete.mThis cosy little house, built entirely of glass and commanding a marvelous prospect in every direction was a magician's throne to them and their enjoyment of the place was simply boundless.They sat them down on a high bench and looked miles ahead and saw the wooded capes fold back and reveal the bends beyond; and they looked miles to the rear and saw the silvery highway diminish its breadth by degrees and close itself together in the distance.7Presently the pilot said: "By George, yonder comes the Amaranth!" A spark appeared, close to the water, several miles down the river.+{|The pilot took his glass and looked at it steadily for a moment, and said, chiefly to himself: "It can't be the Blue Wing./!"She couldn't pick us up this way.WIt's the Amaranth, sure!" He bent over a speaking tube and said: "Who's on watch down there?" A hollow, unhuman voice rumbled up through the tube in answer: "I am.@Second engineer.Good! You want to stir your stumps, now, Harry--the Amaranth's just turned the point--and she's just a--humping herself, too!" The pilot took hold of a rope that stretched out forward, jerked it twice, and two mellow strokes of the big bell responded.=A voice out on the deck shouted: "Stand by, down there, with that labboard lead!" "No, I don't want the lead," said the pilot, "I want you.67Roust out the old man--tell him the Amaranth's coming.2And go and call Jim--tell him.*z{Aye-aye, sir!" The "old man" was the captain--he is always called so, on steamboats and ships; "Jim" was the other pilot.cdWithin two minutes both of these men were flying up the pilothouse stairway, three steps at a jump.ABJim was in his shirt sleeves,--with his coat and vest on his arm./!"He said: "I was just turning in.?@Where's the glass" He took it and looked: "Don't appear to be any night-hawk on the jack-staff--it's the Amaranth, dead sure!" The captain took a good long look, and only said: "Damnation!" George Davis, the pilot on watch, shouted to the night-watchman on deck: "How's she loaded?" "Two inches by the head, sir.<=T ain't enough!" The captain shouted, now: "Call the mate._`Tell him to call all hands and get a lot of that sugar forrard--put her ten inches by the head.3Lively, now!" "Aye-aye, sir.JA riot of shouting and trampling floated up from below, presently, and the uneasy steering of the boat soon showed that she was getting "down by the head. \]The three men in the pilot house began to talk in short, sharp sentences, low and earnestly.12As their excitement rose, their voices went down.lmAs fast as one of them put down the spy-glass another took it up--but always with a studied air of calmness.vEach time the verdict was: "She's a gaining!" The captain spoke through the tube: "What steam are You carrying?" "A hundred and forty-two, sir! But she's getting hotter and hotter all the time.IJThe boat was straining and groaning and quivering like a monster in pain.]Both pilots were at work now, one on each side of the wheel, with their coats and vests off, their bosoms and collars wide open and the perspiration flowing down heir faces.mnThey were holding the boat so close to the shore that the willows swept the guards almost from stem to stern.4Stand by!" whispered George.)'(All ready!" said Jim, under his breath.&vwLet her come!" The boat sprang away, from the bank like a deer, and darted in a long diagonal toward the other shore.LMShe closed in again and thrashed her fierce way along the willows as before. !The captain put down the glass: "Lord how she walks up on us! I do hate to be beat!" "Jim," said George, looking straight ahead, watching the slightest yawing of the boat and promptly meeting it with the wheel, "how'll it do to try Murderer's Chute?" "Well, it's--it's taking chances.'wxHow was the cottonwood stump on the false point below Boardman's Island this morning?" "Water just touching the roots.4Well it's pretty close work.:;That gives six feet scant in the head of Murderer's Chute.:;We can just barely rub through if we hit it exactly right.:But it's worth trying.12She don't dare tackle it!"--meaning the Amaranth.8In another instant the Boreas plunged into what seemed a crooked creek, and the Amaranth's approaching lights were shut out in a moment.eNot a whisper was uttered, now, but the three men stared ahead into the shadows and two of them spun the wheel back and forth with anxious watchfulness while the steamer tore along.TUThe chute seemed to come to an end every fifty yards, but always opened out in time.1 Now the head of it was at hand.aGeorge tapped the big bell three times, two leadsmen sprang to their posts, and in a moment their weird cries rose on the night air and were caught up and repeated by two men on the upper deck: "No-o bottom!" "De-e-p four!" "Half three!" "Quarter three!" "Mark under wa-a-ter three!" "Half twain!" "Quarter twain!-----" Davis pulled a couple of ropes--there was a jingling of small bells far below, the boat's speed slackened, and the pent steam began to whistle and the gauge-cocks to scream: "By the mark twain!" "Quar--ter--her--er--less twain!" "Eight and a half!" "Eight feet!" "Seven-ana-half!" Another jingling of little bells and the wheels ceased turning altogether. [\The whistling of the steam was something frightful now--it almost drowned all other noises.STStand by to meet her!" George had the wheel hard down and was standing on a spoke.XYAll ready!" The boat hesitated seemed to hold her breath, as did the captain and pilots--and then she began to fall away to starboard and every eye lighted: "Now then!--meet her! meet her! Snatch her!" The wheel flew to port so fast that the spokes blended into a spider-web --the swing of the boat subsided--she steadied herself---- "Seven feet!" "Sev--six and a half!" "Six feet! Six f----" Bang! She hit the bottom! George shouted through the tube: "Spread her wide open! Whale it at her!" Pow-wow-chow! The escape-pipes belched snowy pillars of steam aloft, the boat ground and surged and trembled--and slid over into---- "M-a-r-k twain!" "Quarter-her----" "Tap! tap! tap!" (to signify "Lay in the leads") And away she went, flying up the willow shore, with the whole silver sea of the Mississippi stretching abroad on every hand. ]^No Amaranth in sight! "Ha-ha, boys, we took a couple of tricks that time!" said the captain.And just at that moment a red glare appeared in the head of the chute and the Amaranth came springing after them! "Well, I swear!" "Jim, what is the meaning of that?" "I'll tell you what's the meaning of it. ]^That hail we had at Napoleon was Wash Hastings, wanting to come to Cairo--and we didn't stop.TUHe's in that pilot house, now, showing those mud turtles how to hunt for easy water. \]That's it! I thought it wasn't any slouch that was running that middle bar in Hog-eye Bend.NIf it's Wash Hastings--well, what he don't know about the river ain't worth knowing--a regular gold-leaf, kid-glove, diamond breastpin pilot Wash Hastings is. Z[We won't take any tricks off of him, old man!" "I wish I'd a stopped for him, that's all.MNThe Amaranth was within three hundred yards of the Boreas, and still gaining.WXThe "old man" spoke through the tube: "What is she-carrying now?" "A hundred and sixty-five, sir!" "How's your wood?" "Pine all out-cypress half gone-eating up cotton-wood like pie!" "Break into that rosin on the main deck-pile it in, the boat can pay for it!" Soon the boat was plunging and quivering and screaming more madly than ever.But the Amaranth's head was almost abreast the Boreas's stern: "How's your steam, now, Harry?" "Hundred and eighty-two, sir!" "Break up the casks of bacon in the forrard hold! Pile it in! Levy on that turpentine in the fantail-drench every stick of wood with it!" The boat was a moving earthquake by this time: "How is she now?" "A hundred and ninety-six and still a-swelling!--water, below the middle gauge-cocks!--carrying every pound she can stand!--nigger roosting on the safety-valve!" "Good! How's your draft?" "Bully! Every time a nigger heaves a stick of wood into the furnace he goes out the chimney, with it!" The Amaranth drew steadily up till her jack-staff breasted the Boreas's wheel-house--climbed along inch by inch till her chimneys breasted it --crept along, further and further, till the boats were wheel to wheel --and then they, closed up with a heavy jolt and locked together tight and fast in the middle of the big river under the flooding moonlight! A roar and a hurrah went up from the crowded decks of both steamers--all hands rushed to the guards to look and shout and gesticulate--the weight careened the vessels over toward each other--officers flew hither and thither cursing and storming, trying to drive the people amidships--both captains were leaning over their railings shaking their fists, swearing and threatening--black volumes of smoke rolled up and canopied the scene,--delivering a rain of sparks upon the vessels--two pistol shots rang out, and both captains dodged unhurt and the packed masses of passengers surged back and fell apart while the shrieks of women and children soared above the intolerable din---- And then there was a booming roar, a thundering crash, and the riddled Amaranth dropped loose from her hold and drifted helplessly away! Instantly the fire-doors of the Boreas were thrown open and the men began dashing buckets of water into the furnaces--for it would have been death and destruction to stop the engines with such a head of steam on.STAs soon as possible the Boreas dropped down to the floating wreck and took off the dead, the wounded and the unhurt--at least all that could be got at, for the whole forward half of the boat was a shapeless ruin, with the great chimneys lying crossed on top of it, and underneath were a dozen victims imprisoned alive and wailing for help.?While men with axes worked with might and main to free these poor fellows, the Boreas's boats went about, picking up stragglers from the river.*&'And now a new horror presented itself.8The wreck took fire from the dismantled furnaces! Never did men work with a heartier will than did those stalwart braves with the axes.;But it was of no use.KLThe fire ate its way steadily, despising the bucket brigade that fought it.gIt scorched the clothes, it singed the hair of the axemen--it drove them back, foot by foot-inch by inch--they wavered, struck a final blow in the teeth of the enemy, and surrendered.And as they fell back they heard prisoned voices saying: "Don't leave us! Don't desert us! Don't, don't do it!" And one poor fellow said: "I am Henry Worley, striker of the Amaranth! My mother lives in St.JLouis.!/0Tell her a lie for a poor devil's sake, please.vSay I was killed in an instant and never knew what hurt me--though God knows I've neither scratch nor bruise this moment! It's hard to burn up in a coop like this with the whole wide world so near.OPGood-bye boys--we've all got to come to it at last, anyway!" The Boreas stood away out of danger, and the ruined steamer went drifting down the stream an island of wreathing and climbing flame that vomited clouds of smoke from time to time, and glared more fiercely and sent its luminous tongues higher and higher after each emission.>?A shriek at intervals told of a captive that had met his doom.@The wreck lodged upon a sandbar, and when the Boreas turned the next point on her upward journey it was still burning with scarcely abated fury.)yzWhen the boys came down into the main saloon of the Boreas, they saw a pitiful sight and heard a world of pitiful sounds.+{|Eleven poor creatures lay dead and forty more lay moaning, or pleading or screaming, while a score of Good Samaritans moved among them doing what they could to relieve their sufferings; bathing their chinless faces and bodies with linseed oil and lime water and covering the places with bulging masses of raw cotton that gave to every face and form a dreadful and unhuman aspect.EA little wee French midshipman of fourteen lay fearfully injured, but never uttered a sound till a physician of Memphis was about to dress his hurts. CDThen he said: "Can I get well? You need not be afraid to tell me.1 No--I--I am afraid you can not.BCThen do not waste your time with me--help those that can get well.IJBut----" "Help those that can get well! It is, not for me to be a girl.qI carry the blood of eleven generations of soldiers in my veins!" The physician--himself a man who had seen service in the navy in his time--touched his hat to this little hero, and passed on.fThe head engineer of the Amaranth, a grand specimen of physical manhood, struggled to his feet a ghastly spectacle and strode toward his brother, the second engineer, who was unhurt.3He said: "You were on watch.BYou were boss.BCYou would not listen to me when I begged you to reduce your steam.LMTake that!--take it to my wife and tell her it comes from me by the hand of my murderer! Take it--and take my curse with it to blister your heart a hundred years--and may you live so long!" And he tore a ring from his finger, stripping flesh and skin with it, threw it down and fell dead! But these things must not be dwelt upon.The Boreas landed her dreadful cargo at the next large town and delivered it over to a multitude of eager hands and warm southern hearts--a cargo amounting by this time to 39 wounded persons and 22 dead bodies..~And with these she delivered a list of 96 missing persons that had drowned or otherwise perished at the scene of the disaster.yA jury of inquest was impaneled, and after due deliberation and inquiry they returned the inevitable American verdict which has been so familiar to our ears all the days of our lives--"NOBODY TO BLAME. 01The incidents of the explosion are not invented.,$%They happened just as they are told.D The Authors.F CHAPTER V.HIIl veut faire secher de la neige au four et la vendre pour du sel blanc.When the Boreas backed away from the land to continue her voyage up the river, the Hawkinses were richer by twenty-four hours of experience in the contemplation of human suffering and in learning through honest hard work how to relieve it.')*And they were richer in another way also.In the early turmoil an hour after the explosion, a little black-eyed girl of five years, frightened and crying bitterly, was struggling through the throng in the Boreas' saloon calling her mother and father, but no one answered.4Something in the face of Mr.abHawkins attracted her and she came and looked up at him; was satisfied, and took refuge with him.TUHe petted her, listened to her troubles, and said he would find her friends for her.\Then he put her in a state-room with his children and told them to be kind to her (the adults of his party were all busy with the wounded) and straightway began his search.?It was fruitless. CDBut all day he and his wife made inquiries, and hoped against hope.All that they could learn was that the child and her parents came on board at New Orleans, where they had just arrived in a vessel from Cuba; that they looked like people from the Atlantic States; that the family name was Van Brunt and the child's name Laura.C This was all.23The parents had not been seen since the explosion.fgThe child's manners were those of a little lady, and her clothes were daintier and finer than any Mrs.3Hawkins had ever seen before. !As the hours dragged on the child lost heart, and cried so piteously for her mother that it seemed to the Hawkinses that the moanings and the wailings of the mutilated men and women in the saloon did not so strain at their heart-strings as the sufferings of this little desolate creature._They tried hard to comfort her; and in trying, learned to love her; they could not help it, seeing how she clung, to them and put her arms about their necks and found-no solace but in their kind eyes and comforting words: There was a question in both their hearts--a question that rose up and asserted itself with more and more pertinacity as the hours wore on--but both hesitated to give it voice--both kept silence --and--waited. CDBut a time came at last when the matter would bear delay no longer.STThe boat had landed, and the dead and the wounded were being conveyed to the shore."./The tired child was asleep in the arms of Mrs.H Hawkins.MMr.<=Hawkins came into their presence and stood without speaking.()His eyes met his wife's; then both looked at the child--and as they looked it stirred in its sleep and nestled closer; an expression of contentment and peace settled upon its face that touched the mother-heart; and when the eyes of husband and wife met again, the question was asked and answered.abWhen the Boreas had journeyed some four hundred miles from the time the Hawkinses joined her, a long rank of steamboats was sighted, packed side by side at a wharf like sardines, in a box, and above and beyond them rose the domes and steeples and general architectural confusion of a city--a city with an imposing umbrella of black smoke spread over it.D This was St.JLouis.The children of the Hawkins family were playing about the hurricane deck, and the father and mother were sitting in the lee of the pilot house essaying to keep order and not greatly grieved that they were not succeeding."./They're worth all the trouble they are, Nancy.>Yes, and more, Si.opI believe you! You wouldn't sell one of them at a good round figure?" "Not for all the money in the bank, Si.3My own sentiments every time. pqIt is true we are not rich--but still you are not sorry---you haven't any misgivings about the additions?" "No.7God will provide" "Amen.TUAnd so you wouldn't even part with Clay? Or Laura!" "Not for anything in the world.klI love them just the same as I love my own: They pet me and spoil me even more than the others do, I think.3I reckon we'll get along, Si.!/0Oh yes, it will all come out right, old mother.AI wouldn't be afraid to adopt a thousand children if I wanted to, for there's that Tennessee Land, you know--enough to make an army of them rich.TUA whole army, Nancy! You and I will never see the day, but these little chaps will.?Indeed they will.$tuOne of these days it will be the rich Miss Emily Hawkins--and the wealthy Miss Laura Van Brunt Hawkins--and the Hon. 01George Washington Hawkins, millionaire--and Gov.?Henry Clay Hawkins, millionaire! That is the way the world will word it! Don't let's ever fret about the children, Nancy--never in the world.>They're all right.DNancy, there's oceans and oceans of money in that land--mark my words!" The children had stopped playing, for the moment, and drawn near to listen.5Hawkins said: "Washington, my boy, what will you do when you get to be one of the richest men in the world?" "I don't know, father.#stSometimes I think I'll have a balloon and go up in the air; and sometimes I think I'll have ever so many books; and sometimes I think I'll have ever so many weathercocks and water-wheels; or have a machine like that one you and Colonel Sellers bought; and sometimes I think I'll have--well, somehow I don't know--somehow I ain't certain; maybe I'll get a steamboat first.BCThe same old chap!--always just a little bit divided about things.hiAnd what will you do when you get to be one of the richest men in the world, Clay?" "I don't know, sir.^My mother--my other mother that's gone away--she always told me to work along and not be much expecting to get rich, and then I wouldn't be disappointed if I didn't get rich.7And so I reckon it's better for me to wait till I get rich, and then by that time maybe I'll know what I'll want--but I don't now, sir.`aCareful old head!--Governor Henry Clay Hawkins!--that's what you'll be, Clay, one of these days. CDWise old head! weighty old head! Go on, now, and play--all of you. DEIt's a prime lot, Nancy; as the Obedstown folk say about their hogs.A smaller steamboat received the Hawkinses and their fortunes, and bore them a hundred and thirty miles still higher up the Mississippi, and landed them at a little tumble-down village on the Missouri shore in the twilight of a mellow October day.MThe next morning they harnessed up their team and for two days they wended slowly into the interior through almost roadless and uninhabited forest solitudes.0And when for the last time they pitched their tents, metaphorically speaking, it was at the goal of their hopes, their new home.IBy the muddy roadside stood a new log cabin, one story high--the store; clustered in the neighborhood were ten or twelve more cabins, some new, some old. GHIn the sad light of the departing day the place looked homeless enough.jTwo or three coatless young men sat in front of the store on a dry-goods box, and whittled it with their knives, kicked it with their vast boots, and shot tobacco-juice at various marks.<Several ragged negroes leaned comfortably against the posts of the awning and contemplated the arrival of the wayfarers with lazy curiosity.All these people presently managed to drag themselves to the vicinity of the Hawkins' wagon, and there they took up permanent positions, hands in pockets and resting on one leg; and thus anchored they proceeded to look and enjoy.8Vagrant dogs came wagging around and making inquiries of Hawkins's dog, which were not satisfactory and they made war on him in concert.|This would have interested the citizens but it was too many on one to amount to anything as a fight, and so they commanded the peace and the foreign dog coiled his tail and took sanctuary under the wagon.+{|Slatternly negro girls and women slouched along with pails deftly balanced on their heads, and joined the group and stared.Little half dressed white boys, and little negro boys with nothing whatever on but tow-linen shirts with a fine southern exposure, came from various directions and stood with their hands locked together behind them and aided in the inspection.:;The rest of the population were laying down their employments and getting ready to come, when a man burst through the assemblage and seized the new-comers by the hands in a frenzy of welcome, and exclaimed--indeed almost shouted: "Well who could have believed it! Now is it you sure enough--turn around! hold up your heads! I want to look at you good! Well, well, well, it does seem most too good to be true, I declare! Lord, I'm so glad to see you! Does a body's whole soul good to look at you! Shake hands again! Keep on shaking hands! Goodness gracious alive.BCWhat will my wife say?--Oh yes indeed, it's so!--married only last week--lovely, perfectly lovely creature, the noblest woman that ever--you'll like her, Nancy! Like her? Lord bless me you'll love her--you'll dote on her --you'll be twins! Well, well, well, let me look at you again! Same old --why bless my life it was only jest this very morning that my wife says, 'Colonel'--she will call me Colonel spite of everything I can do--she says 'Colonel, something tells me somebody's coming!' and sure enough here you are, the last people on earth a body could have expected.VWhy she'll think she's a prophetess--and hanged if I don't think so too --and you know there ain't any, country but what a prophet's an honor to, as the proverb says.hiLord bless me and here's the children, too! Washington, Emily, don't you know me? Come, give us a kiss.xWon't I fix you, though!--ponies, cows, dogs, everything you can think of that'll delight a child's heart-and--Why how's this? Little strangers? Well you won't be any strangers here, I can tell you.DBless your souls we'll make you think you never was at home before--'deed and 'deed we will, I can tell you! Come, now, bundle right along with me.You can't glorify any hearth stone but mine in this camp, you know--can't eat anybody's bread but mine--can't do anything but just make yourselves perfectly at home and comfortable, and spread yourselves out and rest! You hear me! Here--Jim, Tom, Pete, Jake, fly around! Take that team to my place--put the wagon in my lot--put the horses under the shed, and get out hay and oats and fill them up! Ain't any hay and oats? Well get some--have it charged to me--come, spin around, now! Now, Hawkins, the procession's ready; mark time, by the left flank, forward-march!" And the Colonel took the lead, with Laura astride his neck, and the newly-inspired and very grateful immigrants picked up their tired limbs with quite a spring in them and dropped into his wake.xPresently they were ranged about an old-time fire-place whose blazing logs sent out rather an unnecessary amount of heat, but that was no matter-supper was needed, and to have it, it had to be cooked.OPThis apartment was the family bedroom, parlor, library and kitchen, all in one.rThe matronly little wife of the Colonel moved hither and thither and in and out with her pots and pans in her hands', happiness in her heart and a world of admiration of her husband in her eyes.PAnd when at last she had spread the cloth and loaded it with hot corn bread, fried chickens, bacon, buttermilk, coffee, and all manner of country luxuries, Col.  Sellers modified his harangue and for a moment throttled it down to the orthodox pitch for a blessing, and then instantly burst forth again as from a parenthesis and clattered on with might and main till every stomach in the party was laden with all it could carry.*z{And when the new-comers ascended the ladder to their comfortable feather beds on the second floor--to wit the garret--Mrs.Hawkins was obliged to say: "Hang the fellow, I do believe he has gone wilder than ever, but still a body can't help liking him if they would--and what is more, they don't ever want to try when they see his eyes and hear him talk.%uvWithin a week or two the Hawkinses were comfortably domiciled in a new log house, and were beginning to feel at home.LThe children were put to school; at least it was what passed for a school in those days: a place where tender young humanity devoted itself for eight or ten hours a day to learning incomprehensible rubbish by heart out of books and reciting it by rote, like parrots; so that a finished education consisted simply of a permanent headache and the ability to read without stopping to spell the words or take breath.7Hawkins bought out the village store for a song and proceeded to reap the profits, which amounted to but little more than another song.%+,The wonderful speculation hinted at by Col.&vwSellers in his letter turned out to be the raising of mules for the Southern market; and really it promised very well.The young stock cost but a trifle, the rearing but another trifle, and so Hawkins was easily persuaded to embark his slender means in the enterprise and turn over the keep and care of the animals to Sellers and Uncle Dan'l.34All went well: Business prospered little by little. \]Hawkins even built a new house, made it two full stories high and put a lightning rod on it.#-.People came two or three miles to look at it.But they knew that the rod attracted the lightning, and so they gave the place a wide berth in a storm, for they were familiar with marksmanship and doubted if the lightning could hit that small stick at a distance of a mile and a half oftener than once in a hundred and fifty times.<=Hawkins fitted out his house with "store" furniture from St.@ALouis, and the fame of its magnificence went abroad in the land.-#$Even the parlor carpet was from St.QRLouis--though the other rooms were clothed in the "rag" carpeting of the country.)yzHawkins put up the first "paling" fence that had ever adorned the village; and he did not stop there, but whitewashed it.=His oil-cloth window-curtains had noble pictures on them of castles such as had never been seen anywhere in the world but on window-curtains.Hawkins enjoyed the admiration these prodigies compelled, but he always smiled to think how poor and, cheap they were, compared to what the Hawkins mansion would display in a future day after the Tennessee Land should have borne its minted fruit.GEven Washington observed, once, that when the Tennessee Land was sold he would have a "store" carpet in his and Clay's room like the one in the parlor.!/0This pleased Hawkins, but it troubled his wife.(xyIt did not seem wise, to her, to put one's entire earthly trust in the Tennessee Land and never think of doing any work.BCHawkins took a weekly Philadelphia newspaper and a semi-weekly St.Louis journal--almost the only papers that came to the village, though Godey's Lady's Book found a good market there and was regarded as the perfection of polite literature by some of the ablest critics in the place.ijPerhaps it is only fair to explain that we are writing of a by gone age--some twenty or thirty years ago.QRIn the two newspapers referred to lay the secret of Hawkins's growing prosperity.They kept him informed of the condition of the crops south and east, and thus he knew which articles were likely to be in demand and which articles were likely to be unsalable, weeks and even months in advance of the simple folk about him.HIAs the months went by he came to be regarded as a wonderfully lucky man.LMIt did not occur to the citizens that brains were at the bottom of his luck.His title of "Squire" came into vogue again, but only for a season; for, as his wealth and popularity augmented, that title, by imperceptible stages, grew up into "Judge;" indeed' it bade fair to swell into "General" bye and bye.'wxAll strangers of consequence who visited the village gravitated to the Hawkins Mansion and became guests of the "Judge.@AHawkins had learned to like the people of his section very much.LThey were uncouth and not cultivated, and not particularly industrious; but they were honest and straightforward, and their virtuous ways commanded respect.2Their patriotism was strong, their pride in the flag was of the old fashioned pattern, their love of country amounted to idolatry.JKWhoever dragged the national honor in the dirt won their deathless hatred.klThey still cursed Benedict Arnold as if he were a personal friend who had broken faith--but a week gone by.E CHAPTER VI. CDWe skip ten years and this history finds certain changes to record.:Judge Hawkins and Col.ijSellers have made and lost two or three moderate fortunes in the meantime and are now pinched by poverty.!/0Sellers has two pairs of twins and four extras. EFIn Hawkins's family are six children of his own and two adopted ones.6From time to time, as fortune smiled, the elder children got the benefit of it, spending the lucky seasons at excellent schools in St. [\Louis and the unlucky ones at home in the chafing discomfort of straightened circumstances.Neither the Hawkins children nor the world that knew them ever supposed that one of the girls was of alien blood and parentage: Such difference as existed between Laura and Emily is not uncommon in a family.fThe girls had grown up as sisters, and they were both too young at the time of the fearful accident on the Mississippi to know that it was that which had thrown their lives together.And yet any one who had known the secret of Laura's birth and had seen her during these passing years, say at the happy age of twelve or thirteen, would have fancied that he knew the reason why she was more winsome than her school companion.|Philosophers dispute whether it is the promise of what she will be in the careless school-girl, that makes her attractive, the undeveloped maidenhood, or the mere natural, careless sweetness of childhood.^_If Laura at twelve was beginning to be a beauty, the thought of it had never entered her head.E No, indeed.12Her mind wad filled with more important thoughts.rTo her simple school-girl dress she was beginning to add those mysterious little adornments of ribbon-knots and ear-rings, which were the subject of earnest consultations with her grown friends.mnWhen she tripped down the street on a summer's day with her dainty hands propped into the ribbon-broidered pockets of her apron, and elbows consequently more or less akimbo with her wide Leghorn hat flapping down and hiding her face one moment and blowing straight up against her fore head the next and making its revealment of fresh young beauty; with all her pretty girlish airs and graces in full play, and that sweet ignorance of care and that atmosphere of innocence and purity all about her that belong to her gracious time of life, indeed she was a vision to warm the coldest heart and bless and cheer the saddest.#stWillful, generous, forgiving, imperious, affectionate, improvident, bewitching, in short--was Laura at this period.IJCould she have remained there, this history would not need to be written.RBut Laura had grown to be almost a woman in these few years, to the end of which we have now come--years which had seen Judge Hawkins pass through so many trials.7When the judge's first bankruptcy came upon him, a homely human angel intruded upon him with an offer of $1,500 for the Tennessee Land.LMrs.;Hawkins said take it.9:It was a grievous temptation, but the judge withstood it.jkHe said the land was for the children--he could not rob them of their future millions for so paltry a sum. ]^When the second blight fell upon him, another angel appeared and offered $3,000 for the land.He was in such deep distress that he allowed his wife to persuade him to let the papers be drawn; but when his children came into his presence in their poor apparel, he felt like a traitor and refused to sign.<=But now he was down again, and deeper in the mire than ever.78He paced the floor all day, he scarcely slept at night.,|}He blushed even to acknowledge it to himself, but treason was in his mind--he was meditating, at last, the sale of the land.LMrs.2Hawkins stepped into the room.^_He had not spoken a word, but he felt as guilty as if she had caught him in some shameful act.67She said: "Si, I do not know what we are going to do. GHThe children are not fit to be seen, their clothes are in such a state.')*But there's something more serious still.#-.There is scarcely a bite in the house to eat.2Why, Nancy, go to Johnson----.'wxJohnson indeed! You took that man's part when he hadn't a friend in the world, and you built him up and made him rich.`aAnd here's the result of it: He lives in our fine house, and we live in his miserable log cabin.He has hinted to our children that he would rather they wouldn't come about his yard to play with his children,--which I can bear, and bear easy enough, for they're not a sort we want to associate with much--but what I can't bear with any quietness at all, is his telling Franky our bill was running pretty high this morning when I sent him for some meal --and that was all he said, too--didn't give him the meal--turned off and went to talking with the Hargrave girls about some stuff they wanted to cheapen.:;Nancy, this is astounding!" "And so it is, I warrant you.#-.I've kept still, Si, as long as ever I could. !Things have been getting worse and worse, and worse and worse, every single day; I don't go out of the house, I feel so down; but you had trouble enough, and I wouldn't say a word--and I wouldn't say a word now, only things have got so bad that I don't know what to do, nor where to turn.9:And she gave way and put her face in her hands and cried.4Poor child, don't grieve so.0 !I never thought that of Johnson.5I am clear at my wit's end.+%&I don't know what in the world to do.2Now if somebody would come along and offer $3,000--Uh, if somebody only would come along and offer $3,000 for that Tennessee Land.4You'd sell it, S!" said Mrs.>Hawkins excitedly.BTry me!" Mrs.(()Hawkins was out of the room in a moment.(xyWithin a minute she was back again with a business-looking stranger, whom she seated, and then she took her leave again.VHawkins said to himself, "How can a man ever lose faith? When the blackest hour comes, Providence always comes with it--ah, this is the very timeliest help that ever poor harried devil had; if this blessed man offers but a thousand I'll embrace him like a brother!" The stranger said: "I am aware that you own 75,000 acres, of land in East Tennessee, and without sacrificing your time, I will come to the point at once.!qrI am agent of an iron manufacturing company, and they empower me to offer you ten thousand dollars for that land.-#$Hawkins's heart bounded within him.>?His whole frame was racked and wrenched with fettered hurrahs.KHis first impulse was to shout "Done! and God bless the iron company, too!" But a something flitted through his mind, and his opened lips uttered nothing.^_The enthusiasm faded away from his eyes, and the look of a man who is thinking took its place. Z[Presently, in a hesitating, undecided way, he said: "Well, I--it don't seem quite enough.67That--that is a very valuable property--very valuable.@It's brim full of iron-ore, sir--brim full of it! And copper, coal,--everything--everything you can think of! Now, I'll tell you what I'll do.yI'll reserve everything except the iron, and I'll sell them the iron property for $15,000 cash, I to go in with them and own an undivided interest of one-half the concern--or the stock, as you may say. DEI'm out of business, and I'd just as soon help run the thing as not.;Now how does that strike you?" "Well, I am only an agent of these people, who are friends of mine, and I am not even paid for my services.}To tell you the truth, I have tried to persuade them not to go into the thing; and I have come square out with their offer, without throwing out any feelers--and I did it in the hope that you would refuse.QRA man pretty much always refuses another man's first offer, no matter what it is.RSBut I have performed my duty, and will take pleasure in telling them what you say.;He was about to rise.5Hawkins said, "Wait a bit.:Hawkins thought again.12And the substance of his thought was: "This is a deep man; this is a very deep man; I don't like his candor; your ostentatiously candid business man's a deep fox--always a deep fox; this man's that iron company himself--that's what he is; he wants that property, too; I am not so blind but I can see that; he don't want the company to go into this thing--O, that's very good; yes, that's very good indeed--stuff! he'll be back here tomorrow, sure, and take my offer; take it? I'll risk anything he is suffering to take it now; here--I must mind what I'm about.What has started this sudden excitement about iron? I wonder what is in the wind? just as sure as I'm alive this moment, there's something tremendous stirring in iron speculation" [here Hawkins got up and began to pace the floor with excited eyes and with gesturing hands]--"something enormous going on in iron, without the shadow of a doubt, and here I sit mousing in the dark and never knowing anything about it; great heaven, what an escape I've made! this underhanded mercenary creature might have taken me up--and ruined me! but I have escaped, and I warrant me I'll not put my foot into--" He stopped and turned toward the stranger; saying: "I have made you a proposition, you have not accepted it, and I desire that you will consider that I have made none.67At the same time my conscience will not allow me to--.()Please alter the figures I named to thirty thousand dollars, if you will, and let the proposition go to the company--I will stick to it if it breaks my heart!" The stranger looked amused, and there was a pretty well defined touch of surprise in his expression, too, but Hawkins never noticed it.>?Indeed he scarcely noticed anything or knew what he was about.@The man left; Hawkins flung himself into a chair; thought a few moments, then glanced around, looked frightened, sprang to the door---- "Too late--too late! He's gone! Fool that I am! always a fool! Thirty thousand--ass that I am! Oh, why didn't I say fifty thousand!" He plunged his hands into his hair and leaned his elbows on his knees, and fell to rocking himself back and forth in anguish.LMrs.^_Hawkins sprang in, beaming: "Well, Si?" "Oh, con-found the con-founded--con-found it, Nancy.XI've gone and done it, now!" "Done what Si for mercy's sake!" "Done everything! Ruined everything!" "Tell me, tell me, tell me! Don't keep a body in such suspense.&vwDidn't he buy, after all? Didn't he make an offer?" "Offer? He offered $10,000 for our land, and----" "Thank the good providence from the very bottom of my heart of hearts! What sort of ruin do you call that, Si!" "Nancy, do you suppose I listened to such a preposterous proposition? No! Thank fortune I'm not a simpleton! I saw through the pretty scheme in a second.It's a vast iron speculation!--millions upon millions in it! But fool as I am I told him he could have half the iron property for thirty thousand--and if I only had him back here he couldn't touch it for a cent less than a quarter of a million!" Mrs.45Hawkins looked up white and despairing: "You threw away this chance, you let this man go, and we in this awful trouble? You don't mean it, you can't mean it!" "Throw it away? Catch me at it! Why woman, do you suppose that man don't know what he is about? Bless you, he'll be back fast enough to-morrow.<Never, never, never.9He never will comeback.+%&I don't know what is to become of us.23I don't know what in the world is to become of us.!/0A shade of uneasiness came into Hawkins's face.BCHe said: "Why, Nancy, you--you can't believe what you are saying.-#$Believe it, indeed? I know it, Si.^_And I know that we haven't a cent in the world, and we've sent ten thousand dollars a-begging.9Nancy, you frighten me.1Now could that man--is it possible that I --hanged if I don't believe I have missed a chance! Don't grieve, Nancy, don't grieve.8I'll go right after him.&vwI'll take--I'll take--what a fool I am!--I'll take anything he'll give!" The next instant he left the house on a run.*&'But the man was no longer in the town.56Nobody knew where he belonged or whither he had gone.5Hawkins came slowly back, watching wistfully but hopelessly for the stranger, and lowering his price steadily with his sinking heart.And when his foot finally pressed his own threshold, the value he held the entire Tennessee property at was five hundred dollars--two hundred down and the rest in three equal annual payments, without interest.ABThere was a sad gathering at the Hawkins fireside the next night.)'(All the children were present but Clay.MMr.QRHawkins said: "Washington, we seem to be hopelessly fallen, hopelessly involved.:I am ready to give up.fgI do not know where to turn--I never have been down so low before, I never have seen things so dismal.cdThere are many mouths to feed; Clay is at work; we must lose you, also, for a little while, my boy. [\But it will not be long--the Tennessee land----" He stopped, and was conscious of a blush.HThere was silence for a moment, and then Washington--now a lank, dreamy-eyed stripling between twenty-two and twenty-three years of age--said: "If Col.abSellers would come for me, I would go and stay with him a while, till the Tennessee land is sold.?@He has often wanted me to come, ever since he moved to Hawkeye.23I'm afraid he can't well come for you, Washington.8From what I can hear--not from him of course, but from others--he is not far from as bad off as we are--and his family is as large, too..~He might find something for you to do, maybe, but you'd better try to get to him yourself, Washington--it's only thirty miles.56But how can I, father? There's no stage or anything.(()And if there were, stages require money. 01A stage goes from Swansea, five miles from here.0 !But it would be cheaper to walk.$tuFather, they must know you there, and no doubt they would credit you in a moment, for a little stage ride like that.Couldn't you write and ask them?" "Couldn't you, Washington--seeing it's you that wants the ride? And what do you think you'll do, Washington, when you get to Hawkeye? Finish your invention for making window-glass opaque?" "No, sir, I have given that up.MNI almost knew I could do it, but it was so tedious and troublesome I quit it.5I was afraid of it, my boy. pqThen I suppose you'll finish your plan of coloring hen's eggs by feeding a peculiar diet to the hen?" "No, sir.yI believe I have found out the stuff that will do it, but it kills the hen; so I have dropped that for the present, though I can take it up again some day when I learn how to manage the mixture better.MNWell, what have you got on hand--anything?" "Yes, sir, three or four things.efI think they are all good and can all be done, but they are tiresome, and besides they require money. ]^But as soon as the land is sold----" "Emily, were you about to say something?" said Hawkins.G Yes, sir.,$%If you are willing, I will go to St.JLouis.&*+That will make another mouth less to feed.LMrs.+%&Buckner has always wanted me to come.\But the money, child?" "Why I think she would send it, if you would write her--and I know she would wait for her pay till----" "Come, Laura, let's hear from you, my girl.HIEmily and Laura were about the same age--between seventeen and eighteen.KLEmily was fair and pretty, girlish and diffident--blue eyes and light hair.Laura had a proud bearing, and a somewhat mature look; she had fine, clean-cut features, her complexion was pure white and contrasted vividly with her black hair and eyes; she was not what one calls pretty --she was beautiful.4She said: "I will go to St.@Louis, too, sir.1 I will find a way to get there.>I will make a way.TUAnd I will find a way to help myself along, and do what I can to help the rest, too.3She spoke it like a princess.LMrs.Hawkins smiled proudly and kissed her, saying in a tone of fond reproof: "So one of my girls is going to turn out and work for her living! It's like your pluck and spirit, child, but we will hope that we haven't got quite down to that, yet.;<The girl's eyes beamed affection under her mother's caress. [\Then she straightened up, folded her white hands in her lap and became a splendid ice-berg. DEClay's dog put up his brown nose for a little attention, and got it.UVHe retired under the table with an apologetic yelp, which did not affect the iceberg.abJudge Hawkins had written and asked Clay to return home and consult with him upon family affairs.efHe arrived the evening after this conversation, and the whole household gave him a rapturous welcome.3He brought sadly needed help with him, consisting of the savings of a year and a half of work--nearly two hundred dollars in money. Z[It was a ray of sunshine which (to this easy household) was the earnest of a clearing sky.hBright and early in the morning the family were astir, and all were busy preparing Washington for his journey--at least all but Washington himself, who sat apart, steeped in a reverie.bWhen the time for his departure came, it was easy to see how fondly all loved him and how hard it was to let him go, notwithstanding they had often seen him go before, in his St.;Louis schooling days.<=In the most matter-of-course way they had borne the burden of getting him ready for his trip, never seeming to think of his helping in the matter; in the same matter-of-course way Clay had hired a horse and cart; and now that the good-byes were ended he bundled Washington's baggage in and drove away with the exile.UVAt Swansea Clay paid his stage fare, stowed him away in the vehicle, and saw him off.KLThen he returned home and reported progress, like a committee of the whole.-#$Clay remained at home several days.LHe held many consultations with his mother upon the financial condition of the family, and talked once with his father upon the same subject, but only once.FGHe found a change in that quarter which was distressing; years of fluctuating fortune had done their work; each reverse had weakened the father's spirit and impaired his energies; his last misfortune seemed to have left hope and ambition dead within him; he had no projects, formed no plans--evidently he was a vanquished man.7He looked worn and tired.WXHe inquired into Clay's affairs and prospects, and when he found that Clay was doing pretty well and was likely to do still better, it was plain that he resigned himself with easy facility to look to the son for a support; and he said, "Keep yourself informed of poor Washington's condition and movements, and help him along all you can, Clay.5The younger children, also, seemed relieved of all fears and distresses, and very ready and willing to look to Clay for a livelihood.RSWithin three days a general tranquility and satisfaction reigned in the household.ABClay's hundred and eighty or ninety, dollars had worked a wonder.`aThe family were as contented, now, and as free from care as they could have been with a fortune.;It was well that Mrs.XYHawkins held the purse otherwise the treasure would have lasted but a very little while.fgIt took but a trifle to pay Hawkins's outstanding obligations, for he had always had a horror of debt.aWhen Clay bade his home good-bye and set out to return to the field of his labors, he was conscious that henceforth he was to have his father's family on his hands as pensioners; but he did not allow himself to chafe at the thought, for he reasoned that his father had dealt by him with a free hand and a loving one all his life, and now that hard fortune had broken his spirit it ought to be a pleasure, not a pain, to work for him.78The younger children were born and educated dependents.&vwThey had never been taught to do anything for themselves, and it did not seem to occur to them to make an attempt now.^_The girls would not have been permitted to work for a living under any circumstances whatever.It was a southern family, and of good blood; and for any person except Laura, either within or without the household to have suggested such an idea would have brought upon the suggester the suspicion of being a lunatic.D CHAPTER VII.rVia, Pecunia! when she's run and gone And fled, and dead, then will I fetch her again With aqua vita, out of an old hogshead! While there are lees of wine, or dregs of beer, I'll never want her! Coin her out of cobwebs, Dust, but I'll have her! raise wool upon egg-shells, Sir, and make grass grow out of marrow-bones, To make her come! B.IJonson.^Bearing Washington Hawkins and his fortunes, the stage-coach tore out of Swansea at a fearful gait, with horn tooting gaily and half the town admiring from doors and windows.But it did not tear any more after it got to the outskirts; it dragged along stupidly enough, then--till it came in sight of the next hamlet; and then the bugle tooted gaily again and again the vehicle went tearing by the horses.This sort of conduct marked every entry to a station and every exit from it; and so in those days children grew up with the idea that stage-coaches always tore and always tooted; but they also grew up with the idea that pirates went into action in their Sunday clothes, carrying the black flag in one hand and pistolling people with the other, merely because they were so represented in the pictures--but these illusions vanished when later years brought their disenchanting wisdom.vThey learned then that the stagecoach is but a poor, plodding, vulgar thing in the solitudes of the highway; and that the pirate is only a seedy, unfantastic "rough," when he is out of the pictures.oToward evening, the stage-coach came thundering into Hawkeye with a perfectly triumphant ostentation--which was natural and proper, for Hawkey a was a pretty large town for interior Missouri.abWashington, very stiff and tired and hungry, climbed out, and wondered how he was to proceed now.*&'But his difficulty was quickly solved.LCol. EFSellers came down the street on a run and arrived panting for breath.(xyHe said: "Lord bless you--I'm glad to see you, Washington--perfectly delighted to see you, my boy! I got your message.3Been on the look-out for you.~Heard the stage horn, but had a party I couldn't shake off--man that's got an enormous thing on hand--wants me to put some capital into it--and I tell you, my boy, I could do worse, I could do a deal worse.!/0No, now, let that luggage alone; I'll fix that.OPHere, Jerry, got anything to do? All right-shoulder this plunder and follow me.9Come along, Washington.STLord I'm glad to see you! Wife and the children are just perishing to look at you. 01Bless you, they won't know you, you've grown so.;<Folks all well, I suppose? That's good--glad to hear that.fWe're always going to run down and see them, but I'm into so many operations, and they're not things a man feels like trusting to other people, and so somehow we keep putting it off.2Fortunes in them! Good gracious, it's the country to pile up wealth in! Here we are--here's where the Sellers dynasty hangs out.1Hump it on the door-step, Jerry--the blackest niggro in the State, Washington, but got a good heart--mighty likely boy, is Jerry.67And now I suppose you've got to have ten cents, Jerry.@AThat's all right--when a man works for me--when a man--in the other pocket, I reckon--when a man --why, where the mischief as that portmonnaie!--when a--well now that's odd--Oh, now I remember, must have left it at the bank; and b'George I've left my check-book, too--Polly says I ought to have a nurse--well, no matter.:;Let me have a dime, Washington, if you've got--ah, thanks. ]^Now clear out, Jerry, your complexion has brought on the twilight half an hour ahead of time.2Pretty fair joke--pretty fair.deHere he is, Polly! Washington's come, children! come now, don't eat him up--finish him in the house.hiWelcome, my boy, to a mansion that is proud to shelter the son of the best man that walks on the ground._Si Hawkins has been a good friend to me, and I believe I can say that whenever I've had a chance to put him into a good thing I've done it, and done it pretty cheerfully, too.cdI put him into that sugar speculation--what a grand thing that was, if we hadn't held on too long!" True enough; but holding on too long had utterly ruined both of them; and the saddest part of it was, that they never had had so much money to lose before, for Sellers's sale of their mule crop that year in New Orleans had been a great financial success.klIf he had kept out of sugar and gone back home content to stick to mules it would have been a happy wisdom.'(As it was, he managed to kill two birds with one stone--that is to say, he killed the sugar speculation by holding for high rates till he had to sell at the bottom figure, and that calamity killed the mule that laid the golden egg--which is but a figurative expression and will be so understood.cdSellers had returned home cheerful but empty-handed, and the mule business lapsed into other hands.The sale of the Hawkins property by the Sheriff had followed, and the Hawkins hearts been torn to see Uncle Dan'l and his wife pass from the auction-block into the hands of a negro trader and depart for the remote South to be seen no more by the family.IJIt had seemed like seeing their own flesh and blood sold into banishment.89Washington was greatly pleased with the Sellers mansion.UVIt was a two-story-and-a-half brick, and much more stylish than any of its neighbors.EHe was borne to the family sitting room in triumph by the swarm of little Sellerses, the parents following with their arms about each other's waists.?The whole family were poorly and cheaply dressed; and the clothing, although neat and clean, showed many evidences of having seen long service.\The Colonel's "stovepipe" hat was napless and shiny with much polishing, but nevertheless it had an almost convincing expression about it of having been just purchased new.MThe rest of his clothing was napless and shiny, too, but it had the air of being entirely satisfied with itself and blandly sorry for other people's clothes.MNIt was growing rather dark in the house, and the evening air was chilly, too.rSellers said: "Lay off your overcoat, Washington, and draw up to the stove and make yourself at home--just consider yourself under your own shingles my boy --I'll have a fire going, in a jiffy.Light the lamp, Polly, dear, and let's have things cheerful just as glad to see you, Washington, as if you'd been lost a century and we'd found you again!" By this time the Colonel was conveying a lighted match into a poor little stove.&vwThen he propped the stove door to its place by leaning the poker against it, for the hinges had retired from business.TUThis door framed a small square of isinglass, which now warmed up with a faint glow.LMrs.SSellers lit a cheap, showy lamp, which dissipated a good deal of the gloom, and then everybody gathered into the light and took the stove into close companionship.cdThe children climbed all over Sellers, fondled him, petted him, and were lavishly petted in return.ZOut from this tugging, laughing, chattering disguise of legs and arms and little faces, the Colonel's voice worked its way and his tireless tongue ran blithely on without interruption; and the purring little wife, diligent with her knitting, sat near at hand and looked happy and proud and grateful; and she listened as one who listens to oracles and, gospels and whose grateful soul is being refreshed with the bread of life.nBye and bye the children quieted down to listen; clustered about their father, and resting their elbows on his legs, they hung upon his words as if he were uttering the music of the spheres._A dreary old hair-cloth sofa against the wall; a few damaged chairs; the small table the lamp stood on; the crippled stove--these things constituted the furniture of the room.There was no carpet on the floor; on the wall were occasional square-shaped interruptions of the general tint of the plaster which betrayed that there used to be pictures in the house--but there were none now.!"There were no mantel ornaments, unless one might bring himself to regard as an ornament a clock which never came within fifteen strokes of striking the right time, and whose hands always hitched together at twenty-two minutes past anything and traveled in company the rest of the way home.9:Remarkable clock!" said Sellers, and got up and wound it.`aI've been offered--well, I wouldn't expect you to believe what I've been offered for that clock.H Old Gov.FHager never sees me but he says, 'Come, now, Colonel, name your price--I must have that clock!' But my goodness I'd as soon think of selling my wife.SAs I was saying to--silence in the court--now, she's begun to strike! You can't talk against her--you have to just be patient and hold up till she's said her say.)yzAh well, as I was saying, when--she's beginning again! Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twen----ah, that's all. EFYes, as I was saying to old Judge ----go it, old girl, don't mind me.?Now how is that?----isn't that a good, spirited tone? She can wake the dead! Sleep? Why you might as well try to sleep in a thunder-factory.8Now just listen at that. FGShe'll strike a hundred and fifty, now, without stopping,--you'll see.34There ain't another clock like that in Christendom.)*Washington hoped that this might be true, for the din was distracting --though the family, one and all, seemed filled with joy; and the more the clock "buckled down to her work" as the Colonel expressed it, and the more insupportable the clatter became, the more enchanted they all appeared to be.AWhen there was silence, Mrs Sellers lifted upon Washington a face that beamed with a childlike pride, and said: "It belonged to his grandmother.The look and the tone were a plain call for admiring surprise, and therefore Washington said (it was the only thing that offered itself at the moment:) "Indeed!" "Yes, it did, didn't it father!" exclaimed one of the twins.jShe was my great-grandmother--and George's too; wasn't she, father! You never saw her, but Sis has seen her, when Sis was a baby-didn't you, Sis! Sis has seen her most a hundred times.,$%She was awful deef--she's dead, now.:;Aint she, father!" All the children chimed in, now, with one general Babel of information about deceased--nobody offering to read the riot act or seeming to discountenance the insurrection or disapprove of it in any way--but the head twin drowned all the turmoil and held his own against the field: "It's our clock, now--and it's got wheels inside of it, and a thing that flutters every time she strikes--don't it, father! Great-grandmother died before hardly any of us was born--she was an Old-School Baptist and had warts all over her--you ask father if she didn't.She had an uncle once that was bald-headed and used to have fits; he wasn't our uncle, I don't know what he was to us--some kin or another I reckon--father's seen him a thousand times--hain't you, father! We used to have a calf that et apples and just chawed up dishrags like nothing, and if you stay here you'll see lots of funerals--won't he, Sis! Did you ever see a house afire? I have! Once me and Jim Terry----" But Sellers began to speak now, and the storm ceased.23He began to tell about an enormous speculation he was thinking of embarking some capital in--a speculation which some London bankers had been over to consult with him about--and soon he was building glittering pyramids of coin, and Washington was presently growing opulent under the magic of his eloquence.IJBut at the same time Washington was not able to ignore the cold entirely.wHe was nearly as close to the stove as he could get, and yet he could not persuade himself, that he felt the slightest heat, notwithstanding the isinglass' door was still gently and serenely glowing.?He tried to get a trifle closer to the stove, and the consequence was, he tripped the supporting poker and the stove-door tumbled to the floor.KAnd then there was a revelation--there was nothing in the stove but a lighted tallow-candle! The poor youth blushed and felt as if he must die with shame.But the Colonel was only disconcerted for a moment--he straightway found his voice again: "A little idea of my own, Washington--one of the greatest things in the world! You must write and tell your father about it--don't forget that, now.hI have been reading up some European Scientific reports--friend of mine, Count Fugier, sent them to me--sends me all sorts of things from Paris--he thinks the world of me, Fugier does.STWell, I saw that the Academy of France had been testing the properties of heat, and they came to the conclusion that it was a nonconductor or something like that, and of course its influence must necessarily be deadly in nervous organizations with excitable temperaments, especially where there is any tendency toward rheumatic affections.>Bless you I saw in a moment what was the matter with us, and says I, out goes your fires!--no more slow torture and certain death for me, sir.NOWhat you want is the appearance of heat, not the heat itself--that's the idea.+%&Well how to do it was the next thing.12I just put my head, to work, pegged away, a couple of days, and here you are! Rheumatism? Why a man can't any more start a case of rheumatism in this house than he can shake an opinion out of a mummy! Stove with a candle in it and a transparent door--that's it--it has been the salvation of this family.9:Don't you fail to write your father about it, Washington.PAnd tell him the idea is mine--I'm no more conceited than most people, I reckon, but you know it is human nature for a man to want credit for a thing like that.)yzWashington said with his blue lips that he would, but he said in his secret heart that he would promote no such iniquity.wHe tried to believe in the healthfulness of the invention, and succeeded tolerably well; but after all he could not feel that good health in a frozen, body was any real improvement on the rheumatism.C CHAPTER VIII.Whan pe horde is thynne, as of seruyse, Nought replenesshed with grete diuersite Of mete & drinke, good chere may then suffise With honest talkyng---- The Book of Curtesye.IMAMMON.C Come on, sir.Now, you set your foot on shore In Novo Orbe; here's the rich Peru: And there within, sir, are the golden mines, Great Solomon's Ophir!---- B.6Jonson The supper at Col.OPSellers's was not sumptuous, in the beginning, but it improved on acquaintance.lThat is to say, that what Washington regarded at first sight as mere lowly potatoes, presently became awe-inspiring agricultural productions that had been reared in some ducal garden beyond the sea, under the sacred eye of the duke himself, who had sent them to Sellers; the bread was from corn which could be grown in only one favored locality in the earth and only a favored few could get it; the Rio coffee, which at first seemed execrable to the taste, took to itself an improved flavor when Washington was told to drink it slowly and not hurry what should be a lingering luxury in order to be fully appreciated--it was from the private stores of a Brazilian nobleman with an unrememberable name.uThe Colonel's tongue was a magician's wand that turned dried apples into figs and water into wine as easily as it could change a hovel into a palace and present poverty into imminent future riches../Washington slept in a cold bed in a carpetless room and woke up in a palace in the morning; at least the palace lingered during the moment that he was rubbing his eyes and getting his bearings--and then it disappeared and he recognized that the Colonel's inspiring talk had been influencing his dreams.-}~Fatigue had made him sleep late; when he entered the sitting room he noticed that the old hair-cloth sofa was absent; when he sat down to breakfast the Colonel tossed six or seven dollars in bills on the table, counted them over, said he was a little short and must call upon his banker; then returned the bills to his wallet with the indifferent air of a man who is used to money.-}~The breakfast was not an improvement upon the supper, but the Colonel talked it up and transformed it into an oriental feast.IJBye and bye, he said: "I intend to look out for you, Washington, my boy.yI hunted up a place for you yesterday, but I am not referring to that,--now--that is a mere livelihood--mere bread and butter; but when I say I mean to look out for you I mean something very different.STI mean to put things in your way than will make a mere livelihood a trifling thing.OPI'll put you in a way to make more money than you'll ever know what to do with.KLYou'll be right here where I can put my hand on you when anything turns up.pI've got some prodigious operations on foot; but I'm keeping quiet; mum's the word; your old hand don't go around pow-wowing and letting everybody see his k'yards and find out his little game.34But all in good time, Washington, all in good time.E You'll see.12Now there's an operation in corn that looks well.OSome New York men are trying to get me to go into it--buy up all the growing crops and just boss the market when they mature--ah I tell you it's a great thing. FGAnd it only costs a trifle; two millions or two and a half will do it.1I haven't exactly promised yet--there's no hurry--the more indifferent I seem, you know, the more anxious those fellows will get.<=And then there is the hog speculation --that's bigger still.QWe've got quiet men at work," [he was very impressive here,] "mousing around, to get propositions out of all the farmers in the whole west and northwest for the hog crop, and other agents quietly getting propositions and terms out of all the manufactories--and don't you see, if we can get all the hogs and all the slaughter horses into our hands on the dead quiet--whew! it would take three ships to carry the money.`I've looked into the thing--calculated all the chances for and all the chances against, and though I shake my head and hesitate and keep on thinking, apparently, I've got my mind made up that if the thing can be done on a capital of six millions, that's the horse to put up money on! Why Washington--but what's the use of talking about it--any man can see that there's whole Atlantic oceans of cash in it, gulfs and bays thrown in.8But there's a bigger thing than that, yes bigger----" "Why Colonel, you can't want anything bigger!" said Washington, his eyes blazing.Oh, I wish I could go into either of those speculations--I only wish I had money--I wish I wasn't cramped and kept down and fettered with poverty, and such prodigious chances lying right here in sight! Oh, it is a fearful thing to be poor. YZBut don't throw away those things --they are so splendid and I can see how sure they are. \]Don't throw them away for something still better and maybe fail in it! I wouldn't, Colonel.9I would stick to these.lmI wish father were here and were his old self again--Oh, he never in his life had such chances as these are.+,Colonel; you can't improve on these--no man can improve on them!" A sweet, compassionate smile played about the Colonel's features, and he leaned over the table with the air of a man who is "going to show you" and do it without the least trouble: "Why Washington, my boy, these things are nothing.eThey look large of course--they look large to a novice, but to a man who has been all his life accustomed to large operations--shaw! They're well enough to while away an idle hour with, or furnish a bit of employment that will give a trifle of idle capital a chance to earn its bread while it is waiting for something to do, but--now just listen a moment--just let me give you an idea of what we old veterans of commerce call 'business.Here's the Rothschild's proposition--this is between you and me, you understand----" Washington nodded three or four times impatiently, and his glowing eyes said, "Yes, yes--hurry--I understand----" ----"for I wouldn't have it get out for a fortune.kThey want me to go in with them on the sly--agent was here two weeks ago about it--go in on the sly" [voice down to an impressive whisper, now,] "and buy up a hundred and thirteen wild cat banks in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri--notes of these banks are at all sorts of discount now--average discount of the hundred and thirteen is forty-four per cent--buy them all up, you see, and then all of a sudden let the cat out of the bag! Whiz! the stock of every one of those wildcats would spin up to a tremendous premium before you could turn a handspring--profit on the speculation not a dollar less than forty millions!" [An eloquent pause, while the marvelous vision settled into W.H s focus.STWhere's your hogs now? Why my dear innocent boy, we would just sit down on the front door-steps and peddle banks like lucifer matches!" Washington finally got his breath and said: "Oh, it is perfectly wonderful! Why couldn't these things have happened in father's day? And I--it's of no use--they simply lie before my face and mock me.`aThere is nothing for me but to stand helpless and see other people reap the astonishing harvest.(()Never mind, Washington, don't you worry.C I'll fix you.6There's plenty of chances.aHow much money have you got?" In the presence of so many millions, Washington could not keep from blushing when he had to confess that he had but eighteen dollars in the world.1 Well, all right--don't despair.23Other people have been obliged to begin with less.RSI have a small idea that may develop into something for us both, all in good time.,$%Keep your money close and add to it.=I'll make it breed.EI've been experimenting (to pass away the time), on a little preparation for curing sore eyes--a kind of decoction nine-tenths water and the other tenth drugs that don't cost more than a dollar a barrel; I'm still experimenting; there's one ingredient wanted yet to perfect the thing, and somehow I can't just manage to hit upon the thing that's necessary, and I don't dare talk with a chemist, of course.But I'm progressing, and before many weeks I wager the country will ring with the fame of Beriah Sellers' Infallible Imperial Oriental Optic Liniment and Salvation for Sore Eyes--the Medical Wonder of the Age! Small bottles fifty cents, large ones a dollar.56Average cost, five and seven cents for the two sizes.The first year sell, say, ten thousand bottles in Missouri, seven thousand in Iowa, three thousand in Arkansas, four thousand in Kentucky, six thousand in Illinois, and say twenty-five thousand in the rest of the country.)yzTotal, fifty five thousand bottles; profit clear of all expenses, twenty thousand dollars at the very lowest calculation.AAll the capital needed is to manufacture the first two thousand bottles --say a hundred and fifty dollars--then the money would begin to flow in.>The second year, sales would reach 200,000 bottles--clear profit, say, $75,000--and in the meantime the great factory would be building in St.2Louis, to cost, say, $100,000.%uvThe third year we could, easily sell 1,000,000 bottles in the United States and----" "O, splendid!" said Washington.}Let's commence right away--let's----" "----1,000,000 bottles in the United States--profit at least $350,000 --and then it would begin to be time to turn our attention toward the real idea of the business.GHThe real idea of it! Ain't $350,000 a year a pretty real----" "Stuff! Why what an infant you are, Washington--what a guileless, short-sighted, easily-contented innocent you, are, my poor little country-bred know-nothing! Would I go to all that trouble and bother for the poor crumbs a body might pick up in this country? Now do I look like a man who----does my history suggest that I am a man who deals in trifles, contents himself with the narrow horizon that hems in the common herd, sees no further than the end of his nose? Now you know that that is not me--couldn't be me.TYou ought to know that if I throw my time and abilities into a patent medicine, it's a patent medicine whose field of operations is the solid earth! its clients the swarming nations that inhabit it! Why what is the republic of America for an eye-water country? Lord bless you, it is nothing but a barren highway that you've got to cross to get to the true eye-water market! Why, Washington, in the Oriental countries people swarm like the sands of the desert; every square mile of ground upholds its thousands upon thousands of struggling human creatures--and every separate and individual devil of them's got the ophthalmia! It's as natural to them as noses are--and sin. \]It's born with them, it stays with them, it's all that some of them have left when they die.Three years of introductory trade in the orient and what will be the result? Why, our headquarters would be in Constantinople and our hindquarters in Further India! Factories and warehouses in Cairo, Ispahan, Bagdad, Damascus, Jerusalem, Yedo, Peking, Bangkok, Delhi, Bombay--and Calcutta! Annual income--well, God only knows how many millions and millions apiece!" Washington was so dazed, so bewildered--his heart and his eyes had wandered so far away among the strange lands beyond the seas, and such avalanches of coin and currency had fluttered and jingled confusedly down before him, that he was now as one who has been whirling round and round for a time, and, stopping all at once, finds his surroundings still whirling and all objects a dancing chaos.@However, little by little the Sellers family cooled down and crystalized into shape, and the poor room lost its glitter and resumed its poverty.Then the youth found his voice and begged Sellers to drop everything and hurry up the eye-water; and he got his eighteen dollars and tried to force it upon the Colonel--pleaded with him to take it--implored him to do it.bBut the Colonel would not; said he would not need the capital (in his native magnificent way he called that eighteen dollars Capital) till the eye-water was an accomplished fact.He made Washington easy in his mind, though, by promising that he would call for it just as soon as the invention was finished, and he added the glad tidings that nobody but just they two should be admitted to a share in the speculation.JKWhen Washington left the breakfast table he could have worshiped that man.!qrWashington was one of that kind of people whose hopes are in the very, clouds one day and in the gutter the next.:He walked on air, now. The Colonel was ready to take him around and introduce him to the employment he had found for him, but Washington begged for a few moments in which to write home; with his kind of people, to ride to-day's new interest to death and put off yesterday's till another time, is nature itself.iHe ran up stairs and wrote glowingly, enthusiastically, to his mother about the hogs and the corn, the banks and the eye-water--and added a few inconsequential millions to each project.67And he said that people little dreamed what a man Col. FGSellers was, and that the world would open its eyes when it found out.8And he closed his letter thus: "So make yourself perfectly easy, mother-in a little while you shall have everything you want, and more.23I am not likely to stint you in anything, I fancy.89This money will not be for me, alone, but for all of us.`aI want all to share alike; and there is going to be far more for each than one person can spend.()Break it to father cautiously--you understand the need of that--break it to him cautiously, for he has had such cruel hard fortune, and is so stricken by it that great good news might prostrate him more surely than even bad, for he is used to the bad but is grown sadly unaccustomed to the other.."#Tell Laura--tell all the children.56And write to Clay about it if he is not with you yet. DEYou may tell Clay that whatever I get he can freely share in-freely.efHe knows that that is true--there will be no need that I should swear to that to make him believe it.noGood-bye--and mind what I say: Rest perfectly easy, one and all of you, for our troubles are nearly at an end.Poor lad, he could not know that his mother would cry some loving, compassionate tears over his letter and put off the family with a synopsis of its contents which conveyed a deal of love to then but not much idea of his prospects or projects.And he never dreamed that such a joyful letter could sadden her and fill her night with sighs, and troubled thoughts, and bodings of the future, instead of filling it with peace and blessing it with restful sleep.2When the letter was done, Washington and the Colonel sallied forth, and as they walked along Washington learned what he was to be.#-.He was to be a clerk in a real estate office.deInstantly the fickle youth's dreams forsook the magic eye-water and flew back to the Tennessee Land.And the gorgeous possibilities of that great domain straightway began to occupy his imagination to such a degree that he could scarcely manage to keep even enough of his attention upon the Colonel's talk to retain the general run of what he was saying. EFHe was glad it was a real estate office--he was a made man now, sure.^The Colonel said that General Boswell was a rich man and had a good and growing business; and that Washington's work world be light and he would get forty dollars a month and be boarded and lodged in the General's family--which was as good as ten dollars more; and even better, for he could not live as well even at the "City Hotel" as he would there, and yet the hotel charged fifteen dollars a month where a man had a good room.yGeneral Boswell was in his office; a comfortable looking place, with plenty of outline maps hanging about the walls and in the windows, and a spectacled man was marking out another one on a long table.)'(The office was in the principal street. FGThe General received Washington with a kindly but reserved politeness.."#Washington rather liked his looks.IJHe was about fifty years old, dignified, well preserved and well dressed.QAfter the Colonel took his leave, the General talked a while with Washington--his talk consisting chiefly of instructions about the clerical duties of the place.gHe seemed satisfied as to Washington's ability to take care of the books, he was evidently a pretty fair theoretical bookkeeper, and experience would soon harden theory into practice.By and by dinner-time came, and the two walked to the General's house; and now Washington noticed an instinct in himself that moved him to keep not in the General's rear, exactly, but yet not at his side--somehow the old gentleman's dignity and reserve did not inspire familiarity.CHAPTER IX Washington dreamed his way along the street, his fancy flitting from grain to hogs, from hogs to banks, from banks to eyewater, from eye-water to Tennessee Land, and lingering but a feverish moment upon each of these fascinations.opHe was conscious of but one outward thing, to wit, the General, and he was really not vividly conscious of him.MNArrived at the finest dwelling in the town, they entered it and were at home./!"Washington was introduced to Mrs.JBoswell, and his imagination was on the point of flitting into the vapory realms of speculation again, when a lovely girl of sixteen or seventeen came in. [\This vision swept Washington's mind clear of its chaos of glittering rubbish in an instant.Beauty had fascinated him before; many times he had been in love even for weeks at a time with the same object but his heart had never suffered so sudden and so fierce an assault as this, within his recollection._`Louise Boswell occupied his mind and drifted among his multiplication tables all the afternoon.He was constantly catching himself in a reverie--reveries made up of recalling how she looked when she first burst upon him; how her voice thrilled him when she first spoke; how charmed the very air seemed by her presence.6Blissful as the afternoon was, delivered up to such a revel as this, it seemed an eternity, so impatient was he to see the girl again.."#Other afternoons like it followed.!qrWashington plunged into this love affair as he plunged into everything else--upon impulse and without reflection.2As the days went by it seemed plain that he was growing in favor with Louise,--not sweepingly so, but yet perceptibly, he fancied.His attentions to her troubled her father and mother a little, and they warned Louise, without stating particulars or making allusions to any special person, that a girl was sure to make a mistake who allowed herself to marry anybody but a man who could support her well.Some instinct taught Washington that his present lack of money would be an obstruction, though possibly not a bar, to his hopes, and straightway his poverty became a torture to him which cast all his former sufferings under that held into the shade.?@He longed for riches now as he had ever longed for them before.%+,He had been once or twice to dine with Col.2Sellers, and had been discouraged to note that the Colonel's bill of fare was falling off both in quantity and quality--a sign, he feared, that the lacking ingredient in the eye-water still remained undiscovered--though Sellers always explained that these changes in the family diet had been ordered by the doctor, or suggested by some new scientific work the Colonel had stumbled upon.MBut it always turned out that the lacking ingredient was still lacking--though it always appeared, at the same time, that the Colonel was right on its heels..~Every time the Colonel came into the real estate office Washington's heart bounded and his eyes lighted with hope, but it always turned out that the Colonel was merely on the scent of some vast, undefined landed speculation--although he was customarily able to say that he was nearer to the all-necessary ingredient than ever, and could almost name the hour when success would dawn. Z[And then Washington's heart world sink again and a sigh would tell when it touched bottom.5About this time a letter came, saying that Judge Hawkins had been ailing for a fortnight, and was now considered to be seriously ill.56It was thought best that Washington should come home.eThe news filled him with grief, for he loved and honored his father; the Boswells were touched by the youth's sorrow, and even the General unbent and said encouraging things to him.There was balm in this; but when Louise bade him good-bye, and shook his hand and said, "Don't be cast down--it will all come out right--I know it will all come out right," it seemed a blessed thing to be in misfortune, and the tears that welled up to his eyes were the messengers of an adoring and a grateful heart; and when the girl saw them and answering tears came into her own eyes, Washington could hardly contain the excess of happiness that poured into the cavities of his breast that were so lately stored to the roof with grief.23All the way home he nursed his woe and exalted it.'(He pictured himself as she must be picturing him: a noble, struggling young spirit persecuted by misfortune, but bravely and patiently waiting in the shadow of a dread calamity and preparing to meet the blow as became one who was all too used to hard fortune and the pitiless buffetings of fate.,|}These thoughts made him weep, and weep more broken-heartedly than ever; and he wished that she could see his sufferings now.cThere was nothing significant in the fact that Louise, dreamy and distraught, stood at her bedroom bureau that night, scribbling "Washington" here and there over a sheet of paper.,-But there was something significant in the fact that she scratched the word out every time she wrote it; examined the erasure critically to see if anybody could guess at what the word had been; then buried it under a maze of obliterating lines; and finally, as if still unsatisfied, burned the paper.VWWhen Washington reached home, he recognized at once how serious his father's case was.^The darkened room, the labored breathing and occasional moanings of the patient, the tip-toeing of the attendants and their whispered consultations, were full of sad meaning.3For three or four nights Mrs.EHawkins and Laura had been watching by the bedside; Clay had arrived, preceding Washington by one day, and he was now added to the corps of watchers.MMr.abHawkins would have none but these three, though neighborly assistance was offered by old friends.jkFrom this time forth three-hour watches were instituted, and day and night the watchers kept their vigils.$tuBy degrees Laura and her mother began to show wear, but neither of them would yield a minute of their tasks to Clay.'wxHe ventured once to let the midnight hour pass without calling Laura, but he ventured no more; there was that about her rebuke when he tried to explain, that taught him that to let her sleep when she might be ministering to her father's needs, was to rob her of moments that were priceless in her eyes; he perceived that she regarded it as a privilege to watch, not a burden.And, he had noticed, also, that when midnight struck, the patient turned his eyes toward the door, with an expectancy in them which presently grew into a longing but brightened into contentment as soon as the door opened and Laura appeared.4And he did not need Laura's rebuke when he heard his father say: "Clay is good, and you are tired, poor child; but I wanted you so.#-.Clay is not good, father--he did not call me.0 !I would not have treated him so.How could you do it, Clay?" Clay begged forgiveness and promised not to break faith again; and as he betook him to his bed, he said to himself: "It's a steadfast little soul; whoever thinks he is doing the Duchess a kindness by intimating that she is not sufficient for any undertaking she puts her hand to, makes a mistake; and if I did not know it before, I know now that there are surer ways of pleasing her than by trying to lighten her labor when that labor consists in wearing herself out for the sake of a person she loves. FGA week drifted by, and all the while the patient sank lower and lower.!/0The night drew on that was to end all suspense.<It was a wintry one.'wxThe darkness gathered, the snow was falling, the wind wailed plaintively about the house or shook it with fitful gusts.The doctor had paid his last visit and gone away with that dismal remark to the nearest friend of the family that he "believed there was nothing more that he could do" --a remark which is always overheard by some one it is not meant for and strikes a lingering half-conscious hope dead with a withering shock; the medicine phials had been removed from the bedside and put out of sight, and all things made orderly and meet for the solemn event that was impending; the patient, with closed eyes, lay scarcely breathing; the watchers sat by and wiped the gathering damps from his forehead while the silent tears flowed down their faces; the deep hush was only interrupted by sobs from the children, grouped about the bed.#-.After a time--it was toward midnight now--Mr.QRHawkins roused out of a doze, looked about him and was evidently trying to speak.JInstantly Laura lifted his head and in a failing voice he said, while something of the old light shone in his eyes: "Wife--children--come nearer--nearer.=The darkness grows.2Let me see you all, once more.^_The group closed together at the bedside, and their tears and sobs came now without restraint.."#I am leaving you in cruel poverty.&*+I have been--so foolish--so short-sighted.')*But courage! A better day is--is coming.12Never lose sight of the Tennessee Land! Be wary.:There is wealth stored up for you there--wealth that is boundless! The children shall hold up their heads with the best in the land, yet.Where are the papers?--Have you got the papers safe? Show them--show them to me!" Under his strong excitement his voice had gathered power and his last sentences were spoken with scarcely a perceptible halt or hindrance.TUWith an effort he had raised himself almost without assistance to a sitting posture.BCBut now the fire faded out of his eyes and he fell back exhausted./The papers were brought and held before him, and the answering smile that flitted across his face showed that he was satisfied.PQHe closed his eyes, and the signs of approaching dissolution multiplied rapidly.CHe lay almost motionless for a little while, then suddenly partly raised his head and looked about him as one who peers into a dim uncertain light.%+,He muttered: "Gone? No--I see you--still.>It is--it is-over.>But you are--safe.KSafe.PQThe Ten-----" The voice died out in a whisper; the sentence was never finished.BCThe emaciated fingers began to pick at the coverlet, a fatal sign.!qrAfter a time there were no sounds but the cries of the mourners within and the gusty turmoil of the wind without.GLaura had bent down and kissed her father's lips as the spirit left the body; but she did not sob, or utter any ejaculation; her tears flowed silently.9:Then she closed the dead eyes, and crossed the hands upon the breast; after a season, she kissed the forehead reverently, drew the sheet up over the face, and then walked apart and sat down with the look of one who is done with life and has no further interest in its joys and sorrows, its hopes or its ambitions.Clay buried his face in the coverlet of the bed; when the other children and the mother realized that death was indeed come at last, they threw themselves into each others' arms and gave way to a frenzy of grief.F CHAPTER X.Only two or three days had elapsed since the funeral, when something happened which was to change the drift of Laura's life somewhat, and influence in a greater or lesser degree the formation of her character..~Major Lackland had once been a man of note in the State--a man of extraordinary natural ability and as extraordinary learning.'wxHe had been universally trusted and honored in his day, but had finally, fallen into misfortune; while serving his third term in Congress, and while upon the point of being elevated to the Senate--which was considered the summit of earthly aggrandizement in those days--he had yielded to temptation, when in distress for money wherewith to save his estate; and sold his vote.:;His crime was discovered, and his fall followed instantly.opNothing could reinstate him in the confidence of the people, his ruin was irretrievable--his disgrace complete.78All doors were closed against him, all men avoided him.CAfter years of skulking retirement and dissipation, death had relieved him of his troubles at last, and his funeral followed close upon that of Mr.H Hawkins.>?He died as he had latterly lived--wholly alone and friendless.?@He had no relatives--or if he had they did not acknowledge him.@The coroner's jury found certain memoranda upon his body and about the premises which revealed a fact not suspected by the villagers before-viz.-#$that Laura was not the child of Mr.H and Mrs.H Hawkins.2The gossips were soon at work.^They were but little hampered by the fact that the memoranda referred to betrayed nothing but the bare circumstance that Laura's real parents were unknown, and stopped there. \]So far from being hampered by this, the gossips seemed to gain all the more freedom from it.TUThey supplied all the missing information themselves, they filled up all the blanks.()The town soon teemed with histories of Laura's origin and secret history, no two versions precisely alike, but all elaborate, exhaustive, mysterious and interesting, and all agreeing in one vital particular-to-wit, that there was a suspicious cloud about her birth, not to say a disreputable one.|Laura began to encounter cold looks, averted eyes and peculiar nods and gestures which perplexed her beyond measure; but presently the pervading gossip found its way to her, and she understood them--then.<Her pride was stung.#-.She was astonished, and at first incredulous. pqShe was about to ask her mother if there was any truth in these reports, but upon second thought held her peace.0She soon gathered that Major Lackland's memoranda seemed to refer to letters which had passed between himself and Judge Hawkins.LMShe shaped her course without difficulty the day that that hint reached her.ijThat night she sat in her room till all was still, and then she stole into the garret and began a search.DShe rummaged long among boxes of musty papers relating to business matters of no, interest to her, but at last she found several bundles of letters. GHOne bundle was marked "private," and in that she found what she wanted.lmShe selected six or eight letters from the package and began to devour their contents, heedless of the cold.>?By the dates, these letters were from five to seven years old.(()They were all from Major Lackland to Mr.H Hawkins.hThe substance of them was, that some one in the east had been inquiring of Major Lackland about a lost child and its parents, and that it was conjectured that the child might be Laura.Evidently some of the letters were missing, for the name of the inquirer was not mentioned; there was a casual reference to "this handsome-featured aristocratic gentleman," as if the reader and the writer were accustomed to speak of him and knew who was meant.!/0In one letter the Major said he agreed with Mr._Hawkins that the inquirer seemed not altogether on the wrong track; but he also agreed that it would be best to keep quiet until more convincing developments were forthcoming.'wxAnother letter said that "the poor soul broke completely down when he saw Laura's picture, and declared it must be she.Still another said: "He seems entirely alone in the world, and his heart is so wrapped up in this thing that I believe that if it proved a false hope, it would kill him; I have persuaded him to wait a little while and go west when I go.=Another letter had this paragraph in it: "He is better one day and worse the next, and is out of his mind a good deal of the time.bLately his case has developed a something which is a wonder to the hired nurses, but which will not be much of a marvel to you if you have read medical philosophy much.It is this: his lost memory returns to him when he is delirious, and goes away again when he is himself-just as old Canada Joe used to talk the French patois of his boyhood in the delirium of typhus fever, though he could not do it when his mind was clear.<Now this poor gentleman's memory has always broken down before he reached the explosion of the steamer; he could only remember starting up the river with his wife and child, and he had an idea that there was a race, but he was not certain; he could not name the boat he was on; there was a dead blank of a month or more that supplied not an item to his recollection.%+,It was not for me to assist him, of course. \]But now in his delirium it all comes out: the names of the boats, every incident of the explosion, and likewise the details of his astonishing escape--that is, up to where, just as a yawl-boat was approaching him (he was clinging to the starboard wheel of the burning wreck at the time), a falling timber struck him on the head.MNBut I will write out his wonderful escape in full to-morrow or next day.QOf course the physicians will not let me tell him now that our Laura is indeed his child--that must come later, when his health is thoroughly restored. ]^His case is not considered dangerous at all; he will recover presently, the doctors say.But they insist that he must travel a little when he gets well--they recommend a short sea voyage, and they say he can be persuaded to try it if we continue to keep him in ignorance and promise to let him see L.5as soon as he returns.The letter that bore the latest date of all, contained this clause: "It is the most unaccountable thing in the world; the mystery remains as impenetrable as ever; I have hunted high and low for him, and inquired of everybody, but in vain; all trace of him ends at that hotel in New York; I never have seen or heard of him since, up to this day; he could hardly have sailed, for his name does not appear upon the books of any shipping office in New York or Boston or Baltimore.^How fortunate it seems, now, that we kept this thing to ourselves; Laura still has a father in you, and it is better for her that we drop this subject here forever.C That was all.Random remarks here and there, being pieced together gave Laura a vague impression of a man of fine presence, abort forty-three or forty-five years of age, with dark hair and eyes, and a slight limp in his walk--it was not stated which leg was defective.23And this indistinct shadow represented her father. FGShe made an exhaustive search for the missing letters, but found none.,|}They had probably been burned; and she doubted not that the ones she had ferreted out would have shared the same fate if Mr.JHawkins had not been a dreamer, void of method, whose mind was perhaps in a state of conflagration over some bright new speculation when he received them.PQShe sat long, with the letters in her lap, thinking--and unconsciously freezing.She felt like a lost person who has traveled down a long lane in good hope of escape, and, just as the night descends finds his progress barred by a bridge-less river whose further shore, if it has one, is lost in the darkness.QRIf she could only have found these letters a month sooner! That was her thought.56But now the dead had carried their secrets with them.%+,A dreary, melancholy settled down upon her.23An undefined sense of injury crept into her heart.8She grew very miserable.She had just reached the romantic age--the age when there is a sad sweetness, a dismal comfort to a girl to find out that there is a mystery connected with her birth, which no other piece of good luck can afford.eShe had more than her rightful share of practical good sense, but still she was human; and to be human is to have one's little modicum of romance secreted away in one's composition.One never ceases to make a hero of one's self, (in private,) during life, but only alters the style of his heroism from time to time as the drifting years belittle certain gods of his admiration and raise up others in their stead that seem greater.The recent wearing days and nights of watching, and the wasting grief that had possessed her, combined with the profound depression that naturally came with the reaction of idleness, made Laura peculiarly susceptible at this time to romantic impressions.;<She was a heroine, now, with a mysterious father somewhere.She could not really tell whether she wanted to find him and spoil it all or not; but still all the traditions of romance pointed to the making the attempt as the usual and necessary, course to follow; therefore she would some day begin the search when opportunity should offer.89Now a former thought struck her--she would speak to Mrs.H Hawkins.7And naturally enough Mrs.#-.Hawkins appeared on the stage at that moment.MNShe said she knew all--she knew that Laura had discovered the secret that Mr./!"Hawkins, the elder children, Col.Sellers and herself had kept so long and so faithfully; and she cried and said that now that troubles had begun they would never end; her daughter's love would wean itself away from her and her heart would break.8Her grief so wrought upon Laura that the girl almost forgot her own troubles for the moment in her compassion for her mother's distress.D Finally Mrs.67Hawkins said: "Speak to me, child--do not forsake me.1 Forget all this miserable talk. GHSay I am your mother!--I have loved you so long, and there is no other.(xyI am your mother, in the sight of God, and nothing shall ever take you from me!" All barriers fell, before this appeal.^_Laura put her arms about her mother's neck and said: "You are my mother, and always shall be.GWe will be as we have always been; and neither this foolish talk nor any other thing shall part us or make us less to each other than we are this hour.IJThere was no longer any sense of separation or estrangement between them. GHIndeed their love seemed more perfect now than it had ever been before.(xyBy and by they went down stairs and sat by the fire and talked long and earnestly about Laura's history and the letters.5But it transpired that Mrs.VWHawkins had never known of this correspondence between her husband and Major Lackland."./With his usual consideration for his wife, Mr.IJHawkins had shielded her from the worry the matter would have caused her.8Laura went to bed at last with a mind that had gained largely in tranquility and had lost correspondingly in morbid romantic exaltation.KShe was pensive, the next day, and subdued; but that was not matter for remark, for she did not differ from the mournful friends about her in that respect. ]^Clay and Washington were the same loving and admiring brothers now that they had always been.+{|The great secret was new to some of the younger children, but their love suffered no change under the wonderful revelation.It is barely possible that things might have presently settled down into their old rut and the mystery have lost the bulk of its romantic sublimity in Laura's eyes, if the village gossips could have quieted down.!/0But they could not quiet down and they did not.tDay after day they called at the house, ostensibly upon visits of condolence, and they pumped away at the mother and the children without seeming to know that their questionings were in bad taste.$,-They meant no harm they only wanted to know.2Villagers always want to know.LMThe family fought shy of the questionings, and of course that was high testimony "if the Duchess was respectably born, why didn't they come out and prove it?--why did they, stick to that poor thin story about picking her up out of a steamboat explosion?" Under this ceaseless persecution, Laura's morbid self-communing was renewed.TAt night the day's contribution of detraction, innuendo and malicious conjecture would be canvassed in her mind, and then she would drift into a course of thinking.5As her thoughts ran on, the indignant tears would spring to her eyes, and she would spit out fierce little ejaculations at intervals.But finally she would grow calmer and say some comforting disdainful thing--something like this: "But who are they?--Animals! What are their opinions to me? Let them talk--I will not stoop to be affected by it.?I could hate----.PQNonsense--nobody I care for or in any way respect is changed toward me, I fancy.lmShe may have supposed she was thinking of many individuals, but it was not so--she was thinking of only one."./And her heart warmed somewhat, too, the while.AOne day a friend overheard a conversation like this: --and naturally came and told her all about it: "Ned, they say you don't go there any more.How is that?" "Well, I don't; but I tell you it's not because I don't want to and it's not because I think it is any matter who her father was or who he wasn't, either; it's only on account of this talk, talk, talk.I think she is a fine girl every way, and so would you if you knew her as well as I do; but you know how it is when a girl once gets talked about--it's all up with her--the world won't ever let her alone, after that.DThe only comment Laura made upon this revelation, was: "Then it appears that if this trouble had not occurred I could have had the happiness of Mr.."#Ned Thurston's serious attentions.$tuHe is well favored in person, and well liked, too, I believe, and comes of one of the first families of the village..~He is prosperous, too, I hear; has been a doctor a year, now, and has had two patients--no, three, I think; yes, it was three.6I attended their funerals.LMWell, other people have hoped and been disappointed; I am not alone in that.lI wish you could stay to dinner, Maria--we are going to have sausages; and besides, I wanted to talk to you about Hawkeye and make you promise to come and see us when we are settled there.7But Maria could not stay.She had come to mingle romantic tears with Laura's over the lover's defection and had found herself dealing with a heart that could not rise to an appreciation of affliction because its interest was all centred in sausages.67But as soon as Maria was gone, Laura stamped her expressive foot and said: "The coward! Are all books lies? I thought he would fly to the front, and be brave and noble, and stand up for me against all the world, and defy my enemies, and wither these gossips with his scorn! Poor crawling thing, let him go.<=I do begin to despise thin world!" She lapsed into thought.;Presently she said: "If the time ever comes, and I get a chance, Oh, I'll----" She could not find a word that was strong enough, perhaps.<=By and by she said: "Well, I am glad of it--I'm glad of it.>I never cared anything for him anyway!" And then, with small consistency, she cried a little, and patted her foot more indignantly than ever.TUCHAPTER XI Two months had gone by and the Hawkins family were domiciled in Hawkeye.-.Washington was at work in the real estate office again, and was alternately in paradise or the other place just as it happened that Louise was gracious to him or seemingly indifferent--because indifference or preoccupation could mean nothing else than that she was thinking of some other young person.LCol.ESellers had asked him several times, to dine with him, when he first returned to Hawkeye, but Washington, for no particular reason, had not accepted.KLNo particular reason except one which he preferred to keep to himself--viz."./that he could not bear to be away from Louise.WIt occurred to him, now, that the Colonel had not invited him lately--could he be offended? He resolved to go that very day, and give the Colonel a pleasant surprise.TIt was a good idea; especially as Louise had absented herself from breakfast that morning, and torn his heart; he would tear hers, now, and let her see how it felt.bcThe Sellers family were just starting to dinner when Washington burst upon them with his surprise.TUFor an instant the Colonel looked nonplussed, and just a bit uncomfortable; and Mrs.Sellers looked actually distressed; but the next moment the head of the house was himself again, and exclaimed: "All right, my boy, all right--always glad to see you--always glad to hear your voice and take you by the hand. FGDon't wait for special invitations--that's all nonsense among friends.QRJust come whenever you can, and come as often as you can--the oftener the better.`aYou can't please us any better than that, Washington; the little woman will tell you so herself.6We don't pretend to style.-#$Plain folks, you know--plain folks.+{|Just a plain family dinner, but such as it is, our friends are always welcome, I reckon you know that yourself, Washington.#stRun along, children, run along; Lafayette,--[**In those old days the average man called his children after his most revered literary and historical idols; consequently there was hardly a family, at least in the West, but had a Washington in it--and also a Lafayette, a Franklin, and six or eight sounding names from Byron, Scott, and the Bible, if the offspring held out.OTo visit such a family, was to find one's self confronted by a congress made up of representatives of the imperial myths and the majestic dead of all the ages.PQThere was something thrilling about it, to a stranger, not to say awe inspiring.stand off the cat's tail, child, can't you see what you're doing?--Come, come, come, Roderick Dhu, it isn't nice for little boys to hang onto young gentlemen's coat tails --but never mind him, Washington, he's full of spirits and don't mean any harm.,$%Children will be children, you know.5Take the chair next to Mrs.*z{Sellers, Washington--tut, tut, Marie Antoinette, let your brother have the fork if he wants it, you are bigger than he is.OPWashington contemplated the banquet, and wondered if he were in his right mind.Was this the plain family dinner? And was it all present? It was soon apparent that this was indeed the dinner: it was all on the table: it consisted of abundance of clear, fresh water, and a basin of raw turnips--nothing more./!"Washington stole a glance at Mrs.bcSellers's face, and would have given the world, the next moment, if he could have spared her that. CDThe poor woman's face was crimson, and the tears stood in her eyes.-#$Washington did not know what to do.gHe wished he had never come there and spied out this cruel poverty and brought pain to that poor little lady's heart and shame to her cheek; but he was there, and there was no escape.LCol. \]Sellers hitched back his coat sleeves airily from his wrists as who should say "Now for solid enjoyment!" seized a fork, flourished it and began to harpoon turnips and deposit them in the plates before him "Let me help you, Washington--Lafayette pass this plate Washington--ah, well, well, my boy, things are looking pretty bright, now, I tell you.67Speculation--my! the whole atmosphere's full of money.EI would'nt take three fortunes for one little operation I've got on hand now--have anything from the casters? No? Well, you're right, you're right.Some people like mustard with turnips, but--now there was Baron Poniatowski --Lord, but that man did know how to live!--true Russian you know, Russian to the back bone; I say to my wife, give me a Russian every time, for a table comrade.-}~The Baron used to say, 'Take mustard, Sellers, try the mustard,--a man can't know what turnips are in perfection without, mustard,' but I always said, 'No, Baron, I'm a plain man and I want my food plain--none of your embellishments for Beriah Sellers--no made dishes for me! And it's the best way--high living kills more than it cures in this world, you can rest assured of that.IYes indeed, Washington, I've got one little operation on hand that--take some more water--help yourself, won't you?--help yourself, there's plenty of it.,$%You'll find it pretty good, I guess.abHow does that fruit strike you?" Washington said he did not know that he had ever tasted better.ghHe did not add that he detested turnips even when they were cooked loathed them in their natural state.NONo, he kept this to himself, and praised the turnips to the peril of his soul.6I thought you'd like them.$,-Examine them--examine them--they'll bear it.&vwSee how perfectly firm and juicy they are--they can't start any like them in this part of the country, I can tell you.34These are from New Jersey --I imported them myself.OThey cost like sin, too; but lord bless me, I go in for having the best of a thing, even if it does cost a little more--it's the best economy, in the long run.7These are the Early Malcolm--it's a turnip that can't be produced except in just one orchard, and the supply never is up to the demand.fgTake some more water, Washington--you can't drink too much water with fruit--all the doctors say that.gThe plague can't come where this article is, my boy!" "Plague? What plague?" "What plague, indeed? Why the Asiatic plague that nearly depopulated London a couple of centuries ago.ABBut how does that concern us? There is no plague here, I reckon.ABSh! I've let it out! Well, never mind--just keep it to yourself.wPerhaps I oughtn't said anything, but its bound to come out sooner or later, so what is the odds? Old McDowells wouldn't like me to--to --bother it all, I'll jest tell the whole thing and let it go.2You see, I've been down to St.%+,Louis, and I happened to run across old Dr.34McDowells--thinks the world of me, does the doctor.9He's a man that keeps himself to himself, and well he may, for he knows that he's got a reputation that covers the whole earth--he won't condescend to open himself out to many people, but lord bless you, he and I are just like brothers; he won't let me go to a hotel when I'm in the city--says I'm the only man that's company to him, and I don't know but there's some truth in it, too, because although I never like to glorify myself and make a great to-do over what I am or what I can do or what I know, I don't mind saying here among friends that I am better read up in most sciences, maybe, than the general run of professional men in these days.klWell, the other day he let me into a little secret, strictly on the quiet, about this matter of the plague.You see it's booming right along in our direction--follows the Gulf Stream, you know, just as all those epidemics do, and within three months it will be just waltzing through this land like a whirlwind! And whoever it touches can make his will and contract for the funeral.9:Well you can't cure it, you know, but you can prevent it.mHow? Turnips! that's it! Turnips and water! Nothing like it in the world, old McDowells says, just fill yourself up two or three times a day, and you can snap your fingers at the plague.OPSh!--keep mum, but just you confine yourself to that diet and you're all right.ghI wouldn't have old McDowells know that I told about it for anything--he never would speak to me again. GHTake some more water, Washington--the more water you drink, the better.!/0Here, let me give you some more of the turnips.6No, no, no, now, I insist.E There, now.C Absorb those.QRThey're, mighty sustaining--brim full of nutriment--all the medical books say so.`Just eat from four to seven good-sized turnips at a meal, and drink from a pint and a half to a quart of water, and then just sit around a couple of hours and let them ferment.&*+You'll feel like a fighting cock next day.^_Fifteen or twenty minutes later the Colonel's tongue was still chattering away--he had piled up several future fortunes out of several incipient "operations" which he had blundered into within the past week, and was now soaring along through some brilliant expectations born of late promising experiments upon the lacking ingredient of the eye-water.SAnd at such a time Washington ought to have been a rapt and enthusiastic listener, but he was not, for two matters disturbed his mind and distracted his attention.QOne was, that he discovered, to his confusion and shame, that in allowing himself to be helped a second time to the turnips, he had robbed those hungry children.  He had not needed the dreadful "fruit," and had not wanted it; and when he saw the pathetic sorrow in their faces when they asked for more and there was no more to give them, he hated himself for his stupidity and pitied the famishing young things with all his heart. YZThe other matter that disturbed him was the dire inflation that had begun in his stomach.89It grew and grew, it became more and more insupportable.)'(Evidently the turnips were "fermenting. Z[He forced himself to sit still as long as he could, but his anguish conquered him at last.deHe rose in the midst of the Colonel's talk and excused himself on the plea of a previous engagement.The Colonel followed him to the door, promising over and over again that he would use his influence to get some of the Early Malcolms for him, and insisting that he should not be such a stranger but come and take pot-luck with him every chance he got.;<Washington was glad enough to get away and feel free again.&*+He immediately bent his steps toward home.CIn bed he passed an hour that threatened to turn his hair gray, and then a blessed calm settled down upon him that filled his heart with gratitude.QWeak and languid, he made shift to turn himself about and seek rest and sleep; and as his soul hovered upon the brink of unconciousness, he heaved a long, deep sigh, and said to himself that in his heart he had cursed the Colonel's preventive of rheumatism, before, and now let the plague come if it must--he was done with preventives; if ever any man beguiled him with turnips and water again, let him die the death.9:If he dreamed at all that night, no gossiping spirit disturbed his visions to whisper in his ear of certain matters just then in bud in the East, more than a thousand miles away that after the lapse of a few years would develop influences which would profoundly affect the fate and fortunes of the Hawkins family.BCCHAPTER XII "Oh, it's easy enough to make a fortune," Henry said. DEIt seems to be easier than it is, I begin to think," replied Philip.UVWell, why don't you go into something? You'll never dig it out of the Astor Library.cdIf there be any place and time in the world where and when it seems easy to "go into something" it is in Broadway on a spring morning, when one is walking city-ward, and has before him the long lines of palace-shops with an occasional spire seen through the soft haze that lies over the lower town, and hears the roar and hum of its multitudinous traffic.PTo the young American, here or elsewhere, the paths to fortune are innumerable and all open; there is invitation in the air and success in all his wide horizon.[He is embarrassed which to choose, and is not unlikely to waste years in dallying with his chances, before giving himself to the serious tug and strain of a single object.LHe has no traditions to bind him or guide him, and his impulse is to break away from the occupation his father has followed, and make a new way for himself._Philip Sterling used to say that if he should seriously set himself for ten years to any one of the dozen projects that were in his brain, he felt that he could be a rich man.VHe wanted to be rich, he had a sincere desire for a fortune, but for some unaccountable reason he hesitated about addressing himself to the narrow work of getting it.He never walked Broadway, a part of its tide of abundant shifting life, without feeling something of the flush of wealth, and unconsciously taking the elastic step of one well-to-do in this prosperous world.TEspecially at night in the crowded theatre--Philip was too young to remember the old Chambers' Street box, where the serious Burton led his hilarious and pagan crew--in the intervals of the screaming comedy, when the orchestra scraped and grunted and tooted its dissolute tunes, the world seemed full of opportunities to Philip, and his heart exulted with a conscious ability to take any of its prizes he chose to pluck.0Perhaps it was the swimming ease of the acting, on the stage, where virtue had its reward in three easy acts, perhaps it was the excessive light of the house, or the music, or the buzz of the excited talk between acts, perhaps it was youth which believed everything, but for some reason while Philip was at the theatre he had the utmost confidence in life and his ready victory in it.WXDelightful illusion of paint and tinsel and silk attire, of cheap sentiment and high and mighty dialogue! Will there not always be rosin enough for the squeaking fiddle-bow? Do we not all like the maudlin hero, who is sneaking round the right entrance, in wait to steal the pretty wife of his rich and tyrannical neighbor from the paste-board cottage at the left entrance? and when he advances down to the foot-lights and defiantly informs the audience that, "he who lays his hand on a woman except in the way of kindness," do we not all applaud so as to drown the rest of the sentence? Philip never was fortunate enough to hear what would become of a man who should lay his hand on a woman with the exception named; but he learned afterwards that the woman who lays her hand on a man, without any exception whatsoever, is always acquitted by the jury.,|}The fact was, though Philip Sterling did not know it, that he wanted several other things quite as much as he wanted wealth.The modest fellow would have liked fame thrust upon him for some worthy achievement; it might be for a book, or for the skillful management of some great newspaper, or for some daring expedition like that of Lt.C Strain or Dr.KKane.23He was unable to decide exactly what it should be.NOSometimes he thought he would like to stand in a conspicuous pulpit and humbly preach the gospel of repentance; and it even crossed his mind that it would be noble to give himself to a missionary life to some benighted region, where the date-palm grows, and the nightingale's voice is in tune, and the bul-bul sings on the off nights.WIf he were good enough he would attach himself to that company of young men in the Theological Seminary, who were seeing New York life in preparation for the ministry.}Philip was a New England boy and had graduated at Yale; he had not carried off with him all the learning of that venerable institution, but he knew some things that were not in the regular course of study. A very good use of the English language and considerable knowledge of its literature was one of them; he could sing a song very well, not in time to be sure, but with enthusiasm; he could make a magnetic speech at a moment's notice in the class room, the debating society, or upon any fence or dry-goods box that was convenient; he could lift himself by one arm, and do the giant swing in the gymnasium; he could strike out from his left shoulder; he could handle an oar like a professional and pull stroke in a winning race. EFPhilip had a good appetite, a sunny temper, and a clear hearty laugh.fgHe had brown hair, hazel eyes set wide apart, a broad but not high forehead, and a fresh winning face.He was six feet high, with broad shoulders, long legs and a swinging gait; one of those loose-jointed, capable fellows, who saunter into the world with a free air and usually make a stir in whatever company they enter. EFAfter he left college Philip took the advice of friends and read law.Law seemed to him well enough as a science, but he never could discover a practical case where it appeared to him worth while to go to law, and all the clients who stopped with this new clerk in the ante-room of the law office where he was writing, Philip invariably advised to settle--no matter how, but settle--greatly to the disgust of his employer, who knew that justice between man and man could only be attained by the recognized processes, with the attendant fees.[Besides Philip hated the copying of pleadings, and he was certain that a life of "whereases" and "aforesaids" and whipping the devil round the stump, would be intolerable.INote: these few paragraphs are nearly an autobiography of the life of Charles Dudley Warner whose contributions to the story start here with Chapter XII.XYHis pen therefore, and whereas, and not as aforesaid, strayed off into other scribbling.SIn an unfortunate hour, he had two or three papers accepted by first-class magazines, at three dollars the printed page, and, behold, his vocation was open to him.+%&He would make his mark in literature.6Life has no moment so sweet as that in which a young man believes himself called into the immortal ranks of the masters of literature.XYIt is such a noble ambition, that it is a pity it has usually such a shallow foundation. FGAt the time of this history, Philip had gone to New York for a career. ]^With his talent he thought he should have little difficulty in getting an editorial position upon a metropolitan newspaper; not that he knew anything about news paper work, or had the least idea of journalism; he knew he was not fitted for the technicalities of the subordinate departments, but he could write leaders with perfect ease, he was sure.FThe drudgery of the newspaper office was too distaste ful, and besides it would be beneath the dignity of a graduate and a successful magazine writer.$,-He wanted to begin at the top of the ladder.GTo his surprise he found that every situation in the editorial department of the journals was full, always had been full, was always likely to be full.`aIt seemed to him that the newspaper managers didn't want genius, but mere plodding and grubbing.2Philip therefore read diligently in the Astor library, planned literary works that should compel attention, and nursed his genius.He had no friend wise enough to tell him to step into the Dorking Convention, then in session, make a sketch of the men and women on the platform, and take it to the editor of the Daily Grapevine, and see what he could get a line for it.BOne day he had an offer from some country friends, who believed in him, to take charge of a provincial daily newspaper, and he went to consult Mr.KLGringo--Gringo who years ago managed the Atlas--about taking the situation.)yzTake it of course," says Gringo, "take anything that offers, why not?" "But they want me to make it an opposition paper.=Well, make it that. GHThat party is going to succeed, it's going to elect the next president.MI don't believe it," said Philip, stoutly, "its wrong in principle, and it ought not to succeed, but I don't see how I can go for a thing I don't believe in.aO, very well," said Gringo, turning away with a shade of contempt, "you'll find if you are going into literature and newspaper work that you can't afford a conscience like that.?But Philip did afford it, and he wrote, thanking his friends, and declining because he said the political scheme would fail, and ought to fail.0And he went back to his books and to his waiting for an opening large enough for his dignified entrance into the literary world.%uvIt was in this time of rather impatient waiting that Philip was one morning walking down Broadway with Henry Brierly.YHe frequently accompanied Henry part way down town to what the latter called his office in Broad Street, to which he went, or pretended to go, with regularity every day.gIt was evident to the most casual acquaintance that he was a man of affairs, and that his time was engrossed in the largest sort of operations, about which there was a mysterious air.$tuHis liability to be suddenly summoned to Washington, or Boston or Montreal or even to Liverpool was always imminent.tHe never was so summoned, but none of his acquaintances would have been surprised to hear any day that he had gone to Panama or Peoria, or to hear from him that he had bought the Bank of Commerce.deThe two were intimate at that time,--they had been class, mates--and saw a great deal of each other.Indeed, they lived together in Ninth Street, in a boarding-house, there, which had the honor of lodging and partially feeding several other young fellows of like kidney, who have since gone their several ways into fame or into obscurity.:It was during the morning walk to which reference has been made that Henry Brierly suddenly said, "Philip, how would you like to go to St.deJo?" "I think I should like it of all things," replied Philip, with some hesitation, "but what for.7Oh, it's a big operation.@AWe are going, a lot of us, railroad men, engineers, contractors.&*+You know my uncle is a great railroad man.89I've no doubt I can get you a chance to go if you'll go. CDBut in what capacity would I go?" "Well, I'm going as an engineer.>You can go as one.(()I don't know an engine from a coal cart.1 Field engineer, civil engineer.>?You can begin by carrying a rod, and putting down the figures.?It's easy enough.7I'll show you about that.$,-We'll get Trautwine and some of those books.Yes, but what is it for, what is it all about?" "Why don't you see? We lay out a line, spot the good land, enter it up, know where the stations are to be, spot them, buy lots; there's heaps of money in it.6We wouldn't engineer long.KLWhen do you go?" was Philip's next question, after some moments of silence.F To-morrow.&*+Is that too soon?" "No, its not too soon."./I've been ready to go anywhere for six months.\The fact is, Henry, that I'm about tired of trying to force myself into things, and am quite willing to try floating with the stream for a while, and see where I will land.89This seems like a providential call; it's sudden enough.KThe two young men who were by this time full of the adventure, went down to the Wall street office of Henry's uncle and had a talk with that wily operator.:The uncle knew Philip very well, and was pleased with his frank enthusiasm, and willing enough to give him a trial in the western venture.RIt was settled therefore, in the prompt way in which things are settled in New York, that they would start with the rest of the company next morning for the west.On the way up town these adventurers bought books on engineering, and suits of India-rubber, which they supposed they would need in a new and probably damp country, and many other things which nobody ever needed anywhere.6The night was spent in packing up and writing letters, for Philip would not take such an important step without informing his friends. GHIf they disapprove, thought he, I've done my duty by letting them know.XYHappy youth, that is ready to pack its valise, and start for Cathay on an hour's notice.HIBy the way," calls out Philip from his bed-room, to Henry, "where is St.9:Why, it's in Missouri somewhere, on the frontier I think.@We'll get a map.=Never mind the map.2We will find the place itself.0 !I was afraid it was nearer home.#stPhilip wrote a long letter, first of all, to his mother, full of love and glowing anticipations of his new opening.{He wouldn't bother her with business details, but he hoped that the day was not far off when she would see him return, with a moderate fortune, and something to add to the comfort of her advancing years.To his uncle he said that he had made an arrangement with some New York capitalists to go to Missouri, in a land and railroad operation, which would at least give him a knowledge of the world and not unlikely offer him a business opening.fgHe knew his uncle would be glad to hear that he had at last turned his thoughts to a practical matter.#-.It was to Ruth Bolton that Philip wrote last.:;He might never see her again; he went to seek his fortune.#stHe well knew the perils of the frontier, the savage state of society, the lurking Indians and the dangers of fever.BCBut there was no real danger to a person who took care of himself.67Might he write to her often and, tell her of his life.34If he returned with a fortune, perhaps and perhaps.MNIf he was unsuccessful, or if he never returned--perhaps it would be as well. DENo time or distance, however, would ever lessen his interest in her.&*+He would say good-night, but not good-bye.0In the soft beginning of a Spring morning, long before New York had breakfasted, while yet the air of expectation hung about the wharves of the metropolis, our young adventurers made their way to the Jersey City railway station of the Erie road, to begin the long, swinging, crooked journey, over what a writer of a former day called a causeway of cracked rails and cows, to the West.C CHAPTER XIII.dWhat ever to say be toke in his entente, his langage was so fayer & pertynante, yt semeth unto manys herying not only the worde, but veryly the thyng.6Caxton's Book of Curtesye.()In the party of which our travelers found themselves members, was Duff Brown, the great railroad contractor, and subsequently a well-known member of Congress; a bluff, jovial Bost'n man, thick-set, close shaven, with a heavy jaw and a low forehead--a very pleasant man if you were not in his way.|He had government contracts also, custom houses and dry docks, from Portland to New Orleans, and managed to get out of congress, in appropriations, about weight for weight of gold for the stone furnished.Associated with him, and also of this party, was Rodney Schaick, a sleek New York broker, a man as prominent in the church as in the stock exchange, dainty in his dress, smooth of speech, the necessary complement of Duff Brown in any enterprise that needed assurance and adroitness.mIt would be difficult to find a pleasanter traveling party one that shook off more readily the artificial restraints of Puritanic strictness, and took the world with good-natured allowance.cMoney was plenty for every attainable luxury, and there seemed to be no doubt that its supply would continue, and that fortunes were about to be made without a great deal of toil.#stEven Philip soon caught the prevailing spirit; Barry did not need any inoculation, he always talked in six figures.RSIt was as natural for the dear boy to be rich as it is for most people to be poor.=The elders of the party were not long in discovering the fact, which almost all travelers to the west soon find out; that the water was poor.+{|It must have been by a lucky premonition of this that they all had brandy flasks with which to qualify the water of the country; and it was no doubt from an uneasy feeling of the danger of being poisoned that they kept experimenting, mixing a little of the dangerous and changing fluid, as they passed along, with the contents of the flasks, thus saving their lives hour by hour.vPhilip learned afterwards that temperance and the strict observance of Sunday and a certain gravity of deportment are geographical habits, which people do not usually carry with them away from home.Our travelers stopped in Chicago long enough to see that they could make their fortunes there in two week's tine, but it did not seem worth while; the west was more attractive; the further one went the wider the opportunities opened.?@They took railroad to Alton and the steamboat from there to St.9:Louis, for the change and to have a glimpse of the river.fIsn't this jolly?" cried Henry, dancing out of the barber's room, and coming down the deck with a one, two, three step, shaven, curled and perfumed after his usual exquisite fashion.7What's jolly?" asked Philip, looking out upon the dreary and monotonous waste through which the shaking steamboat was coughing its way.23Why, the whole thing; it's immense I can tell you.TUI wouldn't give that to be guaranteed a hundred thousand cold cash in a year's time.E Where's Mr.Brown?" "He is in the saloon, playing poker with Schaick and that long haired party with the striped trousers, who scrambled aboard when the stage plank was half hauled in, and the big Delegate to Congress from out west.>That's a fine looking fellow, that delegate, with his glossy, black whiskers; looks like a Washington man; I shouldn't think he'd be at poker.LMOh, its only five cent ante, just to make it interesting, the Delegate said.bcBut I shouldn't think a representative in Congress would play poker any way in a public steamboat.*&'Nonsense, you've got to pass the time.ABI tried a hand myself, but those old fellows are too many for me.."#The Delegate knows all the points.opI'd bet a hundred dollars he will ante his way right into the United States Senate when his territory comes in.6He's got the cheek for it.fgHe has the grave and thoughtful manner of expectoration of a public man, for one thing," added Philip.4Harry," said Philip, after a pause, "what have you got on those big boots for; do you expect to wade ashore?" "I'm breaking 'em in.gThe fact was Harry had got himself up in what he thought a proper costume for a new country, and was in appearance a sort of compromise between a dandy of Broadway and a backwoodsman.%uvHarry, with blue eyes, fresh complexion, silken whiskers and curly chestnut hair, was as handsome as a fashion plate.He wore this morning a soft hat, a short cutaway coat, an open vest displaying immaculate linen, a leathern belt round his waist, and top-boots of soft leather, well polished, that came above his knees and required a string attached to his belt to keep them up.|The light hearted fellow gloried in these shining encasements of his well shaped legs, and told Philip that they were a perfect protection against prairie rattle-snakes, which never strike above the knee.UVThe landscape still wore an almost wintry appearance when our travelers left Chicago.23It was a genial spring day when they landed at St.Louis; the birds were singing, the blossoms of peach trees in city garden plots, made the air sweet, and in the roar and tumult on the long river levee they found an excitement that accorded with their own hopeful anticipations.bThe party went to the Southern Hotel, where the great Duff Brown was very well known, and indeed was a man of so much importance that even the office clerk was respectful to him.%uvHe might have respected in him also a certain vulgar swagger and insolence of money, which the clerk greatly admired.jkThe young fellows liked the house and liked the city; it seemed to them a mighty free and hospitable town.>?Coming from the East they were struck with many peculiarities.tEverybody smoked in the streets, for one thing, they noticed; everybody "took a drink" in an open manner whenever he wished to do so or was asked, as if the habit needed no concealment or apology.JIn the evening when they walked about they found people sitting on the door-steps of their dwellings, in a manner not usual in a northern city; in front of some of the hotels and saloons the side walks were filled with chairs and benches--Paris fashion, said Harry--upon which people lounged in these warm spring evenings, smoking, always smoking; and the clink of glasses and of billiard balls was in the air.>It was delightful.TUHarry at once found on landing that his back-woods custom would not be needed in St.*z{Louis, and that, in fact, he had need of all the resources of his wardrobe to keep even with the young swells of the town.KLBut this did not much matter, for Harry was always superior to his clothes."rsAs they were likely to be detained some time in the city, Harry told Philip that he was going to improve his time.E And he did.It was an encouragement to any industrious man to see this young fellow rise, carefully dress himself, eat his breakfast deliberately, smoke his cigar tranquilly, and then repair to his room, to what he called his work, with a grave and occupied manner, but with perfect cheerfulness.cHarry would take off his coat, remove his cravat, roll up his shirt-sleeves, give his curly hair the right touch before the glass, get out his book on engineering, his boxes of instruments, his drawing paper, his profile paper, open the book of logarithms, mix his India ink, sharpen his pencils, light a cigar, and sit down at the table to "lay out a line," with the most grave notion that he was mastering the details of engineering.GHe would spend half a day in these preparations without ever working out a problem or having the faintest conception of the use of lines or logarithms.abAnd when he had finished, he had the most cheerful confidence that he had done a good day's work./It made no difference, however, whether Harry was in his room in a hotel or in a tent, Philip soon found, he was just the same.mnIn camp he would get himself, up in the most elaborate toilet at his command, polish his long boots to the top, lay out his work before him, and spend an hour or longer, if anybody was looking at him, humming airs, knitting his brows, and "working" at engineering; and if a crowd of gaping rustics were looking on all the while it was perfectly satisfactory to him.TYou see," he says to Philip one morning at the hotel when he was thus engaged, "I want to get the theory of this thing, so that I can have a check on the engineers. FGI thought you were going to be an engineer yourself," queried Philip.%+,Not many times, if the court knows herself.<There's better game.Brown and Schaick have, or will have, the control for the whole line of the Salt Lick Pacific Extension, forty thousand dollars a mile over the prairie, with extra for hard-pan--and it'll be pretty much all hardpan I can tell you; besides every alternate section of land on this line.4There's millions in the job. Z[I'm to have the sub-contract for the first fifty miles, and you can bet it's a soft thing.ABI'll tell you what you do, Philip," continued Larry, in a burst of generosity, "if I don't get you into my contract, you'll be with the engineers, and you jest stick a stake at the first ground marked for a depot, buy the land of the farmer before he knows where the depot will be, and we'll turn a hundred or so on that. CDI'll advance the money for the payments, and you can sell the lots.QRSchaick is going to let me have ten thousand just for a flyer in such operations.0 !But that's a good deal of money.')*Wait till you are used to handling money.)'(I didn't come out here for a bagatelle.My uncle wanted me to stay East and go in on the Mobile custom house, work up the Washington end of it; he said there was a fortune in it for a smart young fellow, but I preferred to take the chances out here.  Did I tell you I had an offer from Bobbett and Fanshaw to go into their office as confidential clerk on a salary of ten thousand?" "Why didn't you take it?" asked Philip, to whom a salary of two thousand would have seemed wealth, before he started on this journey.RSTake it? I'd rather operate on my own hook;" said Harry, in his most airy manner.A few evenings after their arrival at the Southern, Philip and Harry made the acquaintance of a very agreeable gentleman, whom they had frequently seen before about the hotel corridors, and passed a casual word with.NOHe had the air of a man of business, and was evidently a person of importance.TThe precipitating of this casual intercourse into the more substantial form of an acquaintanceship was the work of the gentleman himself, and occurred in this wise.9Meeting the two friends in the lobby one evening, he asked them to give him the time, and added: "Excuse me, gentlemen--strangers in St.<Louis? Ah, yes-yes."./From the East, perhaps? Ah; just so, just so.2Eastern born myself--Virginia.-#$Sellers is my name--Beriah Sellers.{Ah! by the way--New York, did you say? That reminds me; just met some gentlemen from your State, a week or two ago--very prominent gentlemen --in public life they are; you must know them, without doubt.8Let me see --let me see.,$%Curious those names have escaped me.#stI know they were from your State, because I remember afterward my old friend Governor Shackleby said to me--fine man, is the Governor--one of the finest men our country has produced--said he, 'Colonel, how did you like those New York gentlemen?--not many such men in the world,--Colonel Sellers,' said the Governor--yes, it was New York he said--I remember it distinctly.,$%I can't recall those names, somehow.BBut no matter.klStopping here, gentlemen--stopping at the Southern?" In shaping their reply in their minds, the title "Mr.nohad a place in it; but when their turn had arrived to speak, the title "Colonel" came from their lips instead.STThey said yes, they were abiding at the Southern, and thought it a very good house.1 Yes, yes, the Southern is fair.67I myself go to the Planter's, old, aristocratic house.67We Southern gentlemen don't change our ways, you know.%uvI always make it my home there when I run down from Hawkeye--my plantation is in Hawkeye, a little up in the country.2You should know the Planter's.~Philip and Harry both said they should like to see a hotel that had been so famous in its day--a cheerful hostelrie, Philip said it must have been where duels were fought there across the dining-room table.89You may believe it, sir, an uncommonly pleasant lodging.oShall we walk?" And the three strolled along the streets, the Colonel talking all the way in the most liberal and friendly manner, and with a frank open-heartedness that inspired confidence.STYes, born East myself, raised all along, know the West--a great country, gentlemen.lmThe place for a young fellow of spirit to pick up a fortune, simply pick it up, it's lying round loose here.JKNot a day that I don't put aside an opportunity; too busy to look into it.$,-Management of my own property takes my time.MNFirst visit? Looking for an opening?" "Yes, looking around," replied Harry.@Ah, here we are. CDYou'd rather sit here in front than go to my apartments? So had I.#-.An opening eh?" The Colonel's eyes twinkled.D Ah, just so.@AThe country is opening up, all we want is capital to develop it.34Slap down the rails and bring the land into market. FGThe richest land on God Almighty's footstool is lying right out there.78If I had my capital free I could plant it for millions. DEI suppose your capital is largely in your plantation?" asked Philip.6Well, partly, sir, partly.STI'm down here now with reference to a little operation--a little side thing merely.By the way gentlemen, excuse the liberty, but it's about my usual time"-- The Colonel paused, but as no movement of his acquaintances followed this plain remark, he added, in an explanatory manner, "I'm rather particular about the exact time--have to be in this climate.CEven this open declaration of his hospitable intention not being understood the Colonel politely said, "Gentlemen, will you take something?" Col..~Sellers led the way to a saloon on Fourth street under the hotel, and the young gentlemen fell into the custom of the country.tNot that," said the Colonel to the bar-keeper, who shoved along the counter a bottle of apparently corn-whiskey, as if he had done it before on the same order; "not that," with a wave of the hand.7That Otard if you please.LYes.NONever take an inferior liquor, gentlemen, not in the evening, in this climate.JThere.?That's the stuff.My respects!" The hospitable gentleman, having disposed of his liquor, remarking that it was not quite the thing--"when a man has his own cellar to go to, he is apt to get a little fastidious about his liquors"--called for cigars.5But the brand offered did not suit him; he motioned the box away, and asked for some particular Havana's, those in separate wrappers.II always smoke this sort, gentlemen; they are a little more expensive, but you'll learn, in this climate, that you'd better not economize on poor cigars.]Having imparted this valuable piece of information, the Colonel lighted the fragrant cigar with satisfaction, and then carelessly put his fingers into his right vest pocket. pqThat movement being without result, with a shade of disappointment on his face, he felt in his left vest pocket.hNot finding anything there, he looked up with a serious and annoyed air, anxiously slapped his right pantaloon's pocket, and then his left, and exclaimed, "By George, that's annoying.3By George, that's mortifying.45Never had anything of that kind happen to me before.7I've left my pocket-book.0 !Hold! Here's a bill, after all.4No, thunder, it's a receipt._`Allow me," said Philip, seeing how seriously the Colonel was annoyed, and taking out his purse.The Colonel protested he couldn't think of it, and muttered something to the barkeeper about "hanging it up," but the vender of exhilaration made no sign, and Philip had the privilege of paying the costly shot; Col.KLSellers profusely apologizing and claiming the right "next time, next time.|As soon as Beriah Sellers had bade his friends good night and seen them depart, he did not retire apartments in the Planter's, but took his way to his lodgings with a friend in a distant part of the city.D CHAPTER XIV.eThe letter that Philip Sterling wrote to Ruth Bolton, on the evening of setting out to seek his fortune in the west, found that young lady in her own father's house in Philadelphia.@AIt was one of the pleasantest of the many charming suburban houses in that hospitable city, which is territorially one of the largest cities in the world, and only prevented from becoming the convenient metropolis of the country by the intrusive strip of Camden and Amboy sand which shuts it off from the Atlantic ocean.DIt is a city of steady thrift, the arms of which might well be the deliberate but delicious terrapin that imparts such a royal flavor to its feasts.HIt was a spring morning, and perhaps it was the influence of it that made Ruth a little restless, satisfied neither with the out-doors nor the in-doors.Her sisters had gone to the city to show some country visitors Independence Hall, Girard College and Fairmount Water Works and Park, four objects which Americans cannot die peacefully, even in Naples, without having seen. DEBut Ruth confessed that she was tired of them, and also of the Mint.2She was tired of other things.bShe tried this morning an air or two upon the piano, sang a simple song in a sweet but slightly metallic voice, and then seating herself by the open window, read Philip's letter.:;Was she thinking about Philip, as she gazed across the fresh lawn over the tree tops to the Chelton Hills, or of that world which his entrance, into her tradition-bound life had been one of the means of opening to her? Whatever she thought, she was not idly musing, as one might see by the expression of her face.!"After a time she took up a book; it was a medical work, and to all appearance about as interesting to a girl of eighteen as the statutes at large; but her face was soon aglow over its pages, and she was so absorbed in it that she did not notice the entrance of her mother at the open door.WXRuth?" "Well, mother," said the young student, looking up, with a shade of impatience.45I wanted to talk with thee a little about thy plans./Mother; thee knows I couldn't stand it at Westfield; the school stifled me, it's a place to turn young people into dried fruit.I know," said Margaret Bolton, with a half anxious smile, "thee chafes against all the ways of Friends, but what will thee do? Why is thee so discontented?" "If I must say it, mother, I want to go away, and get out of this dead level.With a look half of pain and half of pity, her mother answered, "I am sure thee is little interfered with; thee dresses as thee will, and goes where thee pleases, to any church thee likes, and thee has music.<I had a visit yesterday from the society's committee by way of discipline, because we have a piano in the house, which is against the rules.MI hope thee told the elders that father and I are responsible for the piano, and that, much as thee loves music, thee is never in the room when it is played.KLFortunately father is already out of meeting, so they can't discipline him.PI heard father tell cousin Abner that he was whipped so often for whistling when he was a boy that he was determined to have what compensation he could get now.56Thy ways greatly try me, Ruth, and all thy relations.RSI desire thy happiness first of all, but thee is starting out on a dangerous path.'(Is thy father willing thee should go away to a school of the world's people?" "I have not asked him," Ruth replied with a look that might imply that she was one of those determined little bodies who first made up her own mind and then compelled others to make up theirs in accordance with hers.ghAnd when thee has got the education thee wants, and lost all relish for the society of thy friends and the ways of thy ancestors, what then?" Ruth turned square round to her mother, and with an impassive face and not the slightest change of tone, said, "Mother, I'm going to study medicine?" Margaret Bolton almost lost for a moment her habitual placidity.Thee, study medicine! A slight frail girl like thee, study medicine! Does thee think thee could stand it six months? And the lectures, and the dissecting rooms, has thee thought of the dissecting rooms?" "Mother," said Ruth calmly, "I have thought it all over. DEI know I can go through the whole, clinics, dissecting room and all.gDoes thee think I lack nerve? What is there to fear in a person dead more than in a person living?" "But thy health and strength, child; thee can never stand the severe application. FGAnd, besides, suppose thee does learn medicine?" "I will practice it.BHere?" "Here.>?Where thee and thy family are known?" "If I can get patients.aI hope at least, Ruth, thee will let us know when thee opens an office," said her mother, with an approach to sarcasm that she rarely indulged in, as she rose and left the room.>?Ruth sat quite still for a tine, with face intent and flushed.AIt was out now.2She had begun her open battle.78The sight-seers returned in high spirits from the city.Was there any building in Greece to compare with Girard College, was there ever such a magnificent pile of stone devised for the shelter of poor orphans? Think of the stone shingles of the roof eight inches thick! Ruth asked the enthusiasts if they would like to live in such a sounding mausoleum, with its great halls and echoing rooms, and no comfortable place in it for the accommodation of any body? If they were orphans, would they like to be brought up in a Grecian temple? And then there was Broad street! Wasn't it the broadest and the longest street in the world? There certainly was no end to it, and even Ruth was Philadelphian enough to believe that a street ought not to have any end, or architectural point upon which the weary eye could rest.ABut neither St. Girard, nor Broad street, neither wonders of the Mint nor the glories of the Hall where the ghosts of our fathers sit always signing the Declaration; impressed the visitors so much as the splendors of the Chestnut street windows, and the bargains on Eighth street.The truth is that the country cousins had come to town to attend the Yearly Meeting, and the amount of shopping that preceded that religious event was scarcely exceeded by the preparations for the opera in more worldly circles. CDIs thee going to the Yearly Meeting, Ruth?" asked one of the girls.45I have nothing to wear," replied that demure person.<If thee wants to see new bonnets, orthodox to a shade and conformed to the letter of the true form, thee must go to the Arch Street Meeting.JKAny departure from either color or shape would be instantly taken note of. \]It has occupied mother a long time, to find at the shops the exact shade for her new bonnet.2Oh, thee must go by all means.56But thee won't see there a sweeter woman than mother.?@And thee won't go?" "Why should I? I've been again and again.[If I go to Meeting at all I like best to sit in the quiet old house in Germantown, where the windows are all open and I can see the trees, and hear the stir of the leaves.RIt's such a crush at the Yearly Meeting at Arch Street, and then there's the row of sleek-looking young men who line the curbstone and stare at us as we come out.1 No, I don't feel at home there.jkThat evening Ruth and her father sat late by the drawing-room fire, as they were quite apt to do at night.,$%It was always a time of confidences.>?Thee has another letter from young Sterling," said Eli Bolton.LYes.0 !Philip has gone to the far west.YHow far?" "He doesn't say, but it's on the frontier, and on the map everything beyond it is marked 'Indians' and 'desert,' and looks as desolate as a Wednesday Meeting.JHumph.,$%It was time for him to do something.abIs he going to start a daily newspaper among the Kick-a-poos?" "Father, thee's unjust to Philip.7He's going into business.  What sort of business can a young man go into without capital?" "He doesn't say exactly what it is," said Ruth a little dubiously, "but it's something about land and railroads, and thee knows, father, that fortunes are made nobody knows exactly how, in a new country.<=I should think so, you innocent puss, and in an old one too. \]But Philip is honest, and he has talent enough, if he will stop scribbling, to make his way.\But thee may as well take care of theeself, Ruth, and not go dawdling along with a young man in his adventures, until thy own mind is a little more settled what thee wants.This excellent advice did not seem to impress Ruth greatly, for she was looking away with that abstraction of vision which often came into her grey eyes, and at length she exclaimed, with a sort of impatience, "I wish I could go west, or south, or somewhere.CWhat a box women are put into, measured for it, and put in young; if we go anywhere it's in a box, veiled and pinioned and shut in by disabilities.noFather, I should like to break things and get loose!" What a sweet-voiced little innocent, it was to be sure.yThee will no doubt break things enough when thy time comes, child; women always have; but what does thee want now that thee hasn't?" "I want to be something, to make myself something, to do something.oWhy should I rust, and be stupid, and sit in inaction because I am a girl? What would happen to me if thee should lose thy property and die? What one useful thing could I do for a living, for the support of mother and the children? And if I had a fortune, would thee want me to lead a useless life?" "Has thy mother led a useless life?" "Somewhat that depends upon whether her children amount to anything," retorted the sharp little disputant.PQWhat's the good, father, of a series of human beings who don't advance any?" Friend Eli, who had long ago laid aside the Quaker dress, and was out of Meeting, and who in fact after a youth of doubt could not yet define his belief, nevertheless looked with some wonder at this fierce young eagle of his, hatched in a Friend's dove-cote.kBut he only said, "Has thee consulted thy mother about a career, I suppose it is a career thee wants?" Ruth did not reply directly; she complained that her mother didn't understand her.klBut that wise and placid woman understood the sweet rebel a great deal better than Ruth understood herself.+,She also had a history, possibly, and had sometime beaten her young wings against the cage of custom, and indulged in dreams of a new social order, and had passed through that fiery period when it seems possible for one mind, which has not yet tried its limits, to break up and re-arrange the world. ]^Ruth replied to Philip's letter in due time and in the most cordial and unsentimental manner.>Philip liked the letter, as he did everything she did; but he had a dim notion that there was more about herself in the letter than about him.=He took it with him from the Southern Hotel, when he went to walk, and read it over and again in an unfrequented street as he stumbled along.4The rather common-place and unformed hand-writing seemed to him peculiar and characteristic, different from that of any other woman.8Ruth was glad to hear that Philip had made a push into the world, and she was sure that his talent and courage would make a way for him.TUShe should pray for his success at any rate, and especially that the Indians, in St.0 !Louis, would not take his scalp.dePhilip looked rather dubious at this sentence, and wished that he had written nothing about Indians.E CHAPTER XV.ghEli Bolton and his wife talked over Ruth's case, as they had often done before, with no little anxiety.zAlone of all their children she was impatient of the restraints and monotony of the Friends' Society, and wholly indisposed to accept the "inner light" as a guide into a life of acceptance and inaction.noWhen Margaret told her husband of Ruth's newest project, he did not exhibit so much surprise as she hoped for.!qrIn fact he said that he did not see why a woman should not enter the medical profession if she felt a call to it. YZBut," said Margaret, "consider her total inexperience of the world, and her frail health.Can such a slight little body endure the ordeal of the preparation for, or the strain of, the practice of the profession?" "Did thee ever think, Margaret, whether, she can endure being thwarted in an object on which she has so set her heart, as she has on this? Thee has trained her thyself at home, in her enfeebled childhood, and thee knows how strong her will is, and what she has been able to accomplish in self-culture by the simple force of her determination.ABShe never will be satisfied until she has tried her own strength.>I wish," said Margaret, with an inconsequence that is not exclusively feminine, "that she were in the way to fall in love and marry by and by.34I think that would cure her of some of her notions.&vwI am not sure but if she went away, to some distant school, into an entirely new life, her thoughts would be diverted.Eli Bolton almost laughed as he regarded his wife, with eyes that never looked at her except fondly, and replied, "Perhaps thee remembers that thee had notions also, before we were married, and before thee became a member of Meeting.abI think Ruth comes honestly by certain tendencies which thee has hidden under the Friend's dress.<Margaret could not say no to this, and while she paused, it was evident that memory was busy with suggestions to shake her present opinions./Why not let Ruth try the study for a time," suggested Eli; "there is a fair beginning of a Woman's Medical College in the city.SQuite likely she will soon find that she needs first a more general culture, and fall, in with thy wish that she should see more of the world at some large school.fgThere really seemed to be nothing else to be done, and Margaret consented at length without approving.And it was agreed that Ruth, in order to spare her fatigue, should take lodgings with friends near the college and make a trial in the pursuit of that science to which we all owe our lives, and sometimes as by a miracle of escape.D That day Mr.#-.Bolton brought home a stranger to dinner, Mr.NOBigler of the great firm of Pennybacker, Bigler & Small, railroad contractors.He was always bringing home somebody, who had a scheme; to build a road, or open a mine, or plant a swamp with cane to grow paper-stock, or found a hospital, or invest in a patent shad-bone separator, or start a college somewhere on the frontier, contiguous to a land speculation.=>The Bolton house was a sort of hotel for this kind of people.8They were always coming.3Ruth had known them from childhood, and she used to say that her father attracted them as naturally as a sugar hogshead does flies.ghRuth had an idea that a large portion of the world lived by getting the rest of the world into schemes.MMr.VBolton never could say "no" to any of them, not even, said Ruth again, to the society for stamping oyster shells with scripture texts before they were sold at retail.MMr.45Bigler's plan this time, about which he talked loudly, with his mouth full, all dinner time, was the building of the Tunkhannock, Rattlesnake and Young-womans-town railroad, which would not only be a great highway to the west, but would open to market inexhaustible coal-fields and untold millions of lumber.)'(The plan of operations was very simple.DWe'll buy the lands," explained he, "on long time, backed by the notes of good men; and then mortgage them for money enough to get the road well on.sThen get the towns on the line to issue their bonds for stock, and sell their bonds for enough to complete the road, and partly stock it, especially if we mortgage each section as we complete it.fWe can then sell the rest of the stock on the prospect of the business of the road through an improved country, and also sell the lands at a big advance, on the strength of the road.5All we want," continued Mr.#stBigler in his frank manner, "is a few thousand dollars to start the surveys, and arrange things in the legislature. FGThere is some parties will have to be seen, who might make us trouble.HIIt will take a good deal of money to start the enterprise," remarked Mr.ijBolton, who knew very well what "seeing" a Pennsylvania Legislature meant, but was too polite to tell Mr.bcBigler what he thought of him, while he was his guest; "what security would one have for it?" Mr. CDBigler smiled a hard kind of smile, and said, "You'd be inside, Mr.45Bolton, and you'd have the first chance in the deal.5This was rather unintelligible to Ruth, who was nevertheless somewhat amused by the study of a type of character she had seen before. \]At length she interrupted the conversation by asking, "You'd sell the stock, I suppose, Mr.cdBigler, to anybody who was attracted by the prospectus?" "O, certainly, serve all alike," said Mr./Bigler, now noticing Ruth for the first time, and a little puzzled by the serene, intelligent face that was turned towards him.qWell, what would become of the poor people who had been led to put their little money into the speculation, when you got out of it and left it half way?" It would be no more true to say of Mr.XBigler that he was or could be embarrassed, than to say that a brass counterfeit dollar-piece would change color when refused; the question annoyed him a little, in Mr.>Bolton's presence.Why, yes, Miss, of course, in a great enterprise for the benefit of the community there will little things occur, which, which--and, of course, the poor ought to be looked to; I tell my wife, that the poor must be looked to; if you can tell who are poor--there's so many impostors.8And then, there's so many poor in the legislature to be looked after," said the contractor with a sort of a chuckle, "isn't that so, Mr.OPBolton?" Eli Bolton replied that he never had much to do with the legislature.RSYes," continued this public benefactor, "an uncommon poor lot this year, uncommon.2Consequently an expensive lot.@The fact is, Mr.ZBolton, that the price is raised so high on United States Senator now, that it affects the whole market; you can't get any public improvement through on reasonable terms.!/0Simony is what I call it, Simony," repeated Mr.)'(Bigler, as if he had said a good thing.MMr.0Bigler went on and gave some very interesting details of the intimate connection between railroads and politics, and thoroughly entertained himself all dinner time, and as much disgusted Ruth, who asked no more questions, and her father who replied in monosyllables: "I wish," said Ruth to her father, after the guest had gone, "that you wouldn't bring home any more such horrid men.HDo all men who wear big diamond breast-pins, flourish their knives at table, and use bad grammar, and cheat?" "O, child, thee mustn't be too observing.MMr.^_Bigler is one of the most important men in the state; nobody has more influence at Harrisburg.klI don't like him any more than thee does, but I'd better lend him a little money than to have his ill will.ABFather, I think thee'd better have his ill-will than his company.KLIs it true that he gave money to help build the pretty little church of St.=>James the Less, and that he is, one of the vestrymen?" "Yes.4He is not such a bad fellow.One of the men in Third street asked him the other day, whether his was a high church or a low church? Bigler said he didn't know; he'd been in it once, and he could touch the ceiling in the side aisle with his hand.TI think he's just horrid," was Ruth's final summary of him, after the manner of the swift judgment of women, with no consideration of the extenuating circumstances.MMr.%uvBigler had no idea that he had not made a good impression on the whole family; he certainly intended to be agreeable.FMargaret agreed with her daughter, and though she never said anything to such people, she was grateful to Ruth for sticking at least one pin into him.NSuch was the serenity of the Bolton household that a stranger in it would never have suspected there was any opposition to Ruth's going to the Medical School.@And she went quietly to take her residence in town, and began her attendance of the lectures, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.She did not heed, if she heard, the busy and wondering gossip of relations and acquaintances, gossip that has no less currency among the Friends than elsewhere because it is whispered slyly and creeps about in an undertone.mRuth was absorbed, and for the first time in her life thoroughly happy; happy in the freedom of her life, and in the keen enjoyment of the investigation that broadened its field day by day.bShe was in high spirits when she came home to spend First Days; the house was full of her gaiety and her merry laugh, and the children wished that Ruth would never go away again.But her mother noticed, with a little anxiety, the sometimes flushed face, and the sign of an eager spirit in the kindling eyes, and, as well, the serious air of determination and endurance in her face at unguarded moments.VThe college was a small one and it sustained itself not without difficulty in this city, which is so conservative, and is yet the origin of so many radical movements.iThere were not more than a dozen attendants on the lectures all together, so that the enterprise had the air of an experiment, and the fascination of pioneering for those engaged in it.There was one woman physician driving about town in her carriage, attacking the most violent diseases in all quarters with persistent courage, like a modern Bellona in her war chariot, who was popularly supposed to gather in fees to the amount ten to twenty thousand dollars a year.QRPerhaps some of these students looked forward to the near day when they would support such a practice and a husband besides, but it is unknown that any of them ever went further than practice in hospitals and in their own nurseries, and it is feared that some of them were quite as ready as their sisters, in emergencies, to "call a man.>?If Ruth had any exaggerated expectations of a professional life, she kept them to herself, and was known to her fellows of the class simply as a cheerful, sincere student, eager in her investigations, and never impatient at anything, except an insinuation that women had not as much mental capacity for science as men._They really say," said one young Quaker sprig to another youth of his age, "that Ruth Bolton is really going to be a saw-bones, attends lectures, cuts up bodies, and all that.(()She's cool enough for a surgeon, anyway.xHe spoke feelingly, for he had very likely been weighed in Ruth's calm eyes sometime, and thoroughly scared by the little laugh that accompanied a puzzling reply to one of his conversational nothings.&vwSuch young gentlemen, at this time, did not come very distinctly into Ruth's horizon, except as amusing circumstances.About the details of her student life, Ruth said very little to her friends, but they had reason to know, afterwards, that it required all her nerve and the almost complete exhaustion of her physical strength, to carry her through.hiShe began her anatomical practice upon detached portions of the human frame, which were brought into the demonstrating room--dissecting the eye, the ear, and a small tangle of muscles and nerves--an occupation which had not much more savor of death in it than the analysis of a portion of a plant out of which the life went when it was plucked up by the roots.DCustom inures the most sensitive persons to that which is at first most repellant; and in the late war we saw the most delicate women, who could not at home endure the sight of blood, become so used to scenes of carnage, that they walked the hospitals and the margins of battle-fields, amid the poor remnants of torn humanity, with as perfect self-possession as if they were strolling in a flower garden.It happened that Ruth was one evening deep in a line of investigation which she could not finish or understand without demonstration, and so eager was she in it, that it seemed as if she could not wait till the next day.tShe, therefore, persuaded a fellow student, who was reading that evening with her, to go down to the dissecting room of the college, and ascertain what they wanted to know by an hour's work there.9Perhaps, also, Ruth wanted to test her own nerve, and to see whether the power of association was stronger in her mind than her own will.The janitor of the shabby and comfortless old building admitted the girls, not without suspicion, and gave them lighted candles, which they would need, without other remark than "there's a new one, Miss," as the girls went up the broad stairs.dThey climbed to the third story, and paused before a door, which they unlocked, and which admitted them into a long apartment, with a row of windows on one side and one at the end.$%The room was without light, save from the stars and the candles the girls carried, which revealed to them dimly two long and several small tables, a few benches and chairs, a couple of skeletons hanging on the wall, a sink, and cloth-covered heaps of something upon the tables here and there.@The windows were open, and the cool night wind came in strong enough to flutter a white covering now and then, and to shake the loose casements.bcBut all the sweet odors of the night could not take from the room a faint suggestion of mortality./!"The young ladies paused a moment.The room itself was familiar enough, but night makes almost any chamber eerie, and especially such a room of detention as this where the mortal parts of the unburied might--almost be supposed to be, visited, on the sighing night winds, by the wandering spirits of their late tenants.KOpposite and at some distance across the roofs of lower buildings, the girls saw a tall edifice, the long upper story of which seemed to be a dancing hall.The windows of that were also open, and through them they heard the scream of the jiggered and tortured violin, and the pump, pump of the oboe, and saw the moving shapes of men and women in quick transition, and heard the prompter's drawl.8I wonder," said Ruth, "what the girls dancing there would think if they saw us, or knew that there was such a room as this so near them.GShe did not speak very loud, and, perhaps unconsciously, the girls drew near to each other as they approached the long table in the centre of the room.45A straight object lay upon it, covered with a sheet.<=This was doubtless "the new one" of which the janitor spoke..~Ruth advanced, and with a not very steady hand lifted the white covering from the upper part of the figure and turned it down.9Both the girls started.AIt was a negro.ijThe black face seemed to defy the pallor of death, and asserted an ugly life-likeness that was frightful.^_Ruth was as pale as the white sheet, and her comrade whispered, "Come away, Ruth, it is awful.jPerhaps it was the wavering light of the candles, perhaps it was only the agony from a death of pain, but the repulsive black face seemed to wear a scowl that said, "Haven't you yet done with the outcast, persecuted black man, but you must now haul him from his grave, and send even your women to dismember his body?" Who is this dead man, one of thousands who died yesterday, and will be dust anon, to protest that science shall not turn his worthless carcass to some account? Ruth could have had no such thought, for with a pity in her sweet face, that for the moment overcame fear and disgust, she reverently replaced the covering, and went away to her own table, as her companion did to hers.And there for an hour they worked at their several problems, without speaking, but not without an awe of the presence there, "the new one," and not without an awful sense of life itself, as they heard the pulsations of the music and the light laughter from the dancing-hall.When, at length, they went away, and locked the dreadful room behind them, and came out into the street, where people were passing, they, for the first time, realized, in the relief they felt, what a nervous strain they had been under.D CHAPTER XVI.FWhile Ruth was thus absorbed in her new occupation, and the spring was wearing away, Philip and his friends were still detained at the Southern Hotel.DThe great contractors had concluded their business with the state and railroad officials and with the lesser contractors, and departed for the East.&vwBut the serious illness of one of the engineers kept Philip and Henry in the city and occupied in alternate watchings.@APhilip wrote to Ruth of the new acquaintance they had made, Col.0Sellers, an enthusiastic and hospitable gentleman, very much interested in the development of the country, and in their success.They had not had an opportunity to visit at his place "up in the country" yet, but the Colonel often dined with them, and in confidence, confided to them his projects, and seemed to take a great liking to them, especially to his friend Harry.bcIt was true that he never seemed to have ready money, but he was engaged in very large operations.The correspondence was not very brisk between these two young persons, so differently occupied; for though Philip wrote long letters, he got brief ones in reply, full of sharp little observations however, such as one concerning Col.?@Sellers, namely, that such men dined at their house every week.lRuth's proposed occupation astonished Philip immensely, but while he argued it and discussed it, he did not dare hint to her his fear that it would interfere with his most cherished plans.1He too sincerely respected Ruth's judgment to make any protest, however, and he would have defended her course against the world.4This enforced waiting at St./!"Louis was very irksome to Philip.NHis money was running away, for one thing, and he longed to get into the field, and see for himself what chance there was for a fortune or even an occupation.The contractors had given the young men leave to join the engineer corps as soon as they could, but otherwise had made no provision for them, and in fact had left them with only the most indefinite expectations of something large in the future.!/0Harry was entirely happy; in his circumstances. ]^He very soon knew everybody, from the governor of the state down to the waiters at the hotel.eHe had the Wall street slang at his tongue's end; he always talked like a capitalist, and entered with enthusiasm into all the land and railway schemes with which the air was thick.LCol.=>Sellers and Harry talked together by the hour and by the day.BHarry informed his new friend that he was going out with the engineer corps of the Salt Lick Pacific Extension, but that wasn't his real business.dI'm to have, with another party," said Harry, "a big contract in the road, as soon as it is let; and, meantime, I'm with the engineers to spy out the best land and the depot sites. FGIt's everything," suggested' the Colonel, "in knowing where to invest.efI've known people throwaway their money because they were too consequential to take Sellers' advice.12Others, again, have made their pile on taking it. DEI've looked over the ground; I've been studying it for twenty years._`You can't put your finger on a spot in the map of Missouri that I don't know as if I'd made it.deWhen you want to place anything," continued the Colonel, confidently, "just let Beriah Sellers know.E That's all.Oh, I haven't got much in ready money I can lay my hands on now, but if a fellow could do anything with fifteen or twenty thousand dollars, as a beginning, I shall draw for that when I see the right opening.Well, that's something, that's something, fifteen or twenty thousand dollars, say twenty--as an advance," said the Colonel reflectively, as if turning over his mind for a project that could be entered on with such a trifling sum.#-.I'll tell you what it is--but only to you Mr.MNBrierly, only to you, mind; I've got a little project that I've been keeping.@AIt looks small, looks small on paper, but it's got a big future.What should you say, sir, to a city, built up like the rod of Aladdin had touched it, built up in two years, where now you wouldn't expect it any more than you'd expect a light-house on the top of Pilot Knob? and you could own the land! It can be done, sir.hiIt can be done!" The Colonel hitched up his chair close to Harry, laid his hand on his knee, and, first looking about him, said in a low voice, "The Salt Lick Pacific Extension is going to run through Stone's Landing! The Almighty never laid out a cleaner piece of level prairie for a city; and it's the natural center of all that region of hemp and tobacco.qWhat makes you think the road will go there? It's twenty miles, on the map, off the straight line of the road?" "You can't tell what is the straight line till the engineers have been over it. DEBetween us, I have talked with Jeff Thompson, the division engineer.deHe understands the wants of Stone's Landing, and the claims of the inhabitants--who are to be there.NOJeff says that a railroad is for --the accommodation of the people and not for the benefit of gophers; and if, he don't run this to Stone's Landing he'll be damned! You ought to know Jeff; he's one of the most enthusiastic engineers in this western country, and one of the best fellows that ever looked through the bottom of a glass.*&'The recommendation was not undeserved.2There was nothing that Jeff wouldn't do, to accommodate a friend, from sharing his last dollar with him, to winging him in a duel.4When he understood from Col.H Sellers.how the land lay at Stone's Landing, he cordially shook hands with that gentleman, asked him to drink, and fairly roared out, "Why, God bless my soul, Colonel, a word from one Virginia gentleman to another is 'nuff ced.#stThere's Stone's Landing been waiting for a railroad more than four thousand years, and damme if she shan't have it.ZPhilip had not so much faith as Harry in Stone's Landing, when the latter opened the project to him, but Harry talked about it as if he already owned that incipient city.noHarry thoroughly believed in all his projects and inventions, and lived day by day in their golden atmosphere.Everybody liked the young fellow, for how could they help liking one of such engaging manners and large fortune? The waiters at the hotel would do more for him than for any other guest, and he made a great many acquaintances among the people of St.klLouis, who liked his sensible and liberal views about the development of the western country, and about St.JLouis.$,-He said it ought to be the national capital.Harry made partial arrangements with several of the merchants for furnishing supplies for his contract on the Salt Lick Pacific Extension; consulted the maps with the engineers, and went over the profiles with the contractors, figuring out estimates for bids.HHe was exceedingly busy with those things when he was not at the bedside of his sick acquaintance, or arranging the details of his speculation with Col.H Sellers.`aMeantime the days went along and the weeks, and the money in Harry's pocket got lower and lower.yHe was just as liberal with what he had as before, indeed it was his nature to be free with his money or with that of others, and he could lend or spend a dollar with an air that made it seem like ten.&vwAt length, at the end of one week, when his hotel bill was presented, Harry found not a cent in his pocket to meet it.He carelessly remarked to the landlord that he was not that day in funds, but he would draw on New York, and he sat down and wrote to the contractors in that city a glowing letter about the prospects of the road, and asked them to advance a hundred or two, until he got at work.BNo reply came.fgHe wrote again, in an unoffended business like tone, suggesting that he had better draw at three days.RA short answer came to this, simply saying that money was very tight in Wall street just then, and that he had better join the engineer corps as soon as he could.)yzBut the bill had to be paid, and Harry took it to Philip, and asked him if he thought he hadn't better draw on his uncle.ijPhilip had not much faith in Harry's power of "drawing," and told him that he would pay the bill himself.`Whereupon Harry dismissed the matter then and thereafter from his thoughts, and, like a light-hearted good fellow as he was, gave himself no more trouble about his board-bills.dPhilip paid them, swollen as they were with a monstrous list of extras; but he seriously counted the diminishing bulk of his own hoard, which was all the money he had in the world.WXHad he not tacitly agreed to share with Harry to the last in this adventure, and would not the generous fellow divide; with him if he, Philip, were in want and Harry had anything? The fever at length got tired of tormenting the stout young engineer, who lay sick at the hotel, and left him, very thin, a little sallow but an "acclimated" man.?@Everybody said he was "acclimated" now, and said it cheerfully.KLWhat it is to be acclimated to western fevers no two persons exactly agree.fgSome say it is a sort of vaccination that renders death by some malignant type of fever less probable.0Some regard it as a sort of initiation, like that into the Odd Fellows, which renders one liable to his regular dues thereafter.aOthers consider it merely the acquisition of a habit of taking every morning before breakfast a dose of bitters, composed of whiskey and assafoetida, out of the acclimation jug. Jeff Thompson afterwards told Philip that he once asked Senator Atchison, then acting Vice-President: of the United States, about the possibility of acclimation; he thought the opinion of the second officer of our great government would be, valuable on this point.'wxThey were sitting together on a bench before a country tavern, in the free converse permitted by our democratic habits.34I suppose, Senator, that you have become acclimated to this country?" "Well," said the Vice-President, crossing his legs, pulling his wide-awake down over his forehead, causing a passing chicken to hop quickly one side by the accuracy of his aim, and speaking with senatorial deliberation, "I think I have.EI've been here twenty-five years, and dash, dash my dash to dash, if I haven't entertained twenty-five separate and distinct earthquakes, one a year.NOThe niggro is the only person who can stand the fever and ague of this region.PQThe convalescence of the engineer was the signal for breaking up quarters at St.JKLouis, and the young fortune-hunters started up the river in good spirits.:It was only the second time either of them had been upon a Mississippi steamboat, and nearly everything they saw had the charm of novelty.LCol.12Sellers was at the landing to bid thorn good-bye.KI shall send you up that basket of champagne by the next boat; no, no; no thanks; you'll find it not bad in camp," he cried out as the plank was hauled in.8My respects to Thompson.2Tell him to sight for Stone's.@Let me know, Mr. CDBrierly, when you are ready to locate; I'll come over from Hawkeye.H Goodbye.opAnd the last the young fellows saw of the Colonel, he was waving his hat, and beaming prosperity and good luck.HIThe voyage was delightful, and was not long enough to become monotonous.The travelers scarcely had time indeed to get accustomed to the splendors of the great saloon where the tables were spread for meals, a marvel of paint and gilding, its ceiling hung with fancifully cut tissue-paper of many colors, festooned and arranged in endless patterns.23The whole was more beautiful than a barber's shop.2The printed bill of fare at dinner was longer and more varied, the proprietors justly boasted, than that of any hotel in New York.MIt must have been the work of an author of talent and imagination, and it surely was not his fault if the dinner itself was to a certain extent a delusion, and if the guests got something that tasted pretty much the same whatever dish they ordered; nor was it his fault if a general flavor of rose in all the dessert dishes suggested that they hid passed through the barber's saloon on their way from the kitchen.dThe travelers landed at a little settlement on the left bank, and at once took horses for the camp in the interior, carrying their clothes and blankets strapped behind the saddles. pqHarry was dressed as we have seen him once before, and his long and shining boots attracted not a little the attention of the few persons they met on the road, and especially of the bright faced wenches who lightly stepped along the highway, picturesque in their colored kerchiefs, carrying light baskets, or riding upon mules and balancing before them a heavier load.>?Harry sang fragments of operas and talked abort their fortune._`Philip even was excited by the sense of freedom and adventure, and the beauty of the landscape.The prairie, with its new grass and unending acres of brilliant flowers--chiefly the innumerable varieties of phlox-bore the look of years of cultivation, and the occasional open groves of white oaks gave it a park-like appearance.BIt was hardly unreasonable to expect to see at any moment, the gables and square windows of an Elizabethan mansion in one of the well kept groves.Towards sunset of the third day, when the young gentlemen thought they ought to be near the town of Magnolia, near which they had been directed to find the engineers' camp, they descried a log house and drew up before it to enquire the way.9:Half the building was store, and half was dwelling house.At the door of the latter stood a regress with a bright turban on her head, to whom Philip called, "Can you tell me, auntie, how far it is to the town of Magnolia?" "Why, bress you chile," laughed the woman, "you's dere now.D It was true.NOThis log horse was the compactly built town, and all creation was its suburbs.89The engineers' camp was only two or three miles distant.jkYou's boun' to find it," directed auntie, "if you don't keah nuffin 'bout de road, and go fo' de sun-down.jkA brisk gallop brought the riders in sight of the twinkling light of the camp, just as the stars came out._`It lay in a little hollow, where a small stream ran through a sparse grove of young white oaks.bA half dozen tents were pitched under the trees, horses and oxen were corraled at a little distance, and a group of men sat on camp stools or lay on blankets about a bright fire.}The twang of a banjo became audible as they drew nearer, and they saw a couple of negroes, from some neighboring plantation, "breaking down" a juba in approved style, amid the "hi, hi's" of the spectators.MMr. Jeff Thompson, for it was the camp of this redoubtable engineer, gave the travelers a hearty welcome, offered them ground room in his own tent, ordered supper, and set out a small jug, a drop from which he declared necessary on account of the chill of the evening.XYI never saw an Eastern man," said Jeff, "who knew how to drink from a jug with one hand.:It's as easy as lying.MSo.opHe grasped the handle with the right hand, threw the jug back upon his arm, and applied his lips to the nozzle.%+,It was an act as graceful as it was simple.>Besides," said Mr.JKThompson, setting it down, "it puts every man on his honor as to quantity.78Early to turn in was the rule of the camp, and by nine o'clock everybody was under his blanket, except Jeff himself, who worked awhile at his table over his field-book, and then arose, stepped outside the tent door and sang, in a strong and not unmelodious tenor, the Star Spangled Banner from beginning to end.5It proved to be his nightly practice to let off the unexpended seam of his conversational powers, in the words of this stirring song."./It was a long time before Philip got to sleep.GHe saw the fire light, he saw the clear stars through the tree-tops, he heard the gurgle of the stream, the stamp of the horses, the occasional barking of the dog which followed the cook's wagon, the hooting of an owl; and when these failed he saw Jeff, standing on a battlement, mid the rocket's red glare, and heard him sing, "Oh, say, can you see?", It was the first time he had ever slept on the ground.C CHAPTER XVII.We have view'd it, And measur'd it within all, by the scale The richest tract of land, love, in the kingdom! There will be made seventeen or eighteeen millions, Or more, as't may be handled!" The Devil is an Ass.#-.Nobody dressed more like an engineer than Mr.BHenry Brierly.PThe completeness of his appointments was the envy of the corps, and the gay fellow himself was the admiration of the camp servants, axemen, teamsters and cooks.<I reckon you didn't git them boots no wher's this side o' Sent Louis?" queried the tall Missouri youth who acted as commissariy's assistant.C No, New York.^Yas, I've heern o' New York," continued the butternut lad, attentively studying each item of Harry's dress, and endeavoring to cover his design with interesting conversation.8N there's Massachusetts.?It's not far off."./I've heern Massachusetts was a-----of a place.mnLes, see, what state's Massachusetts in?" "Massachusetts," kindly replied Harry, "is in the state of Boston.KLAbolish'n wan't it? They must a cost right smart," referring to the boots.Harry shouldered his rod and went to the field, tramped over the prairie by day, and figured up results at night, with the utmost cheerfulness and industry, and plotted the line on the profile paper, without, however, the least idea of engineering practical or theoretical.ijPerhaps there was not a great deal of scientific knowledge in the entire corps, nor was very much needed.WXThey were making, what is called a preliminary survey, and the chief object of a preliminary survey was to get up an excitement about the road, to interest every town in that part of the state in it, under the belief that the road would run through it, and to get the aid of every planter upon the prospect that a station would be on his land.MMr.MNJeff Thompson was the most popular engineer who could be found for this work.He did not bother himself much about details or practicabilities of location, but ran merrily along, sighting from the top of one divide to the top of another, and striking "plumb" every town site and big plantation within twenty or thirty miles of his route.&*+In his own language he "just went booming.This course gave Harry an opportunity, as he said, to learn the practical details of engineering, and it gave Philip a chance to see the country, and to judge for himself what prospect of a fortune it offered.Both he and Harry got the "refusal" of more than one plantation as they went along, and wrote urgent letters to their eastern correspondents, upon the beauty of the land and the certainty that it would quadruple in value as soon as the road was finally located.XYIt seemed strange to them that capitalists did not flock out there and secure this land.QRThey had not been in the field over two weeks when Harry wrote to his friend Col. [\Sellers that he'd better be on the move, for the line was certain to go to Stone's Landing.`aAny one who looked at the line on the map, as it was laid down from day to day, would have been uncertain which way it was going; but Jeff had declared that in his judgment the only practicable route from the point they then stood on was to follow the divide to Stone's Landing, and it was generally understood that that town would be the next one hit. EFWe'll make it, boys," said the chief, "if we have to go in a balloon.And make it they did In less than a week, this indomitable engineer had carried his moving caravan over slues and branches, across bottoms and along divides, and pitched his tents in the very heart of the city of Stone's Landing.89Well, I'll be dashed," was heard the cheery voice of Mr. FGThompson, as he stepped outside the tent door at sunrise next morning.;If this don't get me.XYI say yon Grayson, get out your sighting iron and see if you can find old Sellers' town.UVBlame me if we wouldn't have run plumb by it if twilight had held on a little longer. 01Oh! Sterling, Brierly, get up and see the city.!/0There's a steamboat just coming round the bend.2And Jeff roared with laughter.(()The mayor'll be round here to breakfast.OPThe fellows turned out of the tents, rubbing their eyes, and stared about them.IThey were camped on the second bench of the narrow bottom of a crooked, sluggish stream, that was some five rods wide in the present good stage of water.jkBefore them were a dozen log cabins, with stick and mud chimneys, irregularly disposed on either side of a not very well defined road, which did not seem to know its own mind exactly, and, after straggling through the town, wandered off over the rolling prairie in an uncertain way, as if it had started for nowhere and was quite likely to reach its destination./Just as it left the town, however, it was cheered and assisted by a guide-board, upon which was the legend "10 Mils to Hawkeye.WThe road had never been made except by the travel over it, and at this season--the rainy June--it was a way of ruts cut in the black soil, and of fathomless mud-holes.In the principal street of the city, it had received more attention; for hogs; great and small, rooted about in it and wallowed in it, turning the street into a liquid quagmire which could only be crossed on pieces of plank thrown here and there.About the chief cabin, which was the store and grocery of this mart of trade, the mud was more liquid than elsewhere, and the rude platform in front of it and the dry-goods boxes mounted thereon were places of refuge for all the loafers of the place.8Down by the stream was a dilapidated building which served for a hemp warehouse, and a shaky wharf extended out from it, into the water. YZIn fact a flat-boat was there moored by it, it's setting poles lying across the gunwales.Above the town the stream was crossed by a crazy wooden bridge, the supports of which leaned all ways in the soggy soil; the absence of a plank here and there in the flooring made the crossing of the bridge faster than a walk an offense not necessary to be prohibited by law.ABThis, gentlemen," said Jeff, "is Columbus River, alias Goose Run.7If it was widened, and deepened, and straightened, and made, long enough, it would be one of the finest rivers in the western country.As the sun rose and sent his level beams along the stream, the thin stratum of mist, or malaria, rose also and dispersed, but the light was not able to enliven the dull water nor give any hint of its apparently fathomless depth.qVenerable mud-turtles crawled up and roosted upon the old logs in the stream, their backs glistening in the sun, the first inhabitants of the metropolis to begin the active business of the day.?@It was not long, however, before smoke began to issue from the city chimneys; and before the engineers, had finished their breakfast they were the object of the curious inspection of six or eight boys and men, who lounged into the camp and gazed about them with languid interest, their hands in their pockets every one.HIGood morning; gentlemen," called out the chief engineer, from the table.67Good mawning," drawled out the spokesman of the party.9:I allow thish-yers the railroad, I heern it was a-comin'.?@Yes, this is the railroad; all but the rails and the ironhorse.dI reckon you kin git all the rails you want oaten my white oak timber over, thar," replied the first speaker, who appeared to be a man of property and willing to strike up a trade. [\You'll have to negotiate with the contractors about the rails, sir," said Jeff; "here's Mr.HIBrierly, I've no doubt would like to buy your rails when the time comes.NOO," said the man, "I thought maybe you'd fetch the whole bilin along with you. 01But if you want rails, I've got em, haint I Eph. EFHeaps," said Eph, without taking his eyes off the group at the table.AWell," said Mr.DThompson, rising from his seat and moving towards his tent, "the railroad has come to Stone's Landing, sure; I move we take a drink on it all round.*&'The proposal met with universal favor.Jeff gave prosperity to Stone's Landing and navigation to Goose Run, and the toast was washed down with gusto, in the simple fluid of corn; and with the return compliment that a rail road was a good thing, and that Jeff Thompson was no slouch.efAbout ten o'clock a horse and wagon was descried making a slow approach to the camp over the prairie.As it drew near, the wagon was seen to contain a portly gentleman, who hitched impatiently forward on his seat, shook the reins and gently touched up his horse, in the vain attempt to communicate his own energy to that dull beast, and looked eagerly at the tents.$,-When the conveyance at length drew up to Mr.()Thompson's door, the gentleman descended with great deliberation, straightened himself up, rubbed his hands, and beaming satisfaction from every part of his radiant frame, advanced to the group that was gathered to welcome him, and which had saluted him by name as soon as he came within hearing.(()Welcome to Napoleon, gentlemen, welcome.2I am proud to see you here Mr.G Thompson.7You are, looking well Mr.G Sterling.7This is the country, sir.7Right glad to see you Mr.H Brierly.klYou got that basket of champagne? No? Those blasted river thieves! I'll never send anything more by 'em.7The best brand, Roederer.0The last I had in my cellar, from a lot sent me by Sir George Gore--took him out on a buffalo hunt, when he visited our country./!"Is always sending me some trifle.RSYou haven't looked about any yet, gentlemen? It's in the rough yet, in the rough.%+,Those buildings will all have to come down.deThat's the place for the public square, Court House, hotels, churches, jail--all that sort of thing.0 !About where we stand, the deepo."./How does that strike your engineering eye, Mr. DEThompson? Down yonder the business streets, running to the wharves.RSThe University up there, on rising ground, sightly place, see the river for miles.=>That's Columbus river, only forty-nine miles to the Missouri.You see what it is, placid, steady, no current to interfere with navigation, wants widening in places and dredging, dredge out the harbor and raise a levee in front of the town; made by nature on purpose for a mart.SLook at all this country, not another building within ten miles, no other navigable stream, lay of the land points right here; hemp, tobacco, corn, must come here.>?The railroad will do it, Napoleon won't know itself in a year.12Don't now evidently," said Philip aside to Harry.')*Have you breakfasted Colonel?" "Hastily.BCup of coffee.#-.Can't trust any coffee I don't import myself.HBut I put up a basket of provisions,--wife would put in a few delicacies, women always will, and a half dozen of that Burgundy, I was telling you of Mr.H Briefly.&*+By the way, you never got to dine with me.RSAnd the Colonel strode away to the wagon and looked under the seat for the basket.4Apparently it was not there.bcFor the Colonel raised up the flap, looked in front and behind, and then exclaimed, "Confound it.')*That comes of not doing a thing yourself.QRI trusted to the women folks to set that basket in the wagon, and it ain't there.vThe camp cook speedily prepared a savory breakfast for the Colonel, broiled chicken, eggs, corn-bread, and coffee, to which he did ample justice, and topped off with a drop of Old Bourbon, from Mr.mnThompson's private store, a brand which he said he knew well, he should think it came from his own sideboard.While the engineer corps went to the field, to run back a couple of miles and ascertain, approximately, if a road could ever get down to the Landing, and to sight ahead across the Run, and see if it could ever get out again, Col.opSellers and Harry sat down and began to roughly map out the city of Napoleon on a large piece of drawing paper.?I've got the refusal of a mile square here," said the Colonel, "in our names, for a year, with a quarter interest reserved for the four owners.?They laid out the town liberally, not lacking room, leaving space for the railroad to come in, and for the river as it was to be when improved.IThe engineers reported that the railroad could come in, by taking a little sweep and crossing the stream on a high bridge, but the grades would be steep.LCol.)yzSellers said he didn't care so much about the grades, if the road could only be made to reach the elevators on the river.@The next day Mr.XThompson made a hasty survey of the stream for a mile or two, so that the Colonel and Harry were enabled to show on their map how nobly that would accommodate the city.sJeff took a little writing from the Colonel and Harry for a prospective share but Philip declined to join in, saying that he had no money, and didn't want to make engagements he couldn't fulfill.The next morning the camp moved on, followed till it was out of sight by the listless eyes of the group in front of the store, one of whom remarked that, "he'd be doggoned if he ever expected to see that railroad any mo'.mHarry went with the Colonel to Hawkeye to complete their arrangements, a part of which was the preparation of a petition to congress for the improvement of the navigation of Columbus River.BCHAPTER XVIII."./Eight years have passed since the death of Mr.H Hawkins.PEight years are not many in the life of a nation or the history of a state, but they maybe years of destiny that shall fix the current of the century following.MNSuch years were those that followed the little scrimmage on Lexington Common._`Such years were those that followed the double-shotted demand for the surrender of Fort Sumter.5History is never done with inquiring of these years, and summoning witnesses about them, and trying to understand their significance.45The eight years in America from 1860 to 1868 uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the social life of half the country, and wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations.{As we are accustomed to interpret the economy of providence, the life of the individual is as nothing to that of the nation or the race; but who can say, in the broader view and the more intelligent weight of values, that the life of one man is not more than that of a nationality, and that there is not a tribunal where the tragedy of one human soul shall not seem more significant than the overturning of any human institution whatever? When one thinks of the tremendous forces of the upper and the nether world which play for the mastery of the soul of a woman during the few years in which she passes from plastic girlhood to the ripe maturity of womanhood, he may well stand in awe before the momentous drama.jkWhat capacities she has of purity, tenderness, goodness; what capacities of vileness, bitterness and evil. pqNature must needs be lavish with the mother and creator of men, and centre in her all the possibilities of life.And a few critical years can decide whether her life is to be full of sweetness and light, whether she is to be the vestal of a holy temple, or whether she will be the fallen priestess of a desecrated shrine.]There are women, it is true, who seem to be capable neither of rising much nor of falling much, and whom a conventional life saves from any special development of character.2But Laura was not one of them.aShe had the fatal gift of beauty, and that more fatal gift which does not always accompany mere beauty, the power of fascination, a power that may, indeed, exist without beauty.She had will, and pride and courage and ambition, and she was left to be very much her own guide at the age when romance comes to the aid of passion, and when the awakening powers of her vigorous mind had little object on which to discipline themselves.\The tremendous conflict that was fought in this girl's soul none of those about her knew, and very few knew that her life had in it anything unusual or romantic or strange.67Those were troublous days in Hawkeye as well as in most other Missouri towns, days of confusion, when between Unionist and Confederate occupations, sudden maraudings and bush-whackings and raids, individuals escaped observation or comment in actions that would have filled the town with scandal in quiet times.uFortunately we only need to deal with Laura's life at this period historically, and look back upon such portions of it as will serve to reveal the woman as she was at the time of the arrival of Mr.7Harry Brierly in Hawkeye.The Hawkins family were settled there, and had a hard enough struggle with poverty and the necessity of keeping up appearances in accord with their own family pride and the large expectations they secretly cherished of a fortune in the Knobs of East Tennessee.ghHow pinched they were perhaps no one knew but Clay, to whom they looked for almost their whole support.@Washington had been in Hawkeye off and on, attracted away occasionally by some tremendous speculation, from which he invariably returned to Gen.,$%Boswell's office as poor as he went.WXHe was the inventor of no one knew how many useless contrivances, which were not worth patenting, and his years had been passed in dreaming and planning to no purpose; until he was now a man of about thirty, without a profession or a permanent occupation, a tall, brown-haired, dreamy person of the best intentions and the frailest resolution.dProbably however, the eight years had been happier to him than to any others in his circle, for the time had been mostly spent in a blissful dream of the coming of enormous wealth.He went out with a company from Hawkeye to the war, and was not wanting in courage, but he would have been a better soldier if he had been less engaged in contrivances for circumventing the enemy by strategy unknown to the books.It happened to him to be captured in one of his self-appointed expeditions, but the federal colonel released him, after a short examination, satisfied that he could most injure the confederate forces opposed to the Unionists by returning him to his regiment.LCol.56Sellers was of course a prominent man during the war.He was captain of the home guards in Hawkeye, and he never left home except upon one occasion, when on the strength of a rumor, he executed a flank movement and fortified Stone's Landing, a place which no one unacquainted with the country would be likely to find.0Gad," said the Colonel afterwards, "the Landing is the key to upper Missouri, and it is the only place the enemy never captured.abIf other places had been defended as well as that was, the result would have been different, sir. EFThe Colonel had his own theories about war as he had in other things.^_If everybody had stayed at home as he did, he said, the South never would have been conquered.!/0For what would there have been to conquer? Mr.bcJeff Davis was constantly writing him to take command of a corps in the confederate army, but Col.)'(Sellers said, no, his duty was at home.4And he was by no means idle.0He was the inventor of the famous air torpedo, which came very near destroying the Union armies in Missouri, and the city of St.C Louis itself.His plan was to fill a torpedo with Greek fire and poisonous and deadly missiles, attach it to a balloon, and then let it sail away over the hostile camp and explode at the right moment, when the time-fuse burned out.78He intended to use this invention in the capture of St.3Louis, exploding his torpedoes over the city, and raining destruction upon it until the army of occupation would gladly capitulate.He was unable to procure the Greek fire, but he constructed a vicious torpedo which would have answered the purpose, but the first one prematurely exploded in his wood-house, blowing it clean away, and setting fire to his house.klThe neighbors helped him put out the conflagration, but they discouraged any more experiments of that sort.VWThe patriotic old gentleman, however, planted so much powder and so many explosive contrivances in the roads leading into Hawkeye, and then forgot the exact spots of danger, that people were afraid to travel the highways, and used to come to town across the fields, The Colonel's motto was, "Millions for defence but not one cent for tribute.When Laura came to Hawkeye she might have forgotten the annoyances of the gossips of Murpheysburg and have out lived the bitterness that was growing in her heart, if she had been thrown less upon herself, or if the surroundings of her life had been more congenial and helpful.But she had little society, less and less as she grew older that was congenial to her, and her mind preyed upon itself; and the mystery of her birth at once chagrined her and raised in her the most extravagant expectations. 01She was proud and she felt the sting of poverty.She could not but be conscious of her beauty also, and she was vain of that, and came to take a sort of delight in the exercise of her fascinations upon the rather loutish young men who came in her way and whom she despised.89There was another world opened to her--a world of books../But it was not the best world of that sort, for the small libraries she had access to in Hawkeye were decidedly miscellaneous, and largely made up of romances and fictions which fed her imagination with the most exaggerated notions of life, and showed her men and women in a very false sort of heroism.From these stories she learned what a woman of keen intellect and some culture joined to beauty and fascination of manner, might expect to accomplish in society as she read of it; and along with these ideas she imbibed other very crude ones in regard to the emancipation of woman.There were also other books-histories, biographies of distinguished people, travels in far lands, poems, especially those of Byron, Scott and Shelley and Moore, which she eagerly absorbed, and appropriated therefrom what was to her liking.WXNobody in Hawkeye had read so much or, after a fashion, studied so diligently as Laura.#stShe passed for an accomplished girl, and no doubt thought herself one, as she was, judged by any standard near her.@ADuring the war there came to Hawkeye a confederate officer, Col. GHSelby, who was stationed there for a time, in command of that district.He was a handsome, soldierly man of thirty years, a graduate of the University of Virginia, and of distinguished family, if his story might be believed, and, it was evident, a man of the world and of extensive travel and adventure.klTo find in such an out of the way country place a woman like Laura was a piece of good luck upon which Col.4Selby congratulated himself.cdHe was studiously polite to her and treated her with a consideration to which she was unaccustomed.MShe had read of such men, but she had never seen one before, one so high-bred, so noble in sentiment, so entertaining in conversation, so engaging in manner.RSIt is a long story; unfortunately it is an old story, and it need not be dwelt on.TULaura loved him, and believed that his love for her was as pure and deep as her own.KShe worshipped him and would have counted her life a little thing to give him, if he would only love her and let her feed the hunger of her heart upon him. YZThe passion possessed her whole being, and lifted her up, till she seemed to walk on air.WXIt was all true, then, the romances she had read, the bliss of love she had dreamed of.Why had she never noticed before how blithesome the world was, how jocund with love; the birds sang it, the trees whispered it to her as she passed, the very flowers beneath her feet strewed the way as for a bridal march.RWhen the Colonel went away they were engaged to be married, as soon as he could make certain arrangements which he represented to be necessary, and quit the army.1He wrote to her from Harding, a small town in the southwest corner of the state, saying that he should be held in the service longer than he had expected, but that it would not be more than a few months, then he should be at liberty to take her to Chicago where he had property, and should have business, either now or as soon as the war was over, which he thought could not last long.qMeantime why should they be separated? He was established in comfortable quarters, and if she could find company and join him, they would be married, and gain so many more months of happiness.3Was woman ever prudent when she loved? Laura went to Harding, the neighbors supposed to nurse Washington who had fallen ill there.`aHer engagement was, of course, known in Hawkeye, and was indeed a matter of pride to her family.LMrs. 01Hawkins would have told the first inquirer that.fLaura had gone to be married; but Laura had cautioned her; she did not want to be thought of, she said, as going in search of a husband; let the news come back after she was married.NOSo she traveled to Harding on the pretence we have mentioned, and was married.`aShe was married, but something must have happened on that very day or the next that alarmed her.TWashington did not know then or after what it was, but Laura bound him not to send news of her marriage to Hawkeye yet, and to enjoin her mother not to speak of it.,|}Whatever cruel suspicion or nameless dread this was, Laura tried bravely to put it away, and not let it cloud her happiness.  Communication that summer, as may be imagined, was neither regular nor frequent between the remote confederate camp at Harding and Hawkeye, and Laura was in a measure lost sight of--indeed, everyone had troubles enough of his own without borrowing from his neighbors.[Laura had given herself utterly to her husband, and if he had faults, if he was selfish, if he was sometimes coarse, if he was dissipated, she did not or would not see it.noIt was the passion of her life, the time when her whole nature went to flood tide and swept away all barriers.#stWas her husband ever cold or indifferent? She shut her eyes to everything but her sense of possession of her idol.<Three months passed.bcOne morning her husband informed her that he had been ordered South, and must go within two hours.(()I can be ready," said Laura, cheerfully.;But I can't take you.4You must go back to Hawkeye.56Can't-take-me?" Laura asked, with wonder in her eyes.7I can't live without you.UYou said-----" "O bother what I said,"--and the Colonel took up his sword to buckle it on, and then continued coolly, "the fact is Laura, our romance is played out.(()Laura heard, but she did not comprehend.bcShe caught his arm and cried, "George, how can you joke so cruelly? I will go any where with you.:I will wait any where.5I can't go back to Hawkeye.8Well, go where you like. ]^Perhaps," continued he with a sneer, "you would do as well to wait here, for another colonel.:Laura's brain whirled.5She did not yet comprehend.jWhat does this mean? Where are you going?" "It means," said the officer, in measured words, "that you haven't anything to show for a legal marriage, and that I am going to New Orleans.1 It's a lie, George, it's a lie.AI am your wife.E I shall go.."#I shall follow you to New Orleans.APerhaps my wife might not like it!" Laura raised her head, her eyes flamed with fire, she tried to utter a cry, and fell senseless on the floor."./When she came to herself the Colonel was gone.(()Washington Hawkins stood at her bedside.oDid she come to herself? Was there anything left in her heart but hate and bitterness, a sense of an infamous wrong at the hands of the only man she had ever loved? She returned to Hawkeye.OPWith the exception of Washington and his mother, no one knew what had happened.45The neighbors supposed that the engagement with Col.7Selby had fallen through.!qrLaura was ill for a long time, but she recovered; she had that resolution in her that could conquer death almost.#stAnd with her health came back her beauty, and an added fascination, a something that might be mistaken for sadness.  Is there a beauty in the knowledge of evil, a beauty that shines out in the face of a person whose inward life is transformed by some terrible experience? Is the pathos in the eyes of the Beatrice Cenci from her guilt or her innocence? Laura was not much changed.&*+The lovely woman had a devil in her heart.C That was all.D CHAPTER XIX.MMr. [\Harry Brierly drew his pay as an engineer while he was living at the City Hotel in Hawkeye.MMr.}Thompson had been kind enough to say that it didn't make any difference whether he was with the corps or not; and although Harry protested to the Colonel daily and to Washington Hawkins that he must go back at once to the line and superintend the lay-out with reference to his contract, yet he did not go, but wrote instead long letters to Philip, instructing him to keep his eye out, and to let him know when any difficulty occurred that required his presence.GMeantime Harry blossomed out in the society of Hawkeye, as he did in any society where fortune cast him and he had the slightest opportunity to expand.*z{Indeed the talents of a rich and accomplished young fellow like Harry were not likely to go unappreciated in such a place.WXA land operator, engaged in vast speculations, a favorite in the select circles of New York, in correspondence with brokers and bankers, intimate with public men at Washington, one who could play the guitar and touch the banjo lightly, and who had an eye for a pretty girl, and knew the language of flattery, was welcome everywhere in Hawkeye.REven Miss Laura Hawkins thought it worth while to use her fascinations upon him, and to endeavor to entangle the volatile fellow in the meshes of her attractions.lmGad," says Harry to the Colonel, "she's a superb creature, she'd make a stir in New York, money or no money."rsThere are men I know would give her a railroad or an opera house, or whatever she wanted--at least they'd promise.UHarry had a way of looking at women as he looked at anything else in the world he wanted, and he half resolved to appropriate Miss Laura, during his stay in Hawkeye.mnPerhaps the Colonel divined his thoughts, or was offended at Harry's talk, for he replied, "No nonsense, Mr.H Brierly.23Nonsense won't do in Hawkeye, not with my friends.=>The Hawkins' blood is good blood, all the way from Tennessee.lmThe Hawkinses are under the weather now, but their Tennessee property is millions when it comes into market.=Of course, Colonel.1 Not the least offense intended.%+,But you can see she is a fascinating woman. ]^I was only thinking, as to this appropriation, now, what such a woman could do in Washington.2All correct, too, all correct.XCommon thing, I assure you in Washington; the wives of senators, representatives, cabinet officers, all sorts of wives, and some who are not wives, use their influence.<=You want an appointment? Do you go to Senator X? Not much.*&'You get on the right side of his wife.2Is it an appropriation? You'd go 'straight to the Committee, or to the Interior office, I suppose? You'd learn better than that.  It takes a woman to get any thing through the Land Office: I tell you, Miss Laura would fascinate an appropriation right through the Senate and the House of Representatives in one session, if she was in Washington, as your friend, Colonel, of course as your friend. EFWould you have her sign our petition?" asked the Colonel, innocently.BHarry laughed.OPWomen don't get anything by petitioning Congress; nobody does, that's for form./Petitions are referred somewhere, and that's the last of them; you can't refer a handsome woman so easily, when she is present.9They prefer 'em mostly."rsThe petition however was elaborately drawn up, with a glowing description of Napoleon and the adjacent country, and a statement of the absolute necessity to the prosperity of that region and of one of the stations on the great through route to the Pacific, of the immediate improvement of Columbus River; to this was appended a map of the city and a survey of the river.WXIt was signed by all the people at Stone's Landing who could write their names, by Col.fBeriah Sellers, and the Colonel agreed to have the names headed by all the senators and representatives from the state and by a sprinkling of ex-governors and ex-members of congress.$,-When completed it was a formidable document.bIts preparation and that of more minute plots of the new city consumed the valuable time of Sellers and Harry for many weeks, and served to keep them both in the highest spirits.?In the eyes of Washington Hawkins, Harry was a superior being, a man who was able to bring things to pass in a way that excited his enthusiasm.^_He never tired of listening to his stories of what he had done and of what he was going to do.%uvAs for Washington, Harry thought he was a man of ability and comprehension, but "too visionary," he told the Colonel. Z[The Colonel said he might be right, but he had never noticed anything visionary about him.8He's got his plans, sir.34God bless my soul, at his age, I was full of plans.TBut experience sobers a man, I never touch any thing now that hasn't been weighed in my judgment; and when Beriah Sellers puts his judgment on a thing, there it is.ZWhatever might have been Harry's intentions with regard to Laura, he saw more and more of her every day, until he got to be restless and nervous when he was not with her.xThat consummate artist in passion allowed him to believe that the fascination was mainly on his side, and so worked upon his vanity, while inflaming his ardor, that he scarcely knew what he was about.rHer coolness and coyness were even made to appear the simple precautions of a modest timidity, and attracted him even more than the little tendernesses into which she was occasionally surprised.klHe could never be away from her long, day or evening; and in a short time their intimacy was the town talk.IShe played with him so adroitly that Harry thought she was absorbed in love for him, and yet he was amazed that he did not get on faster in his conquest.12And when he thought of it, he was piqued as well.)*A country girl, poor enough, that was evident; living with her family in a cheap and most unattractive frame house, such as carpenters build in America, scantily furnished and unadorned; without the adventitious aids of dress or jewels or the fine manners of society--Harry couldn't understand it.cdBut she fascinated him, and held him just beyond the line of absolute familiarity at the same time.While he was with her she made him forget that the Hawkins' house was nothing but a wooden tenement, with four small square rooms on the ground floor and a half story; it might have been a palace for aught he knew.-#$Perhaps Laura was older than Harry.She was, at any rate, at that ripe age when beauty in woman seems more solid than in the budding period of girlhood, and she had come to understand her powers perfectly, and to know exactly how much of the susceptibility and archness of the girl it was profitable to retain."rsShe saw that many women, with the best intentions, make a mistake of carrying too much girlishness into womanhood.vSuch a woman would have attracted Harry at any time, but only a woman with a cool brain and exquisite art could have made him lose his head in this way; for Harry thought himself a man of the world.The young fellow never dreamed that he was merely being experimented on; he was to her a man of another society and another culture, different from that she had any knowledge of except in books, and she was not unwilling to try on him the fascinations of her mind and person.7For Laura had her dreams.LMShe detested the narrow limits in which her lot was cast, she hated poverty. [\Much of her reading had been of modern works of fiction, written by her own sex, which had revealed to her something of her own powers and given her indeed, an exaggerated notion of the influence, the wealth, the position a woman may attain who has beauty and talent and ambition and a little culture, and is not too scrupulous in the use of them.She wanted to be rich, she wanted luxury, she wanted men at her feet, her slaves, and she had not--thanks to some of the novels she had read--the nicest discrimination between notoriety and reputation; perhaps she did not know how fatal notoriety usually is to the bloom of womanhood.1With the other Hawkins children Laura had been brought up in the belief that they had inherited a fortune in the Tennessee Lands.'wxShe did not by any means share all the delusion of the family; but her brain was not seldom busy with schemes about it.yWashington seemed to her only to dream of it and to be willing to wait for its riches to fall upon him in a golden shower; but she was impatient, and wished she were a man to take hold of the business.sYou men must enjoy your schemes and your activity and liberty to go about the world," she said to Harry one day, when he had been talking of New York and Washington and his incessant engagements./Oh, yes," replied that martyr to business, "it's all well enough, if you don't have too much of it, but it only has one object. CDWhat is that?" "If a woman doesn't know, it's useless to tell her.=What do you suppose I am staying in Hawkeye for, week after week, when I ought to be with my corps?" "I suppose it's your business with Col. pqSellers about Napoleon, you've always told me so," answered Laura, with a look intended to contradict her words.^And now I tell you that is all arranged, I suppose you'll tell me I ought to go?" "Harry!" exclaimed Laura, touching his arm and letting her pretty hand rest there a moment.QRWhy should I want you to go away? The only person in Hawkeye who understands me.NOBut you refuse to understand me," replied Harry, flattered but still petulant.%+,You are like an iceberg, when we are alone.dLaura looked up with wonder in her great eyes, and something like a blush suffusing her face, followed by a look of langour that penetrated Harry's heart as if it had been longing.oDid I ever show any want of confidence in you, Harry?" And she gave him her hand, which Harry pressed with effusion--something in her manner told him that he must be content with that favor.?It was always so.$tuShe excited his hopes and denied him, inflamed his passion and restrained it, and wound him in her toils day by day.TUTo what purpose? It was keen delight to Laura to prove that she had power over men.cdLaura liked to hear about life at the east, and especially about the luxurious society in which Mr.."#Brierly moved when he was at home.:;It pleased her imagination to fancy herself a queen in it.23You should be a winter in Washington," Harry said.."#But I have no acquaintances there.ghDon't know any of the families of the congressmen? They like to have a pretty woman staying with them.H Not one.D Suppose Col."rsSellers should, have business there; say, about this Columbus River appropriation?" "Sellers!" and Laura laughed.>You needn't laugh.3Queerer things have happened.OPSellers knows everybody from Missouri, and from the West, too, for that matter.34He'd introduce you to Washington life quick enough. Z[It doesn't need a crowbar to break your way into society there as it does in Philadelphia.1 It's democratic, Washington is.-#$Money or beauty will open any door. pqIf I were a handsome woman, I shouldn't want any better place than the capital to pick up a prince or a fortune.6Thank you," replied Laura.@But I prefer the quiet of home, and the love of those I know;" and her face wore a look of sweet contentment and unworldliness that finished Mr.6Harry Brierly for the day.pNevertheless, the hint that Harry had dropped fell upon good ground, and bore fruit an hundred fold; it worked in her mind until she had built up a plan on it, and almost a career for herself.klWhy not, she said, why shouldn't I do as other women have done? She took the first opportunity to see Col.56Sellers, and to sound him about the Washington visit.GHow was he getting on with his navigation scheme, would it be likely to take him from home to Jefferson City; or to Washington, perhaps? "Well, maybe.$tuIf the people of Napoleon want me to go to Washington, and look after that matter, I might tear myself from my home.89It's been suggested to me, but--not a word of it to Mrs.7Sellers and the children.@AMaybe they wouldn't like to think of their father in Washington.KBut Dilworthy, Senator Dilworthy, says to me, 'Colonel, you are the man, you could influence more votes than any one else on such a measure, an old settler, a man of the people, you know the wants of Missouri; you've a respect for religion too, says he, and know how the cause of the gospel goes with improvements: Which is true enough, Miss Laura, and hasn't been enough thought of in connection with Napoleon.$,-He's an able man, Dilworthy, and a good man."./A man has got to be good to succeed as he has. GHHe's only been in Congress a few years, and he must be worth a million..~First thing in the morning when he stayed with me he asked about family prayers, whether we had 'em before or after breakfast.efI hated to disappoint the Senator, but I had to out with it, tell him we didn't have 'em, not steady.LHe said he understood, business interruptions and all that, some men were well enough without, but as for him he never neglected the ordinances of religion.lmHe doubted if the Columbus River appropriation would succeed if we did not invoke the Divine Blessing on it.^_Perhaps it is unnecessary to say to the reader that Senator Dilworthy had not stayed with Col.'(Sellers while he was in Hawkeye; this visit to his house being only one of the Colonel's hallucinations--one of those instant creations of his fertile fancy, which were always flashing into his brain and out of his mouth in the course of any conversation and without interrupting the flow of it. During the summer Philip rode across the country and made a short visit in Hawkeye, giving Harry an opportunity to show him the progress that he and the Colonel had made in their operation at Stone's Landing, to introduce him also to Laura, and to borrow a little money when he departed.cdHarry bragged about his conquest, as was his habit, and took Philip round to see his western prize.>Laura received Mr.bcPhilip with a courtesy and a slight hauteur that rather surprised and not a little interested him.EHe saw at once that she was older than Harry, and soon made up his mind that she was leading his friend a country dance to which he was unaccustomed.  At least he thought he saw that, and half hinted as much to Harry, who flared up at once; but on a second visit Philip was not so sure, the young lady was certainly kind and friendly and almost confiding with Harry, and treated Philip with the greatest consideration.She deferred to his opinions, and listened attentively when he talked, and in time met his frank manner with an equal frankness, so that he was quite convinced that whatever she might feel towards Harry, she was sincere with him.')*Perhaps his manly way did win her liking.XPerhaps in her mind, she compared him with Harry, and recognized in him a man to whom a woman might give her whole soul, recklessly and with little care if she lost it.VWPhilip was not invincible to her beauty nor to the intellectual charm of her presence.)yzThe week seemed very short that he passed in Hawkeye, and when he bade Laura good by, he seemed to have known her a year.5We shall see you again, Mr.`aSterling," she said as she gave him her hand, with just a shade of sadness in her handsome eyes.And when he turned away she followed him with a look that might have disturbed his serenity, if he had not at the moment had a little square letter in his breast pocket, dated at Philadelphia, and signed "Ruth.E CHAPTER XX.=>The visit of Senator Abner Dilworthy was an event in Hawkeye.When a Senator, whose place is in Washington moving among the Great and guiding the destinies of the nation, condescends to mingle among the people and accept the hospitalities of such a place as Hawkeye, the honor is not considered a light one.&vwAll, parties are flattered by it and politics are forgotten in the presence of one so distinguished among his fellows.TSenator Dilworthy, who was from a neighboring state, had been a Unionist in the darkest days of his country, and had thriven by it, but was that any reason why Col.CSellers, who had been a confederate and had not thriven by it, should give him the cold shoulder? The Senator was the guest of his old friend Gen.<=Boswell, but it almost appeared that he was indebted to Col.56Sellers for the unreserved hospitalities of the town.TUIt was the large hearted Colonel who, in a manner, gave him the freedom of the city.IJYou are known here, sir," said the Colonel, "and Hawkeye is proud of you.BCYou will find every door open, and a welcome at every hearthstone.^_I should insist upon your going to my house, if you were not claimed by your older friend Gen.H Boswell._`But you will mingle with our people, and you will see here developments that will surprise you.56The Colonel was so profuse in his hospitality that he must have made the impression upon himself that he had entertained the Senator at his own mansion during his stay; at any rate, he afterwards always spoke of him as his guest, and not seldom referred to the Senator's relish of certain viands on his table. Z[He did, in fact, press him to dine upon the morning of the day the Senator was going away.noSenator Dilworthy was large and portly, though not tall--a pleasant spoken man, a popular man with the people.He took a lively interest in the town and all the surrounding country, and made many inquiries as to the progress of agriculture, of education, and of religion, and especially as to the condition of the emancipated race.hProvidence," he said, "has placed them in our hands, and although you and I, General, might have chosen a different destiny for them, under the Constitution, yet Providence knows best.#-.You can't do much with 'em," interrupted Col.H Sellers.<They are a speculating race, sir, disinclined to work for white folks without security, planning how to live by only working for themselves.23Idle, sir, there's my garden just a ruin of weeds.7Nothing practical in 'em.LMThere is some truth in your observation, Colonel, but you must educate them.LMYou educate the niggro and you make him more speculating than he was before.]If he won't stick to any industry except for himself now, what will he do then?" "But, Colonel, the negro when educated will be more able to make his speculations fruitful.>Never, sir, never.34He would only have a wider scope to injure himself.5A niggro has no grasp, sir.STNow, a white man can conceive great operations, and carry them out; a niggro can't.Still," replied the Senator, "granting that he might injure himself in a worldly point of view, his elevation through education would multiply his chances for the hereafter--which is the important thing after all, Colonel.IJAnd no matter what the result is, we must fulfill our duty by this being.@I'd elevate his soul," promptly responded the Colonel; "that's just it; you can't make his soul too immortal, but I wouldn't touch him, himself.IJYes, sir! make his soul immortal, but don't disturb the niggro as he is.JOf course one of the entertainments offered the Senator was a public reception, held in the court house, at which he made a speech to his fellow citizens.LCol./!"Sellers was master of ceremonies. 01He escorted the band from the city hotel to Gen.iBoswell's; he marshalled the procession of Masons, of Odd Fellows, and of Firemen, the Good Templars, the Sons of Temperance, the Cadets of Temperance, the Daughters of Rebecca, the Sunday School children, and citizens generally, which followed the Senator to the court house; he bustled about the room long after every one else was seated, and loudly cried "Order!" in the dead silence which preceded the introduction of the Senator by Gen.H Boswell."rsThe occasion was one to call out his finest powers of personal appearance, and one he long dwelt on with pleasure.!qrThis not being an edition of the Congressional Globe it is impossible to give Senator Dilworthy's speech in full.He began somewhat as follows: "Fellow citizens: It gives me great pleasure to thus meet and mingle with you, to lay aside for a moment the heavy duties of an official and burdensome station, and confer in familiar converse with my friends in your great state.bcThe good opinion of my fellow citizens of all sections is the sweetest solace in all my anxieties.7I look forward with longing to the time when I can lay aside the cares of office--" ["dam sight," shouted a tipsy fellow near the door.:Cries of "put him out.2My friends, do not remove him.5Let the misguided man stay."rsI see that he is a victim of that evil which is swallowing up public virtue and sapping the foundation of society.rAs I was saying, when I can lay down the cares of office and retire to the sweets of private life in some such sweet, peaceful, intelligent, wide-awake and patriotic place as Hawkeye (applause).I have traveled much, I have seen all parts of our glorious union, but I have never seen a lovelier village than yours, or one that has more signs of commercial and industrial and religious prosperity --(more applause).DThe Senator then launched into a sketch of our great country, and dwelt for an hour or more upon its prosperity and the dangers which threatened it.?He then touched reverently upon the institutions of religion, and upon the necessity of private purity, if we were to have any public morality.+,I trust," he said, "that there are children within the sound of my voice," and after some remarks to them, the Senator closed with an apostrophe to "the genius of American Liberty, walking with the Sunday School in one hand and Temperance in the other up the glorified steps of the National Capitol.LCol.USellers did not of course lose the opportunity to impress upon so influential a person as the Senator the desirability of improving the navigation of Columbus river.F He and Mr. GHBrierly took the Senator over to Napoleon and opened to him their plan.GIt was a plan that the Senator could understand without a great deal of explanation, for he seemed to be familiar with the like improvements elsewhere.eWhen, however, they reached Stone's Landing the Senator looked about him and inquired, "Is this Napoleon?" "This is the nucleus, the nucleus," said the Colonel, unrolling his map.78Here is the deepo, the church, the City Hall and so on.F Ah, I see.`aHow far from here is Columbus River? Does that stream empty----" "That, why, that's Goose Run.3Thar ain't no Columbus, thout'n it's over to Hawkeye," interrupted one of the citizens, who had come out to stare at the strangers.@AA railroad come here last summer, but it haint been here no mo'.cdYes, sir," the Colonel hastened to explain, "in the old records Columbus River is called Goose Run.rYou see how it sweeps round the town--forty-nine miles to the Missouri; sloop navigation all the way pretty much, drains this whole country; when it's improved steamboats will run right up here.."#It's got to be enlarged, deepened.=You see by the map.AColumbus River. ]^This country must have water communication!" "You'll want a considerable appropriation, Col.H Sellers.!/0I should say a million; is that your figure Mr.H Brierly.<According to our surveys," said Harry, "a million would do it; a million spent on the river would make Napoleon worth two millions at least.5I see," nodded the Senator.WXBut you'd better begin by asking only for two or three hundred thousand, the usual way.?@You can begin to sell town lots on that appropriation you know.UThe Senator, himself, to do him justice, was not very much interested in the country or the stream, but he favored the appropriation, and he gave the Colonel and Mr. CDBrierly to and understand that he would endeavor to get it through.RSHarry, who thought he was shrewd and understood Washington, suggested an interest.:;But he saw that the Senator was wounded by the suggestion.>?You will offend me by repeating such an observation," he said."./Whatever I do will be for the public interest.=It will require a portion of the appropriation for necessary expenses, and I am sorry to say that there are members who will have to be seen.%+,But you can reckon upon my humble services.45This aspect of the subject was not again alluded to.mnThe Senator possessed himself of the facts, not from his observation of the ground, but from the lips of Col.`aSellers, and laid the appropriation scheme away among his other plans for benefiting the public. GHIt was on this visit also that the Senator made the acquaintance of Mr.KWashington Hawkins, and was greatly taken with his innocence, his guileless manner and perhaps with his ready adaptability to enter upon any plan proposed.LCol. pqSellers was pleased to see this interest that Washington had awakened, especially since it was likely to further his expectations with regard to the Tennessee lands; the Senator having remarked to the Colonel, that he delighted to help any deserving young man, when the promotion of a private advantage could at the same time be made to contribute to the general good.?@And he did not doubt that this was an opportunity of that kind.The result of several conferences with Washington was that the Senator proposed that he should go to Washington with him and become his private secretary and the secretary of his committee; a proposal which was eagerly accepted.89The Senator spent Sunday in Hawkeye and attended church.]He cheered the heart of the worthy and zealous minister by an expression of his sympathy in his labors, and by many inquiries in regard to the religious state of the region.BIt was not a very promising state, and the good man felt how much lighter his task would be, if he had the aid of such a man as Senator Dilworthy.TUI am glad to see, my dear sir," said the Senator, "that you give them the doctrines.deIt is owing to a neglect of the doctrines, that there is such a fearful falling away in the country.MNI wish that we might have you in Washington--as chaplain, now, in the senate.The good man could not but be a little flattered, and if sometimes, thereafter, in his discouraging work, he allowed the thought that he might perhaps be called to Washington as chaplain of the Senate, to cheer him, who can wonder.ghThe Senator's commendation at least did one service for him, it elevated him in the opinion of Hawkeye.%+,Laura was at church alone that day, and Mr.3Brierly walked home with her.hiA part of their way lay with that of General Boswell and Senator Dilworthy, and introductions were made.@Laura had her own reasons for wishing to know the Senator, and the Senator was not a man who could be called indifferent to charms such as hers.That meek young lady so commended herself to him in the short walk, that he announced his intentions of paying his respects to her the next day, an intention which Harry received glumly; and when the Senator was out of hearing he called him "an old fool.78Fie," said Laura, "I do believe you are jealous, Harry.6He is a very pleasant man."./He said you were a young man of great promise.TThe Senator did call next day, and the result of his visit was that he was confirmed in his impression that there was something about him very attractive to ladies.IHe saw Laura again and again daring his stay, and felt more and more the subtle influence of her feminine beauty, which every man felt who came near her.Harry was beside himself with rage while the Senator remained in town; he declared that women were always ready to drop any man for higher game; and he attributed his own ill-luck to the Senator's appearance. Z[The fellow was in fact crazy about her beauty and ready to beat his brains out in chagrin.Perhaps Laura enjoyed his torment, but she soothed him with blandishments that increased his ardor, and she smiled to herself to think that he had, with all his protestations of love, never spoken of marriage.67Probably the vivacious fellow never had thought of it.IJAt any rate when he at length went away from Hawkeye he was no nearer it.STBut there was no telling to what desperate lengths his passion might not carry him."rsLaura bade him good bye with tender regret, which, however, did not disturb her peace or interfere with her plans.The visit of Senator Dilworthy had become of more importance to her, and it by and by bore the fruit she longed for, in an invitation to visit his family in the National Capital during the winter session of Congress.D CHAPTER XXI.OPO lift your natures up: Embrace our aims: work out your freedom.Girls, Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed; Drink deep until the habits of the slave, The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite And slander, die.C The Princess.mnWhether medicine is a science, or only an empirical method of getting a living out of the ignorance of the human race, Ruth found before her first term was over at the medical school that there were other things she needed to know quite as much as that which is taught in medical books, and that she could never satisfy her aspirations without more general culture.VDoes your doctor know any thing--I don't mean about medicine, but about things in general, is he a man of information and good sense?" once asked an old practitioner.  If he doesn't know any thing but medicine the chance is he doesn't know that:" The close application to her special study was beginning to tell upon Ruth's delicate health also, and the summer brought with it only weariness and indisposition for any mental effort.:In this condition of mind and body the quiet of her home and the unexciting companionship of those about her were more than ever tiresome.She followed with more interest Philip's sparkling account of his life in the west, and longed for his experiences, and to know some of those people of a world so different from here, who alternately amused and displeased him.,|}He at least was learning the world, the good and the bad of it, as must happen to every one who accomplishes anything in it.GBut what, Ruth wrote, could a woman do, tied up by custom, and cast into particular circumstances out of which it was almost impossible to extricate herself? Philip thought that he would go some day and extricate Ruth, but he did not write that, for he had the instinct to know that this was not the extrication she dreamed of, and that she must find out by her own experience what her heart really wanted.hPhilip was not a philosopher, to be sure, but he had the old fashioned notion, that whatever a woman's theories of life might be, she would come round to matrimony, only give her time.He could indeed recall to mind one woman--and he never knew a nobler--whose whole soul was devoted and who believed that her life was consecrated to a certain benevolent project in singleness of life, who yielded to the touch of matrimony, as an icicle yields to a sunbeam.MNeither at home nor elsewhere did Ruth utter any complaint, or admit any weariness or doubt of her ability to pursue the path she had marked out for herself.vBut her mother saw clearly enough her struggle with infirmity, and was not deceived by either her gaiety or by the cheerful composure which she carried into all the ordinary duties that fell to her.  She saw plainly enough that Ruth needed an entire change of scene and of occupation, and perhaps she believed that such a change, with the knowledge of the world it would bring, would divert Ruth from a course for which she felt she was physically entirely unfitted.fgIt therefore suited the wishes of all concerned, when autumn came, that Ruth should go away to school.]She selected a large New England Seminary, of which she had often heard Philip speak, which was attended by both sexes and offered almost collegiate advantages of education. [\Thither she went in September, and began for the second time in the year a life new to her._`The Seminary was the chief feature of Fallkill, a village of two to three thousand inhabitants.iIt was a prosperous school, with three hundred students, a large corps of teachers, men and women, and with a venerable rusty row of academic buildings on the shaded square of the town.The students lodged and boarded in private families in the place, and so it came about that while the school did a great deal to support the town, the town gave the students society and the sweet influences of home life.LMIt is at least respectful to say that the influences of home life are sweet.@Ruth's home, by the intervention of Philip, was in a family--one of the rare exceptions in life or in fiction--that had never known better days.AThe Montagues, it is perhaps well to say, had intended to come over in the Mayflower, but were detained at Delft Haven by the illness of a child.]They came over to Massachusetts Bay in another vessel, and thus escaped the onus of that brevet nobility under which the successors of the Mayflower Pilgrims have descended.~Having no factitious weight of dignity to carry, the Montagues steadily improved their condition from the day they landed, and they were never more vigorous or prosperous than at the date of this narrative.With character compacted by the rigid Puritan discipline of more than two centuries, they had retained its strength and purity and thrown off its narrowness, and were now blossoming under the generous modern influences.wSquire Oliver Montague, a lawyer who had retired from the practice of his profession except in rare cases, dwelt in a square old fashioned New England mansion a quarter of a mile away from the green.It was called a mansion because it stood alone with ample fields about it, and had an avenue of trees leading to it from the road, and on the west commanded a view of a pretty little lake with gentle slopes and nodding were now blossoming under the generous modern influences.NSquire Oliver Montague, a lawyer who had retired from the practice of his profession except in rare cases, dwelt in a square old fashioned New England groves.fgBut it was just a plain, roomy house, capable of extending to many guests an unpretending hospitality.The family consisted of the Squire and his wife, a son and a daughter married and not at home, a son in college at Cambridge, another son at the Seminary, and a daughter Alice, who was a year or more older than Ruth.Having only riches enough to be able to gratify reasonable desires, and yet make their gratifications always a novelty and a pleasure, the family occupied that just mean in life which is so rarely attained, and still more rarely enjoyed without discontent.zIf Ruth did not find so much luxury in the house as in her own home, there were evidences of culture, of intellectual activity and of a zest in the affairs of all the world, which greatly impressed her._Every room had its book-cases or book-shelves, and was more or less a library; upon every table was liable to be a litter of new books, fresh periodicals and daily newspapers.There were plants in the sunny windows and some choice engravings on the walls, with bits of color in oil or water-colors; the piano was sure to be open and strewn with music; and there were photographs and little souvenirs here and there of foreign travel.An absence of any "what-pots" in the corners with rows of cheerful shells, and Hindoo gods, and Chinese idols, and nests of use less boxes of lacquered wood, might be taken as denoting a languidness in the family concerning foreign missions, but perhaps unjustly.$%At any rate the life of the world flowed freely into this hospitable house, and there was always so much talk there of the news of the day, of the new books and of authors, of Boston radicalism and New York civilization, and the virtue of Congress, that small gossip stood a very poor chance._All this was in many ways so new to Ruth that she seemed to have passed into another world, in which she experienced a freedom and a mental exhilaration unknown to her before.[Under this influence she entered upon her studies with keen enjoyment, finding for a time all the relaxation she needed, in the charming social life at the Montague house.@It is strange, she wrote to Philip, in one of her occasional letters, that you never told me more about this delightful family, and scarcely mentioned Alice who is the life of it, just the noblest girl, unselfish, knows how to do so many things, with lots of talent, with a dry humor, and an odd way of looking at things, and yet quiet and even serious often--one of your "capable" New England girls.6We shall be great friends.lmIt had never occurred to Philip that there was any thing extraordinary about the family that needed mention.RSHe knew dozens of girls like Alice, he thought to himself, but only one like Ruth.34Good friends the two girls were from the beginning.VWRuth was a study to Alice; the product of a culture entirely foreign to her experience, so much a child in some things, so much a woman in others; and Ruth in turn, it must be confessed, probing Alice sometimes with her serious grey eyes, wondered what her object in life was, and whether she had any purpose beyond living as she now saw her.For she could scarcely conceive of a life that should not be devoted to the accomplishment of some definite work, and she had-no doubt that in her own case everything else would yield to the professional career she had marked out.QRSo you know Philip Sterling," said Ruth one day as the girls sat at their sewing.@ARuth never embroidered, and never sewed when she could avoid it.F Bless her.5Oh yes, we are old friends.>?Philip used to come to Fallkill often while he was in college.)'(He was once rusticated here for a term.12Rusticated?" "Suspended for some College scrape.3He was a great favorite here.."#Father and he were famous friends.LFather said that Philip had no end of nonsense in him and was always blundering into something, but he was a royal good fellow and would come out all right.fgDid you think he was fickle?" "Why, I never thought whether he was or not," replied Alice looking up.OPI suppose he was always in love with some girl or another, as college boys are.LMHe used to make me his confidant now and then, and be terribly in the dumps.ABWhy did he come to you?" pursued Ruth, "you were younger than he.:I'm sure I don't know.0 !He was at our house a good deal.3Once at a picnic by the lake, at the risk of his own life, he saved sister Millie from drowning, and we all liked to have him here.bcPerhaps he thought as he had saved one sister, the other ought to help him when he was in trouble.C I don't know.4The fact was that Alice was a person who invited confidences, because she never betrayed them, and gave abundant sympathy in return.8There are persons, whom we all know, to whom human confidences, troubles and heart-aches flow as naturally its streams to a placid lake.UThis is not a history of Fallkill, nor of the Montague family, worthy as both are of that honor, and this narrative cannot be diverted into long loitering with them.If the reader visits the village to-day, he will doubtless be pointed out the Montague dwelling, where Ruth lived, the cross-lots path she traversed to the Seminary, and the venerable chapel with its cracked bell.LIn the little society of the place, the Quaker girl was a favorite, and no considerable social gathering or pleasure party was thought complete without her.#$There was something in this seemingly transparent and yet deep character, in her childlike gaiety and enjoyment of the society about her, and in her not seldom absorption in herself, that would have made her long remembered there if no events had subsequently occurred to recall her to mind.wTo the surprise of Alice, Ruth took to the small gaieties of the village with a zest of enjoyment that seemed foreign to one who had devoted her life to a serious profession from the highest motives.fAlice liked society well enough, she thought, but there was nothing exciting in that of Fallkill, nor anything novel in the attentions of the well-bred young gentlemen one met in it.It must have worn a different aspect to Ruth, for she entered into its pleasures at first with curiosity, and then with interest and finally with a kind of staid abandon that no one would have deemed possible for her.BParties, picnics, rowing-matches, moonlight strolls, nutting expeditions in the October woods,--Alice declared that it was a whirl of dissipation.QThe fondness of Ruth, which was scarcely disguised, for the company of agreeable young fellows, who talked nothings, gave Alice opportunity for no end of banter.:;Do you look upon them as I subjects, dear?" she would ask.ABAnd Ruth laughed her merriest laugh, and then looked sober again.>?Perhaps she was thinking, after all, whether she knew herself.klIf you should rear a duck in the heart of the Sahara, no doubt it would swim if you brought it to the Nile.]Surely no one would have predicted when Ruth left Philadelphia that she would become absorbed to this extent, and so happy, in a life so unlike that she thought she desired.ABBut no one can tell how a woman will act under any circumstances.`The reason novelists nearly always fail in depicting women when they make them act, is that they let them do what they have observed some woman has done at sometime or another.abAnd that is where they make a mistake; for a woman will never do again what has been done before.0It is this uncertainty that causes women, considered as materials for fiction, to be so interesting to themselves and to others.As the fall went on and the winter, Ruth did not distinguish herself greatly at the Fallkill Seminary as a student, a fact that apparently gave her no anxiety, and did not diminish her enjoyment of a new sort of power which had awakened within her.C CHAPTER XXII.OIn mid-winter, an event occurred of unusual interest to the inhabitants of the Montague house, and to the friends of the young ladies who sought their society.PQThis was the arrival at the Sassacua Hotel of two young gentlemen from the west.DEIt is the fashion in New England to give Indian names to the public houses, not that the late lamented savage knew how to keep a hotel, but that his warlike name may impress the traveler who humbly craves shelter there, and make him grateful to the noble and gentlemanly clerk if he is allowed to depart with his scalp safe.:;The two young gentlemen were neither students for the Fallkill Seminary, nor lecturers on physiology, nor yet life assurance solicitors, three suppositions that almost exhausted the guessing power of the people at the hotel in respect to the names of "Philip Sterling and Henry Brierly, Missouri," on the register.VThey were handsome enough fellows, that was evident, browned by out-door exposure, and with a free and lordly way about them that almost awed the hotel clerk himself./!"Indeed, he very soon set down Mr.RSBrierly as a gentleman of large fortune, with enormous interests on his shoulders.Harry had a way of casually mentioning western investments, through lines, the freighting business, and the route through the Indian territory to Lower California, which was calculated to give an importance to his lightest word.|You've a pleasant town here, sir, and the most comfortable looking hotel I've seen out of New York," said Harry to the clerk; "we shall stay here a few days if you can give us a roomy suite of apartments.'wxHarry usually had the best of everything, wherever he went, as such fellows always do have in this accommodating world.1Philip would have been quite content with less expensive quarters, but there was no resisting Harry's generosity in such matters.Railroad surveying and real-estate operations were at a standstill during the winter in Missouri, and the young men had taken advantage of the lull to come east, Philip to see if there was any disposition in his friends, the railway contractors, to give him a share in the Salt Lick Union Pacific Extension, and Harry to open out to his uncle the prospects of the new city at Stone's Landing, and to procure congressional appropriations for the harbor and for making Goose Run navigable. Harry had with him a map of that noble stream and of the harbor, with a perfect net-work of railroads centering in it, pictures of wharves, crowded with steamboats, and of huge grain-elevators on the bank, all of which grew out of the combined imaginations of Col.ASellers and Mr.H Brierly.#$The Colonel had entire confidence in Harry's influence with Wall street, and with congressmen, to bring about the consummation of their scheme, and he waited his return in the empty house at Hawkeye, feeding his pinched family upon the most gorgeous expectations with a reckless prodigality.Don't let 'em into the thing more than is necessary," says the Colonel to Harry; "give 'em a small interest; a lot apiece in the suburbs of the Landing ought to do a congressman, but I reckon you'll have to mortgage a part of the city itself to the brokers. \]Harry did not find that eagerness to lend money on Stone's Landing in Wall street which Col.  Sellers had expected, (it had seen too many such maps as he exhibited), although his uncle and some of the brokers looked with more favor on the appropriation for improving the navigation of Columbus River, and were not disinclined to form a company for that purpose.NAn appropriation was a tangible thing, if you could get hold of it, and it made little difference what it was appropriated for, so long as you got hold of it.1Pending these weighty negotiations, Philip has persuaded Harry to take a little run up to Fallkill, a not difficult task, for that young man would at any time have turned his back upon all the land in the West at sight of a new and pretty face, and he had, it must be confessed, a facility in love making which made it not at all an interference with the more serious business of life.He could not, to be sure, conceive how Philip could be interested in a young lady who was studying medicine, but he had no objection to going, for he did not doubt that there were other girls in Fallkill who were worth a week's attention.hiThe young men were received at the house of the Montagues with the hospitality which never failed there.RSWe are glad to see you again," exclaimed the Squire heartily, "you are welcome Mr.67Brierly, any friend of Phil's is welcome at our house.KIt's more like home to me, than any place except my own home," cried Philip, as he looked about the cheerful house and went through a general hand-shaking.wIt's a long time, though, since you have been here to say so," Alice said, with her father's frankness of manner; "and I suspect we owe the visit now to your sudden interest in the Fallkill Seminary.Philip's color came, as it had an awkward way of doing in his tell-tale face, but before he could stammer a reply, Harry came in with, "That accounts for Phil's wish to build a Seminary at Stone's Landing, our place in Missouri, when Col.%+,Sellers insisted it should be a University.!/0Phil appears to have a weakness for Seminaries.$tuIt would have been better for your friend Sellers," retorted Philip, "if he had had a weakness for district schools.LCol.!qrSellers, Miss Alice, is a great friend of Harry's, who is always trying to build a house by beginning at the top.bI suppose it's as easy to build a University on paper as a Seminary, and it looks better," was Harry's reflection; at which the Squire laughed, and said he quite agreed with him.GThe old gentleman understood Stone's Landing a good deal better than he would have done after an hour's talk with either of it's expectant proprietors.TAt this moment, and while Philip was trying to frame a question that he found it exceedingly difficult to put into words, the door opened quietly, and Ruth entered.-}~Taking in the group with a quick glance, her eye lighted up, and with a merry smile she advanced and shook hands with Philip.,|}She was so unconstrained and sincerely cordial, that it made that hero of the west feel somehow young, and very ill at ease.AFor months and months he had thought of this meeting and pictured it to himself a hundred times, but he had never imagined it would be like this.He should meet Ruth unexpectedly, as she was walking alone from the school, perhaps, or entering the room where he was waiting for her, and she would cry "Oh! Phil," and then check herself, and perhaps blush, and Philip calm but eager and enthusiastic, would reassure her by his warm manner, and he would take her hand impressively, and she would look up timidly, and, after his' long absence, perhaps he would be permitted to Good heavens, how many times he had come to this point, and wondered if it could happen so.(xyWell, well; he had never supposed that he should be the one embarrassed, and above all by a sincere and cordial welcome.ZWe heard you were at the Sassacus House," were Ruth's first words; "and this I suppose is your friend?" "I beg your pardon," Philip at length blundered out, "this is Mr.-#$Brierly of whom I have written you.And Ruth welcomed Harry with a friendliness that Philip thought was due to his friend, to be sure, but which seemed to him too level with her reception of himself, but which Harry received as his due from the other sex.nQuestions were asked about the journey and about the West, and the conversation became a general one, until Philip at length found himself talking with the Squire in relation to land and railroads and things he couldn't keep his mind on especially as he heard Ruth and Harry in an animated discourse, and caught the words "New York," and "opera," and "reception," and knew that Harry was giving his imagination full range in the world of fashion.56Harry knew all about the opera, green room and all (at least he said so) and knew a good many of the operas and could make very entertaining stories of their plots, telling how the soprano came in here, and the basso here, humming the beginning of their airs--tum-ti-tum-ti-ti --suggesting the profound dissatisfaction of the basso recitative--down --among--the--dead--men--and touching off the whole with an airy grace quite captivating; though he couldn't have sung a single air through to save himself, and he hadn't an ear to know whether it was sung correctly.CAll the same he doted on the opera, and kept a box there, into which he lounged occasionally to hear a favorite scene and meet his society friends.ijIf Ruth was ever in the city he should be happy to place his box at the disposal of Ruth and her friends.67Needless to say that she was delighted with the offer.When she told Philip of it, that discreet young fellow only smiled, and said that he hoped she would be fortunate enough to be in New York some evening when Harry had not already given the use of his private box to some other friend._The Squire pressed the visitors to let him send for their trunks and urged them to stay at his house, and Alice joined in the invitation, but Philip had reasons for declining.dThey staid to supper, however, and in; the evening Philip had a long talk apart with Ruth, a delightful hour to him, in which she spoke freely of herself as of old, of her studies at Philadelphia and of her plans, and she entered into his adventures and prospects in the West with a genuine and almost sisterly interest; an interest, however, which did not exactly satisfy Philip--it was too general and not personal enough to suit him.FGAnd with all her freedom in speaking of her own hopes, Philip could not, detect any reference to himself in them; whereas he never undertook anything that he did not think of Ruth in connection with it, he never made a plan that had not reference to her, and he never thought of anything as complete if she could not share it.Fortune, reputation these had no value to him except in Ruth's eyes, and there were times when it seemed to him that if Ruth was not on this earth, he should plunge off into some remote wilderness and live in a purposeless seclusion.hI hoped," said Philip; "to get a little start in connection with this new railroad, and make a little money, so that I could came east and engage in something more suited to my tastes.+%&I shouldn't like to live in the West. Z[Would you? "It never occurred to me whether I would or not," was the unembarrassed reply. DEOne of our graduates went to Chicago, and has a nice practice there.2I don't know where I shall go. [\It would mortify mother dreadfully to have me driving about Philadelphia in a doctor's gig./!"Philip laughed at the idea of it. pqAnd does it seem as necessary to you to do it as it did before you came to Fallkill?" It was a home question, and went deeper than Philip knew, for Ruth at once thought of practicing her profession among the young gentlemen and ladies of her acquaintance in the village; but she was reluctant to admit to herself that her notions of a career had undergone any change.Oh, I don't think I should come to Fallkill to practice, but I must do something when I am through school; and why not medicine?" Philip would like to have explained why not, but the explanation would be of no use if it were not already obvious to Ruth.+,Harry was equally in his element whether instructing Squire Montague about the investment of capital in Missouri, the improvement of Columbus River, the project he and some gentlemen in New York had for making a shorter Pacific connection with the Mississippi than the present one; or diverting Mrs.VMontague with his experience in cooking in camp; or drawing for Miss Alice an amusing picture of the social contrasts of New England and the border where he had been.CHarry was a very entertaining fellow, having his imagination to help his memory, and telling his stories as if he believed them--as perhaps he did.!qrAlice was greatly amused with Harry and listened so seriously to his romancing that he exceeded his usual limits.LChance allusions to his bachelor establishment in town and the place of his family on the Hudson, could not have been made by a millionaire, more naturally.4I should think," queried Alice, "you would rather stay in New York than to try the rough life at the West you have been speaking of.56Oh, adventure," says Harry, "I get tired of New York.HIAnd besides I got involved in some operations that I had to see through._`Parties in New York only last week wanted me to go down into Arizona in a big diamond interest.)'(I told them, no, no speculation for me. Z[I've got my interests in Missouri; and I wouldn't leave Philip, as long as he stays there.ABWhen the young gentlemen were on their way back to the hotel, Mr.EPhilip, who was not in very good humor, broke out, "What the deuce, Harry, did you go on in that style to the Montagues for?" "Go on?" cried Harry.LMWhy shouldn't I try to make a pleasant evening? And besides, ain't I going to do those things? What difference does it make about the mood and tense of a mere verb? Didn't uncle tell me only last Saturday, that I might as well go down to Arizona and hunt for diamonds? A fellow might as well make a good impression as a poor one.G Nonsense.56You'll get to believing your own romancing by and by.?Well, you'll see.3When Sellers and I get that appropriation, I'll show you an establishment in town and another on the Hudson and a box at the opera.7Yes, it will be like Col.1 Sellers' plantation at Hawkeye.45Did you ever see that?" "Now, don't be cross, Phil.+%&She's just superb, that little woman.>You never told me._`Who's just superb?" growled Philip, fancying this turn of the conversation less than the other.F Well, Mrs.5Montague, if you must know.BCAnd Harry stopped to light a cigar, and then puffed on in silence.The little quarrel didn't last over night, for Harry never appeared to cherish any ill-will half a second, and Philip was too sensible to continue a row about nothing; and he had invited Harry to come with him.8The young gentlemen stayed in Fallkill a week, and were every day at the Montagues, and took part in the winter gaieties of the village.There were parties here and there to which the friends of Ruth and the Montagues were of course invited, and Harry in the generosity of his nature, gave in return a little supper at the hotel, very simple indeed, with dancing in the hall, and some refreshments passed round. DEAnd Philip found the whole thing in the bill when he came to pay it.TUBefore the week was over Philip thought he had a new light on the character of Ruth.HIHer absorption in the small gaieties of the society there surprised him.;<He had few opportunities for serious conversation with her.There was always some butterfly or another flitting about, and when Philip showed by his manner that he was not pleased, Ruth laughed merrily enough and rallied him on his soberness--she declared he was getting to be grim and unsocial."rsHe talked indeed more with Alice than with Ruth, and scarcely concealed from her the trouble that was in his mind.RIt needed, in fact, no word from him, for she saw clearly enough what was going forward, and knew her sex well enough to know there was no remedy for it but time.Ruth is a dear girl, Philip, and has as much firmness of purpose as ever, but don't you see she has just discovered that she is fond of society? Don't you let her see you are selfish about it, is my advice.:The last evening they were to spend in Fallkill, they were at the Montagues, and Philip hoped that he would find Ruth in a different mood. Z[But she was never more gay, and there was a spice of mischief in her eye and in her laugh.BCConfound it," said Philip to himself, "she's in a perfect twitter.He would have liked to quarrel with her, and fling himself out of the house in tragedy style, going perhaps so far as to blindly wander off miles into the country and bathe his throbbing brow in the chilling rain of the stars, as people do in novels; but he had no opportunity.OFor Ruth was as serenely unconscious of mischief as women can be at times, and fascinated him more than ever with her little demurenesses and half-confidences.KLShe even said "Thee" to him once in reproach for a cutting speech he began..~And the sweet little word made his heart beat like a trip-hammer, for never in all her life had she said "thee" to him before.XWas she fascinated with Harry's careless 'bon homie' and gay assurance? Both chatted away in high spirits, and made the evening whirl along in the most mirthful manner.IRuth sang for Harry, and that young gentleman turned the leaves for her at the piano, and put in a bass note now and then where he thought it would tell.7Yes, it was a merry evening, and Philip was heartily glad when it was over, and the long leave-taking with the family was through with.@Farewell Philip.BGood night Mr.KLBrierly," Ruth's clear voice sounded after them as they went down the walk. 01And she spoke Harry's name last, thought Philip.BCHAPTER XXIII.dO see ye not yon narrow road So thick beset wi' thorns and briers? That is the Path of Righteousness, Though after it but few inquires.kAnd see ye not yon braid, braid road, That lies across the lily leven? That is the Path of Wickedness, Though some call it the road to Heaven.>Thomas the Rhymer. DEPhillip and Harry reached New York in very different states of mind.>Harry was buoyant.5He found a letter from Col.IJSellers urging him to go to Washington and confer with Senator Dilworthy.2The petition was in his hands.bcIt had been signed by everybody of any importance in Missouri, and would be presented immediately.*z{I should go on myself," wrote the Colonel, "but I am engaged in the invention of a process for lighting such a city as St.jLouis by means of water; just attach my machine to the water-pipes anywhere and the decomposition of the fluid begins, and you will have floods of light for the mere cost of the machine. pqI've nearly got the lighting part, but I want to attach to it a heating, cooking, washing and ironing apparatus.ijIt's going to be the great thing, but we'd better keep this appropriation going while I am perfecting it. EFHarry took letters to several congressmen from his uncle and from Mr.  Duff Brown, each of whom had an extensive acquaintance in both houses where they were well known as men engaged in large private operations for the public good and men, besides, who, in the slang of the day, understood the virtues of "addition, division and silence.$%Senator Dilworthy introduced the petition into the Senate with the remark that he knew, personally, the signers of it, that they were men interested; it was true, in the improvement of the country, but he believed without any selfish motive, and that so far as he knew the signers were loyal.It pleased him to see upon the roll the names of many colored citizens, and it must rejoice every friend of humanity to know that this lately emancipated race were intelligently taking part in the development of the resources of their native land.?@He moved the reference of the petition to the proper committee.GSenator Dilworthy introduced his young friend to influential members, as a person who was very well informed about the Salt Lick Extension of the Pacific, and was one of the Engineers who had made a careful survey of Columbus River; and left him to exhibit his maps and plans and to show the connection between the public treasury, the city of Napoleon and legislation for the benefit off the whole country.')*Harry was the guest of Senator Dilworthy.MNThere was scarcely any good movement in which the Senator was not interested.CHis house was open to all the laborers in the field of total abstinence, and much of his time was taken up in attending the meetings of this cause.^He had a Bible class in the Sunday school of the church which he attended, and he suggested to Harry that he might take a class during the time he remained in Washington, Mr.1 Washington Hawkins had a class.4Harry asked the Senator if there was a class of young ladies for him to teach, and after that the Senator did not press the subject.;Philip, if the truth must be told, was not well satisfied with his western prospects, nor altogether with the people he had fallen in with. GHThe railroad contractors held out large but rather indefinite promises.tOpportunities for a fortune he did not doubt existed in Missouri, but for himself he saw no better means for livelihood than the mastery of the profession he had rather thoughtlessly entered upon.oDuring the summer he had made considerable practical advance in the science of engineering; he had been diligent, and made himself to a certain extent necessary to the work he was engaged on.hThe contractors called him into their consultations frequently, as to the character of the country he had been over, and the cost of constructing the road, the nature of the work, etc.oStill Philip felt that if he was going to make either reputation or money as an engineer, he had a great deal of hard study before him, and it is to his credit that he did not shrink from it.BCWhile Harry was in Washington dancing attendance upon the national legislature and making the acquaintance of the vast lobby that encircled it, Philip devoted himself day and night, with an energy and a concentration he was capable of, to the learning and theory of his profession, and to the science of railroad building.He wrote some papers at this time for the "Plow, the Loom and the Anvil," upon the strength of materials, and especially upon bridge-building, which attracted considerable attention, and were copied into the English "Practical Magazine.They served at any rate to raise Philip in the opinion of his friends the contractors, for practical men have a certain superstitious estimation of ability with the pen, and though they may a little despise the talent, they are quite ready to make use of it.CPhilip sent copies of his performances to Ruth's father and to other gentlemen whose good opinion he coveted, but he did not rest upon his laurels.mIndeed, so diligently had he applied himself, that when it came time for him to return to the West, he felt himself, at least in theory, competent to take charge of a division in the field.C CHAPTER XXIV.UVThe capital of the Great Republic was a new world to country-bred Washington Hawkins.MSt.%+,Louis was a greater city, but its floating.population did not hail from great distances, and so it had the general family aspect of the permanent population; but Washington gathered its people from the four winds of heaven, and so the manners, the faces and the fashions there, presented a variety that was infinite.#-.Washington had never been in "society" in St. pqLouis, and he knew nothing of the ways of its wealthier citizens and had never inspected one of their dwellings. pqConsequently, everything in the nature of modern fashion and grandeur was a new and wonderful revelation to him.!/0Washington is an interesting city to any of us. EFIt seems to become more and more interesting the oftener we visit it.45Perhaps the reader has never been there? Very well.You arrive either at night, rather too late to do anything or see anything until morning, or you arrive so early in the morning that you consider it best to go to your hotel and sleep an hour or two while the sun bothers along over the Atlantic.eYou cannot well arrive at a pleasant intermediate hour, because the railway corporation that keeps the keys of the only door that leads into the town or out of it take care of that.|You arrive in tolerably good spirits, because it is only thirty-eight miles from Baltimore to the capital, and so you have only been insulted three times (provided you are not in a sleeping car--the average is higher there): once when you renewed your ticket after stopping over in Baltimore, once when you were about to enter the "ladies' car" without knowing it was a lady's car, and once When you asked the conductor at what hour you would reach Washington.)yzYou are assailed by a long rank of hackmen who shake their whips in your face as you step out upon the sidewalk; you enter what they regard as a "carriage," in the capital, and you wonder why they do not take it out of service and put it in the museum: we have few enough antiquities, and it is little to our credit that we make scarcely any effort to preserve the few we have./You reach your hotel, presently--and here let us draw the curtain of charity--because of course you have gone to the wrong one.&vwYou being a stranger, how could you do otherwise? There are a hundred and eighteen bad hotels, and only one good one. Z[The most renowned and popular hotel of them all is perhaps the worst one known to history.8It is winter, and night./!"When you arrived, it was snowing.$,-When you reached the hotel, it was sleeting.+%&When you went to bed, it was raining. EFDuring the night it froze hard, and the wind blew some chimneys down.#-.When you got up in the morning, it was foggy.XWhen you finished your breakfast at ten o'clock and went out, the sunshine was brilliant, the weather balmy and delicious, and the mud and slush deep and all-pervading.23You will like the climate when you get used to it.cdYou naturally wish to view the city; so you take an umbrella, an overcoat, and a fan, and go forth.,-The prominent features you soon locate and get familiar with; first you glimpse the ornamental upper works of a long, snowy palace projecting above a grove of trees, and a tall, graceful white dome with a statue on it surmounting the palace and pleasantly contrasting with the background of blue sky.oThat building is the capitol; gossips will tell you that by the original estimates it was to cost $12,000,000, and that the government did come within $21,200,000 of building it for that sum. ]^You stand at the back of the capitol to treat yourself to a view, and it is a very noble one.You understand, the capitol stands upon the verge of a high piece of table land, a fine commanding position, and its front looks out over this noble situation for a city--but it don't see it, for the reason that when the capitol extension was decided upon, the property owners at once advanced their prices to such inhuman figures that the people went down and built the city in the muddy low marsh behind the temple of liberty; so now the lordly front of the building, with, its imposing colonades, its projecting graceful wings, its picturesque groups of statuary, and its long terraced ranges of steps, flowing down in white marble waves to the ground, merely looks out upon a sorrowful little desert of cheap boarding houses. EFSo you observe, that you take your view from the back of the capitol.8And yet not from the airy outlooks of the dome, by the way, because to get there you must pass through the great rotunda: and to do that, you would have to see the marvelous Historical Paintings that hang there, and the bas-reliefs--and what have you done that you should suffer thus? And besides, you might have to pass through the old part of the building, and you could not help seeing Mr. !Lincoln, as petrified by a young lady artist for $10,000--and you might take his marble emancipation proclamation, which he holds out in his hand and contemplates, for a folded napkin; and you might conceive from his expression and his attitude, that he is finding fault with the washing.:Which is not the case. FGNobody knows what is the matter with him; but everybody feels for him.?@Well, you ought not to go into the dome anyhow, because it would be utterly impossible to go up there without seeing the frescoes in it--and why should you be interested in the delirium tremens of art? The capitol is a very noble and a very beautiful building, both within and without, but you need not examine it now.56Still, if you greatly prefer going into the dome, go.ENow your general glance gives you picturesque stretches of gleaming water, on your left, with a sail here and there and a lunatic asylum on shore; over beyond the water, on a distant elevation, you see a squat yellow temple which your eye dwells upon lovingly through a blur of unmanly moisture, for it recalls your lost boyhood and the Parthenons done in molasses candy which made it blest and beautiful._Still in the distance, but on this side of the water and close to its edge, the Monument to the Father of his Country towers out of the mud--sacred soil is the customary term.?@It has the aspect of a factory chimney with the top broken off.The skeleton of a decaying scaffolding lingers about its summit, and tradition says that the spirit of Washington often comes down and sits on those rafters to enjoy this tribute of respect which the nation has reared as the symbol of its unappeasable gratitude.sThe Monument is to be finished, some day, and at that time our Washington will have risen still higher in the nation's veneration, and will be known as the Great-Great-Grandfather of his Country.^_The memorial Chimney stands in a quiet pastoral locality that is full of reposeful expression.~With a glass you can see the cow-sheds about its base, and the contented sheep nimbling pebbles in the desert solitudes that surround it, and the tired pigs dozing in the holy calm of its protecting shadow../Now you wrench your gaze loose, and you look down in front of you and see the broad Pennsylvania Avenue stretching straight ahead for a mile or more till it brings up against the iron fence in front of a pillared granite pile, the Treasury building-an edifice that would command respect in any capital.)yzThe stores and hotels that wall in this broad avenue are mean, and cheap, and dingy, and are better left without comment.VWBeyond the Treasury is a fine large white barn, with wide unhandsome grounds about it.6The President lives there. DEIt is ugly enough outside, but that is nothing to what it is inside.GDreariness, flimsiness, bad taste reduced to mathematical completeness is what the inside offers to the eye, if it remains yet what it always has been.:;The front and right hand views give you the city at large.NIt is a wide stretch of cheap little brick houses, with here and there a noble architectural pile lifting itself out of the midst-government buildings, these.If the thaw is still going on when you come down and go about town, you will wonder at the short-sightedness of the city fathers, when you come to inspect the streets, in that they do not dilute the mud a little more and use them for canals.XIf you inquire around a little, you will find that there are more boardinghouses to the square acre in Washington than there are in any other city in the land, perhaps.TIf you apply for a home in one of them, it will seem odd to you to have the landlady inspect you with a severe eye and then ask you if you are a member of Congress. 01Perhaps, just as a pleasantry, you will say yes.#-.And then she will tell you that she is "full.fgThen you show her her advertisement in the morning paper, and there she stands, convicted and ashamed. YZShe will try to blush, and it will be only polite in you to take the effort for the deed. ]^She shows you her rooms, now, and lets you take one--but she makes you pay in advance for it. DEThat is what you will get for pretending to be a member of Congress.&vwIf you had been content to be merely a private citizen, your trunk would have been sufficient security for your board.FIf you are curious and inquire into this thing, the chances are that your landlady will be ill-natured enough to say that the person and property of a Congressman are exempt from arrest or detention, and that with the tears in her eyes she has seen several of the people's representatives walk off to their several States and Territories carrying her unreceipted board bills in their pockets for keepsakes.^_And before you have been in Washington many weeks you will be mean enough to believe her, too.ABOf course you contrive to see everything and find out everything.\And one of the first and most startling things you find out is, that every individual you encounter in the City of Washington almost--and certainly every separate and distinct individual in the public employment, from the highest bureau chief, clear down to the maid who scrubs Department halls, the night watchmen of the public buildings and the darkey boy who purifies the Department spittoons--represents Political Influence.Unless you can get the ear of a Senator, or a Congressman, or a Chief of a Bureau or Department, and persuade him to use his "influence" in your behalf, you cannot get an employment of the most trivial nature in Washington.RSMere merit, fitness and capability, are useless baggage to you without "influence. pqThe population of Washington consists pretty much entirely of government employee and the people who board them.There are thousands of these employees, and they have gathered there from every corner of the Union and got their berths through the intercession (command is nearer the word) of the Senators and Representatives of their respective States. It would be an odd circumstance to see a girl get employment at three or four dollars a week in one of the great public cribs without any political grandee to back her, but merely because she was worthy, and competent, and a good citizen of a free country that "treats all persons alike.ABWashington would be mildly thunderstruck at such a thing as that.  If you are a member of Congress, (no offence,) and one of your constituents who doesn't know anything, and does not want to go into the bother of learning something, and has no money, and no employment, and can't earn a living, comes besieging you for help, do you say, "Come, my friend, if your services were valuable you could get employment elsewhere--don't want you here?" Oh, no: You take him to a Department and say, "Here, give this person something to pass away the time at--and a salary"--and the thing is done.3You throw him on his country.78He is his country's child, let his country support him.!qrThere is something good and motherly about Washington, the grand old benevolent National Asylum for the Helpless.2The wages received by this great hive of employees are placed at the liberal figure meet and just for skilled and competent labor.,-Such of them as are immediately employed about the two Houses of Congress, are not only liberally paid also, but are remembered in the customary Extra Compensation bill which slides neatly through, annually, with the general grab that signalizes the last night of a session, and thus twenty per cent. 01is added to their wages, for--for fun, no doubt.=>Washington Hawkins' new life was an unceasing delight to him.DESenator Dilworthy lived sumptuously, and Washington's quarters were charming --gas; running water, hot and cold; bath-room, coal-fires, rich carpets, beautiful pictures on the walls; books on religion, temperance, public charities and financial schemes; trim colored servants, dainty food --everything a body could wish for.fAnd as for stationery, there was no end to it; the government furnished it; postage stamps were not needed --the Senator's frank could convey a horse through the mails, if necessary.*&'And then he saw such dazzling company.%&Renowned generals and admirals who had seemed but colossal myths when he was in the far west, went in and out before him or sat at the Senator's table, solidified into palpable flesh and blood; famous statesmen crossed his path daily; that once rare and awe-inspiring being, a Congressman, was become a common spectacle--a spectacle so common, indeed, that he could contemplate it without excitement, even without embarrassment; foreign ministers were visible to the naked eye at happy intervals; he had looked upon the President himself, and lived.sAnd more; this world of enchantment teemed with speculation--the whole atmosphere was thick with hand that indeed was Washington Hawkins' native air; none other refreshed his lungs so gratefully.2He had found paradise at last.HThe more he saw of his chief the Senator, the more he honored him, and the more conspicuously the moral grandeur of his character appeared to stand out.sTo possess the friendship and the kindly interest of such a man, Washington said in a letter to Louise, was a happy fortune for a young man whose career had been so impeded and so clouded as his.9:The weeks drifted by;--Harry Brierly flirted, danced, added lustre to the brilliant Senatorial receptions, and diligently "buzzed" and "button-holed" Congressmen in the interest of the Columbus River scheme; meantime Senator Dilworthy labored hard in the same interest--and in others of equal national importance.=>Harry wrote frequently to Sellers, and always encouragingly; and from these letters it was easy to see that Harry was a pet with all Washington, and was likely to carry the thing through; that the assistance rendered him by "old Dilworthy" was pretty fair--pretty fair; "and every little helps, you know," said Harry.23Washington wrote Sellers officially, now and then.aIn one of his letters it appeared that whereas no member of the House committee favored the scheme at first, there was now needed but one more vote to compass a majority report.ABClosing sentence: "Providence seems to further our efforts.3Signed,) "ABNER DILWORTHY, U.6per WASHINGTON HAWKINS, P.`At the end of a week, Washington was able to send the happy news, officially, as usual,--that the needed vote had been added and the bill favorably reported from the Committee.JOther letters recorded its perils in Committee of the whole, and by and by its victory, by just the skin of its teeth, on third reading and final passage.0 !Then came letters telling of Mr.MDilworthy's struggles with a stubborn majority in his own Committee in the Senate; of how these gentlemen succumbed, one by one, till a majority was secured.8Then there was a hiatus.=Washington watched every move on the board, and he was in a good position to do this, for he was clerk of this committee, and also one other.He received no salary as private secretary, but these two clerkships, procured by his benefactor, paid him an aggregate of twelve dollars a day, without counting the twenty percent extra compensation which would of course be voted to him on the last night of the session.jkHe saw the bill go into Committee of the whole and struggle for its life again, and finally worry through.EIn the fullness of time he noted its second reading, and by and by the day arrived when the grand ordeal came, and it was put upon its final passage.JWashington listened with bated breath to the "Aye!" "No!" "No!" "Aye!" of the voters, for a few dread minutes, and then could bear the suspense no longer.67He ran down from the gallery and hurried home to wait.hiAt the end of two or three hours the Senator arrived in the bosom of his family, and dinner was waiting.\Washington sprang forward, with the eager question on his lips, and the Senator said: "We may rejoice freely, now, my son--Providence has crowned our efforts with success.D CHAPTER XXV.)'(Washington sent grand good news to Col.=Sellers that night.9To Louise he wrote: "It is beautiful to hear him talk when his heart is full of thankfulness for some manifestation of the Divine favor.TUYou shall know him, some day my Louise, and knowing him you will honor him, as I do.efHarry wrote: "I pulled it through, Colonel, but it was a tough job, there is no question about that.There was not a friend to the measure in the House committee when I began, and not a friend in the Senate committee except old Dil himself, but they were all fixed for a majority report when I hauled off my forces.Everybody here says you can't get a thing like this through Congress without buying committees for straight-out cash on delivery, but I think I've taught them a thing or two--if I could only make them believe it.:When I tell the old residenters that this thing went through without buying a vote or making a promise, they say, 'That's rather too thin. And when I say thin or not thin it's a fact, anyway, they say, 'Come, now, but do you really believe that?' and when I say I don't believe anything about it, I know it, they smile and say, 'Well, you are pretty innocent, or pretty blind, one or the other--there's no getting around that. GHWhy they really do believe that votes have been bought--they do indeed./!"But let them keep on thinking so.I have found out that if a man knows how to talk to women, and has a little gift in the way of argument with men, he can afford to play for an appropriation against a money bag and give the money bag odds in the game.We've raked in $200,000 of Uncle Sam's money, say what they will--and there is more where this came from, when we want it, and I rather fancy I am the person that can go in and occupy it, too, if I do say it myself, that shouldn't, perhaps.1 I'll be with you within a week.;<Scare up all the men you can, and put them to work at once."./When I get there I propose to make things hum."./The great news lifted Sellers into the clouds.1 He went to work on the instant.noHe flew hither and thither making contracts, engaging men, and steeping his soul in the ecstasies of business.,$%He was the happiest man in Missouri.And Louise was the happiest woman; for presently came a letter from Washington which said: "Rejoice with me, for the long agony is over! We have waited patiently and faithfully, all these years, and now at last the reward is at hand.>?A man is to pay our family $40,000 for the Tennessee Land! It is but a little sum compared to what we could get by waiting, but I do so long to see the day when I can call you my own, that I have said to myself, better take this and enjoy life in a humble way than wear out our best days in this miserable separation./Besides, I can put this money into operations here that will increase it a hundred fold, yes, a thousand fold, in a few months.-}~The air is full of such chances, and I know our family would consent in a moment that I should put in their shares with mine.Without a doubt we shall be worth half a million dollars in a year from this time--I put it at the very lowest figure, because it is always best to be on the safe side--half a million at the very lowest calculation, and then your father will give his consent and we can marry at last.0 !Oh, that will be a glorious day.78Tell our friends the good news--I want all to share it. \]And she did tell her father and mother, but they said, let it be kept still for the present.RThe careful father also told her to write Washington and warn him not to speculate with the money, but to wait a little and advise with one or two wise old heads.C She did this.And she managed to keep the good news to herself, though it would seem that the most careless observer might have seen by her springing step and her radiant countenance that some fine piece of good fortune had descended upon her. YZHarry joined the Colonel at Stone's Landing, and that dead place sprang into sudden life. ]^A swarm of men were hard at work, and the dull air was filled with the cheery music of labor.klHarry had been constituted engineer-in-general, and he threw the full strength of his powers into his work.')*He moved among his hirelings like a king.34Authority seemed to invest him with a new splendor.LCol.%uvSellers, as general superintendent of a great public enterprise, was all that a mere human being could be --and more.HThese two grandees went at their imposing "improvement" with the air of men who had been charged with the work of altering the foundations of the globe.They turned their first attention to straightening the river just above the Landing, where it made a deep bend, and where the maps and plans showed that the process of straightening would not only shorten distance but increase the "fall.They started a cut-off canal across the peninsula formed by the bend, and such another tearing up of the earth and slopping around in the mud as followed the order to the men, had never been seen in that region before.:There was such a panic among the turtles that at the end of six hours there was not one to be found within three miles of Stone's Landing.nThey took the young and the aged, the decrepit and the sick upon their backs and left for tide-water in disorderly procession, the tadpoles following and the bull-frogs bringing up the rear.^_Saturday night came, but the men were obliged to wait, because the appropriation had not come.PQHarry said he had written to hurry up the money and it would be along presently./!"So the work continued, on Monday. FGStone's Landing was making quite a stir in the vicinity, by this time.LMSellers threw a lot or two on the market, "as a feeler," and they sold well.WXHe re-clothed his family, laid in a good stock of provisions, and still had money left.He started a bank account, in a small way--and mentioned the deposit casually to friends; and to strangers, too; to everybody, in fact; but not as a new thing--on the contrary, as a matter of life-long standing.<=He could not keep from buying trifles every day that were not wholly necessary, it was such a gaudy thing to get out his bank-book and draw a check, instead of using his old customary formula, "Charge it" Harry sold a lot or two, also--and had a dinner party or two at Hawkeye and a general good time with the money. GHBoth men held on pretty strenuously for the coming big prices, however."./At the end of a month things were looking bad.Harry had besieged the New York headquarters of the Columbus River Slack-water Navigation Company with demands, then commands, and finally appeals, but to no purpose; the appropriation did not come; the letters were not even answered.0 !The workmen were clamorous, now.')*The Colonel and Harry retired to consult.+%&What's to be done?" said the Colonel.?Hang'd if I know.,$%Company say anything?" "Not a word.;<You telegraphed yesterday?" "Yes, and the day before, too.@ANo answer?" "None-confound them!" Then there was a long pause.XYFinally both spoke at once: "I've got it!" "I've got it!" "What's yours?" said Harry.@AGive the boys thirty-day orders on the Company for the back pay.*&'That's it-that's my own idea to a dot.But then--but then----" "Yes, I know," said the Colonel; "I know they can't wait for the orders to go to New York and be cashed, but what's the reason they can't get them discounted in Hawkeye?" "Of course they can.5That solves the difficulty.OPEverybody knows the appropriation's been made and the Company's perfectly good.VWSo the orders were given and the men appeased, though they grumbled a little at first.)yzThe orders went well enough for groceries and such things at a fair discount, and the work danced along gaily for a time.9Two or three purchasers put up frame houses at the Landing and moved in, and of course a far-sighted but easy-going journeyman printer wandered along and started the "Napoleon Weekly Telegraph and Literary Repository"--a paper with a Latin motto from the Unabridged dictionary, and plenty of "fat" conversational tales and double-leaded poetry--all for two dollars a year, strictly in advance.`aOf course the merchants forwarded the orders at once to New York--and never heard of them again.#stAt the end of some weeks Harry's orders were a drug in the market--nobody would take them at any discount whatever.,$%The second month closed with a riot.deSellers was absent at the time, and Harry began an active absence himself with the mob at his heels.#-.But being on horseback, he had the advantage. [\He did not tarry in Hawkeye, but went on, thus missing several appointments with creditors.WXHe was far on his flight eastward, and well out of danger when the next morning dawned.mHe telegraphed the Colonel to go down and quiet the laborers--he was bound east for money --everything would be right in a week--tell the men so--tell them to rely on him and not be afraid.?@Sellers found the mob quiet enough when he reached the Landing.SThey had gutted the Navigation office, then piled the beautiful engraved stock-books and things in the middle of the floor and enjoyed the bonfire while it lasted._They had a liking for the Colonel, but still they had some idea of hanging him, as a sort of make-shift that might answer, after a fashion, in place of more satisfactory game. FGBut they made the mistake of waiting to hear what he had to say first.OPWithin fifteen minutes his tongue had done its work and they were all rich men.He gave every one of them a lot in the suburbs of the city of Stone's Landing, within a mile and a half of the future post office and railway station, and they promised to resume work as soon as Harry got east and started the money along.^_Now things were blooming and pleasant again, but the men had no money, and nothing to live on.78The Colonel divided with them the money he still had in bank--an act which had nothing surprising about it because he was generally ready to divide whatever he had with anybody that wanted it, and it was owing to this very trait that his family spent their days in poverty and at times were pinched with famine.When the men's minds had cooled and Sellers was gone, they hated themselves for letting him beguile them with fine speeches, but it was too late, now--they agreed to hang him another time--such time as Providence should appoint.C CHAPTER XXVI.KRumors of Ruth's frivolity and worldliness at Fallkill traveled to Philadelphia in due time, and occasioned no little undertalk among the Bolton relatives.!"Hannah Shoecraft told another, cousin that, for her part, she never believed that Ruth had so much more "mind" than other people; and Cousin Hulda added that she always thought Ruth was fond of admiration, and that was the reason she was unwilling to wear plain clothes and attend Meeting.%&The story that Ruth was "engaged" to a young gentleman of fortune in Fallkill came with the other news, and helped to give point to the little satirical remarks that went round about Ruth's desire to be a doctor! Margaret Bolton was too wise to be either surprised or alarmed by these rumors.They might be true; she knew a woman's nature too well to think them improbable, but she also knew how steadfast Ruth was in her purposes, and that, as a brook breaks into ripples and eddies and dances and sports by the way, and yet keeps on to the sea, it was in Ruth's nature to give back cheerful answer to the solicitations of friendliness and pleasure, to appear idly delaying even, and sporting in the sunshine, while the current of her resolution flowed steadily on.-}~That Ruth had this delight in the mere surface play of life that she could, for instance, be interested in that somewhat serious by-play called "flirtation," or take any delight in the exercise of those little arts of pleasing and winning which are none the less genuine and charming because they are not intellectual, Ruth, herself, had never suspected until she went to Fallkill.%&She had believed it her duty to subdue her gaiety of temperament, and let nothing divert her from what are called serious pursuits: In her limited experience she brought everything to the judgment of her own conscience, and settled the affairs of all the world in her own serene judgment hall.?Perhaps her mother saw this, and saw also that there was nothing in the Friends' society to prevent her from growing more and more opinionated.When Ruth returned to Philadelphia, it must be confessed--though it would not have been by her--that a medical career did seem a little less necessary for her than formerly; and coming back in a glow of triumph, as it were, and in the consciousness of the freedom and life in a lively society and in new and sympathetic friendship, she anticipated pleasure in an attempt to break up the stiffness and levelness of the society at home, and infusing into it something of the motion and sparkle which were so agreeable at Fallkill.^She expected visits from her new friends, she would have company, the new books and the periodicals about which all the world was talking, and, in short, she would have life.OPFor a little while she lived in this atmosphere which she had brought with her.4Her mother was delighted with this change in her, with the improvement in her health and the interest she exhibited in home affairs.eHer father enjoyed the society of his favorite daughter as he did few things besides; he liked her mirthful and teasing ways, and not less a keen battle over something she had read.$tuHe had been a great reader all his life, and a remarkable memory had stored his mind with encyclopaedic information.>It was one of Ruth's delights to cram herself with some out of the way subject and endeavor to catch her father; but she almost always failed.MMr.tBolton liked company, a house full of it, and the mirth of young people, and he would have willingly entered into any revolutionary plans Ruth might have suggested in relation to Friends' society.*z{But custom and the fixed order are stronger than the most enthusiastic and rebellious young lady, as Ruth very soon found.EFIn spite of all her brave efforts, her frequent correspondence, and her determined animation, her books and her music, she found herself settling into the clutches of the old monotony, and as she realized the hopelessness of her endeavors, the medical scheme took new hold of her, and seemed to her the only method of escape.<Mother, thee does not know how different it is in Fallkill, how much more interesting the people are one meets, how much more life there is. YZBut thee will find the world, child, pretty much all the same, when thee knows it better. YZI thought once as thee does now, and had as little thought of being a Friend as thee has.JKPerhaps when thee has seen more, thee will better appreciate a quiet life.=Thee married young. \]I shall not marry young, and perhaps not at all," said Ruth, with a look of vast experience.UVPerhaps thee doesn't know thee own mind; I have known persons of thy age who did not.,|}Did thee see anybody whom thee would like to live with always in Fallkill?" "Not always," replied Ruth with a little laugh.lmMother, I think I wouldn't say 'always' to any one until I have a profession and am as independent as he is.ABThen my love would be a free act, and not in any way a necessity.67Margaret Bolton smiled at this new-fangled philosophy.opThee will find that love, Ruth, is a thing thee won't reason about, when it comes, nor make any bargains about. 01Thee wrote that Philip Sterling was at Fallkill.3Yes, and Henry Brierly, a friend of his; a very amusing young fellow and not so serious-minded as Philip, but a bit of a fop maybe.=And thee preferred the fop to the serious-minded?" "I didn't prefer anybody; but Henry Brierly was good company, which Philip wasn't always.3Did thee know thee father had been in correspondence with Philip?" Ruth looked up surprised and with a plain question in her eyes.8Oh, it's not about thee.lmWhat then?" and if there was any shade of disappointment in her tone, probably Ruth herself did not know it.)'(It's about some land up in the country.89That man Bigler has got father into another speculation. ]^That odious man! Why will father have anything to do with him? Is it that railroad?" "Yes.DFather advanced money and took land as security, and whatever has gone with the money and the bonds, he has on his hands a large tract of wild land.NAnd what has Philip to do with that?" "It has good timber, if it could ever be got out, and father says that there must be coal in it; it's in a coal region. EFHe wants Philip to survey it, and examine it for indications of coal.9:It's another of father's fortunes, I suppose," said Ruth.QRHe has put away so many fortunes for us that I'm afraid we never shall find them."rsRuth was interested in it nevertheless, and perhaps mainly because Philip was to be connected with the enterprise.MMr.QRBigler came to dinner with her father next day, and talked a great deal about Mr.yBolton's magnificent tract of land, extolled the sagacity that led him to secure such a property, and led the talk along to another railroad which would open a northern communication to this very land.#stPennybacker says it's full of coal, he's no doubt of it, and a railroad to strike the Erie would make it a fortune.45Suppose you take the land and work the thing up, Mr.9:Bigler; you may have the tract for three dollars an acre.)'(You'd throw it away, then," replied Mr.;<Bigler, "and I'm not the man to take advantage of a friend.xBut if you'll put a mortgage on it for the northern road, I wouldn't mind taking an interest, if Pennybacker is willing; but Pennybacker, you know, don't go much on land, he sticks to the legislature.IAnd Mr.ABigler laughed.H When Mr.VWBigler had gone, Ruth asked her father about Philip's connection with the land scheme.-#$There's nothing definite," said Mr.IBolton."./Philip is showing aptitude for his profession.klI hear the best reports of him in New York, though those sharpers don't 'intend to do anything but use him.LMI've written and offered him employment in surveying and examining the land.5We want to know what it is. Z[And if there is anything in it that his enterprise can dig out, he shall have an interest.12I should be glad to give the young fellow a lift.-}~All his life Eli Bolton had been giving young fellows a lift, and shouldering the loses when things turned out unfortunately.tHis ledger, take-it-altogether, would not show a balance on the right side; but perhaps the losses on his books will turn out to be credits in a world where accounts are kept on a different basis.QRThe left hand of the ledger will appear the right, looked at from the other side.bPhilip, wrote to Ruth rather a comical account of the bursting up of the city of Napoleon and the navigation improvement scheme, of Harry's flight and the Colonel's discomfiture.Harry left in such a hurry that he hadn't even time to bid Miss Laura Hawkins good-bye, but he had no doubt that Harry would console himself with the next pretty face he saw --a remark which was thrown in for Ruth's benefit.LCol.deSellers had in all probability, by this time, some other equally brilliant speculation in his brain.EAs to the railroad, Philip had made up his mind that it was merely kept on foot for speculative purposes in Wall street, and he was about to quit it.&'Would Ruth be glad to hear, he wondered, that he was coming East? For he was coming, in spite of a letter from Harry in New York, advising him to hold on until he had made some arrangements in regard to contracts, he to be a little careful about Sellers, who was somewhat visionary, Harry said.45The summer went on without much excitement for Ruth.She kept up a correspondence with Alice, who promised a visit in the fall, she read, she earnestly tried to interest herself in home affairs and such people as came to the house; but she found herself falling more and more into reveries, and growing weary of things as they were.yShe felt that everybody might become in time like two relatives from a Shaker establishment in Ohio, who visited the Boltons about this time, a father and son, clad exactly alike, and alike in manners.The son; however, who was not of age, was more unworldly and sanctimonious than his father; he always addressed his parent as "Brother Plum," and bore himself, altogether in such a superior manner that Ruth longed to put bent pins in his chair.bBoth father and son wore the long, single breasted collarless coats of their society, without buttons, before or behind, but with a row of hooks and eyes on either side in front.CIt was Ruth's suggestion that the coats would be improved by a single hook and eye sewed on in the small of the back where the buttons usually are.3Amusing as this Shaker caricature of the Friends was, it oppressed Ruth beyond measure; and increased her feeling of being stifled.-#$It was a most unreasonable feeling.(()No home could be pleasanter than Ruth's.=The house, a little out of the city; was one of those elegant country residences which so much charm visitors to the suburbs of Philadelphia.lmA modern dwelling and luxurious in everything that wealth could suggest for comfort, it stood in the midst of exquisitely kept lawns, with groups of trees, parterres of flowers massed in colors, with greenhouse, grapery and garden; and on one side, the garden sloped away in undulations to a shallow brook that ran over a pebbly bottom and sang under forest trees.The country about teas the perfection of cultivated landscape, dotted with cottages, and stately mansions of Revolutionary date, and sweet as an English country-side, whether seen in the soft bloom of May or in the mellow ripeness of late October. CDIt needed only the peace of the mind within, to make it a paradise.One riding by on the Old Germantown road, and seeing a young girl swinging in the hammock on the piazza and, intent upon some volume of old poetry or the latest novel, would no doubt have envied a life so idyllic.&vwHe could not have imagined that the young girl was reading a volume of reports of clinics and longing to be elsewhere.lmRuth could not have been more discontented if all the wealth about her had been as unsubstantial as a dream.6Perhaps she so thought it.OPI feel," she once said to her father, "as if I were living in a house of cards.67And thee would like to turn it into a hospital?" "No.IBut tell me father," continued Ruth, not to be put off, "is thee still going on with that Bigler and those other men who come here and entice thee?" Mr.deBolton smiled, as men do when they talk with women about "business" "Such men have their uses, Ruth.UVThey keep the world active, and I owe a great many of my best operations to such men.Who knows, Ruth, but this new land purchase, which I confess I yielded a little too much to Bigler in, may not turn out a fortune for thee and the rest of the children?" "Ah, father, thee sees every thing in a rose-colored light.<I do believe thee wouldn't have so readily allowed me to begin the study of medicine, if it hadn't had the novelty of an experiment to thee.PQAnd is thee satisfied with it?" "If thee means, if I have had enough of it, no.WXI just begin to see what I can do in it, and what a noble profession it is for a woman.lmWould thee have me sit here like a bird on a bough and wait for somebody to come and put me in a cage?" Mr.mBolton was not sorry to divert the talk from his own affairs, and he did not think it worth while to tell his family of a performance that very day which was entirely characteristic of him../Ruth might well say that she felt as if she were living in a house of cards, although the Bolton household had no idea of the number of perils that hovered over them, any more than thousands of families in America have of the business risks and contingences upon which their prosperity and luxury hang.:A sudden call upon Mr.TBolton for a large sum of money, which must be forthcoming at once, had found him in the midst of a dozen ventures, from no one of which a dollar could be realized.'wxIt was in vain that he applied to his business acquaintances and friends; it was a period of sudden panic and no money.8A hundred thousand! Mr.;Bolton," said Plumly.IJGood God, if you should ask me for ten, I shouldn't know where to get it.<And yet that day Mr.12Small (Pennybacker, Bigler and Small) came to Mr.deBolton with a piteous story of ruin in a coal operation, if he could not raise ten thousand dollars.)'(Only ten, and he was sure of a fortune.5Without it he was a beggar.MMr.HBolton had already Small's notes for a large amount in his safe, labeled "doubtful;" he had helped him again and again, and always with the same result.IBut Mr.MSmall spoke with a faltering voice of his family, his daughter in school, his wife ignorant of his calamity, and drew such a picture of their agony, that Mr.zBolton put by his own more pressing necessity, and devoted the day to scraping together, here and there, ten thousand dollars for this brazen beggar, who had never kept a promise to him nor paid a debt.45Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society.RWho shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark:--"I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.BCHAPTER XXVII.iIt was a hard blow to poor Sellers to see the work on his darling enterprise stop, and the noise and bustle and confusion that had been such refreshment to his soul, sicken and die out.;It was hard to come down to humdrum ordinary life again after being a General Superintendent and the most conspicuous man in the community.|It was sad to see his name disappear from the newspapers; sadder still to see it resurrected at intervals, shorn of its aforetime gaudy gear of compliments and clothed on with rhetorical tar and feathers.9:But his friends suffered more on his account than he did.LMHe was a cork that could not be kept under the water many moments at a time.;<He had to bolster up his wife's spirits every now and then."rsOn one of these occasions he said: "It's all right, my dear, all right; it will all come right in a little while.There's $200,000 coming, and that will set things booming again: Harry seems to be having some difficulty, but that's to be expected--you can't move these big operations to the tune of Fisher's Hornpipe, you know.efBut Harry will get it started along presently, and then you'll see! I expect the news every day now.#stBut Beriah, you've been expecting it every day, all along, haven't you?" "Well, yes; yes--I don't know but I have."#But anyway, the longer it's delayed, the nearer it grows to the time when it will start--same as every day you live brings you nearer to--nearer--" "The grave?" "Well, no--not that exactly; but you can't understand these things, Polly dear--women haven't much head for business, you know.bcYou make yourself perfectly comfortable, old lady, and you'll see how we'll trot this right along.#stWhy bless you, let the appropriation lag, if it wants to--that's no great matter--there's a bigger thing than that.Bigger than $200,000, Beriah?" "Bigger, child?--why, what's $200,000? Pocket money! Mere pocket money! Look at the railroad! Did you forget the railroad? It ain't many months till spring; it will be coming right along, and the railroad swimming right along behind it.Where'll it be by the middle of summer? Just stop and fancy a moment--just think a little--don't anything suggest itself? Bless your heart, you dear women live right in the present all the time--but a man, why a man lives---- "In the future, Beriah? But don't we live in the future most too much, Beriah? We do somehow seem to manage to live on next year's crop of corn and potatoes as a general thing while this year is still dragging along, but sometimes it's not a robust diet,--Beriah.56But don't look that way, dear--don't mind what I say.{I don't mean to fret, I don't mean to worry; and I don't, once a month, do I, dear? But when I get a little low and feel bad, I get a bit troubled and worrisome, but it don't mean anything in the world.;It passes right away.'wxI know you're doing all you can, and I don't want to seem repining and ungrateful--for I'm not, Beriah--you know I'm not, don't you?" "Lord bless you, child, I know you are the very best little woman that ever lived--that ever lived on the whole face of the Earth! And I know that I would be a dog not to work for you and think for you and scheme for you with all my might.IJAnd I'll bring things all right yet, honey --cheer up and don't you fear.!qrThe railroad----" "Oh, I had forgotten the railroad, dear, but when a body gets blue, a body forgets everything."./Yes, the railroad--tell me about the railroad.`aAha, my girl, don't you see? Things ain't so dark, are they? Now I didn't forget the railroad. Z[Now just think for a moment--just figure up a little on the future dead moral certainties.."#For instance, call this waiter St.JLouis.<=And we'll lay this fork (representing the railroad) from St.Louis to this potato, which is Slouchburg: "Then with this carving knife we'll continue the railroad from Slouchburg to Doodleville, shown by the black pepper: "Then we run along the--yes--the comb--to the tumbler that's Brimstone: "Thence by the pipe to Belshazzar, which is the salt-cellar: "Thence to, to--that quill--Catfish--hand me the pincushion, Marie Antoinette: "Thence right along these shears to this horse, Babylon: "Then by the spoon to Bloody Run--thank you, the ink: "Thence to Hail Columbia--snuffers, Polly, please move that cup and saucer close up, that's Hail Columbia: "Then--let me open my knife--to Hark-from-the-Tomb, where we'll put the candle-stick--only a little distance from Hail Columbia to Hark-from-the-Tomb--down-grade all the way.And there we strike Columbus River--pass me two or throe skeins of thread to stand for the river; the sugar bowl will do for Hawkeye, and the rat trap for Stone's Landing-Napoleon, I mean--and you can see how much better Napoleon is located than Hawkeye.'wxNow here you are with your railroad complete, and showing its continuation to Hallelujah and thence to Corruptionville.9:Now then-them you are! It's a beautiful road, beautiful.Jeff Thompson can out-engineer any civil engineer that ever sighted through an aneroid, or a theodolite, or whatever they call it--he calls it sometimes one and sometimes the other just whichever levels off his sentence neatest, I reckon.WXBut ain't it a ripping toad, though? I tell you, it'll make a stir when it gets along.(()Just see what a country it goes through.~There's your onions at Slouchburg--noblest onion country that graces God's footstool; and there's your turnip country all around Doodleville --bless my life, what fortunes are going to be made there when they get that contrivance perfected for extracting olive oil out of turnips--if there's any in them; and I reckon there is, because Congress has made an appropriation of money to test the thing, and they wouldn't have done that just on conjecture, of course.'wxAnd now we come to the Brimstone region--cattle raised there till you can't rest--and corn, and all that sort of thing.DThen you've got a little stretch along through Belshazzar that don't produce anything now--at least nothing but rocks--but irrigation will fetch it.mnThen from Catfish to Babylon it's a little swampy, but there's dead loads of peat down under there somewhere.#stNext is the Bloody Run and Hail Columbia country--tobacco enough can be raised there to support two such railroads.1 Next is the sassparilla region.I reckon there's enough of that truck along in there on the line of the pocket-knife, from Hail Columbia to Hark-from-the Tomb to fat up all the consumptives in all the hospitals from Halifax to the Holy Land.hIt just grows like weeds! I've got a little belt of sassparilla land in there just tucked away unobstrusively waiting for my little Universal Expectorant to get into shape in my head.4And I'll fix that, you know.One of these days I'll have all the nations of the earth expecto--" "But Beriah, dear--" "Don't interrupt me; Polly--I don't want you to lose the run of the map --well, take your toy-horse, James Fitz-James, if you must have it--and run along with you.(()Here, now--the soap will do for Babylon.ijLet me see --where was I? Oh yes--now we run down to Stone's Lan--Napoleon--now we run down to Napoleon.ABeautiful road.>Look at that, now.9:Perfectly straight line-straight as the way to the grave.VWAnd see where it leaves Hawkeye-clear out in the cold, my dear, clear out in the cold.lmThat town's as bound to die as--well if I owned it I'd get its obituary ready, now, and notify the mourners.STPolly, mark my words--in three years from this, Hawkeye'll be a howling wilderness.E You'll see.And just look at that river--noblest stream that meanders over the thirsty earth! --calmest, gentlest artery that refreshes her weary bosom! Railroad goes all over it and all through it--wades right along on stilts.`Seventeen bridges in three miles and a half--forty-nine bridges from Hark-from-the-Tomb to Stone's Landing altogether--forty nine bridges, and culverts enough to culvert creation itself! Hadn't skeins of thread enough to represent them all--but you get an idea--perfect trestle-work of bridges for seventy two miles: Jeff Thompson and I fixed all that, you know; he's to get the contracts and I'm to put them through on the divide.*&'Just oceans of money in those bridges.efIt's the only part of the railroad I'm interested in,--down along the line--and it's all I want, too.4It's enough, I should judge.4Now here we are at Napoleon. CDGood enough country plenty good enough--all it wants is population./!"That's all right--that will come."rsAnd it's no bad country now for calmness and solitude, I can tell you--though there's no money in that, of course.hiNo money, but a man wants rest, a man wants peace--a man don't want to rip and tear around all the time.And here we go, now, just as straight as a string for Hallelujah--it's a beautiful angle --handsome up grade all the way--and then away you go to Corruptionville, the gaudiest country for early carrots and cauliflowers that ever--good missionary field, too.PQThere ain't such another missionary field outside the jungles of Central Africa.89And patriotic?--why they named it after Congress itself.%uvOh, I warn you, my dear, there's a good time coming, and it'll be right along before you know what you're about, too.4That railroad's fetching it.,-You see what it is as far as I've got, and if I had enough bottles and soap and boot-jacks and such things to carry it along to where it joins onto the Union Pacific, fourteen hundred miles from here, I should exhibit to you in that little internal improvement a spectacle of inconceivable sublimity.PSo, don't you see? We've got the rail road to fall back on; and in the meantime, what are we worrying about that $200,000 appropriation for? That's all right.hI'd be willing to bet anything that the very next letter that comes from Harry will--" The eldest boy entered just in the nick of time and brought a letter, warm from the post-office.')*Things do look bright, after all, Beriah.`aI'm sorry I was blue, but it did seem as if everything had been going against us for whole ages. ]^Open the letter--open it quick, and let's know all about it before we stir out of our places.&*+I am all in a fidget to know what it says.56The letter was opened, without any unnecessary delay.ACHAPTER XXVIII.Whatever may have been the language of Harry's letter to the Colonel, the information it conveyed was condensed or expanded, one or the other, from the following episode of his visit to New York: He called, with official importance in his mien, at No.7Wall street, where a great gilt sign betokened the presence of the head-quarters of the "Columbus River Slack-Water Navigation Company.hiHe entered and gave a dressy porter his card, and was requested to wait a moment in a sort of ante-room. pqThe porter returned in a minute; and asked whom he would like to see? "The president of the company, of course.MNHe is busy with some gentlemen, sir; says he will be done with them directly.%uvThat a copper-plate card with "Engineer-in-Chief" on it should be received with such tranquility as this, annoyed Mr.;Brierly not a little.;But he had to submit.rIndeed his annoyance had time to augment a good deal; for he was allowed to cool his heels a frill half hour in the ante-room before those gentlemen emerged and he was ushered into the presence.lHe found a stately dignitary occupying a very official chair behind a long green morocco-covered table, in a room with sumptuously carpeted and furnished, and well garnished with pictures.$,-Good morning, sir; take a seat--take a seat.cdThank you sir," said Harry, throwing as much chill into his manner as his ruffled dignity prompted.5We perceive by your reports and the reports of the Chief Superintendent, that you have been making gratifying progress with the work.3We are all very much pleased.Indeed? We did not discover it from your letters--which we have not received; nor by the treatment our drafts have met with--which were not honored; nor by the reception of any part of the appropriation, no part of it having come to hand.@Why, my dear Mr.HIBrierly, there must be some mistake, I am sure we wrote you and also Mr.fgSellers, recently--when my clerk comes he will show copies--letters informing you of the ten per cent.E assessment.,$%Oh, certainly, we got those letters.HIBut what we wanted was money to carry on the work--money to pay the men.4Certainly, certainly--true enough--but we credited you both for a large part of your assessments--I am sure that was in our letters.)'(Of course that was in--I remember that.=Ah, very well then.*&'Now we begin to understand each other.3Well, I don't see that we do.There's two months' wages due the men, and----" "How? Haven't you paid the men?" "Paid them! How are we going to pay them when you don't honor our drafts?" "Why, my dear sir, I cannot see how you can find any fault with us. EFI am sure we have acted in a perfectly straight forward business way.*&'Now let us look at the thing a moment.efYou subscribed for 100 shares of the capital stock, at $1,000 a share, I believe?" "Yes, sir, I did.IAnd Mr.(()Sellers took a like amount?" "Yes, sir.F Very well.)'(No concern can get along without money.7We levied a ten per cent.E assessment.23It was the original understanding that you and Mr.mnSellers were to have the positions you now hold, with salaries of $600 a month each, while in active service.=>You were duly elected to these places, and you accepted them.7Am I right?" "Certainly.F Very well.12You were given your instructions and put to work.WXBy your reports it appears that you have expended the sum of $9,610 upon the said work.jkTwo months salary to you two officers amounts altogether to $2,400--about one-eighth of your ten per cent.>assessment, you see; which leaves you in debt to the company for the other seven-eighths of the assessment--viz, something over $8,000 apiece.Now instead of requiring you to forward this aggregate of $16,000 or $17,000 to New York, the company voted unanimously to let you pay it over to the contractors, laborers from time to time, and give you credit on the books for it.jAnd they did it without a murmur, too, for they were pleased with the progress you had made, and were glad to pay you that little compliment --and a very neat one it was, too, I am sure.12The work you did fell short of $10,000, a trifle.noLet me see--$9,640 from $20,000 salary $2;400 added--ah yes, the balance due the company from yourself and Mr.  Sellers is $7,960, which I will take the responsibility of allowing to stand for the present, unless you prefer to draw a check now, and thus----" "Confound it, do you mean to say that instead of the company owing us $2,400, we owe the company $7,960?" "Well, yes.And that we owe the men and the contractors nearly ten thousand dollars besides?" "Owe them! Oh bless my soul, you can't mean that you have not paid these people?" "But I do mean it!" The president rose and walked the floor like a man in bodily pain.His brows contracted, he put his hand up and clasped his forehead, and kept saying, "Oh, it is, too bad, too bad, too bad! Oh, it is bound to be found out--nothing can prevent it--nothing!" Then he threw himself into his chair and said: "My dear Mr.!/0Brierson, this is dreadful--perfectly dreadful.;It will be found out.klIt is bound to tarnish the good name of the company; our credit will be seriously, most seriously impaired.XYHow could you be so thoughtless--the men ought to have been paid though it beggared us all!" "They ought, ought they? Then why the devil--my name is not Bryerson, by the way--why the mischief didn't the compa--why what in the nation ever became of the appropriation? Where is that appropriation?--if a stockholder may make so bold as to ask.(xyThe appropriation?--that paltry $200,000, do you mean?" "Of course--but I didn't know that $200,000 was so very paltry.IJThough I grant, of course, that it is not a large sum, strictly speaking.12But where is it?" "My dear sir, you surprise me.HIYou surely cannot have had a large acquaintance with this sort of thing.cdOtherwise you would not have expected much of a result from a mere INITIAL appropriation like that. pqIt was never intended for anything but a mere nest egg for the future and real appropriations to cluster around.opIndeed? Well, was it a myth, or was it a reality? Whatever become of it?" "Why the--matter is simple enough.&*+A Congressional appropriation costs money.23Just reflect, for instance--a majority of the House Committee, say $10,000 apiece--$40,000; a majority of the Senate Committee, the same each--say $40,000; a little extra to one or two chairman of one or two such committees, say $10,000 each--$20,000; and there's $100,000 of the money gone, to begin with.dThen, seven male lobbyists, at $3,000 each --$21,000; one female lobbyist, $10,000; a high moral Congressman or Senator here and there--the high moral ones cost more, because they.ygive tone to a measure--say ten of these at $3,000 each, is $30,000; then a lot of small-fry country members who won't vote for anything whatever without pay--say twenty at $500 apiece, is $10,000; a lot of dinners to members--say $10,000 altogether; lot of jimcracks for Congressmen's wives and children--those go a long way--you can't sped too much money in that line--well, those things cost in a lump, say $10,000--along there somewhere; and then comes your printed documents--your maps, your tinted engravings, your pamphlets, your illuminated show cards, your advertisements in a hundred and fifty papers at ever so much a line --because you've got to keep the papers all light or you are gone up, you know.78Oh, my dear sir, printing bills are destruction itself.MOurs so far amount to--let me see--10; 52; 22; 13;--and then there's 11; 14; 33 --well, never mind the details, the total in clean numbers foots up $118,254.+%&thus far!" "What!" "Oh, yes indeed.(()Printing's no bagatelle, I can tell you.bAnd then there's your contributions, as a company, to Chicago fires and Boston fires, and orphan asylums and all that sort of thing--head the list, you see, with the company's full name and a thousand dollars set opposite --great card, sir--one of the finest advertisements in the world--the preachers mention it in the pulpit when it's a religious charity--one of the happiest advertisements in the world is your benevolent donation.NOOurs have amounted to sixteen thousand dollars and some cents up to this time.7Good heavens!" "Oh, yes. \]Perhaps the biggest thing we've done in the advertising line was to get an officer of the U.government, of perfectly Himmalayan official altitude, to write up our little internal improvement for a religious paper of enormous circulation--I tell you that makes our bonds go handsomely among the pious poor. [\Your religious paper is by far the best vehicle for a thing of this kind, because they'll 'lead' your article and put it right in the midst of the reading matter; and if it's got a few Scripture quotations in it, and some temperance platitudes and a bit of gush here and there about Sunday Schools, and a sentimental snuffle now and then about 'God's precious ones, the honest hard-handed poor,' it works the nation like a charm, my dear sir, and never a man suspects that it is an advertisement; but your secular paper sticks you right into the advertising columns and of course you don't take a trick.Give me a religious paper to advertise in, every time; and if you'll just look at their advertising pages, you'll observe that other people think a good deal as I do--especially people who have got little financial schemes to make everybody rich with.-.Of course I mean your great big metropolitan religious papers that know how to serve God and make money at the same time--that's your sort, sir, that's your sort--a religious paper that isn't run to make money is no use to us, sir, as an advertising medium--no use to anybody--in our line of business._`I guess our next best dodge was sending a pleasure trip of newspaper reporters out to Napoleon.Never paid them a cent; just filled them up with champagne and the fat of the land, put pen, ink and paper before them while they were red-hot, and bless your soul when you come to read their letters you'd have supposed they'd been to heaven.xAnd if a sentimental squeamishness held one or two of them back from taking a less rosy view of Napoleon, our hospitalities tied his tongue, at least, and he said nothing at all and so did us no harm.efLet me see--have I stated all the expenses I've been at? No, I was near forgetting one or two items. CDThere's your official salaries--you can't get good men for nothing.4Salaries cost pretty lively.And then there's your big high-sounding millionaire names stuck into your advertisements as stockholders--another card, that--and they are stockholders, too, but you have to give them the stock and non-assessable at that--so they're an expensive lot.%uvVery, very expensive thing, take it all around, is a big internal improvement concern--but you see that yourself, Mr.*&'Bryerman--you see that, yourself, sir.BBut look here._`I think you are a little mistaken about it's ever having cost anything for Congressional votes.*&'I happen to know something about that.!/0I've let you say your say--now let me say mine.noI don't wish to seem to throw any suspicion on anybody's statements, because we are all liable to be mistaken.xBut how would it strike you if I were to say that I was in Washington all the time this bill was pending? and what if I added that I put the measure through myself? Yes, sir, I did that little thing.NOAnd moreover, I never paid a dollar for any man's vote and never promised one.mThere are some ways of doing a thing that are as good as others which other people don't happen to think about, or don't have the knack of succeeding in, if they do happen to think of them.PMy dear sir, I am obliged to knock some of your expenses in the head--for never a cent was paid a Congressman or Senator on the part of this Navigation Company.(xyThe president smiled blandly, even sweetly, all through this harangue, and then said: "Is that so?" "Every word of it.=>Well it does seem to alter the complexion of things a little.5You are acquainted with the members down there, of course, else you could not have worked to such advantage?" "I know them all, sir.!qrI know their wives, their children, their babies --I even made it a point to be on good terms with their lackeys.!/0I know every Congressman well--even familiarly.F Very good.hDo you know any of their signatures? Do you know their handwriting?" "Why I know their handwriting as well as I know my own--have had correspondence enough with them, I should think.;<And their signatures --why I can tell their initials, even.fgThe president went to a private safe, unlocked it and got out some letters and certain slips of paper.Then he said: "Now here, for instance; do you believe that that is a genuine letter? Do you know this signature here?--and this one? Do you know who those initials represent--and are they forgeries?" Harry was stupefied.12There were things there that made his brain swim.EPresently, at the bottom of one of the letters he saw a signature that restored his equilibrium; it even brought the sunshine of a smile to his face.&*+The president said: "That one amuses you.'wxYou never suspected him?" "Of course I ought to have suspected him, but I don't believe it ever really occurred to me.NWell, well, well--how did you ever have the nerve to approach him, of all others?" "Why my friend, we never think of accomplishing anything without his help.=He is our mainstay.But how do those letters strike you?" "They strike me dumb! What a stone-blind idiot I have been!" "Well, take it all around, I suppose you had a pleasant time in Washington," said the president, gathering up the letters; "of course you must have had.deVery few men could go there and get a money bill through without buying a single--" "Come, now, Mr.NOPresident, that's plenty of that! I take back everything I said on that head.<=I'm a wiser man to-day than I was yesterday, I can tell you.@I think you are.1 In fact I am satisfied you are.@ABut now I showed you these things in confidence, you understand.IJMention facts as much as you want to, but don't mention names to anybody.89I can depend on you for that, can't I?" "Oh, of course.-#$I understand the necessity of that.4I will not betray the names.LBut to go back a bit, it begins to look as if you never saw any of that appropriation at all?" "We saw nearly ten thousand dollars of it--and that was all.NSeveral of us took turns at log-rolling in Washington, and if we had charged anything for that service, none of that $10,000 would ever have reached New York.mIf you hadn't levied the assessment you would have been in a close place I judge?" "Close? Have you figured up the total of the disbursements I told you of?" "No, I didn't think of that.$,-Well, lets see: Spent in Washington, say, .5Printing, advertising, etc.Ksay .ACharity, say, .H Total, .89The money to do that with, comes from --Appropriation, .C Ten per cent.&*+assessment on capital of $1,000,000 .H Total, .45Which leaves us in debt some $25,000 at this moment.LMSalaries of home officers are still going on; also printing and advertising. YZNext month will show a state of things!" "And then--burst up, I suppose?" "By no means.+%&Levy another assessment" "Oh, I see.BThat's dismal.D By no means.jkWhy isn't it? What's the road out?" "Another appropriation, don't you see?" "Bother the appropriations./!"They cost more than they come to.?Not the next one.OPWe'll call for half a million--get it and go for a million the very next month.^_Yes, but the cost of it!" The president smiled, and patted his secret letters affectionately.56He said: "All these people are in the next Congress.."#We shan't have to pay them a cent. ]^And what is more, they will work like beavers for us--perhaps it might be to their advantage.-#$Harry reflected profoundly a while.XYThen he said: "We send many missionaries to lift up the benighted races of other lands.0How much cheaper and better it would be if those people could only come here and drink of our civilization at its fountain head.1 I perfectly agree with you, Mr.H Beverly./!"Must you go? Well, good morning.6Look in, when you are passing; and whenever I can give you any information about our affairs and pro'spects, I shall be glad to do it.,|}Harry's letter was not a long one, but it contained at least the calamitous figures that came out in the above conversation.The Colonel found himself in a rather uncomfortable place--no $1,200 salary forthcoming; and himself held responsible for half of the $9,640 due the workmen, to say nothing of being in debt to the company to the extent of nearly $4,000.MPolly's heart was nearly broken; the "blues" returned in fearful force, and she had to go out of the room to hide the tears that nothing could keep back now. DEThere was mourning in another quarter, too, for Louise had a letter.yWashington had refused, at the last moment, to take $40,000 for the Tennessee Land, and had demanded $150,000! So the trade fell through, and now Washington was wailing because he had been so foolish.9But he wrote that his man might probably return to the city soon, and then he meant to sell to him, sure, even if he had to take $10,000.5Louise had a good cry-several of them, indeed--and the family charitably forebore to make any comments that would increase her grief.?Spring blossomed, summer came, dragged its hot weeks by, and the Colonel's spirits rose, day by day, for the railroad was making good progress./!"But by and by something happened.sHawkeye had always declined to subscribe anything toward the railway, imagining that her large business would be a sufficient compulsory influence; but now Hawkeye was frightened; and before Col.PQSellers knew what he was about, Hawkeye, in a panic, had rushed to the front and subscribed such a sum that Napoleon's attractions suddenly sank into insignificance and the railroad concluded to follow a comparatively straight coarse instead of going miles out of its way to build up a metropolis in the muddy desert of Stone's Landing.;The thunderbolt fell.RAfter all the Colonel's deep planning; after all his brain work and tongue work in drawing public attention to his pet project and enlisting interest in it; after all his faithful hard toil with his hands, and running hither and thither on his busy feet; after all his high hopes and splendid prophecies, the fates had turned their backs on him at last, and all in a moment his air-castles crumbled to ruins abort him.uHawkeye rose from her fright triumphant and rejoicing, and down went Stone's Landing! One by one its meagre parcel of inhabitants packed up and moved away, as the summer waned and fall approached. \]Town lots were no longer salable, traffic ceased, a deadly lethargy fell upon the place once more, the "Weekly Telegraph" faded into an early grave, the wary tadpole returned from exile, the bullfrog resumed his ancient song, the tranquil turtle sunned his back upon bank and log and drowsed his grateful life away as in the old sweet days of yore.C CHAPTER XXIX. FGPhilip Sterling was on his way to Ilium, in the state of Pennsylvania.IJIlium was the railway station nearest to the tract of wild land which Mr.)'(Bolton had commissioned him to examine.yOn the last day of the journey as the railway train Philip was on was leaving a large city, a lady timidly entered the drawing-room car, and hesitatingly took a chair that was at the moment unoccupied. ]^Philip saw from the window that a gentleman had put her upon the car just as it was starting.0In a few moments the conductor entered, and without waiting an explanation, said roughly to the lady, "Now you can't sit there.>That seat's taken.:Go into the other car.6I did not intend to take the seat," said the lady rising, "I only sat down a moment till the conductor should come and give me a seat.AThere aint any.E Car's full.;You'll have to leave.#stBut, sir," said the lady, appealingly, "I thought--" "Can't help what you thought--you must go into the other car.=>The train is going very fast, let me stand here till we stop.78The lady can have my seat," cried Philip, springing up.The conductor turned towards Philip, and coolly and deliberately surveyed him from head to foot, with contempt in every line of his face, turned his back upon him without a word, and said to the lady, "Come, I've got no time to talk.@You must go now.$tuThe lady, entirely disconcerted by such rudeness, and frightened, moved towards the door, opened it and stepped out.FThe train was swinging along at a rapid rate, jarring from side to side; the step was a long one between the cars and there was no protecting grating.The lady attempted it, but lost her balance, in the wind and the motion of the car, and fell! She would inevitably have gone down under the wheels, if Philip, who had swiftly followed her, had not caught her arm and drawn her up.ghHe then assisted her across, found her a seat, received her bewildered thanks, and returned to his car. [\The conductor was still there, taking his tickets, and growling something about imposition.noPhilip marched up to him, and burst out with, "You are a brute, an infernal brute, to treat a woman that way. CDPerhaps you'd like to make a fuss about it," sneered the conductor.Philip's reply was a blow, given so suddenly and planted so squarely in the conductor's face, that it sent him reeling over a fat passenger, who was looking up in mild wonder that any one should dare to dispute with a conductor, and against the side of the car.qHe recovered himself, reached the bell rope, "Damn you, I'll learn you," stepped to the door and called a couple of brakemen, and then, as the speed slackened; roared out, "Get off this train.<I shall not get off./!"I have as much right here as you.<=We'll see," said the conductor, advancing with the brakemen.VThe passengers protested, and some of them said to each other, "That's too bad," as they always do in such cases, but none of them offered to take a hand with Philip.kThe men seized him, wrenched him from his seat, dragged him along the aisle, tearing his clothes, thrust him from the car, and, then flung his carpet-bag, overcoat and umbrella after him.:And the train went on.*z{The conductor, red in the face and puffing from his exertion, swaggered through the car, muttering "Puppy, I'll learn him.:The passengers, when he had gone, were loud in their indignation, and talked about signing a protest, but they did nothing more than talk.)yzThe next morning the Hooverville Patriot and Clarion had this "item":-- SLIGHTUALLY OVERBOARD.WWe learn that as the down noon express was leaving H---- yesterday a lady! (God save the mark) attempted to force herself into the already full palatial car.Conductor Slum, who is too old a bird to be caught with chaff, courteously informed her that the car was full, and when she insisted on remaining, he persuaded her to go into the car where she belonged.9Thereupon a young sprig, from the East, blustered like a Shanghai rooster, and began to sass the conductor with his chin music.WThat gentleman delivered the young aspirant for a muss one of his elegant little left-handers, which so astonished him that he began to feel for his shooter.C Whereupon Mr.hiSlum gently raised the youth, carried him forth, and set him down just outside the car to cool off. ]^Whether the young blood has yet made his way out of Bascom's swamp, we have not learned.0Conductor Slum is one of the most gentlemanly and efficient officers on the road; but he ain't trifled with, not much.<We learn that the company have put a new engine on the seven o'clock train, and newly upholstered the drawing-room car throughout.ABIt spares no effort for the comfort of the traveling public.cdPhilip never had been before in Bascom's swamp, and there was nothing inviting in it to detain him.deAfter the train got out of the way he crawled out of the briars and the mud, and got upon the track.;<He was somewhat bruised, but he was too angry to mind that.HIHe plodded along over the ties in a very hot condition of mind and body.sIn the scuffle, his railway check had disappeared, and he grimly wondered, as he noticed the loss, if the company would permit him to walk over their track if they should know he hadn't a ticket.=Philip had to walk some five miles before he reached a little station, where he could wait for a train, and he had ample time for reflection.12At first he was full of vengeance on the company.@He would sue it.3He would make it pay roundly.iBut then it occurred to him that he did not know the name of a witness he could summon, and that a personal fight against a railway corporation was about the most hopeless in the world./He then thought he would seek out that conductor, lie in wait for him at some station, and thrash him, or get thrashed himself.WXBut as he got cooler, that did not seem to him a project worthy of a gentleman exactly.Was it possible for a gentleman to get even with such a fellow as that conductor on the letter's own plane? And when he came to this point, he began to ask himself, if he had not acted very much like a fool.IJHe didn't regret striking the fellow--he hoped he had left a mark on him.^But, after all, was that the best way? Here was he, Philip Sterling, calling himself a gentleman, in a brawl with a vulgar conductor, about a woman he had never seen before.  Why should he have put himself in such a ridiculous position? Wasn't it enough to have offered the lady his seat, to have rescued her from an accident, perhaps from death? Suppose he had simply said to the conductor, "Sir, your conduct is brutal, I shall report you.9The passengers, who saw the affair, might have joined in a report against the conductor, and he might really have accomplished something.3And, now! Philip looked at leis torn clothes, and thought with disgust of his haste in getting into a fight with such an autocrat.YAt the little station where Philip waited for the next train, he met a man--who turned out to be a justice of the peace in that neighborhood, and told him his adventure.=>He was a kindly sort of man, and seemed very much interested.!/0Dum 'em," said he, when he had heard the story. GHDo you think any thing can be done, sir?" "Wal, I guess tain't no use.!/0I hain't a mite of doubt of every word you say.>But suin's no use.WXThe railroad company owns all these people along here, and the judges on the bench too.89Spiled your clothes! Wal, 'least said's soonest mended.+%&You haint no chance with the company.kWhen next morning, he read the humorous account in the Patriot and Clarion, he saw still more clearly what chance he would have had before the public in a fight with the railroad company.5Still Philip's conscience told him that it was his plain duty to carry the matter into the courts, even with the certainty of defeat.[He confessed that neither he nor any citizen had a right to consult his own feelings or conscience in a case where a law of the land had been violated before his own eyes.THe confessed that every citizen's first duty in such case is to put aside his own business and devote his time and his best efforts to seeing that the infraction is promptly punished; and he knew that no country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law, and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.As a finality he was obliged to confess that he was a bad citizen, and also that the general laxity of the time, and the absence of a sense of duty toward any part of the community but the individual himself were ingrained in him, am he was no better than the rest of the people.bThe result of this little adventure was that Philip did not reach Ilium till daylight the next morning, when he descended sleepy and sore, from a way train, and looked about him. GHIlium was in a narrow mountain gorge, through which a rapid stream ran.rIt consisted of the plank platform on which he stood, a wooden house, half painted, with a dirty piazza (unroofed) in front, and a sign board hung on a slanting pole--bearing the legend, "Hotel.;Dusenheimer," a sawmill further down the stream, a blacksmith-shop, and a store, and three or four unpainted dwellings of the slab variety._`As Philip approached the hotel he saw what appeared to be a wild beast crouching on the piazza.LMIt did not stir, however, and he soon found that it was only a stuffed skin.0This cheerful invitation to the tavern was the remains of a huge panther which had been killed in the region a few weeks before.(xyPhilip examined his ugly visage and strong crooked fore-arm, as he was waiting admittance, having pounded upon the door.E Yait a bit.(xyI'll shoost--put on my trowsers," shouted a voice from the window, and the door was soon opened by the yawning landlord.,$%Morgen! Didn't hear d' drain oncet.2Dem boys geeps me up zo spate.C Gom right in.)'(Philip was shown into a dirty bar-room.It was a small room, with a stove in the middle, set in a long shallow box of sand, for the benefit of the "spitters," a bar across one end--a mere counter with a sliding glass-case behind it containing a few bottles having ambitious labels, and a wash-sink in one corner.noOn the walls were the bright yellow and black handbills of a traveling circus, with pictures of acrobats in human pyramids, horses flying in long leaps through the air, and sylph-like women in a paradisaic costume, balancing themselves upon the tips of their toes on the bare backs of frantic and plunging steeds, and kissing their hands to the spectators meanwhile.<=As Philip did not desire a room at that hour, he was invited to wash himself at the nasty sink, a feat somewhat easier than drying his face, for the towel that hung in a roller over the sink was evidently as much a fixture as the sink itself, and belonged, like the suspended brush and comb, to the traveling public.Philip managed to complete his toilet by the use of his pocket-handkerchief, and declining the hospitality of the landlord, implied in the remark, "You won'd dake notin'?" he went into the open air to wait for breakfast. 01The country he saw was wild but not picturesque.FThe mountain before him might be eight hundred feet high, and was only a portion of a long unbroken range, savagely wooded, which followed the stream.hiBehind the hotel, and across the brawling brook, was another level-topped, wooded range exactly like it.xIlium itself, seen at a glance, was old enough to be dilapidated, and if it had gained anything by being made a wood and water station of the new railroad, it was only a new sort of grime and rawness.~Dusenheimer, standing in the door of his uninviting groggery, when the trains stopped for water; never received from the traveling public any patronage except facetious remarks upon his personal appearance.?@Perhaps a thousand times he had heard the remark, "Ilium fuit," followed in most instances by a hail to himself as "AEneas," with the inquiry "Where is old Anchises?" At first he had replied, "Dere ain't no such man;" but irritated by its senseless repetition, he had latterly dropped into the formula of, "You be dam.Philip was recalled from the contemplation of Ilium by the rolling and growling of the gong within the hotel, the din and clamor increasing till the house was apparently unable to contain it; when it burst out of the front door and informed the world that breakfast was on the table.WXThe dining room was long, low and narrow, and a narrow table extended its whole length.noUpon this was spread a cloth which from appearance might have been as long in use as the towel in the barroom.Upon the table was the usual service, the heavy, much nicked stone ware, the row of plated and rusty castors, the sugar bowls with the zinc tea-spoons sticking up in them, the piles of yellow biscuits, the discouraged-looking plates of butter.PQThe landlord waited, and Philip was pleased to observe the change in his manner. 01In the barroom he was the conciliatory landlord.Standing behind his guests at table, he had an air of peremptory patronage, and the voice in which he shot out the inquiry, as he seized Philip's plate, "Beefsteak or liver?" quite took away Philip's power of choice.67He begged for a glass of milk, after trying that green hued compound called coffee, and made his breakfast out of that and some hard crackers which seemed to have been imported into Ilium before the introduction of the iron horse, and to have withstood a ten years siege of regular boarders, Greeks and others. \]The land that Philip had come to look at was at least five miles distant from Ilium station.lA corner of it touched the railroad, but the rest was pretty much an unbroken wilderness, eight or ten thousand acres of rough country, most of it such a mountain range as he saw at Ilium.;<His first step was to hire three woodsmen to accompany him.By their help he built a log hut, and established a camp on the land, and then began his explorations, mapping down his survey as he went along, noting the timber, and the lay of the land, and making superficial observations as to the prospect of coal.The landlord at Ilium endeavored to persuade Philip to hire the services of a witch-hazel professor of that region, who could walk over the land with his wand and tell him infallibly whether it contained coal, and exactly where the strata ran.mnBut Philip preferred to trust to his own study of the country, and his knowledge of the geological formation.He spent a month in traveling over the land and making calculations; and made up his mind that a fine vein of coal ran through the mountain about a mile from the railroad, and that the place to run in a tunnel was half way towards its summit.ABActing with his usual promptness, Philip, with the consent of Mr.9Bolton, broke ground there at once, and, before snow came, had some rude buildings up, and was ready for active operations in the spring.^_It was true that there were no outcroppings of coal at the place, and the people at Ilium said he "mought as well dig for plug terbaccer there;" but Philip had great faith in the uniformity of nature's operations in ages past, and he had no doubt that he should strike at this spot the rich vein that had made the fortune of the Golden Briar Company.D CHAPTER XXX.OOnce more Louise had good news from her Washington--Senator Dilworthy was going to sell the Tennessee Land to the government! Louise told Laura in confidence.DShe had told her parents, too, and also several bosom friends; but all of these people had simply looked sad when they heard the news, except Laura.ELaura's face suddenly brightened under it--only for an instant, it is true, but poor Louise was grateful for even that fleeting ray of encouragement.sWhen next Laura was alone, she fell into a train of thought something like this: "If the Senator has really taken hold of this matter, I may look for that invitation to his house at, any moment.jI am perishing to go! I do long to know whether I am only simply a large-sized pigmy among these pigmies here, who tumble over so easily when one strikes them, or whether I am really--.78Her thoughts drifted into other channels, for a season.zThen she continued:--"He said I could be useful in the great cause of philanthropy, and help in the blessed work of uplifting the poor and the ignorant, if he found it feasible to take hold of our Land.abWell, that is neither here nor there; what I want, is to go to Washington and find out what I am. [\I want money, too; and if one may judge by what she hears, there are chances there for a--.HIFor a fascinating woman, she was going to say, perhaps, but she did not.34Along in the fall the invitation came, sure enough.]It came officially through brother Washington, the private Secretary, who appended a postscript that was brimming with delight over the prospect of seeing the Duchess again.He said it would be happiness enough to look upon her face once more--it would be almost too much happiness when to it was added the fact that she would bring messages with her that were fresh from Louise's lips.9:In Washington's letter were several important enclosures.JFor instance, there was the Senator's check for $2,000--"to buy suitable clothing in New York with!" It was a loan to be refunded when the Land was sold.-#$Two thousand--this was fine indeed.-}~Louise's father was called rich, but Laura doubted if Louise had ever had $400 worth of new clothing at one time in her life.With the check came two through tickets--good on the railroad from Hawkeye to Washington via New York--and they were "dead-head" tickets, too, which had been given to Senator Dilworthy by the railway companies.Senators and representatives were paid thousands of dollars by the government for traveling expenses, but they always traveled "deadhead" both ways, and then did as any honorable, high-minded men would naturally do--declined to receive the mileage tendered them by the government.45The Senator had plenty of railway passes, and could. EFeasily spare two to Laura--one for herself and one for a male escort.sWashington suggested that she get some old friend of the family to come with her, and said the Senator would "deadhead" him home again as soon as he had grown tired, of the sights of the capital.3Laura thought the thing over. ]^At first she was pleased with the idea, but presently she began to feel differently about it.Finally she said, "No, our staid, steady-going Hawkeye friends' notions and mine differ about some things --they respect me, now, and I respect them--better leave it so--I will go alone; I am not afraid to travel by myself.HIAnd so communing with herself, she left the house for an afternoon walk.1 Almost at the door she met Col.H Sellers. 01She told him about her invitation to Washington.4Bless me!" said the Colonel. 01I have about made up my mind to go there myself.)yzYou see we've got to get another appropriation through, and the Company want me to come east and put it through Congress."rsHarry's there, and he'll do what he can, of course; and Harry's a good fellow and always does the very best he knows how, but then he's young--rather young for some parts of such work, you know--and besides he talks too much, talks a good deal too much; and sometimes he appears to be a little bit visionary, too, I think the worst thing in the world for a business man.:;A man like that always exposes his cards, sooner or later.LThis sort of thing wants an old, quiet, steady hand--wants an old cool head, you know, that knows men, through and through, and is used to large operations.aI'm expecting my salary, and also some dividends from the company, and if they get along in time, I'll go along with you Laura--take you under my wing--you mustn't travel alone.*&'Lord I wish I had the money right now.,$%But there'll be plenty soon--plenty.Laura reasoned with herself that if the kindly, simple-hearted Colonel was going anyhow, what could she gain by traveling alone and throwing away his company? So she told him she accepted his offer gladly, gratefully.She said it would be the greatest of favors if he would go with her and protect her--not at his own expense as far as railway fares were concerned, of course; she could not expect him to put himself to so much trouble for her and pay his fare besides. ]^But he wouldn't hear of her paying his fare--it would be only a pleasure to him to serve her.Laura insisted on furnishing the tickets; and finally, when argument failed, she said the tickets cost neither her nor any one else a cent --she had two of them--she needed but one--and if he would not take the other she would not go with him.8That settled the matter.=He took the ticket.kLaura was glad that she had the check for new clothing, for she felt very certain of being able to get the Colonel to borrow a little of the money to pay hotel bills with, here and there.#-.She wrote Washington to look for her and Col.7Sellers toward the end of November; and at about the time set the two travelers arrived safe in the capital of the nation, sure enough.CHAPTER XXXI She, the gracious lady, yet no paines did spare To doe him ease, or doe him remedy: Many restoratives of vertues rare And costly cordialles she did apply, To mitigate his stubborne malady.8Spenser's Faerie Queens.MMr.@AHenry Brierly was exceedingly busy in New York, so he wrote Col.;<Sellers, but he would drop everything and go to Washington.The Colonel believed that Harry was the prince of lobbyists, a little too sanguine, may be, and given to speculation, but, then, he knew everybody; the Columbus River navigation scheme was, got through almost entirely by his aid.STHe was needed now to help through another scheme, a benevolent scheme in which Col.45Sellers, through the Hawkinses, had a deep interest.HII don't care, you know," he wrote to Harry, "so much about the niggroes.]But if the government will buy this land, it will set up the Hawkins family--make Laura an heiress--and I shouldn't wonder if Beriah Sellers would set up his carriage again.%+,Dilworthy looks at it different, of course.;<He's all for philanthropy, for benefiting the colored race.<=There's old Balsam, was in the Interior--used to be the Rev.abOrson Balsam of Iowa--he's made the riffle on the Injun; great Injun pacificator and land dealer.1Balaam'a got the Injun to himself, and I suppose that Senator Dilworthy feels that there is nothing left him but the colored man.HII do reckon he is the best friend the colored man has got in Washington.mThough Harry was in a hurry to reach Washington, he stopped in Philadelphia; and prolonged his visit day after day, greatly to the detriment of his business both in New York and Washington. pqThe society at the Bolton's might have been a valid excuse for neglecting business much more important than his.%+,Philip was there; he was a partner with Mr.cBolton now in the new coal venture, concerning which there was much to be arranged in preparation for the Spring work, and Philip lingered week after week in the hospitable house.0 !Alice was making a winter visit. Z[Ruth only went to town twice a week to attend lectures, and the household was quite to Mr.RSBolton's taste, for he liked the cheer of company and something going on evenings.`aHarry was cordially asked to bring his traveling-bag there, and he did not need urging to do so.TNot even the thought of seeing Laura at the capital made him restless in the society of the two young ladies; two birds in hand are worth one in the bush certainly.?@Philip was at home--he sometimes wished he were not so much so.:;He felt that too much or not enough was taken for granted.opRuth had met him, when he first came, with a cordial frankness, and her manner continued entirely unrestrained.4She neither sought his company nor avoided it, and this perfectly level treatment irritated him more than any other could have done.It was impossible to advance much in love-making with one who offered no obstacles, had no concealments and no embarrassments, and whom any approach to sentimentality would be quite likely to set into a fit of laughter. pqWhy, Phil," she would say, "what puts you in the dumps to day? You are as solemn as the upper bench in Meeting.STI shall have to call Alice to raise your spirits; my presence seems to depress you.>It's not your presence, but your absence when you are present," began Philip, dolefully, with the idea that he was saying a rather deep thing.4But you won't understand me.9No, I confess I cannot.=If you really are so low, as to think I am absent when I am present, it's a frightful case of aberration; I shall ask father to bring out Dr.H Jackson. \]Does Alice appear to be present when she is absent?" "Alice has some human feeling, anyway.:;She cares for something besides musty books and dry bones.noI think, Ruth, when I die," said Philip, intending to be very grim and sarcastic, "I'll leave you my skeleton.<You might like that.LMIt might be more cheerful than you are at times," Ruth replied with a laugh.!/0But you mustn't do it without consulting Alice.BShe might not.H like it.=>I don't know why you should bring Alice up on every occasion.56Do you think I am in love with her?" "Bless you, no.7It never entered my head.@AAre you? The thought of Philip Sterling in love is too comical.hiI thought you were only in love with the Ilium coal mine, which you and father talk about half the time.*&'This is a specimen of Philip's wooing.EConfound the girl, he would say to himself, why does she never tease Harry and that young Shepley who comes here? How differently Alice treated him.cdShe at least never mocked him, and it was a relief to talk with one who had some sympathy with him. 01And he did talk to her, by the hour, about Ruth.oThe blundering fellow poured all his doubts and anxieties into her ear, as if she had been the impassive occupant of one of those little wooden confessionals in the Cathedral on Logan Square.Has, a confessor, if she is young and pretty, any feeling? Does it mend the matter by calling her your sister? Philip called Alice his good sister, and talked to her about love and marriage, meaning Ruth, as if sisters could by no possibility have any personal concern in such things.TDid Ruth ever speak of him? Did she think Ruth cared for him? Did Ruth care for anybody at Fallkill? Did she care for anything except her profession? And so on.PQAlice was loyal to Ruth, and if she knew anything she did not betray her friend.=>She did not, at any rate, give Philip too much encouragement.What woman, under the circumstances, would? "I can tell you one thing, Philip," she said, "if ever Ruth Bolton loves, it will be with her whole soul, in a depth of passion that will sweep everything before it and surprise even herself.YA remark that did not much console Philip, who imagined that only some grand heroism could unlock the sweetness of such a heart; and Philip feared that he wasn't a hero.efHe did not know out of what materials a woman can construct a hero, when she is in the creative mood. DEHarry skipped into this society with his usual lightness and gaiety.IHis good nature was inexhaustible, and though he liked to relate his own exploits, he had a little tact in adapting himself to the tastes of his hearers.He was not long in finding out that Alice liked to hear about Philip, and Harry launched out into the career of his friend in the West, with a prodigality of invention that would have astonished the chief actor.,|}He was the most generous fellow in the world, and picturesque conversation was the one thing in which he never was bankrupt.H With Mr."rsBolton he was the serious man of business, enjoying the confidence of many of the monied men in New York, whom Mr.OPBolton knew, and engaged with them in railway schemes and government contracts.hPhilip, who had so long known Harry, never could make up his mind that Harry did not himself believe that he was a chief actor in all these large operations of which he talked so much. CDHarry did not neglect to endeavor to make himself agreeable to Mrs. pqBolton, by paying great attention to the children, and by professing the warmest interest in the Friends' faith.wIt always seemed to him the most peaceful religion; he thought it must be much easier to live by an internal light than by a lot of outward rules; he had a dear Quaker aunt in Providence of whom Mrs.1 Bolton constantly reminded him.0 !He insisted upon going with Mrs.Bolton and the children to the Friends Meeting on First Day, when Ruth and Alice and Philip, "world's people," went to a church in town, and he sat through the hour of silence with his hat on, in most exemplary patience.89In short, this amazing actor succeeded so well with Mrs.$tuBolton, that she said to Philip one day, "Thy friend, Henry Brierly, appears to be a very worldly minded young man.-}~Does he believe in anything?" "Oh, yes," said Philip laughing, "he believes in more things than any other person I ever saw.%+,To Ruth, Harry seemed to be very congenial. [\He was never moody for one thing, but lent himself with alacrity to whatever her fancy was.')*He was gay or grave as the need might be.RSNo one apparently could enter more fully into her plans for an independent career.fgMy father," said Harry, "was bred a physician, and practiced a little before he went into Wall street.,$%I always had a leaning to the study.)yzThere was a skeleton hanging in the closet of my father's study when I was a boy, that I used to dress up in old clothes."./Oh, I got quite familiar with the human frame.4You must have," said Philip.:Was that where you learned to play the bones? He is a master of those musical instruments, Ruth; he plays well enough to go on the stage.JKPhilip hates science of any kind, and steady application," retorted Harry.(xyHe didn't fancy Philip's banter, and when the latter had gone out, and Ruth asked, "Why don't you take up medicine, Mr.&*+Brierly?" Harry said, "I have it in mind.deI believe I would begin attending lectures this winter if it weren't for being wanted in Washington."./But medicine is particularly women's province.-#$Why so?" asked Ruth, rather amused. CDWell, the treatment of disease is a good deal a matter of sympathy.%+,A woman's intuition is better than a man's. ]^Nobody knows anything, really, you know, and a woman can guess a good deal nearer than a man.+%&You are very complimentary to my sex.NBut," said Harry frankly; "I should want to choose my doctor; an ugly woman would ruin me, the disease would be sure to strike in and kill me at sight of her.ghI think a pretty physician, with engaging manners, would coax a fellow to live through almost anything.."#I am afraid you are a scoffer, Mr.H Brierly.,$%On the contrary, I am quite sincere.WWasn't it old what's his name? that said only the beautiful is useful?" Whether Ruth was anything more than diverted with Harry's company; Philip could not determine.He scorned at any rate to advance his own interest by any disparaging communications about Harry, both because he could not help liking the fellow himself, and because he may have known that he could not more surely create a sympathy for him in Ruth's mind.NThat Ruth was in no danger of any serious impression he felt pretty sure, felt certain of it when he reflected upon her severe occupation with her profession.KLHang it, he would say to himself, she is nothing but pure intellect anyway.!qrAnd he only felt uncertain of it when she was in one of her moods of raillery, with mocking mischief in her eyes.:;At such times she seemed to prefer Harry's society to his.KWhen Philip was miserable about this, he always took refuge with Alice, who was never moody, and who generally laughed him out of his sentimental nonsense.He felt at his ease with Alice, and was never in want of something to talk about; and he could not account for the fact that he was so often dull with Ruth, with whom, of all persons in the world, he wanted to appear at his best.45Harry was entirely satisfied with his own situation. YZA bird of passage is always at its ease, having no house to build, and no responsibility.>He talked freely with Philip about Ruth, an almighty fine girl, he said, but what the deuce she wanted to study medicine for, he couldn't see.,|}There was a concert one night at the Musical Fund Hall and the four had arranged to go in and return by the Germantown cars.It was Philip's plan, who had engaged the seats, and promised himself an evening with Ruth, walking with her, sitting by her in the hall, and enjoying the feeling of protecting that a man always has of a woman in a public place.%uvHe was fond of music, too, in a sympathetic way; at least, he knew that Ruth's delight in it would be enough for him.STPerhaps he meant to take advantage of the occasion to say some very serious things.)'(His love for Ruth was no secret to Mrs.PQBolton, and he felt almost sure that he should have no opposition in the family.LMrs.mnBolton had been cautious in what she said, but Philip inferred everything from her reply to his own questions, one day, "Has thee ever spoken thy mind to Ruth?" Why shouldn't he speak his mind, and end his doubts? Ruth had been more tricksy than usual that day, and in a flow of spirits quite inconsistent, it would seem, in a young lady devoted to grave studies.IJHad Ruth a premonition of Philip's intention, in his manner? It may be, for when the girls came down stairs, ready to walk to the cars; and met Philip and Harry in the hall, Ruth said, laughing, "The two tallest must walk together" and before Philip knew how it happened Ruth had taken Harry's arm, and his evening was spoiled. ]^He had too much politeness and good sense and kindness to show in his manner that he was hit.?@So he said to Harry, "That's your disadvantage in being short.'wxAnd he gave Alice no reason to feel during the evening that she would not have been his first choice for the excursion.WXBut he was none the less chagrined, and not a little angry at the turn the affair took.23The Hall was crowded with the fashion of the town.:The concert was one of those fragmentary drearinesses that people endure because they are fashionable; tours de force on the piano, and fragments from operas, which have no meaning without the setting, with weary pauses of waiting between; there is the comic basso who is so amusing and on such familiar terms with the audience, and always sings the Barber; the attitudinizing tenor, with his languishing "Oh, Summer Night;" the soprano with her "Batti Batti," who warbles and trills and runs and fetches her breath, and ends with a noble scream that brings down a tempest of applause in the midst of which she backs off the stage smiling and bowing.zIt was this sort of concert, and Philip was thinking that it was the most stupid one he ever sat through, when just as the soprano was in the midst of that touching ballad, "Comin' thro' the Rye" (the soprano always sings "Comin' thro' the Rye" on an encore)--the Black Swan used to make it irresistible, Philip remembered, with her arch, "If a body kiss a body" there was a cry of "Fire!" The hall is long and narrow, and there is only one place of egress. FGInstantly the audience was on its feet, and a rush began for the door.?@Men shouted, women screamed, and panic seized the swaying mass.HA second's thought would have convinced every one that getting out was impossible, and that the only effect of a rush would be to crash people to death.+%&But a second's thought was not given.MNA few cried: "Sit down, sit down," but the mass was turned towards the door.YWomen were down and trampled on in the aisles, and stout men, utterly lost to self-control, were mounting the benches, as if to run a race over the mass to the entrance.lmPhilip who had forced the girls to keep their seats saw, in a flash, the new danger, and sprang to avert it.noIn a second more those infuriated men would be over the benches and crushing Ruth and Alice under their boots.He leaped upon the bench in front of them and struck out before him with all his might, felling one man who was rushing on him, and checking for an instant the movement, or rather parting it, and causing it to flow on either side of him.,|}But it was only for an instant; the pressure behind was too great, and, the next Philip was dashed backwards over the seat.AAnd yet that instant of arrest had probably saved the girls, for as Philip fell, the orchestra struck up "Yankee Doodle" in the liveliest manner.The familiar tune caught the ear of the mass, which paused in wonder, and gave the conductor's voice a chance to be heard--"It's a false alarm!" The tumult was over in a minute, and the next, laughter was heard, and not a few said, "I knew it wasn't anything.+%&What fools people are at such a time.2The concert was over, however.qA good many people were hurt, some of them seriously, and among them Philip Sterling was found bent across the seat, insensible, with his left arm hanging limp and a bleeding wound on his head. EFWhen he was carried into the air he revived, and said it was nothing.?A surgeon was called, and it was thought best to drive at once to the Bolton's, the surgeon supporting Philip, who did not speak the whole way.2His arm was set and his head dressed, and the surgeon said he would come round all right in his mind by morning; he was very weak.1Alice who was not much frightened while the panic lasted in the hall, was very much unnerved by seeing Philip so pale and bloody.klRuth assisted the surgeon with the utmost coolness and with skillful hands helped to dress Philip's wounds.?And there was a certain intentness and fierce energy in what she did that might have revealed something to Philip if he had been in his senses.TUBut he was not, or he would not have murmured "Let Alice do it, she is not too tall.7It was Ruth's first case.ACHAPTER, XXXII.=>Washington's delight in his beautiful sister was measureless.He said that she had always been the queenliest creature in the land, but that she was only commonplace before, compared to what she was now, so extraordinary was the improvement wrought by rich fashionable attire.WXBut your criticisms are too full of brotherly partiality to be depended on, Washington.,$%Other people will judge differently.>Indeed they won't.E You'll see. DEThere will never be a woman in Washington that can compare with you.%+,You'll be famous within a fortnight, Laura.0 !Everybody will want to know you.;You wait--you'll see.Laura wished in her heart that the prophecy might come true; and privately she even believed it might--for she had brought all the women whom she had seen since she left home under sharp inspection, and the result had not been unsatisfactory to her..~During a week or two Washington drove about the city every day with her and familiarized her with all of its salient features.She was beginning to feel very much at home with the town itself, and she was also fast acquiring ease with the distinguished people she met at the Dilworthy table, and losing what little of country timidity she had brought with her from Hawkeye.vShe noticed with secret pleasure the little start of admiration that always manifested itself in the faces of the guests when she entered the drawing-room arrayed in evening costume: she took comforting note of the fact that these guests directed a very liberal share of their conversation toward her; she observed with surprise, that famous statesmen and soldiers did not talk like gods, as a general thing, but said rather commonplace things for the most part; and she was filled with gratification to discover that she, on the contrary, was making a good many shrewd speeches and now and then a really brilliant one, and furthermore, that they were beginning to be repeated in social circles about the town.XCongress began its sittings, and every day or two Washington escorted her to the galleries set apart for lady members of the households of Senators and Representatives.Here was a larger field and a wider competition, but still she saw that many eyes were uplifted toward her face, and that first one person and then another called a neighbor's attention to her; she was not too dull to perceive that the speeches of some of the younger statesmen were delivered about as much and perhaps more at her than to the presiding officer; and she was not sorry to see that the dapper young Senator from Iowa came at once and stood in the open space before the president's desk to exhibit his feet as soon as she entered the gallery, whereas she had early learned from common report that his usual custom was to prop them on his desk and enjoy them himself with a selfish disregard of other people's longings.JKInvitations began to flow in upon her and soon she was fairly "in society.5The season" was now in full bloom, and the first select reception was at hand that is to say, a reception confined to invited guests. Z[Senator Dilworthy had become well convinced; by this time, that his judgment of the country-bred Missouri girl had not deceived him--it was plain that she was going to be a peerless missionary in the field of labor he designed her for, and therefore it would be perfectly safe and likewise judicious to send her forth well panoplied for her work.@So he had added new and still richer costumes to her wardrobe, and assisted their attractions with costly jewelry-loans on the future land sale.hiThis first select reception took place at a cabinet minister's--or rather a cabinet secretary's mansion.When Laura and the Senator arrived, about half past nine or ten in the evening, the place was already pretty well crowded, and the white-gloved negro servant at the door was still receiving streams of guests. DEThe drawing-rooms were brilliant with gaslight, and as hot as ovens.jThe host and hostess stood just within the door of entrance; Laura was presented, and then she passed on into the maelstrom of be-jeweled and richly attired low-necked ladies and white-kid-gloved and steel pen-coated gentlemen and wherever she moved she was followed by a buzz of admiration that was grateful to all her senses--so grateful, indeed, that her white face was tinged and its beauty heightened by a perceptible suffusion of color.hiShe caught such remarks as, "Who is she?" "Superb woman!" "That is the new beauty from the west," etc.Letc..~Whenever she halted, she was presently surrounded by Ministers, Generals, Congressmen, and all manner of aristocratic, people.kIntroductions followed, and then the usual original question, "How do you like Washington, Miss Hawkins?" supplemented by that other usual original question, "Is this your first visit?" These two exciting topics being exhausted, conversation generally drifted into calmer channels, only to be interrupted at frequent intervals by new introductions and new inquiries as to how Laura liked the capital and whether it was her first visit or not.SAnd thus for an hour or more the Duchess moved through the crush in a rapture of happiness, for her doubts were dead and gone, now she knew she could conquer here. A familiar face appeared in the midst of the multitude and Harry Brierly fought his difficult way to her side, his eyes shouting their gratification, so to speak: "Oh, this is a happiness! Tell me, my dear Miss Hawkins--" "Sh! I know what you are going to ask.7I do like Washington--I like it ever so much!" "No, but I was going to ask--" "Yes, I am coming to it, coming to it as fast as I can.;It is my first visit.*&'I think you should know that yourself.?@And straightway a wave of the crowd swept her beyond his reach.mnNow what can the girl mean? Of course she likes Washington--I'm not such a dummy as to have to ask her that.OPAnd as to its being her first visit, why bang it, she knows that I knew it was.:;Does she think I have turned idiot? Curious girl, anyway. Z[But how they do swarm about her! She is the reigning belle of Washington after this night._`She'll know five hundred of the heaviest guns in the town before this night's nonsense is over.."#And this isn't even the beginning.YJust as I used to say--she'll be a card in the matter of--yes sir! She shall turn the men's heads and I'll turn the women's! What a team that will be in politics here.ghI wouldn't take a quarter of a million for what I can do in this present session--no indeed I wouldn't.(()Now, here--I don't altogether like this.That insignificant secretary of legation is--why, she's smiling on him as if he--and now on the Admiral! Now she's illuminating that, stuffy Congressman from Massachusetts--vulgar ungrammatcal shovel-maker--greasy knave of spades.0 !I don't like this sort of thing.STShe doesn't appear to be much distressed about me--she hasn't looked this way once.78All right, my bird of Paradise, if it suits you, go on.4But I think I know your sex.STI'll go to smiling around a little, too, and see what effect that will have on you.IAnd he did "smile around a little," and got as near to her as he could to watch the effect, but the scheme was a failure--he could not get her attention.She seemed wholly unconscious of him, and so he could not flirt with any spirit; he could only talk disjointedly; he could not keep his eyes on the charmers he talked to; he grew irritable, jealous, and very, unhappy.4He gave up his enterprise, leaned his shoulder against a fluted pilaster and pouted while he kept watch upon Laura's every movement.'wxHis other shoulder stole the bloom from many a lovely cheek that brushed him in the surging crush, but he noted it not.KLHe was too busy cursing himself inwardly for being an egotistical imbecile.An hour ago he had thought to take this country lass under his protection and show her "life" and enjoy her wonder and delight--and here she was, immersed in the marvel up to her eyes, and just a trifle more at home in it than he was himself.And now his angry comments ran on again: "Now she's sweetening old Brother Balaam; and he--well he is inviting her to the Congressional prayer-meeting, no doubt--better let old Dilworthy alone to see that she doesn't overlook that./And now its Splurge, of New York; and now its Batters of New Hampshire--and now the Vice President! Well I may as well adjourn.@I've got enough.BBut he hadn't.(xyHe got as far as the door--and then struggled back to take one more look, hating himself all the while for his weakness.Toward midnight, when supper was announced, the crowd thronged to the supper room where a long table was decked out with what seemed a rare repast, but which consisted of things better calculated to feast the eye than the appetite.The ladies were soon seated in files along the wall, and in groups here and there, and the colored waiters filled the plates and glasses and the male guests moved hither and thither conveying them to the privileged sex.(xyHarry took an ice and stood up by the table with other gentlemen, and listened to the buzz of conversation while he ate.KLFrom these remarks he learned a good deal about Laura that was news to him.For instance, that she was of a distinguished western family; that she was highly educated; that she was very rich and a great landed heiress; that she was not a professor of religion, and yet was a Christian in the truest and best sense of the word, for her whole heart was devoted to the accomplishment of a great and noble enterprise--none other than the sacrificing of her landed estates to the uplifting of the down-trodden negro and the turning of his erring feet into the way of light and righteousness.]Harry observed that as soon as one listener had absorbed the story, he turned about and delivered it to his next neighbor and the latter individual straightway passed it on. \]And thus he saw it travel the round of the gentlemen and overflow rearward among the ladies.ijHe could not trace it backward to its fountain head, and so he could not tell who it was that started it.One thing annoyed Harry a great deal; and that was the reflection that he might have been in Washington days and days ago and thrown his fascinations about Laura with permanent effect while she was new and strange to the capital, instead of dawdling in Philadelphia to no purpose.67He feared he had "missed a trick," as he expressed it. !He only found one little opportunity of speaking again with Laura before the evening's festivities ended, and then, for the first time in years, his airy self-complacency failed him, his tongue's easy confidence forsook it in a great measure, and he was conscious of an unheroic timidity.,|}He was glad to get away and find a place where he could despise himself in private and try to grow his clipped plumes again.deWhen Laura reached home she was tired but exultant, and Senator Dilworthy was pleased and satisfied.eHe called Laura "my daughter," next morning, and gave her some "pin money," as he termed it, and she sent a hundred and fifty dollars of it to her mother and loaned a trifle to Col.H Sellers.Then the Senator had a long private conference with Laura, and unfolded certain plans of his for the good of the country, and religion, and the poor, and temperance, and showed her how she could assist him in developing these worthy and noble enterprises.ACHAPTER XXXIII.QRLaura soon discovered that there were three distinct aristocracies in Washington.One of these, (nick-named the Antiques,) consisted of cultivated, high-bred old families who looked back with pride upon an ancestry that had been always great in the nation's councils and its wars from the birth of the republic downward.;<Into this select circle it was difficult to gain admission.MNo.>?was the aristocracy of the middle ground--of which, more anon.MNo.&*+lay beyond; of it we will say a word here.TUWe will call it the Aristocracy of the Parvenus--as, indeed, the general public did.:Official position, no matter how obtained, entitled a man to a place in it, and carried his family with him, no matter whence they sprang. YZGreat wealth gave a man a still higher and nobler place in it than did official position.4If this wealth had been acquired by conspicuous ingenuity, with just a pleasant little spice of illegality about it, all the better.;<This aristocracy was "fast," and not averse to ostentation.9The aristocracy of the Antiques ignored the aristocracy of the Parvenus; the Parvenus laughed at the Antiques, (and secretly envied them.bcThere were certain important "society" customs which one in Laura's position needed to understand.For instance, when a lady of any prominence comes to one of our cities and takes up her residence, all the ladies of her grade favor her in turn with an initial call, giving their cards to the servant at the door by way of introduction.VWThey come singly, sometimes; sometimes in couples; and always in elaborate full dress. 01They talk two minutes and a quarter and then go.UIf the lady receiving the call desires a further acquaintance, she must return the visit within two weeks; to neglect it beyond that time means "let the matter drop.7But if she does return the visit within two weeks, it then becomes the other party's privilege to continue the acquaintance or drop it.She signifies her willingness to continue it by calling again any time within twelve-months; after that, if the parties go on calling upon each other once a year, in our large cities, that is sufficient, and the acquaintanceship holds good.-#$The thing goes along smoothly, now.zThe annual visits are made and returned with peaceful regularity and bland satisfaction, although it is not necessary that the two ladies shall actually see each other oftener than once every few years. GHTheir cards preserve the intimacy and keep the acquaintanceship intact.>For instance, Mrs.Upays her annual visit, sits in her carriage and sends in her card with the lower right hand corner turned down, which signifies that she has "called in person;" Mrs.IB: sends down word that she is "engaged" or "wishes to be excused"--or if she is a Parvenu and low-bred, she perhaps sends word that she is "not at home.AVery good; Mrs.3drives, on happy and content.IIf Mrs.:;s daughter marries, or a child is born to the family, Mrs.Mcalls, sends in her card with the upper left hand corner turned down, and then goes along about her affairs--for that inverted corner means "Congratulations.IIf Mrs.45s husband falls downstairs and breaks his neck, Mrs.1calls, leaves her card with the upper right hand corner turned down, and then takes her departure; this corner means "Condolence.BIt is very necessary to get the corners right, else one may unintentionally condole with a friend on a wedding or congratulate her upon a funeral.efIf either lady is about to leave the city, she goes to the other's house and leaves her card with "P.<=engraved under the name--which signifies, "Pay Parting Call.8But enough of etiquette.4Laura was early instructed in the mysteries of society life by a competent mentor, and thus was preserved from troublesome mistakes.jThe first fashionable call she received from a member of the ancient nobility, otherwise the Antiques, was of a pattern with all she received from that limb of the aristocracy afterward.6This call was paid by Mrs.%+,Major-General Fulke-Fulkerson and daughter.zThey drove up at one in the afternoon in a rather antiquated vehicle with a faded coat of arms on the panels, an aged white-wooled negro coachman on the box and a younger darkey beside him--the footman. \]Both of these servants were dressed in dull brown livery that had seen considerable service. The ladies entered the drawing-room in full character; that is to say, with Elizabethan stateliness on the part of the dowager, and an easy grace and dignity on the part of the young lady that had a nameless something about it that suggested conscious superiority.!qrThe dresses of both ladies were exceedingly rich, as to material, but as notably modest as to color and ornament.All parties having seated themselves, the dowager delivered herself of a remark that was not unusual in its form, and yet it came from her lips with the impressiveness of Scripture: "The weather has been unpropitious of late, Miss Hawkins.5It has indeed," said Laura./!"The climate seems to be variable.VIt is its nature of old, here," said the daughter--stating it apparently as a fact, only, and by her manner waving aside all personal responsibility on account of it.%+,Is it not so, mamma?" "Quite so, my child.'wxDo you like winter, Miss Hawkins?" She said "like" as if she had, an idea that its dictionary meaning was "approve of. DENot as well as summer--though I think all seasons have their charms.7It is a very just remark.1 The general held similar views.;He considered snow in winter proper; sultriness in summer legitimate; frosts in the autumn the same, and rains in spring not objectionable.5He was not an exacting man.67And I call to mind now that he always admired thunder.IJYou remember, child, your father always admired thunder?" "He adored it. 01No doubt it reminded him of battle," said Laura.4Yes, I think perhaps it did.."#He had a great respect for Nature.;<He often said there was something striking about the ocean.>?You remember his saying that, daughter?" "Yes, often, Mother.8I remember it very well.AAnd hurricanes.)'(He took a great interest in hurricanes.D And animals.1 Dogs, especially--hunting dogs.D Also comets.*&'I think we all have our predilections.45I think it is this that gives variety to our tastes.1 Laura coincided with this view.Do you find it hard and lonely to be so far from your home and friends, Miss Hawkins?" "I do find it depressing sometimes, but then there is so much about me here that is novel and interesting that my days are made up more of sunshine than shadow.BCWashington is not a dull city in the season," said the young lady.klWe have some very good society indeed, and one need not be at a loss for means to pass the time pleasantly.fAre you fond of watering-places, Miss Hawkins?" "I have really had no experience of them, but I have always felt a strong desire to see something of fashionable watering-place life.OPWe of Washington are unfortunately situated in that respect," said the dowager.,$%It is a tedious distance to Newport.4But there is no help for it.<Laura said to herself, "Long Branch and Cape May are nearer than Newport; doubtless these places are low; I'll feel my way a little and see.ZThen she said aloud: "Why I thought that Long Branch--" There was no need to "feel" any further--there was that in both faces before her which made that truth apparent.efThe dowager said: "Nobody goes there, Miss Hawkins--at least only persons of no position in society.>And the President.0 !She added that with tranquility.noNewport is damp, and cold, and windy and excessively disagreeable," said the daughter, "but it is very select. DEOne cannot be fastidious about minor matters when one has no choice.12The visit had spun out nearly three minutes, now.,|}Both ladies rose with grave dignity, conferred upon Laura a formal invitation to call, aid then retired from the conference.\Laura remained in the drawing-room and left them to pilot themselves out of the house--an inhospitable thing, it seemed to her, but then she was following her instructions.2She stood, steeped in reverie, a while, and then she said: "I think I could always enjoy icebergs--as scenery but not as company.9:Still, she knew these two people by reputation, and was aware that they were not ice-bergs when they were in their own waters and amid their legitimate surroundings, but on the contrary were people to be respected for their stainless characters and esteemed for their social virtues and their benevolent impulses.bcShe thought it a pity that they had to be such changed and dreary creatures on occasions of state.KThe first call Laura received from the other extremity of the Washington aristocracy followed close upon the heels of the one we have just been describing.-#$The callers this time were the Hon.LMrs.8Oliver Higgins, the Hon.LMrs.WXPatrique Oreille (pronounced O-relay,) Miss Bridget (pronounced Breezhay) Oreille, Mrs.45Peter Gashly, Miss Gashly, and Miss Emmeline Gashly.IJThe three carriages arrived at the same moment from different directions.(xyThey were new and wonderfully shiny, and the brasses on the harness were highly polished and bore complicated monograms.89There were showy coats of arms, too, with Latin mottoes.kThe coachmen and footmen were clad in bright new livery, of striking colors, and they had black rosettes with shaving-brushes projecting above them, on the sides of their stove-pipe hats.,|}When the visitors swept into the drawing-room they filled the place with a suffocating sweetness procured at the perfumer's.>Their costumes, as to architecture, were the latest fashion intensified; they were rainbow-hued; they were hung with jewels--chiefly diamonds.XYIt would have been plain to any eye that it had cost something to upholster these women.H The Hon.LMrs.!"Oliver Higgins was the wife of a delegate from a distant territory--a gentleman who had kept the principal "saloon," and sold the best whiskey in the principal village in his wilderness, and so, of course, was recognized as the first man of his commonwealth and its fittest representative.oHe was a man of paramount influence at home, for he was public spirited, he was chief of the fire department, he had an admirable command of profane language, and had killed several "parties.deHis shirt fronts were always immaculate; his boots daintily polished, and no man could lift a foot and fire a dead shot at a stray speck of dirt on it with a white handkerchief with a finer grace than he; his watch chain weighed a pound; the gold in his finger ring was worth forty five dollars; he wore a diamond cluster-pin and he parted his hair behind.He had always been, regarded as the most elegant gentleman in his territory, and it was conceded by all that no man thereabouts was anywhere near his equal in the telling of an obscene story except the venerable white-haired governor himself.H The Hon. DEHiggins had not come to serve his country in Washington for nothing.bThe appropriation which he had engineered through Congress for the maintenance, of the Indians in his Territory would have made all those savages rich if it had ever got to them.H The Hon.LMrs.opHiggins was a picturesque woman, and a fluent talker, and she held a tolerably high station among the Parvenus.|Her English was fair enough, as a general thing--though, being of New York origin, she had the fashion peculiar to many natives of that city of pronouncing saw and law as if they were spelt sawr and lawr.RPetroleum was the agent that had suddenly transformed the Gashlys from modest hard-working country village folk into "loud" aristocrats and ornaments of the city.H The Hon.34Patrique Oreille was a wealthy Frenchman from Cork.KLNot that he was wealthy when he first came from Cork, but just the reverse.When he first landed in New York with his wife, he had only halted at Castle Garden for a few minutes to receive and exhibit papers showing that he had resided in this country two years--and then he voted the democratic ticket and went up town to hunt a house.3He found one and then went to work as assistant to an architect and builder, carrying a hod all day and studying politics evenings.(xyIndustry and economy soon enabled him to start a low rum shop in a foul locality, and this gave him political influence.In our country it is always our first care to see that our people have the opportunity of voting for their choice of men to represent and govern them--we do not permit our great officials to appoint the little officials.ABWe prefer to have so tremendous a power as that in our own hands.9:We hold it safest to elect our judges and everybody else."rsIn our cities, the ward meetings elect delegates to the nominating conventions and instruct them whom to nominate.The publicans and their retainers rule the ward meetings (for every body else hates the worry of politics and stays at home); the delegates from the ward meetings organize as a nominating convention and make up a list of candidates--one convention offering a democratic and another a republican list of incorruptibles; and then the great meek public come forward at the proper time and make unhampered choice and bless Heaven that they live in a free land where no form of despotism can ever intrude.Patrick O'Riley (as his name then stood) created friends and influence very, fast, for he was always on hand at the police courts to give straw bail for his customers or establish an alibi for them in case they had been beating anybody to death on his premises.!qrConsequently he presently became a political leader, and was elected to a petty office under the city government.[Out of a meager salary he soon saved money enough to open quite a stylish liquor saloon higher up town, with a faro bank attached and plenty of capital to conduct it with.$,-This gave him fame and great respectability.efThe position of alderman was forced upon him, and it was just the same as presenting him a gold mine. FGHe had fine horses and carriages, now, and closed up his whiskey mill.fgBy and by he became a large contractor for city work, and was a bosom friend of the great and good Wm.`Weed himself, who had stolen $20,600,000 from the city and was a man so envied, so honored,--so adored, indeed, that when the sheriff went to his office to arrest him as a felon, that sheriff blushed and apologized, and one of the illustrated papers made a picture of the scene and spoke of the matter in such a way as to show that the editor regretted that the offense of an arrest had been offered to so exalted a personage as Mr.KWeed.MMr.#$O'Riley furnished shingle nails to, the new Court House at three thousand dollars a keg, and eighteen gross of 60-cent thermometers at fifteen hundred dollars a dozen; the controller and the board of audit passed the bills, and a mayor, who was simply ignorant but not criminal, signed them.8When they were paid, Mr.#stO'Riley's admirers gave him a solitaire diamond pin of the size of a filbert, in imitation of the liberality of Mr.4Weed's friends, and then Mr.:O'Riley retired from active service and amused himself with buying real estate at enormous figures and holding it in other people's names.By and by the newspapers came out with exposures and called Weed and O'Riley "thieves,"--whereupon the people rose as one man (voting repeatedly) and elected the two gentlemen to their proper theatre of action, the New York legislature.lmThe newspapers clamored, and the courts proceeded to try the new legislators for their small irregularities.Our admirable jury system enabled the persecuted ex-officials to secure a jury of nine gentlemen from a neighboring asylum and three graduates from Sing-Sing, and presently they walked forth with characters vindicated.abThe legislature was called upon to spew them forth--a thing which the legislature declined to do.:;It was like asking children to repudiate their own father.%+,It was a legislature of the modern pattern.(()Being now wealthy and distinguished, Mr.$,-O'Riley, still bearing the legislative "Hon.Pattached to his name (for titles never die in America, although we do take a republican pride in poking fun at such trifles), sailed for Europe with his family.They traveled all about, turning their noses up at every thing, and not finding it a difficult thing to do, either, because nature had originally given those features a cast in that direction; and finally they established themselves in Paris, that Paradise of Americans of their sort.oThey staid there two years and learned to speak English with a foreign accent--not that it hadn't always had a foreign accent (which was indeed the case) but now the nature of it was changed.9:Finally they returned home and became ultra fashionables.4They landed here as the Hon.<=Patrique Oreille and family, and so are known unto this day.zLaura provided seats for her visitors and they immediately launched forth into a breezy, sparkling conversation with that easy confidence which is to be found only among persons accustomed to high life.@AI've been intending to call sooner, Miss Hawkins," said the Hon.LMrs.%+,Oreille, "but the weather's been so horrid.>?How do you like Washington?" Laura liked it very well indeed.LMrs.9:Gashly--"Is it your first visit?" Yea, it was her first.<All--"Indeed?" Mrs.>?Oreille--"I'm afraid you'll despise the weather, Miss Hawkins.;It's perfectly awful.C It always is.F I tell Mr.;<Oreille I can't and I won't put up with any such a climate.mnIf we were obliged to do it, I wouldn't mind it; but we are not obliged to, and so I don't see the use of it.^Sometimes its real pitiful the way the childern pine for Parry --don't look so sad, Bridget, 'ma chere'--poor child, she can't hear Parry mentioned without getting the blues.LMrs.+%&Gashly--"Well I should think so, Mrs.H Oreille.34A body lives in Paris, but a body, only stays here.3I dote on Paris; I'd druther scrimp along on ten thousand dollars a year there, than suffer and worry here on a real decent income.<Miss Gashly--"Well then, I wish you'd take us back, mother; I'm sure I hate this stoopid country enough, even if it is our dear native land. pqMiss Emmeline Gashly--"What and leave poor Johnny Peterson behind?" [An airy genial laugh applauded this sally].@Miss Gashly--"Sister, I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself!" Miss Emmeline--"Oh, you needn't ruffle your feathers so: I was only joking.XYHe don't mean anything by coming to, the house every evening --only comes to see mother.&*+Of course that's all!" [General laughter].IMiss G.12prettily confused--"Emmeline, how can you!" Mrs.0 !Let your sister alone, Emmeline.0 !I never saw such a tease!" Mrs.WXOreille--"What lovely corals you have, Miss Hawkins! Just look at them, Bridget, dear.MNI've a great passion for corals--it's a pity they're getting a little common._`I have some elegant ones--not as elegant as yours, though--but of course I don't wear them now.VLaura--"I suppose they are rather common, but still I have a great affection for these, because they were given to me by a dear old friend of our family named Murphy.!/0He was a very charming man, but very eccentric.iWe always supposed he was an Irishman, but after he got rich he went abroad for a year or two, and when he came back you would have been amused to see how interested he was in a potato.He asked what it was! Now you know that when Providence shapes a mouth especially for the accommodation of a potato you can detect that fact at a glance when that mouth is in repose--foreign travel can never remove that sign.VWBut he was a very delightful gentleman, and his little foible did not hurt him at all.'wxWe all have our shams--I suppose there is a sham somewhere about every individual, if we could manage to ferret it out.0 !I would so like to go to France.XYI suppose our society here compares very favorably with French society does it not, Mrs.AOreille?" Mrs.STNot by any means, Miss Hawkins! French society is much more elegant--much more so.0 !Laura--"I am sorry to hear that.(()I suppose ours has deteriorated of late.LMrs.?Very much indeed.%uvThere are people in society here that have really no more money to live on than what some of us pay for servant hire.STStill I won't say but what some of them are very good people--and respectable, too.OPLaura--"The old families seem to be holding themselves aloof, from what I hear.%uvI suppose you seldom meet in society now, the people you used to be familiar with twelve or fifteen years ago?" Mrs.=Oh, no-hardly ever.MMr.\O'Riley kept his first rum-mill and protected his customers from the law in those days, and this turn of the conversation was rather uncomfortable to madame than otherwise.LHon.LMrs.$,-Higgins--"Is Francois' health good now, Mrs.AOreille?" Mrs.&*+Thankful for the intervention)--"Not very.6A body couldn't expect it..~He was always delicate--especially his lungs--and this odious climate tells on him strong, now, after Parry, which is so mild.LMrs.9H:--"I should think so.&vwHusband says Percy'll die if he don't have a change; and so I'm going to swap round a little and see what can be done.BCI saw a lady from Florida last week, and she recommended Key West.!qrI told her Percy couldn't abide winds, as he was threatened with a pulmonary affection, and then she said try St.F Augustine.<It's an awful distance--ten or twelve hundred mile, they say but then in a case of this kind--a body can't stand back for trouble, you know.LMrs.7No, of course that's off. ]^If Francois don't get better soon we've got to look out for some other place, or else Europe.89We've thought some of the Hot Springs, but I don't know.<=It's a great responsibility and a body wants to go cautious.1 Is Hildebrand about again, Mrs.BGashly?" Mrs.6Yes, but that's about all.@AIt was indigestion, you know, and it looks as if it was chronic.."#And you know I do dread dyspepsia.#-.We've all been worried a good deal about him.RSThe doctor recommended baked apple and spoiled meat, and I think it done him good. CDIt's about the only thing that will stay on his stomach now-a-days.E We have Dr.E Shovel now.9Who's your doctor, Mrs.AHiggins?" Mrs.@Well, we had Dr.#stSpooner a good while, but he runs so much to emetics, which I think are weakening, that we changed off and took Dr.G Leathers.:We like him very much.)'(He has a fine European reputation, too.9The first thing he suggested for Percy was to have him taken out in the back yard for an airing, every afternoon, with nothing at all on.LMrs.H and Mrs.D What!" Mrs.4As true as I'm sitting here.@AAnd it actually helped him for two or three days; it did indeed.=But after that the doctor said it seemed to be too severe and so he has fell back on hot foot-baths at night and cold showers in the morning.VWBut I don't think there, can be any good sound help for him in such a climate as this.=>I believe we are going to lose him if we don't make a change.LMrs.HI suppose you heard of the fright we had two weeks ago last Saturday? No? Why that is strange--but come to remember, you've all been away to Richmond.)yzFrancois tumbled from the sky light--in the second-story hall clean down to the first floor--" Everybody--"Mercy!" Mrs.BCYes indeed--and broke two of his ribs--" Everybody--"What!" Mrs.7Just as true as you live.!/0First we thought he must be injured internally.#-.It was fifteen minutes past 8 in the evening.(xyOf course we were all distracted in a moment--everybody was flying everywhere, and nobody doing anything worth anything.23By and by I flung out next door and dragged in Dr.?@Sprague; President of the Medical University no time to go for our own doctor of course--and the minute he saw Francois he said, 'Send for your own physician, madam;' said it as cross as a bear, too, and turned right on his heel, and cleared out without doing a thing!" Everybody--"The mean, contemptible brute!" Mrs.8O--"Well you may say it.')*I was nearly out of my wits by this time.But we hurried off the servants after our own doctor and telegraphed mother--she was in New York and rushed down on the first train; and when the doctor got there, lo and behold you he found Francois had broke one of his legs, too!" Everybody--"Goodness!" Mrs.LYes.So he set his leg and bandaged it up, and fixed his ribs and gave him a dose of something to quiet down his excitement and put him to sleep--poor thing he was trembling and frightened to death and it was pitiful to see him.7We had him in my bed--Mr._`Oreille slept in the guest room and I laid down beside Francois--but not to sleep bless you no.bcBridget and I set up all night, and the doctor staid till two in the morning, bless his old heart.When mother got there she was so used up with anxiety, that she had to go to bed and have the doctor; but when she found that Francois was not in immediate danger she rallied, and by night she was able to take a watch herself.efWell for three days and nights we three never left that bedside only to take an hour's nap at a time.#stAnd then the doctor said Francois was out of danger and if ever there was a thankful set, in this world, it was us.Laura's respect for these, women had augmented during this conversation, naturally enough; affection and devotion are qualities that are able to adorn and render beautiful a character that is otherwise unattractive, and even repulsive.LMrs. FGGashly--"I do believe I would a died if I had been in your place, Mrs.H Oreille.cThe time Hildebrand was so low with the pneumonia Emmeline and me were all, alone with him most of the time and we never took a minute's sleep for as much as two days, and nights.56It was at Newport and we wouldn't trust hired nurses.One afternoon he had a fit, and jumped up and run out on the portico of the hotel with nothing in the world on and the wind a blowing liken ice and we after him scared to death; and when the ladies and gentlemen saw that he had a fit, every lady scattered for her room and not a gentleman lifted his hand to help, the wretches! Well after that his life hung by a thread for as much as ten days, and the minute he was out of danger Emmeline and me just went to bed sick and worn out.!/0I never want to pass through such a time again. 01Poor dear Francois--which leg did he break, Mrs.AOreille!" Mrs.1 It was his right hand hind leg.OPJump down, Francois dear, and show the ladies what a cruel limp you've got yet.EFrancois demurred, but being coaxed and delivered gently upon the floor, he performed very satisfactorily, with his "right hand hind leg" in the air.HIAll were affected--even Laura--but hers was an affection of the stomach.MThe country-bred girl had not suspected that the little whining ten-ounce black and tan reptile, clad in a red embroidered pigmy blanket and reposing in Mrs.1Oreille's lap all through the visit was the individual whose sufferings had been stirring the dormant generosities of her nature.BCShe said: "Poor little creature! You might have lost him!" Mrs.;O pray don't mention it, Miss Hawkins--it gives me such a turn!" Laura--"And Hildebrand and Percy--are they-are they like this one?" Mrs.89No, Hilly has considerable Skye blood in him, I believe.LMrs.TUPercy's the same, only he is two months and ten days older and has his ears cropped.deHis father, Martin Farquhar Tupper, was sickly, and died young, but he was the sweetest disposition.VWHis mother had heart disease but was very gentle and resigned, and a wonderful ratter.KLAs impossible and exasperating as this conversation may sound to a person who is not an idiot, it is scarcely in any respect an exaggeration of one which one of us actually listened to in an American drawing room --otherwise we could not venture to put such a chapter into a book which, professes to deal with social possibilities.D THE AUTHORS.So carried away had the visitors become by their interest attaching to this discussion of family matters, that their stay had been prolonged to a very improper and unfashionable length; but they suddenly recollected themselves now and took their departure.4Laura's scorn was boundless.&'The more she thought of these people and their extraordinary talk, the more offensive they seemed to her; and yet she confessed that if one must choose between the two extreme aristocracies it might be best, on the whole, looking at things from a strictly business point of view, to herd with the Parvenus; she was in Washington solely to compass a certain matter and to do it at any cost, and these people might be useful to her, while it was plain that her purposes and her schemes for pushing them would not find favor in the eyes of the Antiques.BIf it came to choice--and it might come to that, sooner or later--she believed she could come to a decision without much difficulty or many pangs./But the best aristocracy of the three Washington castes, and really the most powerful, by far, was that of the Middle Ground: It was made up of the families of public men from nearly every state in the Union--men who held positions in both the executive and legislative branches of the government, and whose characters had been for years blemishless, both at home and at the capital.&'These gentlemen and their households were unostentatious people; they were educated and refined; they troubled themselves but little about the two other orders of nobility, but moved serenely in their wide orbit, confident in their own strength and well aware of the potency of their influence.7They had no troublesome appearances to keep up, no rivalries which they cared to distress themselves about, no jealousies to fret over.,|}They could afford to mind their own affairs and leave other combinations to do the same or do otherwise, just as they chose. CDThey were people who were beyond reproach, and that was sufficient. GHSenator Dilworthy never came into collision with any of these factions.&*+He labored for them all and with them all.DHe said that all men were brethren and all were entitled to the honest unselfish help and countenance of a Christian laborer in the public vineyard.FLaura concluded, after reflection, to let circumstances determine the course it might be best for her to pursue as regarded the several aristocracies.noNow it might occur to the reader that perhaps Laura had been somewhat rudely suggestive in her remarks to Mrs._`Oreille when the subject of corals was under discussion, but it did not occur to Laura herself.45She was not a person of exaggerated refinement; indeed, the society and the influences that had formed her character had not been of a nature calculated to make her so; she thought that "give and take was fair play," and that to parry an offensive thrust with a sarcasm was a neat and legitimate thing to do.ZShe some times talked to people in a way which some ladies would consider, actually shocking; but Laura rather prided herself upon some of her exploits of that character.fgWe are sorry we cannot make her a faultless heroine; but we cannot, for the reason that she was human.23She considered herself a superior conversationist.1Long ago, when the possibility had first been brought before her mind that some day she might move in Washington society, she had recognized the fact that practiced conversational powers would be a necessary weapon in that field; she had also recognized the fact that since her dealings there must be mainly with men, and men whom she supposed to be exceptionally cultivated and able, she would need heavier shot in her magazine than mere brilliant "society" nothings; whereupon she had at once entered upon a tireless and elaborate course of reading, and had never since ceased to devote every unoccupied moment to this sort of preparation.KHaving now acquired a happy smattering of various information, she used it with good effect--she passed for a singularly well informed woman in Washington.IJThe quality of her literary tastes had necessarily undergone constant improvement under this regimen, and as necessarily, also; the duality of her language had improved, though it cannot be denied that now and then her former condition of life betrayed itself in just perceptible inelegancies of expression and lapses of grammar.BCHAPTER XXXIV.sWhen Laura had been in Washington three months, she was still the same person, in one respect, that she was when she first arrived there--that is to say, she still bore the name of Laura Hawkins.*&'Otherwise she was perceptibly changed.)*She had arrived in a state of grievous uncertainty as to what manner of woman she was, physically and intellectually, as compared with eastern women; she was well satisfied, now, that her beauty was confessed, her mind a grade above the average, and her powers of fascination rather extraordinary.*&'So she, was at ease upon those points.yWhen she arrived, she was possessed of habits of economy and not possessed of money; now she dressed elaborately, gave but little thought to the cost of things, and was very well fortified financially.WXShe kept her mother and Washington freely supplied with money, and did the same by Col.!qrSellers --who always insisted upon giving his note for loans--with interest; he was rigid upon that; she must take interest; and one of the Colonel's greatest satisfactions was to go over his accounts and note what a handsome sum this accruing interest amounted to, and what a comfortable though modest support it would yield Laura in case reverses should overtake her.PQIn truth he could not help feeling that he was an efficient shield for her against poverty; and so, if her expensive ways ever troubled him for a brief moment, he presently dismissed the thought and said to himself, "Let her go on--even if she loses everything she is still safe--this interest will always afford her a good easy income.hiLaura was on excellent terms with a great many members of Congress, and there was an undercurrent of suspicion in some quarters that she was one of that detested class known as "lobbyists;" but what belle could escape slander in such a city? Fairminded people declined to condemn her on mere suspicion, and so the injurious talk made no very damaging headway.mnShe was very gay, now, and very celebrated, and she might well expect to be assailed by many kinds of gossip.She was growing used to celebrity, and could already sit calm and seemingly unconscious, under the fire of fifty lorgnettes in a theatre, or even overhear the low voice "That's she!" as she passed along the street without betraying annoyance.The whole air was full of a vague vast scheme which was to eventuate in filling Laura's pockets with millions of money; some had one idea of the scheme, and some another, but nobody had any exact knowledge upon the subject. !All that any one felt sure about, was that Laura's landed estates were princely in value and extent, and that the government was anxious to get hold of them for public purposes, and that Laura was willing to make the sale but not at all anxious about the matter and not at all in a hurry.'(It was whispered that Senator Dilworthy was a stumbling block in the way of an immediate sale, because he was resolved that the government should not have the lands except with the understanding that they should be devoted to the uplifting of the negro race; Laura did not care what they were devoted to, it was said, (a world of very different gossip to the contrary notwithstanding,) but there were several other heirs and they would be guided entirely by the Senator's wishes; and finally, many people averred that while it would be easy to sell the lands to the government for the benefit of the negro, by resorting to the usual methods of influencing votes, Senator Dilworthy was unwilling to have so noble a charity sullied by any taint of corruption--he was resolved that not a vote should be bought.)yzNobody could get anything definite from Laura about these matters, and so gossip had to feed itself chiefly upon guesses.-}~But the effect of it all was, that Laura was considered to be very wealthy and likely to be vastly more so in a little while.XYConsequently she was much courted and as much envied: Her wealth attracted many suitors.JKPerhaps they came to worship her riches, but they remained to worship her.BCSome of the noblest men of the time succumbed to her fascinations.jShe frowned upon no lover when he made his first advances, but by and by when she was hopelessly enthralled, he learned from her own lips that she had formed a resolution never to marry.GThen he would go away hating and cursing the whole sex, and she would calmly add his scalp to her string, while she mused upon the bitter day that Col.23Selby trampled her love and her pride in the dust. EFIn time it came to be said that her way was paved with broken hearts."rsPoor Washington gradually woke up to the fact that he too was an intellectual marvel as well as his gifted sister.BHe could not conceive how it had come about (it did not occur to him that the gossip about his family's great wealth had any thing to do with it).:He could not account for it by any process of reasoning, and was simply obliged to accept the fact and give up trying to solve the riddle.He found himself dragged into society and courted, wondered at and envied very much as if he were one of those foreign barbers who flit over here now and then with a self-conferred title of nobility and marry some rich fool's absurd daughter.=Sometimes at a dinner party or a reception he would find himself the centre of interest, and feel unutterably uncomfortable in the discovery.WXBeing obliged to say something, he would mine his brain and put in a blast and when the smoke and flying debris had cleared away the result would be what seemed to him but a poor little intellectual clod of dirt or two, and then he would be astonished to see everybody as lost in admiration as if he had brought up a ton or two of virgin gold.cEvery remark he made delighted his hearers and compelled their applause; he overheard people say he was exceedingly bright--they were chiefly mammas and marriageable young ladies.IJHe found that some of his good things were being repeated about the town..~Whenever he heard of an instance of this kind, he would keep that particular remark in mind and analyze it at home in private.hAt first he could not see that the remark was anything better than a parrot might originate; but by and by he began to feel that perhaps he underrated his powers; and after that he used to analyze his good things with a deal of comfort, and find in them a brilliancy which would have been unapparent to him in earlier days--and then he would make a note, of that good thing and say it again the first time he found himself in a new company.Presently he had saved up quite a repertoire of brilliancies; and after that he confined himself to repeating these and ceased to originate any more, lest he might injure his reputation by an unlucky effort.23He was constantly having young ladies thrust upon his notice at receptions, or left upon his hands at parties, and in time he began to feel that he was being deliberately persecuted in this way; and after that he could not enjoy society because of his constant dread of these female ambushes and surprises.OPHe was distressed to find that nearly every time he showed a young lady a polite attention he was straightway reported to be engaged to her; and as some of these reports got into the newspapers occasionally, he had to keep writing to Louise that they were lies and she must believe in him and not mind them or allow them to grieve her.YWashington was as much in the dark as anybody with regard to the great wealth that was hovering in the air and seemingly on the point of tumbling into the family pocket.+%&Laura would give him no satisfaction.1 All she would say, was: "Wait.E Be patient.C You will see.ABBut will it be soon, Laura?" "It will not be very long, I think.>?But what makes you think so?" "I have reasons--and good ones.6Just wait, and be patient.bcBut is it going to be as much as people say it is?" "What do they say it is?" "Oh, ever so much.')*Millions!" "Yes, it will be a great sum.IJBut how great, Laura? Will it be millions?" "Yes, you may call it that.7Yes, it will be millions.<=There, now--does that satisfy you?" "Splendid! I can wait.(()I can wait patiently--ever so patiently.Once I was near selling the land for twenty thousand dollars; once for thirty thousand dollars; once after that for seven thousand dollars; and once for forty thousand dollars--but something always told me not to do it.}What a fool I would have been to sell it for such a beggarly trifle! It is the land that's to bring the money, isn't it Laura? You can tell me that much, can't you?" "Yes, I don't mind saying that much.AIt is the land.23But mind--don't ever hint that you got it from me.23Don't mention me in the matter at all, Washington.=All right--I won't.9Millions! Isn't it splendid! I mean to look around for a building lot; a lot with fine ornamental shrubbery and all that sort of thing.<I will do it to-day. [\And I might as well see an architect, too, and get him to go to work at a plan for a house. [\I don't intend to spare and expense; I mean to have the noblest house that money can build../Then after a pause--he did not notice Laura's smiles "Laura, would you lay the main hall in encaustic tiles, or just in fancy patterns of hard wood?" Laura laughed a good old-fashioned laugh that had more of her former natural self about it than any sound that had issued from her mouth in many weeks.')*She said: "You don't change, Washington.You still begin to squander a fortune right and left the instant you hear of it in the distance; you never wait till the foremost dollar of it arrives within a hundred miles of you," --and she kissed her brother good bye and left him weltering in his dreams, so to speak.He got up and walked the floor feverishly during two hours; and when he sat down he had married Louise, built a house, reared a family, married them off, spent upwards of eight hundred thousand dollars on mere luxuries, and died worth twelve millions.C CHAPTER XXXV.bcLaura went down stairs, knocked at/the study door, and entered, scarcely waiting for the response.IJSenator Dilworthy was alone--with an open Bible in his hand, upside down.WXLaura smiled, and said, forgetting her acquired correctness of speech, "It is only me.IJAh, come in, sit down," and the Senator closed the book and laid it down.<I wanted to see you. pqTime to report progress from the committee of the whole," and the Senator beamed with his own congressional wit.;<In the committee of the whole things are working very well.#-.We have made ever so much progress in a week.OPI believe that you and I together could run this government beautifully, uncle.7The Senator beamed again.67He liked to be called "uncle" by this beautiful woman.PQDid you see Hopperson last night after the congressional prayer meeting?" "Yes.H He came.78He's a kind of--" "Eh? he is one of my friends, Laura./!"He's a fine man, a very fine man.QRI don't know any man in congress I'd sooner go to for help in any Christian work. 01What did he say?" "Oh, he beat around a little.He said he should like to help the negro, his heart went out to the negro, and all that--plenty of them say that but he was a little afraid of the Tennessee Land bill; if Senator Dilworthy wasn't in it, he should suspect there was a fraud on the government.3He said that, did he?" "Yes.$,-And he said he felt he couldn't vote for it.E He was shy.7Not shy, child, cautious.7He's a very cautious man.;<I have been with him a great deal on conference committees.4He wants reasons, good ones.=>Didn't you show him he was in error about the bill?" "I did.4I went over the whole thing.cdI had to tell him some of the side arrangements, some of the--" "You didn't mention me?" "Oh, no.UVI told him you were daft about the negro and the philanthropy part of it, as you are.1 Daft is a little strong, Laura.But you know that I wouldn't touch this bill if it were not for the public good, and for the good of the colored race; much as I am interested in the heirs of this property, and would like to have them succeed.=>Laura looked a little incredulous, and the Senator proceeded.,|}Don't misunderstand me, I don't deny that it is for the interest of all of us that this bill should go through, and it will.0 !I have no concealments from you.!qrBut I have one principle in my public life, which I should like you to keep in mind; it has always been my guide._`I never push a private interest if it is not Justified and ennobled by some larger public good..~I doubt Christian would be justified in working for his own salvation if it was not to aid in the salvation of his fellow men.mThe Senator spoke with feeling, and then added, "I hope you showed Hopperson that our motives were pure?" "Yes, and he seemed to have a new light on the measure: I think will vote for it.67I hope so; his name will give tone and strength to it.ijI knew you would only have to show him that it was just and pure, in order to secure his cordial support.8I think I convinced him. 01Yes, I am perfectly sure he will vote right now.LMThat's good, that's good," said the Senator; smiling, and rubbing his hands."rsIs there anything more?" "You'll find some changes in that I guess," handing the Senator a printed list of names.0 !Those checked off are all right.%+,Ah--'m--'m," running his eye down the list.=That's encouraging.56What is the 'C' before some of the names, and the 'B.5Those are my private marks.!/0That 'C' stands for 'convinced,' with argument.IThe 'B./!"is a general sign for a relative.&*+You see it stands before three of the Hon.F Committee.9:I expect to see the chairman of the committee to-day, Mr.F Buckstone.45So, you must, he ought to be seen without any delay.HIBuckstone is a worldly sort of a fellow, but he has charitable impulses.MIf we secure him we shall have a favorable report by the committee, and it will be a great thing to be able to state that fact quietly where it will do good. \]Oh, I saw Senator Balloon" "He will help us, I suppose? Balloon is a whole-hearted fellow. CDI can't help loving that man, for all his drollery and waggishness.jkHe puts on an air of levity sometimes, but there aint a man in the senate knows the scriptures as he does./He did not make any objections?" "Not exactly, he said--shall I tell you what he said?" asked Laura glancing furtively at him.F Certainly.jkHe said he had no doubt it was a good thing; if Senator Dilworthy was in it, it would pay to look into it.WXThe Senator laughed, but rather feebly, and said, "Balloon is always full of his jokes.:I explained it to him.LMHe said it was all right, he only wanted a word with you,", continued Laura.ABHe is a handsome old gentleman, and he is gallant for an old man.IMy daughter," said the Senator, with a grave look, "I trust there was nothing free in his manner?" "Free?" repeated Laura, with indignation in her face.0 !With me!" "There, there, child. CDI meant nothing, Balloon talks a little freely sometimes, with men.7But he is right at heart.89His term expires next year and I fear we shall lose him.$,-He seemed to be packing the day I was there.>His rooms were full of dry goods boxes, into which his servant was crowding all manner of old clothes and stuff: I suppose he will paint 'Pub.."#Docs' on them and frank them home.OPThat's good economy, isn't it?" "Yes, yes, but child, all Congressmen do that.noIt may not be strictly honest, indeed it is not unless he had some public documents mixed in with the clothes.=It's a funny world.@Good-bye, uncle.1 I'm going to see that chairman.PQAnd humming a cheery opera air, she departed to her room to dress for going out.HBefore she did that, however, she took out her note book and was soon deep in its contents; marking, dashing, erasing, figuring, and talking to herself.>?Free! I wonder what Dilworthy does think of me anyway? One .Ktwo .Ieight .E seventeen .D twenty-one .-#$m'm it takes a heap for a majority.(()Wouldn't Dilworthy open his eyes if he ."./knew some of the things Balloon did say to me.IThere .#-.Hopperson's influence ought to count twenty ./!"the sanctimonious old curmudgeon.D Son-in-law .."#sinecure in the negro institution.9That about gauges him .8The three committeemen .D sons-in-law. CDNothing like a son-in-law here in Washington or a brother- in-law .9And everybody has 'em .D Let's see: .D sixty- one .C with places .C twenty-five .2persuaded--it is getting on; .%+,we'll have two-thirds of Congress in time .$,-Dilworthy must surely know I understand him.?Uncle Dilworthy .$,-Uncle Balloon!--Tells very amusing stories .3when ladies are not present .=I should think so .Mm .D Eighty-five.JThere.6I must find that chairman.JQueer.@Buckstone acts .:Seemed to be in love .?I was sure of it.6He promised to come here .Aand he hasn't .H Strange.BVery strange ./!"I must chance to meet him to-day. FGLaura dressed and went out, thinking she was perhaps too early for Mr.*z{Buckstone to come from the house, but as he lodged near the bookstore she would drop in there and keep a look out for him.(()While Laura is on her errand to find Mr.hBuckstone, it may not be out of the way to remark that she knew quite as much of Washington life as Senator Dilworthy gave her credit for, and more than she thought proper to tell him.AShe was acquainted by this time with a good many of the young fellows of Newspaper Row; and exchanged gossip with them to their mutual advantage.mThey were always talking in the Row, everlastingly gossiping, bantering and sarcastically praising things, and going on in a style which was a curious commingling of earnest and persiflage.LCol.VSellers liked this talk amazingly, though he was sometimes a little at sea in it--and perhaps that didn't lessen the relish of the conversation to the correspondents.=It seems that they had got hold of the dry-goods box packing story about Balloon, one day, and were talking it over when the Colonel came in.<=The Colonel wanted to know all about it, and Hicks told him.And then Hicks went on, with a serious air, "Colonel, if you register a letter, it means that it is of value, doesn't it? And if you pay fifteen cents for registering it, the government will have to take extra care of it and even pay you back its full value if it is lost.:Isn't that so?" "Yes.>I suppose it's so.12Well Senator Balloon put fifteen cents worth of stamps on each of those seven huge boxes of old clothes, and shipped that ton of second-hand rubbish, old boots and pantaloons and what not through the mails as registered matter! It was an ingenious thing and it had a genuine touch of humor about it, too.NI think there is more real: talent among our public men of to-day than there was among those of old times--a far more fertile fancy, a much happier ingenuity.Now, Colonel, can you picture Jefferson, or Washington or John Adams franking their wardrobes through the mails and adding the facetious idea of making the government responsible for the cargo for the sum of one dollar and five cents? Statesmen were dull creatures in those days.56I have a much greater admiration for Senator Balloon. EFYes, Balloon is a man of parts, there is no denying it" "I think so. \]He is spoken of for the post of Minister to China, or Austria, and I hope will be appointed.?@What we want abroad is good examples of the national character.jkJohn Jay and Benjamin Franklin were well enough in their day, but the nation has made progress since then.ABBalloon is a man we know and can depend on to be true to himself.:;Yes, and Balloon has had a good deal of public experience.4He is an old friend of mine.MNHe was governor of one of the territories a while, and was very satisfactory.BIndeed he was.,$%He was ex-officio Indian agent, too.Many a man would have taken the Indian appropriation and devoted the money to feeding and clothing the helpless savages, whose land had been taken from them by the white man in the interests of civilization; but Balloon knew their needs better.He built a government saw-mill on the reservation with the money, and the lumber sold for enormous prices--a relative of his did all the work free of charge--that is to say he charged nothing more than the lumber world bring.?But the poor Injuns--not that I care much for Injuns--what did he do for them?" "Gave them the outside slabs to fence in the reservation with. DEGovernor Balloon was nothing less than a father to the poor Indians.cdBut Balloon is not alone, we have many truly noble statesmen in our country's service like Balloon.5The Senate is full of them.#-.Don't you think so Colonel?" "Well, I dunno.<=I honor my country's public servants as much as any one can.cI meet them, Sir, every day, and the more I see of them the more I esteem them and the more grateful I am that our institutions give us the opportunity of securing their services.9Few lands are so blest.:That is true, Colonel.6To be sure you can buy now and then a Senator or a Representative but they do not know it is wrong, and so they are not ashamed of it.HThey are gentle, and confiding and childlike, and in my opinion these are qualities that ennoble them far more than any amount of sinful sagacity could.4I quite agree with you, Col.H Sellers.Well"--hesitated the Colonel--"I am afraid some of them do buy their seats--yes, I am afraid they do--but as Senator Dilworthy himself said to me, it is sinful,--it is very wrong--it is shameful; Heaven protect me from such a charge.4That is what Dilworthy said._And yet when you come to look at it you cannot deny that we would have to go without the services of some of our ablest men, sir, if the country were opposed to --to--bribery.=It is a harsh term.8I do not like to use it.>The Colonel interrupted himself at this point to meet an engagement with the Austrian minister, and took his leave with his usual courtly bow.BCHAPTER XXXVI.,|}In due time Laura alighted at the book store, and began to look at the titles of the handsome array of books on the counter.01A dapper clerk of perhaps nineteen or twenty years, with hair accurately parted and surprisingly slick, came bustling up and leaned over with a pretty smile and an affable-- "Can I--was there any particular book you wished to see?" "Have you Taine's England?" "Beg pardon?" "Taine's Notes on England.The young gentleman scratched the side of his nose with a cedar pencil which he took down from its bracket on the side of his head, and reflected a moment: "Ah--I see," [with a bright smile]--"Train, you mean--not Taine.;George Francis Train.9:No, ma'm we--" "I mean Taine--if I may take the liberty.&*+The clerk reflected again--then: "Taine .ITaine .-#$Is it hymns?" "No, it isn't hymns."rsIt is a volume that is making a deal of talk just now, and is very widely known--except among parties who sell it.iThe clerk glanced at her face to see if a sarcasm might not lurk somewhere in that obscure speech, but the gentle simplicity of the beautiful eyes that met his, banished that suspicion.!/0He went away and conferred with the proprietor.0 !Both appeared to be non-plussed.9:They thought and talked, and talked and thought by turns.;Then both came forward and the proprietor said: "Is it an American book, ma'm?" "No, it is an American reprint of an English translation.1 Oh! Yes--yes--I remember, now.2We are expecting it every day.?It isn't out yet. CDI think you must be mistaken, because you advertised it a week ago. 01Why no--can that be so?" "Yes, I am sure of it.56And besides, here is the book itself, on the counter.89She bought it and the proprietor retired from the field.KThen she asked the clerk for the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table--and was pained to see the admiration her beauty had inspired in him fade out of his face.$tuHe said with cold dignity, that cook books were somewhat out of their line, but he would order it if she desired it.7She said, no, never mind.XThen she fell to conning the titles again, finding a delight in the inspection of the Hawthornes, the Longfellows, the Tennysons, and other favorites of her idle hours.Meantime the clerk's eyes were busy, and no doubt his admiration was returning again--or may be he was only gauging her probable literary tastes by some sagacious system of admeasurement only known to his guild.SNow he began to "assist" her in making a selection; but his efforts met with no success--indeed they only annoyed her and unpleasantly interrupted her meditations.*+Presently, while she was holding a copy of "Venetian Life" in her hand and running over a familiar passage here and there, the clerk said, briskly, snatching up a paper-covered volume and striking the counter a smart blow with it to dislodge the dust: "Now here is a work that we've sold a lot of.LEverybody that's read it likes it"--and he intruded it under her nose; "it's a book that I can recommend--'The Pirate's Doom, or the Last of the Buccaneers.@AI think it's one of the best things that's come out this season. [\Laura pushed it gently aside her hand and went on and went on filching from "Venetian Life.*&'I believe I do not want it," she said."rsThe clerk hunted around awhile, glancing at one title and then another, but apparently not finding what he wanted.2However, he succeeded at last. DESaid he: "Have you ever read this, ma'm? I am sure you'll like it.34It's by the author of 'The Hooligans of Hackensack. GHIt is full of love troubles and mysteries and all sorts of such things.+%&The heroine strangles her own mother.OPJust glance at the title please,--'Gonderil the Vampire, or The Dance of Death.OPAnd here is 'The Jokist's Own Treasury, or, The Phunny Phellow's Bosom Phriend.`aThe funniest thing!--I've read it four times, ma'm, and I can laugh at the very sight of it yet.HIAnd 'Gonderil,' --I assure you it is the most splendid book I ever read._`I know you will like these books, ma'm, because I've read them myself and I know what they are."./Oh, I was perplexed--but I see how it is, now.HYou must have thought I asked you to tell me what sort of books I wanted--for I am apt to say things which I don't really mean, when I am absent minded.NI suppose I did ask you, didn't I?" "No ma'm,--but I--" "Yes, I must have done it, else you would not have offered your services, for fear it might be rude.%+,But don't be troubled--it was all my fault. DEI ought not to have been so heedless--I ought not to have asked you.4But you didn't ask me, ma'm.,$%We always help customers all we can.>You see our experience--living right among books all the time--that sort of thing makes us able to help a customer make a selection, you know.RSNow does it, indeed? It is part of your business, then?" "Yes'm, we always help.:How good it is of you.mnSome people would think it rather obtrusive, perhaps, but I don't--I think it is real kindness--even charity.Some people jump to conclusions without any thought--you have noticed that?" "O yes," said the clerk, a little perplexed as to whether to feel comfortable or the reverse; "Oh yes, indeed, I've often noticed that, ma'm.:;Yes, they jump to conclusions with an absurd heedlessness."#Now some people would think it odd that because you, with the budding tastes and the innocent enthusiasms natural to your time of life, enjoyed the Vampires and the volume of nursery jokes, you should imagine that an older person would delight in them too--but I do not think it odd at all.#-.I think it natural--perfectly natural in you.BAnd kind, too.You look like a person who not only finds a deep pleasure in any little thing in the way of literature that strikes you forcibly, but is willing and glad to share that pleasure with others--and that, I think, is noble and admirable--very noble and admirable..~I think we ought all--to share our pleasures with others, and do what we can to make each other happy, do not you?" "Oh, yes.@Oh, yes, indeed.1 Yes, you are quite right, ma'm./But he was getting unmistakably uncomfortable, now, notwithstanding Laura's confiding sociability and almost affectionate tone.D Yes, indeed.3Many people would think that what a bookseller--or perhaps his clerk--knows about literature as literature, in contradistinction to its character as merchandise, would hardly, be of much assistance to a person--that is, to an adult, of course--in the selection of food for the mind--except of course wrapping paper, or twine, or wafers, or something like that--but I never feel that way.:I feel that whatever service you offer me, you offer with a good heart, and I am as grateful for it as if it were the greatest boon to me.#-.And it is useful to me--it is bound to be so.9It cannot be otherwise.If you show me a book which you have read--not skimmed over or merely glanced at, but read--and you tell me that you enjoyed it and that you could read it three or four times, then I know what book I want--" "Thank you!--th--" --"to avoid.E Yes indeed.;<I think that no information ever comes amiss in this world.Once or twice I have traveled in the cars--and there you know, the peanut boy always measures you with his eye, and hands you out a book of murders if you are fond of theology; or Tupper or a dictionary or T.Arthur if you are fond of poetry; or he hands you a volume of distressing jokes or a copy of the American Miscellany if you particularly dislike that sort of literary fatty degeneration of the heart--just for the world like a pleasant spoken well-meaning gentleman in any, bookstore.WXBut here I am running on as if business men had nothing to do but listen to women talk.%+,You must pardon me, for I was not thinking.34And you must let me thank you again for helping me.AI read a good deal, and shall be in nearly every day and I would be sorry to have you think me a customer who talks too much and buys too little.89Might I ask you to give me the time? Ah-two-twenty-two.<Thank you very much.#-.I will set mine while I have the opportunity.12But she could not get her watch open, apparently.5She tried, and tried again.NOThen the clerk, trembling at his own audacity, begged to be allowed to assist.@She allowed him.<He succeeded, and was radiant under the sweet influences of her pleased face and her seductively worded acknowledgements with gratification.78Then he gave her the exact time again, and anxiously watched her turn the hands slowly till they reached the precise spot without accident or loss of life, and then he looked as happy as a man who had helped a fellow being through a momentous undertaking, and was grateful to know that he had not lived in vain.4Laura thanked him once more.pThe words were music to his ear; but what were they compared to the ravishing smile with which she flooded his whole system? When she bowed her adieu and turned away, he was no longer suffering torture in the pillory where she had had him trussed up during so many distressing moments, but he belonged to the list of her conquests and was a flattered and happy thrall, with the dawn-light of love breaking over the eastern elevations of his heart.VIt was about the hour, now, for the chairman of the House Committee on Benevolent Appropriations to make his appearance, and Laura stepped to the door to reconnoiter.?@She glanced up the street, and sure enough-- CHAPTER XXXVII.-#$That Chairman was nowhere in sight.STSuch disappointments seldom occur in novels, but are always happening in real life.-#$She was obliged to make a new plan.HIShe sent him a note, and asked him to call in the evening--which he did.;She received the Hon._`Buckstone with a sunny smile, and said: "I don't know how I ever dared to send you a note, Mr.LMBuckstone, for you have the reputation of not being very partial to our sex.>?Why I am sure my reputation does me wrong, then, Miss Hawkins.hiI have been married once--is that nothing in my favor?" "Oh, yes--that is, it may be and it may not be.lmIf you have known what perfection is in woman, it is fair to argue that inferiority cannot interest you now._`Even if that were the case it could not affect you, Miss Hawkins," said the chairman gallantly.HIFame does not place you in the list of ladies who rank below perfection.1 This happy speech delighted Mr. 01Buckstone as much as it seemed to delight Laura.<=But it did not confuse him as much as it apparently did her.WXI wish in all sincerity that I could be worthy of such a felicitous compliment as that. \]But I am a woman, and so I am gratified for it just as it is, and would not have it altered.QRBut it is not merely a compliment--that is, an empty complement--it is the truth.6All men will endorse that. CDLaura looked pleased, and said: "It is very kind of you to say it.opIt is a distinction indeed, for a country-bred girl like me to be so spoken of by people of brains and culture._`You are so kind that I know you will pardon my putting you to the trouble to come this evening.7Indeed it was no trouble.>It was a pleasure.NI am alone in the world since I lost my wife, and I often long for the society of your sex, Miss Hawkins, notwithstanding what people may say to the contrary.,$%It is pleasant to hear you say that.8I am sure it must be so.If I feel lonely at times, because of my exile from old friends, although surrounded by new ones who are already very dear to me, how much more lonely must you feel, bereft as you are, and with no wholesome relief from the cares of state that weigh you down. [\For your own sake, as well as for the sake of others, you ought to go into society oftener.ghI seldom see you at a reception, and when I do you do not usually give me very, much of your attention.deI never imagined that you wished it or I would have been very glad to make myself happy in that way. [\But one seldom gets an opportunity to say more than a sentence to you in a place like that.QRYou are always the centre of a group--a fact which you may have noticed yourself.RSBut if one might come here--" "Indeed you would always find a hearty welcome, Mr.F Buckstone.$tuI have often wished you would come and tell me more about Cairo and the Pyramids, as you once promised me you would.deWhy, do you remember that yet, Miss Hawkins? I thought ladies' memories were more fickle than that.34Oh, they are not so fickle as gentlemen's promises.-}~And besides, if I had been inclined to forget, I--did you not give me something by way of a remembrancer?" "Did I?" "Think. DEIt does seem to me that I did; but I have forgotten what it was now.,|}Never, never call a lady's memory fickle again! Do you recognize this?" "A little spray of box! I am beaten--I surrender.KLBut have you kept that all this time?" Laura's confusion was very, pretty.&vwShe tried to hide it, but the more she tried the more manifest it became and withal the more captivating to look upon._`Presently she threw the spray of box from her with an annoyed air, and said: "I forgot myself.7I have been very foolish.#-.I beg that you will forget this absurd thing.MMr.)yzBuckstone picked up the spray, and sitting down by Laura's side on the sofa, said: "Please let me keep it, Miss Hawkins.,$%I set a very high value upon it now.>Give it to me, Mr.1 Buckstone, and do not speak so.9:I have been sufficiently punished for my thoughtlessness.23You cannot take pleasure in adding to my distress.;Please give it to me.+%&Indeed I do not wish to distress you.KLBut do not consider the matter so gravely; you have done yourself no wrong.noYou probably forgot that you had it; but if you had given it to me I would have kept it--and not forgotten it.=Do not talk so, Mr.F Buckstone.#-.Give it to me, please, and forget the matter.NOIt would not be kind to refuse, since it troubles you so, and so I restore it. But if you would give me part of it and keep the rest--" "So that you might have something to remind you of me when you wished to laugh at my foolishness?" "Oh, by no means, no! Simply that I might remember that I had once assisted to discomfort you, and be reminded to do so no more.!/0Laura looked up, and scanned his face a moment.`She was about to break the twig, but she hesitated and said: "If I were sure that you--" She threw the spray away, and continued: "This is silly! We will change the subject."./No, do not insist--I must have my way in this.H Then Mr.IBuckstone drew off his forces and proceeded to make a wily advance upon the fortress under cover of carefully--contrived artifices and stratagems of war.@But he contended with an alert and suspicious enemy; and so at the end of two hours it was manifest to him that he had made but little progress.#-.Still, he had made some; he was sure of that.MNLaura sat alone and communed with herself; "He is fairly hooked, poor thing.89I can play him at my leisure and land him when I choose.IJHe was all ready to be caught, days and days ago --I saw that, very well. pqHe will vote for our bill--no fear about that; and moreover he will work for it, too, before I am done with him.[If he had a woman's eyes he would have noticed that the spray of box had grown three inches since he first gave it to me, but a man never sees anything and never suspects. FGIf I had shown him a whole bush he would have thought it was the same.78Well, it is a good night's work: the committee is safe. \]But this is a desperate game I am playing in these days --a wearing, sordid, heartless game.&*+If I lose, I lose everything--even myself.JKAnd if I win the game, will it be worth its cost after all? I do not know.>Sometimes I doubt.*&'Sometimes I half wish I had not begun.LMBut no matter; I have begun, and I will never turn back; never while I live.MMr.SBuckstone indulged in a reverie as he walked homeward: "She is shrewd and deep, and plays her cards with considerable discretion--but she will lose, for all that.=>There is no hurry; I shall come out winner, all in good time.QRShe is the most beautiful woman in the world; and she surpassed herself to-night.0I suppose I must vote for that bill, in the end maybe; but that is not a matter of much consequence the government can stand it.4She is bent on capturing me, that is plain; but she will find by and by that what she took for a sleeping garrison was an ambuscade.@CHAPTER XXXVIII.Now this surprising news caus'd her fall in 'a trance, Life as she were dead, no limbs she could advance, Then her dear brother came, her from the ground he took And she spake up and said, O my poor heart is broke.6The Barnardcastle Tragedy.mnDon't you think he is distinguished looking?" "What! That gawky looking person, with Miss Hawkins?" "There.6He's just speaking to Mrs.D Schoonmaker."./Such high-bred negligence and unconsciousness.@Nothing studied.>See his fine eyes.KVery.3They are moving this way now.8Maybe he is coming here.)'(But he looks as helpless as a rag baby.%uvWho is he, Blanche?" "Who is he? And you've been here a week, Grace, and don't know? He's the catch of the season.)'(That's Washington Hawkins--her brother.=>No, is it?" "Very old family, old Kentucky family I believe.89He's got enormous landed property in Tennessee, I think.PQThe family lost everything, slaves and that sort of thing, you know, in the war.ABBut they have a great deal of land, minerals, mines and all that.MMr.Hawkins and his sister too are very much interested in the amelioration of the condition of the colored race; they have some plan, with Senator Dilworthy, to convert a large part of their property to something another for the freedmen.?@You don't say so? I thought he was some guy from Pennsylvania.0 !But he is different from others.56Probably he has lived all his life on his plantation.2It was a day reception of Mrs.IJRepresentative Schoonmaker, a sweet woman, of simple and sincere manners.45Her house was one of the most popular in Washington.@There was less ostentation there than in some others, and people liked to go where the atmosphere reminded them of the peace and purity of home.LMrs._Schoonmaker was as natural and unaffected in Washington society as she was in her own New York house, and kept up the spirit of home-life there, with her husband and children.NOAnd that was the reason, probably, why people of refinement liked to go there.ghWashington is a microcosm, and one can suit himself with any sort of society within a radius of a mile.nTo a large portion of the people who frequent Washington or dwell where, the ultra fashion, the shoddy, the jobbery are as utterly distasteful as they would be in a refined New England City.%uvSchoonmaker was not exactly a leader in the House, but he was greatly respected for his fine talents and his honesty.cdNo one would have thought of offering to carry National Improvement Directors Relief stock for him.These day receptions were attended by more women than men, and those interested in the problem might have studied the costumes of the ladies present, in view of this fact, to discover whether women dress more for the eyes of women or for effect upon men.YIt is a very important problem, and has been a good deal discussed, and its solution would form one fixed, philosophical basis, upon which to estimate woman's character.4We are inclined to take a medium ground, and aver that woman dresses to please herself, and in obedience to a law of her own nature.(()They are coming this way," said Blanche.=>People who made way for them to pass, turned to look at them.cWashington began to feel that the eyes of the public were on him also, and his eyes rolled about, now towards the ceiling, now towards the floor, in an effort to look unconscious.5Good morning, Miss Hawkins.F Delighted.MMr.H Hawkins.9My friend, Miss Medlar.MMr.`aHawkins, who was endeavoring to square himself for a bow, put his foot through the train of Mrs._`Senator Poplin, who looked round with a scowl, which turned into a smile as she saw who it was.5In extricating himself, Mr.lHawkins, who had the care of his hat as well as the introduction on his mind, shambled against Miss Blanche, who said pardon, with the prettiest accent, as if the awkwardness were her own.IAnd Mr.8Hawkins righted himself.)'(Don't you find it very warm to-day, Mr.%+,Hawkins?" said Blanche, by way of a remark./!"It's awful hot," said Washington.89It's warm for the season," continued Blanche pleasantly.%uvBut I suppose you are accustomed to it," she added, with a general idea that the thermometer always stands at 90 deg.*&'in all parts of the late slave states.;Washington weather generally cannot be very congenial to you?" "It's congenial," said Washington brightening up, "when it's not congealed.?That's very good.8Did you hear, Grace, Mr.45Hawkins says it's congenial when it's not congealed.78What is, dear?" said Grace, who was talking with Laura.&*+The conversation was now finely under way.23Washington launched out an observation of his own. DEDid you see those Japs, Miss Leavitt?" "Oh, yes, aren't they queer./!"But so high-bred, so picturesque.12Do you think that color makes any difference, Mr.34Hawkins? I used to be so prejudiced against color.:Did you? I never was.&*+I used to think my old mammy was handsome.JKHow interesting your life must have been! I should like to hear about it.IJWashington was about settling himself into his narrative style, when Mrs.LGen.8McFingal caught his eye.(()Have you been at the Capitol to-day, Mr.2Hawkins?" Washington had not.@AIs anything uncommon going on?" "They say it was very exciting.2The Alabama business you know.LGen. DESutler, of Massachusetts, defied England, and they say he wants war.<=He wants to make himself conspicuous more like," said Laura.bcHe always, you have noticed, talks with one eye on the gallery, while the other is on the speaker.?@Well, my husband says, its nonsense to talk of war, and wicked.;He knows what war is.>?If we do have war, I hope it will be for the patriots of Cuba./!"Don't you think we want Cuba, Mr.56Hawkins?" "I think we want it bad," said Washington.>And Santo Domingo.VWSenator Dilworthy says, we are bound to extend our religion over the isles of the sea.}We've got to round out our territory, and--" Washington's further observations were broken off by Laura, who whisked him off to another part of the room, and reminded him that they must make their adieux.45How stupid and tiresome these people are," she said.G Let's go.?They were turning to say good-by to the hostess, when Laura's attention was arrested by the sight of a gentleman who was just speaking to Mrs.D Schoonmaker.)'(For a second her heart stopped beating.8He was a handsome man of forty and perhaps more, with grayish hair and whiskers, and he walked with a cane, as if he were slightly lame.TUHe might be less than forty, for his face was worn into hard lines, and he was pale.MNo.+%&It could not be, she said to herself.7It is only a resemblance.<But as the gentleman turned and she saw his full face, Laura put out her hand and clutched Washington's arm to prevent herself from falling.LMWashington, who was not minding anything, as usual, looked 'round in wonder.ijLaura's eyes were blazing fire and hatred; he had never seen her look so before; and her face, was livid.67Why, what is it, sis? Your face is as white as paper.?It's he, it's he.*&'Come, come," and she dragged him away.?@It's who?" asked Washington, when they had gained the carriage.6It's nobody, it's nothing.')*Did I say he? I was faint with the heat.?Don't mention it.>?Don't you speak of it," she added earnestly, grasping his arm.UVWhen she had gained her room she went to the glass and saw a pallid and haggard face.(()My God," she cried, "this will never do.+%&I should have killed him, if I could.23The scoundrel still lives, and dares to come here.<I ought to kill him.8He has no right to live.AHow I hate him.<And yet I loved him.,$%Oh heavens, how I did love that man.%+,And why didn't he kill me? He might better.,$%He did kill all that was good in me.4Oh, but he shall not escape.2He shall not escape this time.:He may have forgotten. 01He will find that a woman's hate doesn't forget.IThe law? What would the law do but protect him and make me an outcast? How all Washington would gather up its virtuous skirts and avoid me, if it knew.YI wonder if he hates me as I do him?" So Laura raved, in tears and in rage by turns, tossed in a tumult of passion, which she gave way to with little effort to control.)'(A servant came to summon her to dinner.=She had a headache.$,-The hour came for the President's reception.?@She had a raving headache, and the Senator must go without her.89That night of agony was like another night she recalled.,$%How vividly it all came back to her.BCAnd at that time she remembered she thought she might be mistaken.6He might come back to her.&*+Perhaps he loved her, a little, after all.7Now, she knew he did not.<=Now, she knew he was a cold-blooded scoundrel, without pity.0 !Never a word in all these years.6She had hoped he was dead.0 !Did his wife live, she wondered.>?She caught at that--and it gave a new current to her thoughts.*&'Perhaps, after all --she must see him.*&'She could not live without seeing him.5Would he smile as in the old days when she loved him so; or would he sneer as when she last saw him? If he looked so, she hated him.HIIf he should call her "Laura, darling," and look SO! She must find him.8She must end her doubts.9Laura kept her room for two days, on one excuse and another--a nervous headache, a cold--to the great anxiety of the Senator's household.$tuCallers, who went away, said she had been too gay--they did not say "fast," though some of them may have thought it.JOne so conspicuous and successful in society as Laura could not be out of the way two days, without remarks being made, and not all of them complimentary.XYWhen she came down she appeared as usual, a little pale may be, but unchanged in manner.HIIf there were any deepened lines about the eyes they had been concealed.&*+Her course of action was quite determined. \]At breakfast she asked if any one had heard any unusual noise during the night? Nobody had. FGWashington never heard any noise of any kind after his eyes were shut.<=Some people thought he never did when they were open either.%+,Senator Dilworthy said he had come in late.PQHe was detained in a little consultation after the Congressional prayer meeting.4Perhaps it was his entrance.ANo, Laura said.AShe heard that.C It was later.WXShe might have been nervous, but she fancied somebody was trying to get into the house.MMr.efBrierly humorously suggested that it might be, as none of the members were occupied in night session.STThe Senator frowned, and said he did not like to hear that kind of newspaper slang.2There might be burglars about.89Laura said that very likely it was only her nervousness. YZBut she thought she world feel safer if Washington would let her take one of his pistols.deWashington brought her one of his revolvers, and instructed her in the art of loading and firing it.%+,During the morning Laura drove down to Mrs.+%&Schoonmaker's to pay a friendly call.jkYour receptions are always delightful," she said to that lady, "the pleasant people all seem to come here.!/0It's pleasant to hear you say so, Miss Hawkins.)'(I believe my friends like to come here. FGThough society in Washington is mixed; we have a little of everything. YZI suppose, though, you don't see much of the old rebel element?" said Laura with a smile.:If this seemed to Mrs.kSchoonmaker a singular remark for a lady to make, who was meeting "rebels" in society every day, she did not express it in any way, but only said, "You know we don't say 'rebel' anymore.MNBefore we came to Washington I thought rebels would look unlike other people.UVI find we are very much alike, and that kindness and good nature wear away prejudice.:;And then you know there are all sorts of common interests.%uvMy husband sometimes says that he doesn't see but confederates are just as eager to get at the treasury as Unionists.?You know that Mr.+%&Schoonmaker is on the appropriations.&*+Does he know many Southerners?" "Oh, yes.12There were several at my reception the other day.4Among others a confederate Colonel--a stranger--handsome man with gray hair, probably you didn't notice him, uses a cane in walking.;A very agreeable man.7I wondered why he called.STWhen my husband came home and looked over the cards, he said he had a cotton claim.>A real southerner.89Perhaps you might know him if I could think of his name.0 !Yes, here's his card--Louisiana.8Laura took the card, looked at it intently till she was sure of the address, and then laid it down, with, "No, he is no friend of ours.>?That afternoon, Laura wrote and dispatched the following note.YIt was in a round hand, unlike her flowing style, and it was directed to a number and street in Georgetown:-- "A Lady at Senator Dilworthy's would like to see Col.@AGeorge Selby, on business connected with the Cotton Claims."./Can he call Wednesday at three o'clock P.<On Wednesday at 3 P. CDM, no one of the family was likely to be in the house except Laura.BCHAPTER XXXIX.LCol. DESelby had just come to Washington, and taken lodgings in Georgetown.NOHis business was to get pay for some cotton that was destroyed during the war.#stThere were many others in Washington on the same errand, some of them with claims as difficult to establish as his.IA concert of action was necessary, and he was not, therefore, at all surprised to receive the note from a lady asking him to call at Senator Dilworthy's.QRAt a little after three on Wednesday he rang the bell of the Senator's residence. GHIt was a handsome mansion on the Square opposite the President's house.|The owner must be a man of great wealth, the Colonel thought; perhaps, who knows, said he with a smile, he may have got some of my cotton in exchange for salt and quinine after the capture of New Orleans.MAs this thought passed through his mind he was looking at the remarkable figure of the Hero of New Orleans, holding itself by main strength from sliding off the back of the rearing bronze horse, and lifting its hat in the manner of one who acknowledges the playing of that martial air: "See, the Conquering Hero Comes!" "Gad," said the Colonel to himself, "Old Hickory ought to get down and give his seat to Gen.*&'Sutler--but they'd have to tie him on.2Laura was in the drawing room.bcShe heard the bell, she heard the steps in the hall, and the emphatic thud of the supporting cane.0She had risen from her chair and was leaning against the piano, pressing her left hand against the violent beating of her heart. [\The door opened and the Colonel entered, standing in the full light of the opposite window.CLaura was more in the shadow and stood for an instant, long enough for the Colonel to make the inward observation that she was a magnificent Woman.7She then advanced a step.LCol.#stSelby, is it not?" The Colonel staggered back, caught himself by a chair, and turned towards her a look of terror.:;Laura? My God!" "Yes, your wife!" "Oh, no, it can't be.3How came you here? I thought you were--" "You thought I was dead? You thought you were rid of me? Not so long as you live, Col.LMSelby, not so long as you live;" Laura in her passion was hurried on to say.4No man had ever accused Col.=Selby of cowardice.*&'But he was a coward before this woman.*&'May be he was not the man he once was.bWhere was his coolness? Where was his sneering, imperturbable manner, with which he could have met, and would have met, any woman he had wronged, if he had only been forewarned.;<He felt now that he must temporize, that he must gain time./!"There was danger in Laura's tone."./There was something frightful in her calmness.+%&Her steady eyes seemed to devour him.WXYou have ruined my life," she said; "and I was so young, so ignorant, and loved you so. Z[You betrayed me, and left me mocking me and trampling me into the dust, a soiled cast-off.+%&You might better have killed me then./!"Then I should not have hated you.efLaura," said the Colonel, nerving himself, but still pale, and speaking appealingly, "don't say that.D Reproach me.C I deserve it.>I was a scoundrel.5I was everything monstrous.2But your beauty made me crazy.BYou are right.*&'I was a brute in leaving you as I did.1But what could I do? I was married, and--" "And your wife still lives?" asked Laura, bending a little forward in her eagerness.opThe Colonel noticed the action, and he almost said "no," but he thought of the folly of attempting concealment.LYes.D She is here. GHWhat little color had wandered back into Laura's face forsook it again.@AHer heart stood still, her strength seemed going from her limbs.9Her last hope was gone.GThe room swam before her for a moment, and the Colonel stepped towards her, but she waved him back, as hot anger again coursed through her veins, and said, "And you dare come with her, here, and tell me of it, here and mock me with it! And you think I will have it; George? You think I will let you live with that woman? You think I am as powerless as that day I fell dead at your feet?" She raged now.-#$She was in a tempest of excitement.56And she advanced towards him with a threatening mien.mnShe would kill me if she could, thought the Colonel; but he thought at the same moment, how beautiful she is.2He had recovered his head now.She was lovely when he knew her, then a simple country girl, Now she was dazzling, in the fullness of ripe womanhood, a superb creature, with all the fascination that a woman of the world has for such a man as Col.JSelby.0 !Nothing of this was lost on him.fHe stepped quickly to her, grasped both her hands in his, and said, "Laura, stop! think! Suppose I loved you yet! Suppose I hated my fate! What can I do? I am broken by the war.2I have lost everything almost.)'(I had as lief be dead and done with it.JKThe Colonel spoke with a low remembered voice that thrilled through Laura.NHe was looking into her eyes as he had looked in those old days, when no birds of all those that sang in the groves where they walked sang a note of warning.AHe was wounded.;He had been punished.AHer strength forsook her with her rage, and she sank upon a chair, sobbing, "Oh! my God, I thought I hated him!" The Colonel knelt beside her.')*He took her hand and she let him keep it.UVShe, looked down into his face, with a pitiable tenderness, and said in a weak voice.?@And you do love me a little?" The Colonel vowed and protested.0 !He kissed her hand and her lips.)'(He swore his false soul into perdition.4She wanted love, this woman.Was not her love for George Selby deeper than any other woman's could be? Had she not a right to him? Did he not belong to her by virtue of her overmastering passion? His wife--she was not his wife, except by the law.?She could not be.STEven with the law she could have no right to stand between two souls that were one.JKIt was an infamous condition in society that George should be tied to her. CDLaura thought this, believed it; because she desired to believe it. YZShe came to it as an original propositions founded an the requirements of her own nature.LShe may have heard, doubtless she had, similar theories that were prevalent at that day, theories of the tyranny of marriage and of the freedom of marriage.GShe had even heard women lecturers say, that marriage should only continue so long as it pleased either party to it --for a year, or a month, or a day._`She had not given much heed to this, but she saw its justice now in a dash of revealing desire.?It must be right.FGod would not have permitted her to love George Selby as she did, and him to love her, if it was right for society to raise up a barrier between them.=He belonged to her.Had he not confessed it himself? Not even the religious atmosphere of Senator Dilworthy's house had been sufficient to instill into Laura that deep Christian principle which had been somehow omitted in her training.iIndeed in that very house had she not heard women, prominent before the country and besieging Congress, utter sentiments that fully justified the course she was marking out for herself.?@They were seated now, side by side, talking with more calmness.,$%Laura was happy, or thought she was.fBut it was that feverish sort of happiness which is snatched out of the black shadow of falsehood, and is at the moment recognized as fleeting and perilous, and indulged tremblingly.F She loved.BShe was loved.4That is happiness certainly.deAnd the black past and the troubled present and the uncertain future could not snatch that from her.rWhat did they say as they sat there? What nothings do people usually say in such circumstances, even if they are three-score and ten? It was enough for Laura to hear his voice and be near him.WXIt was enough for him to be near her, and avoid committing himself as much as he could.,$%Enough for him was the present also./Had there not always been some way out of such scrapes? And yet Laura could not be quite content without prying into tomorrow.\How could the Colonel manage to free himself from his wife? Would it be long? Could he not go into some State where it would not take much time? He could not say exactly.8That they must think of.7That they must talk over.F And so on.&vwDid this seem like a damnable plot to Laura against the life, maybe, of a sister, a woman like herself? Probably not.TUIt was right that this man should be hers, and there were some obstacles in the way.C That was all.VWThere are as good reasons for bad actions as for good ones,--to those who commit them.NOWhen one has broken the tenth commandment, the others are not of much account.Was it unnatural, therefore, that when George Selby departed, Laura should watch him from the window, with an almost joyful heart as he went down the sunny square? "I shall see him to-morrow," she said, "and the next day, and the next.AHe is mine now. FGDamn the woman," said the Colonel as he picked his way down the steps.STOr," he added, as his thoughts took a new turn, "I wish my wife was in New Orleans.E CHAPTER XL.KOpen your ears; for which of you will stop, The vent of hearing when loud Rumor speaks? I, from the orient to the drooping west, Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold The acts commenced on this ball of earth: Upon my tongues continual slanders ride; The which in every language I pronounce, Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.BKing Henry IV.0 !As may be readily believed, Col.HIBeriah Sellers was by this time one of the best known men in Washington.<=For the first time in his life his talents had a fair field..~He was now at the centre of the manufacture of gigantic schemes, of speculations of all sorts, of political and social gossip.UVThe atmosphere was full of little and big rumors and of vast, undefined expectations.HEverybody was in haste, too, to push on his private plan, and feverish in his haste, as if in constant apprehension that tomorrow would be Judgment Day.lmWork while Congress is in session, said the uneasy spirit, for in the recess there is no work and no device.ijThe Colonel enjoyed this bustle and confusion amazingly; he thrived in the air of-indefinite expectation.kAll his own schemes took larger shape and more misty and majestic proportions; and in this congenial air, the Colonel seemed even to himself to expand into something large and mysterious. ]^If he respected himself before, he almost worshipped Beriah Sellers now, as a superior being.!qrIf he could have chosen an official position out of the highest, he would have been embarrassed in the selection.abThe presidency of the republic seemed too limited and cramped in the constitutional restrictions.#stIf he could have been Grand Llama of the United States, that might have come the nearest to his idea of a position.hiAnd next to that he would have luxuriated in the irresponsible omniscience of the Special Correspondent.LCol.6Sellers knew the President very well, and had access to his presence when officials were kept cooling their heels in the Waiting-room.The President liked to hear the Colonel talk, his voluble ease was a refreshment after the decorous dullness of men who only talked business and government, and everlastingly expounded their notions of justice and the distribution of patronage.QRThe Colonel was as much a lover of farming and of horses as Thomas Jefferson was.<He talked to the President by the hour about his magnificent stud, and his plantation at Hawkeye, a kind of principality--he represented it.TUHe urged the President to pay him a visit during the recess, and see his stock farm.The President's table is well enough," he used to say, to the loafers who gathered about him at Willard's, "well enough for a man on a salary, but God bless my soul, I should like him to see a little old-fashioned hospitality--open house, you know.%uvA person seeing me at home might think I paid no attention to what was in the house, just let things flow in and out.?He'd be mistaken.1 What I look to is quality, sir._`The President has variety enough, but the quality! Vegetables of course you can't expect here.1 I'm very particular about mine.PQTake celery, now --there's only one spot in this country where celery will grow.-#$But I an surprised about the wines. CDI should think they were manufactured in the New York Custom House."./I must send the President some from my cellar.deI was really mortified the other day at dinner to see Blacque Bey leave his standing in the glasses. When the Colonel first came to Washington he had thoughts of taking the mission to Constantinople, in order to be on the spot to look after the dissemination, of his Eye Water, but as that invention; was not yet quite ready, the project shrank a little in the presence of vaster schemes.LMBesides he felt that he could do the country more good by remaining at home.^_He was one of the Southerners who were constantly quoted as heartily "accepting the situation.JI'm whipped," he used to say with a jolly laugh, "the government was too many for me; I'm cleaned out, done for, except my plantation and private mansion. CDWe played for a big thing, and lost it, and I don't whine, for one.56I go for putting the old flag on all the vacant lots.1I said to the President, says I, 'Grant, why don't you take Santo Domingo, annex the whole thing, and settle the bill afterwards.BThat's my way.+%&I'd, take the job to manage Congress.3The South would come into it.ghYou've got to conciliate the South, consolidate the two debts, pay 'em off in greenbacks, and go ahead.?That's my notion.OPBoutwell's got the right notion about the value of paper, but he lacks courage.>?I should like to run the treasury department about six months.#-.I'd make things plenty, and business look up.&*+The Colonel had access to the departments.HIHe knew all the senators and representatives, and especially, the lobby.He was consequently a great favorite in Newspaper Row, and was often lounging in the offices there, dropping bits of private, official information, which were immediately, caught up and telegraphed all over the country.KBut it need to surprise even the Colonel when he read it, it was embellished to that degree that he hardly recognized it, and the hint was not lost on him.WXHe began to exaggerate his heretofore simple conversation to suit the newspaper demand.89People used to wonder in the winters of 187- and 187-, where the "Specials" got that remarkable information with which they every morning surprised the country, revealing the most secret intentions of the President and his cabinet, the private thoughts of political leaders, the hidden meaning of every movement.*&'This information was furnished by Col.H Sellers.When he was asked, afterwards, about the stolen copy of the Alabama Treaty which got into the "New York Tribune," he only looked mysterious, and said that neither he nor Senator Dilworthy knew anything about it.`aBut those whom he was in the habit of meeting occasionally felt almost certain that he did know.cdIt must not be supposed that the Colonel in his general patriotic labors neglected his own affairs.The Columbus River Navigation Scheme absorbed only a part of his time, so he was enabled to throw quite a strong reserve force of energy into the Tennessee Land plan, a vast enterprise commensurate with his abilities, and in the prosecution of which he was greatly aided by Mr.0Henry Brierly, who was buzzing about the capitol and the hotels day and night, and making capital for it in some mysterious way.:;We must create, a public opinion," said Senator Dilworthy.noMy only interest in it is a public one, and if the country wants the institution, Congress will have to yield.KLIt may have been after a conversation between the Colonel and Senator Dilworthy that the following special despatch was sent to a New York newspaper: "We understand that a philanthropic plan is on foot in relation to the colored race that will, if successful, revolutionize the whole character of southern industry.MAn experimental institution is in contemplation in Tennessee which will do for that state what the Industrial School at Zurich did for Switzerland.JKWe learn that approaches have been made to the heirs of the late Hon.'wxSilas Hawkins of Missouri, in reference to a lease of a portion of their valuable property in East Tennessee.;Senator Dilworthy, it is understood, is inflexibly opposed to any arrangement that will not give the government absolute control.89Private interests must give way to the public good.5It is to be hoped that Col.TUSellers, who represents the heirs, will be led to see the matter in this light.STWhen Washington Hawkins read this despatch, he went to the Colonel in some anxiety.9:He was for a lease, he didn't want to surrender anything.GWhat did he think the government would offer? Two millions? "May be three, may be four," said the Colonel, "it's worth more than the bank of England.^_If they will not lease," said Washington, "let 'em make it two millions for an undivided half.45I'm not going to throw it away, not the whole of it.+{|Harry told the Colonel that they must drive the thing through, he couldn't be dallying round Washington when Spring opened. CDPhil wanted him, Phil had a great thing on hand up in Pennsylvania.XYWhat is that?" inquired the Colonel, always ready to interest himself in anything large.1 A mountain of coal; that's all.12He's going to run a tunnel into it in the Spring.8Does he want any capital?", asked the Colonel, in the tone of a man who is given to calculating carefully before he makes an investment.MNo.4Old man Bolton's behind him. FGHe has capital, but I judged that he wanted my experience in starting.<=If he wants me, tell him I'll come, after Congress adjourns.(()I should like to give him a little lift.45He lacks enterprise--now, about that Columbus River.5He doesn't see his chances.OPBut he's a good fellow, and you can tell him that Sellers won't go back on him.iBy the way," asked Harry, "who is that rather handsome party that's hanging 'round Laura? I see him with her everywhere, at the Capitol, in the horse cars, and he comes to Dilworthy's. DEIf he weren't lame, I should think he was going to run off with her.=Oh, that's nothing.7Laura knows her business.:He has a cotton claim.+%&Used to be at Hawkeye during the war.0 !Selby's his name, was a Colonel.:Got a wife and family.+%&Very respectable people, the Selby's.78Well, that's all right," said Harry, "if it's business.NOBut if a woman looked at me as I've seen her at Selby, I should understand it.*&'And it's talked about, I can tell you. CDJealousy had no doubt sharpened this young gentleman's observation.:Laura could not have treated him with more lofty condescension if she had been the Queen of Sheba, on a royal visit to the great republic.oAnd he resented it, and was "huffy" when he was with her, and ran her errands, and brought her gossip, and bragged of his intimacy with the lovely creature among the fellows at Newspaper Row. [\Laura's life was rushing on now in the full stream of intrigue and fashionable dissipation.BShe was conspicuous at the balls of the fastest set, and was suspected of being present at those doubtful suppers that began late and ended early.TUIf Senator Dilworthy remonstrated about appearances, she had a way of silencing him.-}~Perhaps she had some hold on him, perhaps she was necessary to his plan for ameliorating the condition the tube colored race.D She saw Col.56Selby, when the public knew and when it did not know.HIShe would see him, whatever excuses he made, and however he avoided her. ]^She was urged on by a fever of love and hatred and jealousy, which alternately possessed her.HISometimes she petted him, and coaxed him and tried all her fascinations. 01And again she threatened him and reproached him.-}~What was he doing? Why had he taken no steps to free himself? Why didn't he send his wife home? She should have money soon.."#They could go to Europe--anywhere.What did she care for talk? And he promised, and lied, and invented fresh excuses for delay, like a cowardly gambler and roue as he was, fearing to break with her, and half the time unwilling to give her up. [\That woman doesn't know what fear is," he said to himself, "and she watches me like a hawk.eHe told his wife that this woman was a lobbyist, whom he had to tolerate and use in getting through his claims, and that he should pay her and have done with her, when he succeeded.D CHAPTER XLI.%uvHenry Brierly was at the Dilworthy's constantly and on such terms of intimacy that he came and went without question.The Senator was not an inhospitable man, he liked to have guests in his house, and Harry's gay humor and rattling way entertained him; for even the most devout men and busy statesmen must have hours of relaxation.GHarry himself believed that he was of great service in the University business, and that the success of the scheme depended upon him to a great degree. EFHe spent many hours in talking it over with the Senator after dinner.8He went so far as to consider whether it would be worth his while to take the professorship of civil engineering in the new institution.]But it was not the Senator's society nor his dinners--at which this scapegrace remarked that there was too much grace and too little wine --which attracted him to the horse.'wxThe fact was the poor fellow hung around there day after day for the chance of seeing Laura for five minutes at a time.[For her presence at dinner he would endure the long bore of the Senator's talk afterwards, while Laura was off at some assembly, or excused herself on the plea of fatigue.!"Now and then he accompanied her to some reception, and rarely, on off nights, he was blessed with her company in the parlor, when he sang, and was chatty and vivacious and performed a hundred little tricks of imitation and ventriloquism, and made himself as entertaining as a man could be.5It puzzled him not a little that all his fascinations seemed to go for so little with Laura; it was beyond his experience with women.JSometimes Laura was exceedingly kind and petted him a little, and took the trouble to exert her powers of pleasing, and to entangle him deeper and deeper.\But this, it angered him afterwards to think, was in private; in public she was beyond his reach, and never gave occasion to the suspicion that she had any affair with him. YZHe was never permitted to achieve the dignity of a serious flirtation with her in public.56Why do you treat me so?" he once said, reproachfully. CDTreat you how?" asked Laura in a sweet voice, lifting her eyebrows.;You know well enough.jkYou let other fellows monopolize you in society, and you are as indifferent to me as if we were strangers.UVCan I help it if they are attentive, can I be rude? But we are such old friends, Mr.45Brierly, that I didn't suppose you would be jealous. FGI think I must be a very old friend, then, by your conduct towards me.')*By the same rule I should judge that Col.9Selby must be very new./Laura looked up quickly, as if about to return an indignant answer to such impertinence, but she only said, "Well, what of Col.89Selby, sauce-box?" "Nothing, probably, you'll care for.efYour being with him so much is the town talk, that's all?" "What do people say?" asked Laura calmly.0 !Oh, they say a good many things. FGYou are offended, though, to have me speak of it?" "Not in the least.9You are my true friend.4I feel that I can trust you.8You wouldn't deceive me, Harry?" throwing into her eyes a look of trust and tenderness that melted away all his petulance and distrust.`What do they say?" "Some say that you've lost your head about him; others that you don't care any more for him than you do for a dozen others, but that he is completely fascinated with you and about to desert his wife; and others say it is nonsense to suppose you would entangle yourself with a married man, and that your intimacy only arises from the matter of the cotton, claims, for which he wants your influence with Dilworthy.BCBut you know everybody is talked about more or less in Washington.]I shouldn't care; but I wish you wouldn't have so much to do with Selby, Laura," continued Harry, fancying that he was now upon such terms that his, advice, would be heeded. YZAnd you believed these slanders?" "I don't believe anything against you, Laura, but Col./!"Selby does not mean you any good.@AI know you wouldn't be seen with him if you knew his reputation.>?Do you know him?" Laura asked, as indifferently as she could.BOnly a little.@AI was at his lodgings' in Georgetown a day or two ago, with Col.H Sellers.?Sellers wanted to talk with him about some patent remedy he has, Eye Water, or something of that sort, which he wants to introduce into Europe.0 !Selby is going abroad very soon.$,-Laura started; in spite of her self-control. FGAnd his wife!--Does he take his family? Did you see his wife?" "Yes. DEA dark little woman, rather worn--must have been pretty once though.!/0Has three or four children, one of them a baby.7They'll all go of course.?@She said she should be glad enough to get away from Washington.ghYou know Selby has got his claim allowed, and they say he has had a run, of luck lately at Morrissey's.XYLaura heard all this in a kind of stupor, looking straight at Harry, without seeing him.-}~Is it possible, she was thinking, that this base wretch, after, all his promises, will take his wife and children and leave me? Is it possible the town is saying all these things about me? And a look of bitterness coming into her face--does the fool think he can escape so? "You are angry with me, Laura," said Harry, not comprehending in the least what was going on in her mind.?@Angry?" she said, forcing herself to come back to his presence.?With you? Oh no. [\I'm angry with the cruel world, which, pursues an independent woman as it never does a man.QRI'm grateful to you Harry; I'm grateful to you for telling me of that odious man.opAnd she rose from her chair and gave him her pretty hand, which the silly fellow took, and kissed and clung to.+{|And he said many silly things, before she disengaged herself gently, and left him, saying it was time to dress, for dinner. FGAnd Harry went away, excited, and a little hopeful, but only a little.RSThe happiness was only a gleam, which departed and left him thoroughly, miserable.BCShe never would love him, and she was going to the devil, besides.OPHe couldn't shut his eyes to what he saw, nor his ears to what he heard of her."rsWhat had come over this thrilling young lady-killer? It was a pity to see such a gay butterfly broken on a wheel.!qrWas there something good in him, after all, that had been touched? He was in fact madly in love with this woman.LMIt is not for us to analyze the passion and say whether it was a worthy one.:;It absorbed his whole nature and made him wretched enough.jkIf he deserved punishment, what more would you have? Perhaps this love was kindling a new heroism in him.mnHe saw the road on which Laura was going clearly enough, though he did not believe the worst he heard of her.;<He loved her too passionately to credit that for a moment.BAnd it seemed to him that if he could compel her to recognize her position, and his own devotion, she might love him, and that he could save her.^_His love was so far ennobled, and become a very different thing from its beginning in Hawkeye.ghWhether he ever thought that if he could save her from ruin, he could give her up himself, is doubtful.qSuch a pitch of virtue does not occur often in real life, especially in such natures as Harry's, whose generosity and unselfishness were matters of temperament rather than habits or principles.He wrote a long letter to Laura, an incoherent, passionate letter, pouring out his love as he could not do in her presence, and warning her as plainly as he dared of the dangers that surrounded her, and the risks she ran of compromising herself in many ways.[Laura read the letter, with a little sigh may be, as she thought of other days, but with contempt also, and she put it into the fire with the thought, "They are all alike.6Harry was in the habit of writing to Philip freely, and boasting also about his doings, as he could not help doing and remain himself.Mixed up with his own exploits, and his daily triumphs as a lobbyist, especially in the matter of the new University, in which Harry was to have something handsome, were amusing sketches of Washington society, hints about Dilworthy, stories about Col.fSellers, who had become a well-known character, and wise remarks upon the machinery of private legislation for the public-good, which greatly entertained Philip in his convalescence.01Laura's name occurred very often in these letters, at first in casual mention as the belle of the season, carrying everything before her with her wit and beauty, and then more seriously, as if Harry did not exactly like so much general admiration of her, and was a little nettled by her treatment of him.deThis was so different from Harry's usual tone about women, that Philip wondered a good deal over it.KLCould it be possible that he was seriously affected? Then came stories about Laura, town talk, gossip which Harry denied the truth of indignantly; but he was evidently uneasy, and at length wrote in such miserable spirits that Philip asked him squarely what the trouble was; was he in love? Upon this, Harry made a clean breast of it, and told Philip all he knew about the Selby affair, and Laura's treatment of him, sometimes encouraging him--and then throwing him off, and finally his belief that she would go, to the bad if something was not done to arouse her from her infatuation.-#$He wished Philip was in Washington. YZHe knew Laura, and she had a great respect for his character, his opinions, his judgment.UPerhaps he, as an uninterested person whom she would have some confidence, and as one of the public, could say some thing to her that would show her where she stood.(()Philip saw the situation clearly enough.}Of Laura he knew not much, except that she was a woman of uncommon fascination, and he thought from what he had seen of her in Hawkeye, her conduct towards him and towards Harry, of not too much principle.UOf course he knew nothing of her history; he knew nothing seriously against her, and if Harry was desperately enamored of her, why should he not win her if he could.>?If, however, she had already become what Harry uneasily felt she might become, was it not his duty to go to the rescue of his friend and try to save him from any rash act on account of a woman that might prove to be entirely unworthy of him; for trifler and visionary as he was, Harry deserved a better fate than this.:;Philip determined to go to Washington and see for himself.6He had other reasons also.2He began to know enough of Mr.2Bolton's affairs to be uneasy.fgPennybacker had been there several times during the winter, and he suspected that he was involving Mr.1 Bolton in some doubtful scheme.?Pennybacker was in Washington, and Philip thought he might perhaps find out something about him, and his plans, that would be of service to Mr.IBolton. \]Philip had enjoyed his winter very well, for a man with his arm broken and his head smashed.RWith two such nurses as Ruth and Alice, illness seemed to him rather a nice holiday, and every moment of his convalescence had been precious and all too fleeting.|With a young fellow of the habits of Philip, such injuries cannot be counted on to tarry long, even for the purpose of love-making, and Philip found himself getting strong with even disagreeable rapidity.During his first weeks of pain and weakness, Ruth was unceasing in her ministrations; she quietly took charge of him, and with a gentle firmness resisted all attempts of Alice or any one else to share to any great extent the burden with her.GHShe was clear, decisive and peremptory in whatever she did; but often when Philip, opened his eyes in those first days of suffering and found her standing by his bedside, he saw a look of tenderness in her anxious face that quickened his already feverish pulse, a look that, remained in his heart long after he closed his eyes.fgSometimes he felt her hand on his forehead, and did not open his eyes for fear she world take it away.bcHe watched for her coming to his chamber; he could distinguish her light footstep from all others. \]If this is what is meant by women practicing medicine, thought Philip to himself, I like it.2Ruth," said he one day when he was getting to be quite himself, "I believe in it?" "Believe in what?" "Why, in women physicians.3Then, I'd better call in Mrs.E Longstreet.IOh, no.5One will do, one at a time.NOI think I should be well tomorrow, if I thought I should never have any other. Z[Thy physician thinks thee mustn't talk, Philip," said Ruth putting her finger on his lips.opBut, Ruth, I want to tell you that I should wish I never had got well if--" "There, there, thee must not talk..~Thee is wandering again," and Ruth closed his lips, with a smile on her own that broadened into a merry laugh as she ran away.NOPhilip was not weary, however, of making these attempts, he rather enjoyed it.But whenever he inclined to be sentimental, Ruth would cut him off, with some such gravely conceived speech as, "Does thee think that thy physician will take advantage of the condition of a man who is as weak as thee is? I will call Alice, if thee has any dying confessions to make.sAs Philip convalesced, Alice more and more took Ruth's place as his entertainer, and read to him by the hour, when he did not want to talk --to talk about Ruth, as he did a good deal of the time.12Nor was this altogether unsatisfactory to Philip.#-.He was always happy and contented with Alice.(()She was the most restful person he knew.RBetter informed than Ruth and with a much more varied culture, and bright and sympathetic, he was never weary of her company, if he was not greatly excited by it.78She had upon his mind that peaceful influence that Mrs. DEBolton had when, occasionally, she sat by his bedside with her work.<=Some people have this influence, which is like an emanation.^They bring peace to a house, they diffuse serene content in a room full of mixed company, though they may say very little, and are apparently, unconscious of their own power.>?Not that Philip did not long for Ruth's presence all the same.TUSince he was well enough to be about the house, she was busy again with her studies.&*+Now and then her teasing humor came again.67She always had a playful shield against his sentiment.Philip used sometimes to declare that she had no sentiment; and then he doubted if he should be pleased with her after all if she were at all sentimental; and he rejoiced that she had, in such matters what he called the airy grace of sanity. 01She was the most gay serious person he ever saw.JKPerhaps he waw not so much at rest or so contented with her as with Alice.:But then he loved her.IJAnd what have rest and contentment to do with love? CHAPTER XLII Mr.JKBuckstone's campaign was brief--much briefer than he supposed it would be.BCHe began it purposing to win Laura without being won himself; but his experience was that of all who had fought on that field before him; he diligently continued his effort to win her, but he presently found that while as yet he could not feel entirely certain of having won her, it was very manifest that she had won him.PQHe had made an able fight, brief as it was, and that at least was to his credit.JKHe was in good company, now; he walked in a leash of conspicuous captives. pqThese unfortunates followed Laura helplessly, for whenever she took a prisoner he remained her slave henceforth.`Sometimes they chafed in their bondage; sometimes they tore themselves free and said their serfdom was ended; but sooner or later they always came back penitent and worshiping.23Laura pursued her usual course: she encouraged Mr.8Buckstone by turns, and by turns she harassed him; she exalted him to the clouds at one time, and at another she dragged him down again.She constituted him chief champion of the Knobs University bill, and he accepted the position, at first reluctantly, but later as a valued means of serving her--he even came to look upon it as a piece of great good fortune, since it brought him into such frequent contact with her.+%&Through him she learned that the Hon.)'(Trollop was a bitter enemy of her bill.$,-He urged her not to attempt to influence Mr.>Trollop in any way, and explained that whatever she might attempt in that direction would surely be used against her and with damaging effect.2She at first said she knew Mr.)yzTrollop, "and was aware that he had a Blank-Blank;"--[**Her private figure of speech for Brother--or Son-in-law]--but Mr.jkBuckstone said that he was not able to conceive what so curious a phrase as Blank-Blank might mean, and had no wish to pry into the matter, since it was probably private, he "would nevertheless venture the blind assertion that nothing would answer in this particular case and during this particular session but to be exceedingly wary and keep clear away from Mr.')*Trollop; any other course would be fatal.+%&It seemed that nothing could be done.3Laura was seriously troubled.@Everything was looking well, and yet it was plain that one vigorous and determined enemy might eventually succeed in overthrowing all her plans.A suggestion came into her mind presently and she said: "Can't you fight against his great Pension bill and, bring him to terms?" "Oh, never; he and I are sworn brothers on that measure; we work in harness and are very loving--I do everything I possibly can for him there.ABut I work with might and main against his Immigration bill, --as pertinaciously and as vindictively, indeed, as he works against our University. \]We hate each other through half a conversation and are all affection through the other half.7We understand each other.He is an admirable worker outside the capitol; he will do more for the Pension bill than any other man could do; I wish he would make the great speech on it which he wants to make--and then I would make another and we would be safe.mnWell if he wants to make a great speech why doesn't he do it?" Visitors interrupted the conversation and Mr.7Buckstone took his leave.It was not of the least moment to Laura that her question had not been answered, inasmuch as it concerned a thing which did not interest her; and yet, human being like, she thought she would have liked to know.%uvAn opportunity occurring presently, she put the same question to another person and got an answer that satisfied her.EShe pondered a good while that night, after she had gone to bed, and when she finally turned over, to, go to sleep, she had thought out a new scheme.8The next evening at Mrs.."#Gloverson's party, she said to Mr.9Buckstone: "I want Mr.56Trollop to make his great speech on the Pension bill.`aDo you? But you remember I was interrupted, and did not explain to you--" "Never mind, I know.,$%You must' make him make that speech.1 I very particularly desire, it.$tuOh, it is easy, to say make him do it, but how am I to make him!" "It is perfectly easy; I have thought it all out.1 She then went into the details.C At length Mr.4Buckstone said: "I see now.5I can manage it, I am sure.OPIndeed I wonder he never thought of it himself--there are no end of precedents.`aBut how is this going to benefit you, after I have managed it? There is where the mystery lies.3But I will take care of that.0 !It will benefit me a great deal.45I only wish I could see how; it is the oddest freak.noYou seem to go the furthest around to get at a thing--but you are in earnest, aren't you?" "Yes I am, indeed.klVery well, I will do it--but why not tell me how you imagine it is going to help you?" "I will, by and by.-#$Now there is nobody talking to him.#-.Go straight and do it, there's a good fellow.LA moment or two later the two sworn friends of the Pension bill were talking together, earnestly, and seemingly unconscious of the moving throng about them./!"They talked an hour, and then Mr.ghBuckstone came back and said: "He hardly fancied it at first, but he fell in love with it after a bit.0 !And we have made a compact, too.pI am to keep his secret and he is to spare me, in future, when he gets ready to denounce the supporters of the University bill--and I can easily believe he will keep his word on this occasion. [\A fortnight elapsed, and the University bill had gathered to itself many friends, meantime.67Senator Dilworthy began to think the harvest was ripe.."#He conferred with Laura privately.:;She was able to tell him exactly how the House would vote.8There was a majority--the bill would pass, unless weak members got frightened at the last, and deserted--a thing pretty likely to occur.;<The Senator said: "I wish we had one more good strong man. EFNow Trollop ought to be on our side, for he is a friend of the negro.45But he is against us, and is our bitterest opponent.jkIf he would simply vote No, but keep quiet and not molest us, I would feel perfectly cheerful and content. 01But perhaps there is no use in thinking of that.78Why I laid a little plan for his benefit two weeks ago.,$%I think he will be tractable, maybe.5He is to come here tonight.56Look out for him, my child! He means mischief, sure.gIt is said that he claims to know of improper practices having been used in the interest of this bill, and he thinks he sees a chance to make a great sensation when the bill comes up.H Be wary.1 Be very, very careful, my dear./!"Do your very-ablest talking, now.12You can convince a man of anything, when you try. pqYou must convince him that if anything improper has been done, you at least are ignorant of it and sorry for it.3And if you could only persuade him out of his hostility to the bill, too--but don't overdo the thing; don't seem too anxious, dear./!"I won't; I'll be ever so careful. Z[I'll talk as sweetly to him as if he were my own child! You may trust me--indeed you may.=The door-bell rang.)'(That is the gentleman now," said Laura.)'(Senator Dilworthy retired to his study.>Laura welcomed Mr.6Trollop, a grave, carefully dressed and very respectable looking man, with a bald head, standing collar and old fashioned watch seals.5Promptness is a virtue, Mr.')*Trollop, and I perceive that you have it.2You are always prompt with me.:;I always meet my engagements, of every kind, Miss Hawkins.HIIt is a quality which is rarer in the world than it has been, I believe.,$%I wished to see you on business, Mr.H Trollop.D I judged so.hiWhat can I do for you?" "You know my bill--the Knobs University bill?" "Ah, I believe it is your bill.@I had forgotten.;Yes, I know the bill.OWell, would you mind telling me your opinion of it?" "Indeed, since you seem to ask it without reserve, I am obliged to say that I do not regard it favorably.deI have not seen the bill itself, but from what I can hear, it--it--well, it has a bad look about it./!"It--" "Speak it out--never fear.?@Well, it--they say it contemplates a fraud upon the government.3Well?" said Laura tranquilly.7Well! I say 'Well?' too.Well, suppose it were a fraud--which I feel able to deny--would it be the first one?" "You take a body's breath away! Would you--did you wish me to vote for it? Was that what you wanted to see me about?" "Your instinct is correct.#-.I did want you--I do want you to vote for it.DVote for a fr--for a measure which is generally believed to be at least questionable? I am afraid we cannot come to an understanding, Miss Hawkins.=>No, I am afraid not--if you have resumed your principles, Mr.H Trollop. [\Did you send for we merely to insult me? It is time for me to take my leave, Miss Hawkins.?No-wait a moment.2Don't be offended at a trifle.0 !Do not be offish and unsociable.9:The Steamship Subsidy bill was a fraud on the government.;You voted for it, Mr.opTrollop, though you always opposed the measure until after you had an interview one evening with a certain Mrs.:McCarter at her house.?She was my agent.:She was acting for me.."#Ah, that is right--sit down again.9:You can be sociable, easily enough if you have a mind to.<Well? I am waiting.#stHave you nothing to say?" "Miss Hawkins, I voted for that bill because when I came to examine into it--" "Ah yes./!"When you came to examine into it."./Well, I only want you to examine into my bill.MMr.xTrollop, you would not sell your vote on that subsidy bill--which was perfectly right--but you accepted of some of the stock, with the understanding that it was to stand in your brother-in-law's name.BCThere is no pr--I mean, this is, utterly groundless, Miss Hawkins.78But the gentleman seemed somewhat uneasy, nevertheless.1 Well, not entirely so, perhaps.%uvI and a person whom we will call Miss Blank (never mind the real name,) were in a closet at your elbow all the while.MMr.FTrollop winced--then he said with dignity: "Miss Hawkins is it possible that you were capable of such a thing as that?" "It was bad; I confess that.E It was bad.WAlmost as bad as selling one's vote for--but I forget; you did not sell your vote--you only accepted a little trifle, a small token of esteem, for your brother-in-law.ABOh, let us come out and be frank with each other: I know you, Mr.H Trollop.}I have met you on business three or four times; true, I never offered to corrupt your principles--never hinted such a thing; but always when I had finished sounding you, I manipulated you through an agent.@Let us be frank.hiWear this comely disguise of virtue before the public--it will count there; but here it is out of place.My dear sir, by and by there is going to be an investigation into that National Internal Improvement Directors' Relief Measure of a few years ago, and you know very well that you will be a crippled man, as likely as not, when it is completed. FGIt cannot be shown that a man is a knave merely for owning that stock.BCI am not distressed about the National Improvement Relief Measure.&*+Oh indeed I am not trying to distress you.9:I only wished, to make good my assertion that I knew you. [\Several of you gentlemen bought of that stack (without paying a penny down) received dividends from it, (think of the happy idea of receiving dividends, and very large ones, too, from stock one hasn't paid for!) and all the while your names never appeared in the transaction; if ever you took the stock at all, you took it in other people's names.uNow you see, you had to know one of two things; namely, you either knew that the idea of all this preposterous generosity was to bribe you into future legislative friendship, or you didn't know it. ]^That is to say, you had to be either a knave or a--well, a fool --there was no middle ground.9You are not a fool, Mr.H Trollop.4Miss Hawking you flatter me.PBut seriously, you do not forget that some of the best and purest men in Congress took that stock in that way?" "Did Senator Bland?" "Well, no--I believe not.6Of course you believe not. FGDo you suppose he was ever approached, on the subject?" "Perhaps not.,|}If you had approached him, for instance, fortified with the fact that some of the best men in Congress, and the purest, etc.Letc.(xywhat would have been the result?" "Well, what WOULD have been the result?" "He would have shown you the door! For Mr.,$%Blank is neither a knave nor a fool.There are other men in the Senate and the House whom no one would have been hardy enough to approach with that Relief Stock in that peculiarly generous way, but they are not of the class that you regard as the best and purest.8No, I say I know you Mr.H Trollop."./That is to say, one may suggest a thing to Mr.!/0Trollop which it would not do to suggest to Mr.JBlank.MMr.ATrollop, you are pledged to support the Indigent Congressmen's Retroactive Appropriation which is to come up, either in this or the next session.+%&You do not deny that, even in public.cThe man that will vote for that bill will break the eighth commandment in any other way, sir!" "But he will not vote for your corrupt measure, nevertheless, madam!" exclaimed Mr.%+,Trollop, rising from his seat in a passion.@Ah, but he will.)'(Sit down again, and let me explain why.6Oh, come, don't behave so.:It is very unpleasant. GHNow be good, and you shall have, the missing page of your great speech.67Here it is!"--and she displayed a sheet of manuscript.MMr.34Trollop turned immediately back from the threshold.EIt might have been gladness that flashed into his face; it might have been something else; but at any rate there was much astonishment mixed with it. CDGood! Where did you get it? Give it me!" "Now there is no hurry.34Sit down; sit down and let us talk and be friendly.:The gentleman wavered."./Then he said: "No, this is only a subterfuge.F I will go.5It is not the missing page.>?Laura tore off a couple of lines from the bottom of the sheet. FGNow," she said, "you will know whether this is the handwriting or not.1 You know it is the handwriting.#$Now if you will listen, you will know that this must be the list of statistics which was to be the 'nub' of your great effort, and the accompanying blast the beginning of the burst of eloquence which was continued on the next page--and you will recognize that there was where you broke down.>She read the page.MMr.#-.Trollop said: "This is perfectly astounding."./Still, what is all this to me? It is nothing.9It does not concern me.+%&The speech is made, and there an end.zI did break down for a moment, and in a rather uncomfortable place, since I had led up to those statistics with some grandeur; the hiatus was pleasanter to the House and the galleries than it was to me.8But it is no matter now. DEA week has passed; the jests about it ceased three or four days ago.@AThe whole thing is a matter of indifference to me, Miss Hawkins.=>But you apologized; and promised the statistics for next day./!"Why didn't you keep your promise.#-.The matter was not of sufficient consequence.45The time was gone by to produce an effect with them.RSBut I hear that other friends of the Soldiers' Pension Bill desire them very much.(()I think you ought to let them have them.fgMiss Hawkins, this silly blunder of my copyist evidently has more interest for you than it has for me. [\I will send my private secretary to you and let him discuss the subject with you at length.56Did he copy your speech for you?" "Of course he did.EWhy all these questions? Tell me--how did you get hold of that page of manuscript? That is the only thing that stirs a passing interest in my mind.=I'm coming to that.Then she said, much as if she were talking to herself: "It does seem like taking a deal of unnecessary pains, for a body to hire another body to construct a great speech for him and then go and get still another body to copy it before it can be read in the House.%uvMiss Hawkins, what do yo mean by such talk as that?" "Why I am sure I mean no harm--no harm to anybody in the world.*&'I am certain that I overheard the Hon.mnBuckstone either promise to write your great speech for you or else get some other competent person to do it.;<This is perfectly absurd, madam, perfectly absurd!" and Mr.+%&Trollop affected a laugh of derision.)'(Why, the thing has occurred before now.ijI mean that I have heard that Congressmen have sometimes hired literary grubs to build speeches for them.6Now didn't I overhear a conversation like that I spoke of?" "Pshaw! Why of course you may have overheard some such jesting nonsense.But would one be in earnest about so farcical a thing?" "Well if it was only a joke, why did you make a serious matter of it? Why did you get the speech written for you, and then read it in the House without ever having it copied?" Mr.?@Trollop did not laugh this time; he seemed seriously perplexed.23He said: "Come, play out your jest, Miss Hawkins. \]I can't understand what you are contriving--but it seems to entertain you--so please, go on.MNI will, I assure you; but I hope to make the matter entertaining to you, too. 01Your private secretary never copied your speech. DEIndeed? Really you seem to know my affairs better than I do myself.AI believe I do.)'(You can't name your own amanuensis, Mr.H Trollop.<That is sad, indeed.(()Perhaps Miss Hawkins can?" "Yes, I can.?@I wrote your speech myself, and you read it from my manuscript.?There, now!" Mr.{Trollop did not spring to his feet and smite his brow with his hand while a cold sweat broke out all over him and the color forsook his face --no, he only said, "Good God!" and looked greatly astonished.GLaura handed him her commonplace-book and called his attention to the fact that the handwriting there and the handwriting of this speech were the same.7He was shortly convinced.FHe laid the book aside and said, composedly: "Well, the wonderful tragedy is done, and it transpires that I am indebted to you for my late eloquence.,|}What of it? What was all this for and what does it amount to after all? What do you propose to do about it?" "Oh nothing.1 It is only a bit of pleasantry.IJWhen I overheard that conversation I took an early opportunity to ask Mr.hiBuckstone if he knew of anybody who might want a speech written--I had a friend, and so forth and so on.mnI was the friend, myself; I thought I might do you a good turn then and depend on you to do me one by and by.AI never let Mr.OBuckstone have the speech till the last moment, and when you hurried off to the House with it, you did not know there was a missing page, of course, but I did.3And now perhaps you think that if I refuse to support your bill, you will make a grand exposure?" "Well I had not thought of that.9I only kept back the page for the mere fun of the thing; but since you mention it, I don't know but I might do something if I were angry.My dear Miss Hawkins, if you were to give out that you composed my speech, you know very well that people would say it was only your raillery, your fondness for putting a victim in the pillory and amusing the public at his expense.opIt is too flimsy, Miss Hawkins, for a person of your fine inventive talent--contrive an abler device than that.1 Come!" "It is easily done, Mr.H Trollop.cdI will hire a man, and pin this page on his breast, and label it, 'The Missing Fragment of the Hon.ZTrollop's Great Speech--which speech was written and composed by Miss Laura Hawkins under a secret understanding for one hundred dollars--and the money has not been paid.BAnd I will pin round about it notes in my handwriting, which I will procure from prominent friends of mine for the occasion; also your printed speech in the Globe, showing the connection between its bracketed hiatus and my Fragment; and I give you my word of honor that I will stand that human bulletin board in the rotunda of the capitol and make him stay there a week! You see you are premature, Mr.=>Trollop, the wonderful tragedy is not done yet, by any means.klCome, now, doesn't it improve?" Mr Trollop opened his eyes rather widely at this novel aspect of the case.HIHe got up and walked the floor and gave himself a moment for reflection.?Then he stopped and studied Laura's face a while, and ended by saying: "Well, I am obliged to believe you would be reckless enough to do that.."#Then don't put me to the test, Mr.H Trollop.6But let's drop the matter. EFI have had my joke and you've borne the infliction becomingly enough.=>It spoils a jest to harp on it after one has had one's laugh.)'(I would much rather talk about my bill.%+,So would I, now, my clandestine amanuensis.QRCompared with some other subjects, even your bill is a pleasant topic to discuss.3Very good indeed! I thought.;I could persuade you.LMNow I am sure you will be generous to the poor negro and vote for that bill. FGYes, I feel more tenderly toward the oppressed colored man than I did.MShall we bury the hatchet and be good friends and respect each other's little secrets, on condition that I vote Aye on the measure?" "With all my heart, Mr.H Trollop.5I give you my word of that.@It is a bargain.-}~But isn't there something else you could give me, too?" Laura looked at him inquiringly a moment, and then she comprehended.2Oh, yes! You may have it now.1 I haven't any, more use for it.She picked up the page of manuscript, but she reconsidered her intention of handing it to him, and said, "But never mind; I will keep it close; no one shall see it; you shall have it as soon as your vote is recorded.MMr.4Trollop looked disappointed.`aBut presently made his adieux, and had got as far as the hall, when something occurred to Laura.iShe said to herself, "I don't simply want his vote under compulsion--he might vote aye, but work against the bill in secret, for revenge; that man is unscrupulous enough to do anything.89I must have his hearty co-operation as well as his vote.."#There is only one way to get that.78She called him back, and said: "I value your vote, Mr.')*Trollop, but I value your influence more.ABYou are able to help a measure along in many ways, if you choose.>?I want to ask you to work for the bill as well as vote for it.JKIt takes so much of one's time, Miss Hawkins--and time is money, you know.&*+Yes, I know it is--especially in Congress._`Now there is no use in you and I dealing in pretenses and going at matters in round-about ways.%+,We know each other--disguises are nonsense.@Let us be plain.56I will make it an object to you to work for the bill.&*+Don't make it unnecessarily plain, please.56There are little proprieties that are best preserved.-#$What do you propose?" "Well, this.9:She mentioned the names of several prominent Congressmen.~Now," said she, "these gentlemen are to vote and work for the bill, simply out of love for the negro--and out of pure generosity I have put in a relative of each as a member of the University incorporation.TUThey will handle a million or so of money, officially, but will receive no salaries.A larger number of statesmen are to, vote and work for the bill--also out of love for the negro--gentlemen of but moderate influence, these--and out of pure generosity I am to see that relatives of theirs have positions in the University, with salaries, and good ones, too.(xyYou will vote and work for the bill, from mere affection for the negro, and I desire to testify my gratitude becomingly.?Make free choice.Have you any friend whom you would like to present with a salaried or unsalaried position in our institution?" "Well, I have a brother-in-law--" "That same old brother-in-law, you good unselfish provider! I have heard of him often, through my agents.$,-How regularly he does 'turn up,' to be sure. YZHe could deal with those millions virtuously, and withal with ability, too--but of course you would rather he had a salaried position?" "Oh, no," said the gentleman, facetiously, "we are very humble, very humble in our desires; we want no money; we labor solely, for our country and require no reward but the luxury of an applauding conscience.wMake him one of those poor hard working unsalaried corporators and let him do every body good with those millions--and go hungry himself! I will try to exert a little influence in favor of the bill.<Arrived at home, Mr.<Trollop sat down and thought it all over--something after this fashion: it is about the shape it might have taken if he had spoken it aloud.My reputation is getting a little damaged, and I meant to clear it up brilliantly with an exposure of this bill at the supreme moment, and ride back into Congress on the eclat of it; and if I had that bit of manuscript, I would do it yet.+{|It would be more money in my pocket in the end, than my brother-in-law will get out of that incorporatorship, fat as it is. YZBut that sheet of paper is out of my reach--she will never let that get out of her hands.=>And what a mountain it is! It blocks up my road, completely.+%&She was going to hand it to me, once.*&'Why didn't she! Must be a deep woman.QRDeep devil! That is what she is; a beautiful devil--and perfectly fearless, too.noThe idea of her pinning that paper on a man and standing him up in the rotunda looks absurd at a first glance.78But she would do it! She is capable of doing anything.`aI went there hoping she would try to bribe me--good solid capital that would be in the exposure.hiWell, my prayer was answered; she did try to bribe me; and I made the best of a bad bargain and let her.?I am check-mated.;<I must contrive something fresh to get back to Congress on.1Very well; a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; I will work for the bill--the incorporatorship will be a very good thing.BAs soon as Mr.Trollop had taken his leave, Laura ran to Senator Dilworthy and began to speak, but he interrupted her and said distressfully, without even turning from his writing to look at her: "Only half an hour! You gave it up early, child. DEHowever, it was best, it was best--I'm sure it was best--and safest.Give it up! I!" The Senator sprang up, all aglow: "My child, you can't mean that you--" "I've made him promise on honor to think about a compromise tonight and come and tell me his decision in the morning.23Good! There's hope yet that--" "Nonsense, uncle.9:I've made him engage to let the Tennessee Land bill utterly alone!" "Impossible! You--" "I've made him promise to vote with us!" "INCREDIBLE! Abso--" "I've made him swear that he'll work for us!" "PRE - - - POSTEROUS!--Utterly pre--break a window, child, before I suffocate!" "No matter, it's true anyway. YZNow we can march into Congress with drums beating and colors flying!" "Well--well--well.)'(I'm sadly bewildered, sadly bewildered.ijI can't understand it at all--the most extraordinary woman that ever--it's a great day, it's a great day. FGThere--there--let me put my hand in benediction on this precious head.efAh, my child, the poor negro will bless--" "Oh bother the poor negro, uncle! Put it in your speech.MGood-night, good-bye--we'll marshal our forces and march with the dawn!" Laura reflected a while, when she was alone, and then fell to laughing, peacefully.#-.Everybody works for me,"--so ran her thought.#-.It was a good idea to make Buckstone lead Mr..~Trollop on to get a great speech written for him; and it was a happy part of the same idea for me to copy the speech after Mr.45Buckstone had written it, and then keep back a page.MMr.was very complimentary to me when Trollop's break-down in the House showed him the object of my mysterious scheme; I think he will say, still finer things when I tell him the triumph the sequel to it has gained for us.opBut what a coward the man was, to believe I would have exposed that page in the rotunda, and so exposed myself.,$%However, I don't know--I don't know.:I will think a moment.Suppose he voted no; suppose the bill failed; that is to suppose this stupendous game lost forever, that I have played so desperately for; suppose people came around pitying me--odious! And he could have saved me by his single voice.Yes, I would have exposed him! What would I care for the talk that that would have made about me when I was gone to Europe with Selby and all the world was busy with my history and my dishonor? It would be almost happiness to spite somebody at such a time.BCHAPTER XLIII.45The very next day, sure enough, the campaign opened.,|}In due course, the Speaker of the House reached that Order of Business which is termed "Notices of Bills," and then the Hon.TBuckstone rose in his place and gave notice of a bill "To Found and Incorporate the Knobs Industrial University," and then sat down without saying anything further.>The busy gentlemen in the reporters' gallery jotted a line in their note-books, ran to the telegraphic desk in a room which communicated with their own writing-parlor, and then hurried back to their places in the gallery; and by the time they had resumed their seats, the line which they had delivered to the operator had been read in telegraphic offices in towns and cities hundreds of miles away. YZIt was distinguished by frankness of language as well as by brevity: "The child is born.<=Buckstone gives notice of the thieving Knobs University job.TUIt is said the noses have been counted and enough votes have been bought to pass it.oFor some time the correspondents had been posting their several journals upon the alleged disreputable nature of the bill, and furnishing daily reports of the Washington gossip concerning it.3So the next morning, nearly every newspaper of character in the land assailed the measure and hurled broadsides of invective at Mr.F Buckstone.WXThe Washington papers were more respectful, as usual--and conciliatory, also, as usual.QThey generally supported measures, when it was possible; but when they could not they "deprecated" violent expressions of opinion in other journalistic quarters.56They always deprecated, when there was trouble ahead.QRHowever, 'The Washington Daily Love-Feast' hailed the bill with warm approbation.This was Senator Balaam's paper--or rather, "Brother" Balaam, as he was popularly called, for he had been a clergyman, in his day; and he himself and all that he did still emitted an odor of sanctity now that he had diverged into journalism and politics..~He was a power in the Congressional prayer meeting, and in all movements that looked to the spread of religion and temperance.His paper supported the new bill with gushing affection; it was a noble measure; it was a just measure; it was a generous measure; it was a pure measure, and that surely should recommend it in these corrupt times; and finally, if the nature of the bill were not known at all, the 'Love Feast' would support it anyway, and unhesitatingly, for the fact that Senator Dilworthy was the originator of the measure was a guaranty that it contemplated a worthy and righteous work.,|}Senator Dilworthy was so anxious to know what the New York papers would say about the bill; that he had arranged to have synopses of their editorials telegraphed to him; he could not wait for the papers themselves to crawl along down to Washington by a mail train which has never run over a cow since the road was built; for the reason that it has never been able to overtake one. \]It carries the usual "cow-catcher" in front of the locomotive, but this is mere ostentation.  It ought to be attached to the rear car, where it could do some good; but instead, no provision is made there for the protection of the traveling public, and hence it is not a matter of surprise that cows so frequently climb aboard that train and among the passengers.=>The Senator read his dispatches aloud at the breakfast table.XLaura was troubled beyond measure at their tone, and said that that sort of comment would defeat the bill; but the Senator said: "Oh, not at all, not at all, my child.8It is just what we want.LMPersecution is the one thing needful, now--all the other forces are secured.67Give us newspaper persecution enough, and we are safe.PVigorous persecution will alone carry a bill sometimes, dear; and when you start with a strong vote in the first place, persecution comes in with double effect.bcIt scares off some of the weak supporters, true, but it soon turns strong ones into stubborn ones.;<And then, presently, it changes the tide of public opinion./0The great public is weak-minded; the great public is sentimental; the great public always turns around and weeps for an odious murderer, and prays for-him, and carries flowers to his prison and besieges the governor with appeals to his clemency, as soon as the papers begin to howl for that man's blood.=In a word, the great putty-hearted public loves to 'gush,' and there is no such darling opportunity to gush as a case of persecution affords.DWell, uncle, dear; if your theory is right, let us go into raptures, for nobody can ask a heartier persecution than these editorials are furnishing.*&'I am not so sure of that, my daughter.89I don't entirely like the tone of some of these remarks.1 They lack vim, they lack venom.#-.Here is one calls it a 'questionable measure.."#Bah, there is no strength in that.12This one is better; it calls it 'highway robbery.5That sounds something like. CDBut now this one seems satisfied to call it an 'iniquitous scheme'.=>Iniquitous' does not exasperate anybody; it is weak--puerile.=>The ignorant will imagine it to be intended for a compliment.But this other one--the one I read last--has the true ring: 'This vile, dirty effort to rob the public treasury, by the kites and vultures that now infest the filthy den called Congress'--that is admirable, admirable! We must have more of that sort.>?But it will come--no fear of that; they're not warmed up, yet.5A week from now you'll see.8Uncle, you and Brother Balaam are bosom friends--why don't you get his paper to persecute us, too?" "It isn't worth while, my daughter.0 !His support doesn't hurt a bill.(()Nobody reads his editorials but himself.;<But I wish the New York papers would talk a little plainer.:;It is annoying to have to wait a week for them to warm up. CDI expected better things at their hands--and time is precious, now.9:At the proper hour, according to his previous notice, Mr.HBuckstone duly introduced his bill entitled "An Act to Found and Incorporate the Knobs Industrial University," moved its proper reference, and sat down.4The Speaker of the House rattled off this observation: "'Fnobjectionbilltakuzhlcoixrssoreferred!'" Habitues of the House comprehended that this long, lightning-heeled word signified that if there was no objection, the bill would take the customary course of a measure of its nature, and be referred to the Committee on Benevolent Appropriations, and that it was accordingly so referred.`aStrangers merely supposed that the Speaker was taking a gargle for some affection of the throat. CDThe reporters immediately telegraphed the introduction of the bill.KLAnd they added: "The assertion that the bill will pass was premature. pqIt is said that many favorers of it will desert when the storm breaks upon them from the public press.NOThe storm came, and during ten days it waxed more and more violent day by day.ijThe great "Negro University Swindle" became the one absorbing topic of conversation throughout the Union.cIndividuals denounced it, journals denounced it, public meetings denounced it, the pictorial papers caricatured its friends, the whole nation seemed to be growing frantic over it.*z{Meantime the Washington correspondents were sending such telegrams as these abroad in the land; Under date of-- SATURDAY. [\Congressmen Jex and Fluke are wavering; it is believed they will desert the execrable bill.IMONDAY.(()Jex and Fluke have deserted!" THURSDAY.PQTubbs and Huffy left the sinking ship last night" Later on: "Three desertions. GHThe University thieves are getting scared, though they will not own it.Later: "The leaders are growing stubborn--they swear they can carry it, but it is now almost certain that they no longer have a majority!" After a day or two of reluctant and ambiguous telegrams: "Public sentiment seems changing, a trifle in favor of the bill --but only a trifle. 01And still later: "It is whispered that the Hon.+%&Trollop has gone over to the pirates.8It is probably a canard.MMr.TTrollop has all along been the bravest and most efficient champion of virtue and the people against the bill, and the report is without doubt a shameless invention.8Next day: "With characteristic treachery, the truckling and pusillanimous reptile, Crippled-Speech Trollop, has gone over to the enemy.eIt is contended, now, that he has been a friend to the bill, in secret, since the day it was introduced, and has had bankable reasons for being so; but he himself declares that he has gone over because the malignant persecution of the bill by the newspapers caused him to study its provisions with more care than he had previously done, and this close examination revealed the fact that the measure is one in every way worthy of support.PQPretty thin!) It cannot be denied that this desertion has had a damaging effect.bJex and Fluke have returned to their iniquitous allegiance, with six or eight others of lesser calibre, and it is reported and believed that Tubbs and Huffy are ready to go back. YZIt is feared that the University swindle is stronger to-day than it has ever been before.TULater-midnight: "It is said that the committee will report the bill back to-morrow.'wxBoth sides are marshaling their forces, and the fight on this bill is evidently going to be the hottest of the session.6All Washington is boiling.C CHAPTER XLIV.6It's easy enough for another fellow to talk," said Harry, despondingly, after he had put Philip in possession of his view of the case.ABIt's easy enough to say 'give her up,' if you don't care for her."rsWhat am I going to do to give her up?" It seemed to Harry that it was a situation requiring some active measures.>He couldn't realize that he had fallen hopelessly in love without some rights accruing to him for the possession of the object of his passion.RSQuiet resignation under relinquishment of any thing he wanted was not in his line.oAnd when it appeared to him that his surrender of Laura would be the withdrawal of the one barrier that kept her from ruin, it was unreasonable to expect that he could see how to give her up.<Harry had the most buoyant confidence in his own projects always; he saw everything connected with himself in a large way and in rosy lines.This predominance of the imagination over the judgment gave that appearance of exaggeration to his conversation and to his communications with regard to himself, which sometimes conveyed the impression that he was not speaking the truth.WHis acquaintances had been known to say that they invariably allowed a half for shrinkage in his statements, and held the other half under advisement for confirmation.MPhilip in this case could not tell from Harry's story exactly how much encouragement Laura had given him, nor what hopes he might justly have of winning her.(()He had never seen him desponding before.=The "brag" appeared to be all taken out of him, and his airy manner only asserted itself now and then in a comical imitation of its old self.BCPhilip wanted time to look about him before he decided what to do.&vwHe was not familiar with Washington, and it was difficult to adjust his feelings and perceptions to its peculiarities.(xyComing out of the sweet sanity of the Bolton household, this was by contrast the maddest Vanity Fair one could conceive. \]It seemed to him a feverish, unhealthy atmosphere in which lunacy would be easily developed.He fancied that everybody attached to himself an exaggerated importance, from the fact of being at the national capital, the center of political influence, the fountain of patronage, preferment, jobs and opportunities.EPeople were introduced to each other as from this or that state, not from cities or towns, and this gave a largeness to their representative feeling.cdAll the women talked politics as naturally and glibly as they talk fashion or literature elsewhere.fThere was always some exciting topic at the Capitol, or some huge slander was rising up like a miasmatic exhalation from the Potomac, threatening to settle no one knew exactly where.fgEvery other person was an aspirant for a place, or, if he had one, for a better place, or more pay; almost every other one had some claim or interest or remedy to urge; even the women were all advocates for the advancement of some person, and they violently espoused or denounced this or that measure as it would affect some relative, acquaintance or friend.1Love, travel, even death itself, waited on the chances of the dies daily thrown in the two Houses, and the committee rooms there.+{|If the measure went through, love could afford to ripen into marriage, and longing for foreign travel would have fruition; and it must have been only eternal hope springing in the breast that kept alive numerous old claimants who for years and years had besieged the doors of Congress, and who looked as if they needed not so much an appropriation of money as six feet of ground.lmAnd those who stood so long waiting for success to bring them death were usually those who had a just claim.Representing states and talking of national and even international affairs, as familiarly as neighbors at home talk of poor crops and the extravagance of their ministers, was likely at first to impose upon Philip as to the importance of the people gathered here.^_There was a little newspaper editor from Phil's native town, the assistant on a Peddletonian weekly, who made his little annual joke about the "first egg laid on our table," and who was the menial of every tradesman in the village and under bonds to him for frequent "puffs," except the undertaker, about whose employment he was recklessly facetious.cIn Washington he was an important man, correspondent, and clerk of two house committees, a "worker" in politics, and a confident critic of every woman and every man in Washington.rHe would be a consul no doubt by and by, at some foreign port, of the language of which he was ignorant--though if ignorance of language were a qualification he might have been a consul at home.His easy familiarity with great men was beautiful to see, and when Philip learned what a tremendous underground influence this little ignoramus had, he no longer wondered at the queer appointments and the queerer legislation.Philip was not long in discovering that people in Washington did not differ much from other people; they had the same meannesses, generosities, and tastes: A Washington boarding house had the odor of a boarding house the world over.LCol.KLSellers was as unchanged as any one Philip saw whom he had known elsewhere.9:Washington appeared to be the native element of this man.78His pretentions were equal to any he encountered there.23He saw nothing in its society that equalled that of Hawkeye, he sat down to no table that could not be unfavorably contrasted with his own at home; the most airy scheme inflated in the hot air of the capital only reached in magnitude some of his lesser fancies, the by-play of his constructive imagination.^_The country is getting along very well," he said to Philip, "but our public men are too timid.5What we want is more money.:I've told Boutwell so.JKTalk about basing the currency on gold; you might as well base it on pork.7Gold is only one product.?@Base it on everything! You've got to do something for the West.56How am I to move my crops? We must have improvements.;Grant's got the idea.89We want a canal from the James River to the Mississippi.3Government ought to build it.\It was difficult to get the Colonel off from these large themes when he was once started, but Philip brought the conversation round to Laura and her reputation in the City.*&'No," he said, "I haven't noticed much.')*We've been so busy about this University.bcIt will make Laura rich with the rest of us, and she has done nearly as much as if she were a man. 01She has great talent, and will make a big match.45I see the foreign ministers and that sort after her.TUYes, there is talk, always will be about a pretty woman so much in public as she is.$,-Tough stories come to me, but I put'em away._`Taint likely one of Si Hawkins's children would do that--for she is the same as a child of his.)yzI told her, though, to go slow," added the Colonel, as if that mysterious admonition from him would set everything right./!"Do you know anything about a Col.3Selby?" "Know all about him.D Fine fellow.STBut he's got a wife; and I told him, as a friend, he'd better sheer off from Laura.')*I reckon he thought better of it and did."./But Philip was not long in learning the truth.eCourted as Laura was by a certain class and still admitted into society, that, nevertheless, buzzed with disreputable stories about her, she had lost character with the best people.2Her intimacy with Selby was open gossip, and there were winks and thrustings of the tongue in any group of men when she passed by.LIt was clear enough that Harry's delusion must be broken up, and that no such feeble obstacle as his passion could interpose would turn Laura from her fate./Philip determined to see her, and put himself in possession of the truth, as he suspected it, in order to show Harry his folly.OPLaura, after her last conversation with Harry, had a new sense of her position.6She had noticed before the signs of a change in manner towards her, a little less respect perhaps from men, and an avoidance by women.vShe had attributed this latter partly to jealousy of her, for no one is willing to acknowledge a fault in himself when a more agreeable motive can be found for the estrangement of his acquaintances.9:But now, if society had turned on her, she would defy it.-#$It was not in her nature to shrink. CDShe knew she had been wronged, and she knew that she had no remedy.:What she heard of Col.MSelby's proposed departure alarmed her more than anything else, and she calmly determined that if he was deceiving her the second time it should be the last.PQLet society finish the tragedy if it liked; she was indifferent what came after.NOAt the first opportunity, she charged Selby with his intention to abandon her.6He unblushingly denied it.*&'He had not thought of going to Europe.78He had only been amusing himself with Sellers' schemes.efHe swore that as soon as she succeeded with her bill, he would fly with her to any part of the world.AShe did not quite believe him, for she saw that he feared her, and she began to suspect that his were the protestations of a coward to gain time.3But she showed him no doubts. YZShe only watched his movements day by day, and always held herself ready to act promptly.;When Philip came into the presence of this attractive woman, he could not realize that she was the subject of all the scandal he had heard.She received him with quite the old Hawkeye openness and cordiality, and fell to talking at once of their little acquaintance there; and it seemed impossible that he could ever say to her what he had come determined to say. CDSuch a man as Philip has only one standard by which to judge women.,$%Laura recognized that fact no doubt.#-.The better part of her woman's nature saw it.=Such a man might, years ago, not now, have changed her nature, and made the issue of her life so different, even after her cruel abandonment.MNShe had a dim feeling of this, and she would like now to stand well with him.OPThe spark of truth and honor that was left in her was elicited by his presence.BCIt was this influence that governed her conduct in this interview. CDI have come," said Philip in his direct manner, "from my friend Mr.H Brierly.@AYou are not ignorant of his feeling towards you?" "Perhaps not.But perhaps you do not know, you who have so much admiration, how sincere and overmastering his love is for you?" Philip would not have spoken so plainly, if he had in mind anything except to draw from Laura something that would end Harry's passion.0 !And is sincere love so rare, Mr.WXSterling?" asked Laura, moving her foot a little, and speaking with a shade of sarcasm.IJPerhaps not in Washington," replied Philip,--tempted into a similar tone.nExcuse my bluntness," he continued, "but would the knowledge of his love; would his devotion, make any difference to you in your Washington life?" "In respect to what?" asked Laura quickly.@Well, to others.5I won't equivocate--to Col.`Selby?" Laura's face flushed with anger, or shame; she looked steadily at Philip and began, "By what right, sir,--" "By the right of friendship," interrupted Philip stoutly.4It may matter little to you.8It is everything to him.WXHe has a Quixotic notion that you would turn back from what is before you for his sake.:;You cannot be ignorant of what all the city is talking of.78Philip said this determinedly and with some bitterness.(()It was a full minute before Laura spoke. GHBoth had risen, Philip as if to go, and Laura in suppressed excitement.@AWhen she spoke her voice was very unsteady, and she looked down.D Yes, I know.+%&I perfectly understand what you mean.MMr.-#$Brierly is nothing--simply nothing.OPHe is a moth singed, that is all--the trifler with women thought he was a wasp.*&'I have no pity for him, not the least.ABYou may tell him not to make a fool of himself, and to keep away.,$%I say this on your account, not his.;You are not like him.(()It is enough for me that you want it so.MMr.Sterling," she continued, looking up; and there were tears in her eyes that contradicted the hardness of her language, "you might not pity him if you knew my history; perhaps you would not wonder at some things you hear."./No; it is useless to ask me why it must be so.cdYou can't make a life over--society wouldn't let you if you would--and mine must be lived as it is.MNThere, sir, I'm not offended; but it is useless for you to say anything more.1Philip went away with his heart lightened about Harry, but profoundly saddened by the glimpse of what this woman might have been.`He told Harry all that was necessary of the conversation--she was bent on going her own way, he had not the ghost of a chance--he was a fool, she had said, for thinking he had.`aAnd Harry accepted it meekly, and made up his own mind that Philip didn't know much about women.D CHAPTER XLV.The galleries of the House were packed, on the momentous day, not because the reporting of an important bill back by a committee was a thing to be excited about, if the bill were going to take the ordinary course afterward; it would be like getting excited over the empaneling of a coroner's jury in a murder case, instead of saving up one's emotions for the grander occasion of the hanging of the accused, two years later, after all the tedious forms of law had been gone through with.But suppose you understand that this coroner's jury is going to turn out to be a vigilance committee in disguise, who will hear testimony for an hour and then hang the murderer on the spot? That puts a different aspect upon the matter. YZNow it was whispered that the legitimate forms of procedure usual in the House, and which keep a bill hanging along for days and even weeks, before it is finally passed upon, were going to be overruled, in this case, and short work made of the measure; and so, what was beginning as a mere inquest might, torn out to be something very different.In the course of the day's business the Order of "Reports of Committees" was finally reached and when the weary crowds heard that glad announcement issue from the Speaker's lips they ceased to fret at the dragging delay, and plucked up spirit.WThe Chairman of the Committee on Benevolent Appropriations rose and made his report, and just then a blue-uniformed brass-mounted little page put a note into his hand.()It was from Senator Dilworthy, who had appeared upon the floor of the House for a moment and flitted away again: "Everybody expects a grand assault in force; no doubt you believe, as I certainly do, that it is the thing to do; we are strong, and everything is hot for the contest. ]^Trollop's espousal of our cause has immensely helped us and we grow in power constantly.mnTen of the opposition were called away from town about noon,(but--so it is said--only for one day)._`Six others are sick, but expect to be about again tomorrow or next day, a friend tells me.*&'A bold onslaught is worth trying.*z{Go for a suspension of the rules! You will find we can swing a two-thirds vote--I am perfectly satisfied of it.2The Lord's truth will prevail.F DILWORTHY.MMr.^_Buckstone had reported the bills from his committee, one by one, leaving the bill to the last.:When the House had voted upon the acceptance or rejection of the report upon all but it, and the question now being upon its disposal--Mr.cdBuckstone begged that the House would give its attention to a few remarks which he desired to make.His committee had instructed him to report the bill favorably; he wished to explain the nature of the measure, and thus justify the committee's action; the hostility roused by the press would then disappear, and the bill would shine forth in its true and noble character.(()He said that its provisions were simple.It incorporated the Knobs Industrial University, locating it in East Tennessee, declaring it open to all persons without distinction of sex, color or religion, and committing its management to a board of perpetual trustees, with power to fill vacancies in their own number.TIt provided for the erection of certain buildings for the University, dormitories, lecture-halls, museums, libraries, laboratories, work-shops, furnaces, and mills.MIt provided also for the purchase of sixty-five thousand acres of land, (fully described) for the purposes of the University, in the Knobs of East Tennessee.DAnd it appropriated [blank] dollars for the purchase of the Land, which should be the property of the national trustees in trust for the uses named.LEvery effort had been made to secure the refusal of the whole amount of the property of the Hawkins heirs in the Knobs, some seventy-five thousand acres Mr.ABuckstone said.IBut Mr.!/0Washington Hawkins (one of the heirs) objected.xHe was, indeed, very reluctant to sell any part of the land at any price; and indeed--this reluctance was justifiable when one considers how constantly and how greatly the property is rising in value.,$%What the South needed, continued Mr.3Buckstone, was skilled labor.xWithout that it would be unable to develop its mines, build its roads, work to advantage and without great waste its fruitful land, establish manufactures or enter upon a prosperous industrial career."./Its laborers were almost altogether unskilled.^Change them into intelligent, trained workmen, and you increased at once the capital, the resources of the entire south, which would enter upon a prosperity hitherto unknown.RIn five years the increase in local wealth would not only reimburse the government for the outlay in this appropriation, but pour untold wealth into the treasury. YZThis was the material view, and the least important in the honorable gentleman's opinion.VWHere he referred to some notes furnished him by Senator Dilworthy, and then continued.45God had given us the care of these colored millions.PQWhat account should we render to Him of our stewardship? We had made them free.IJShould we leave them ignorant? We had cast them upon their own resources.HShould we leave them without tools? We could not tell what the intentions of Providence are in regard to these peculiar people, but our duty was plain. pqThe Knobs Industrial University would be a vast school of modern science and practice, worthy of a great nation. Z[It would combine the advantages of Zurich, Freiburg, Creuzot and the Sheffield Scientific.^_Providence had apparently reserved and set apart the Knobs of East Tennessee for this purpose.kWhat else were they for? Was it not wonderful that for more than thirty years, over a generation, the choicest portion of them had remained in one family, untouched, as if, separated for some great use! It might be asked why the government should buy this land, when it had millions of yes, more than the railroad companies desired, which, it might devote to this purpose? He answered, that the government had no such tract of land as this.It had nothing comparable to it for the purposes of the University: This was to be a school of mining, of engineering, of the working of metals, of chemistry, zoology, botany, manufactures, agriculture, in short of all the complicated industries that make a state great.VWThere was no place for the location of such a school like the Knobs of East Tennessee.;<The hills abounded in metals of all sorts, iron in all its combinations, copper, bismuth, gold and silver in small quantities, platinum he--believed, tin, aluminium; it was covered with forests and strange plants; in the woods were found the coon, the opossum, the fox, the deer and many other animals who roamed in the domain of natural history; coal existed in enormous quantity and no doubt oil; it was such a place for the practice of agricultural experiments that any student who had been successful there would have an easy task in any other portion of the country.UVNo place offered equal facilities for experiments in mining, metallurgy, engineering.He expected to live to see the day, when the youth of the south would resort to its mines, its workshops, its laboratories, its furnaces and factories for practical instruction in all the great industrial pursuits.PQA noisy and rather ill-natured debate followed, now, and lasted hour after hour.bcThe friends of the bill were instructed by the leaders to make no effort to check it; it was deemed better strategy to tire out the opposition; it was decided to vote down every proposition to adjourn, and so continue the sitting into the night; opponents might desert, then, one by one and weaken their party, for they had no personal stake in the bill.GHSunset came, and still the fight went on; the gas was lit, the crowd in the galleries began to thin, but the contest continued; the crowd returned, by and by, with hunger and thirst appeased, and aggravated the hungry and thirsty House by looking contented and comfortable; but still the wrangle lost nothing of its bitterness.deRecesses were moved plaintively by the opposition, and invariably voted down by the University army.NOAt midnight the House presented a spectacle calculated to interest a stranger.NThe great galleries were still thronged--though only with men, now; the bright colors that had made them look like hanging gardens were gone, with the ladies.The reporters' gallery, was merely occupied by one or two watchful sentinels of the quill-driving guild; the main body cared nothing for a debate that had dwindled to a mere vaporing of dull speakers and now and then a brief quarrel over a point of order; but there was an unusually large attendance of journalists in the reporters' waiting-room, chatting, smoking, and keeping on the 'qui vive' for the general irruption of the Congressional volcano that must come when the time was ripe for it.klSenator Dilworthy and Philip were in the Diplomatic Gallery; Washington sat in the public gallery, and Col.6Sellers was, not far away.The Colonel had been flying about the corridors and button-holing Congressmen all the evening, and believed that he had accomplished a world of valuable service; but fatigue was telling upon him, now, and he was quiet and speechless--for once.fgBelow, a few Senators lounged upon the sofas set apart for visitors, and talked with idle Congressmen.A dreary member was speaking; the presiding officer was nodding; here and there little knots of members stood in the aisles, whispering together; all about the House others sat in all the various attitudes that express weariness; some, tilted back, had one or more legs disposed upon their desks; some sharpened pencils indolently; some scribbled aimlessly; some yawned and stretched; a great many lay upon their breasts upon the desks, sound asleep and gently snoring. [\The flooding gaslight from the fancifully wrought roof poured down upon the tranquil scene.noHardly a sound disturbed the stillness, save the monotonous eloquence of the gentleman who occupied the floor.bcNow and then a warrior of the opposition broke down under the pressure, gave it up, and went home.MMr.HIBuckstone began to think it might be safe, now, to "proceed to business. 01He consulted with Trollop and one or two others.PQSenator Dilworthy descended to the floor of the House and they went to meet him..~After a brief comparison of notes, the Congressmen sought their seats and sent pages about the House with messages to friends.BCThese latter instantly roused up, yawned, and began to look alert.(()The moment the floor was unoccupied, Mr.Buckstone rose, with an injured look, and said it was evident that the opponents of the bill were merely talking against time, hoping in this unbecoming way to tire out the friends of the measure and so defeat it.Such conduct might be respectable enough in a village debating society, but it was trivial among statesmen, it was out of place in so august an assemblage as the House of Representatives of the United States.0The friends of the bill had been not only willing that its opponents should express their opinions, but had strongly desired it.wThey courted the fullest and freest discussion; but it seemed to him that this fairness was but illy appreciated, since gentlemen were capable of taking advantage of it for selfish and unworthy ends.."#This trifling had gone far enough.5He called for the question.AThe instant Mr.&*+Buckstone sat down, the storm burst forth.)'(A dozen gentlemen sprang to their feet.MMr.ASpeaker!" "Mr.ASpeaker!" "Mr.%uvSpeaker!" "Order! Order! Order! Question! Question!" The sharp blows of the Speaker's gavel rose above the din.?@The "previous question," that hated gag, was moved and carried.%+,All debate came to a sudden end, of course.E Triumph No.^_Then the vote was taken on the adoption of the report and it carried by a surprising majority.MMr.cdBuckstone got the floor again and moved that the rules be suspended and the bill read a first time.MMr.RSTrollop--"Second the motion!" The Speaker--"It is moved and--" Clamor of Voices.cMove we adjourn! Second the motion! Adjourn! Adjourn! Order! Order!" The Speaker, (after using his gavel vigorously)--"It is moved and seconded that the House do now adjourn.DAll those in favor--" Voices--"Division! Division! Ayes and nays! Ayes and nays!" It was decided to vote upon the adjournment by ayes and nays.<This was in earnest.5The excitement was furious.UVThe galleries were in commotion in an instant, the reporters swarmed to their places.Idling members of the House flocked to their seats, nervous gentlemen sprang to their feet, pages flew hither and thither, life and animation were visible everywhere, all the long ranks of faces in the building were kindled.-#$This thing decides it!" thought Mr.*&'Buckstone; "but let the fight proceed.,|}The voting began, and every sound ceased but the calling if the names and the "Aye!" "No!" "No!" "Aye!" of the responses.NOThere was not a movement in the House; the people seemed to hold their breath.deThe voting ceased, and then there was an interval of dead silence while the clerk made up his count.ABThere was a two-thirds vote on the University side--and two over.The Speaker--"The rules are suspended, the motion is carried--first reading of the bill!" By one impulse the galleries broke forth into stormy applause, and even some of the members of the House were not wholly able to restrain their feelings.The Speaker's gavel came to the rescue and his clear voice followed: "Order, gentlemen--! The House will come to order! If spectators offend again, the Sergeant-at-arms will clear the galleries!" Then he cast his eyes aloft and gazed at some object attentively for a moment.VWAll eyes followed the direction of the Speaker's, and then there was a general titter.nThe Speaker said: "Let the Sergeant-at Arms inform the gentleman that his conduct is an infringement of the dignity of the House--and one which is not warranted by the state of the weather.3Poor Sellers was the culprit.NHe sat in the front seat of the gallery, with his arms and his tired body overflowing the balustrade--sound asleep, dead to all excitements, all disturbances.sThe fluctuations of the Washington weather had influenced his dreams, perhaps, for during the recent tempest of applause he had hoisted his gingham umbrella, and calmly gone on with his slumbers.DWashington Hawkins had seen the act, but was not near enough at hand to save his friend, and no one who was near enough desired to spoil the effect.7But a neighbor stirred up the Colonel, now that the House had its eye upon him, and the great speculator furled his tent like the Arab.He said: "Bless my soul, I'm so absent-minded when I, get to thinking! I never wear an umbrella in the house--did anybody 'notice it'? What-asleep? Indeed? And did you wake me sir? Thank you--thank you very much indeed.67It might have fallen out of my hands and been injured.IAdmirable article, sir--present from a friend in Hong Kong; one doesn't come across silk like that in this country--it's the real--Young Hyson, I'm told.HIBy this time the incident was forgotten, for the House was at war again.opVictory was almost in sight, now, and the friends of the bill threw themselves into their work with enthusiasm.4They soon moved and carried its second reading, and after a strong, sharp fight, carried a motion to go into Committee of the whole. DEThe Speaker left his place, of course, and a chairman was appointed.MNow the contest raged hotter than ever--for the authority that compels order when the House sits as a House, is greatly diminished when it sits as Committee.+{|The main fight came upon the filling of the blanks with the sum to be appropriated for the purchase of the land, of course.ABuckstone--"Mr.JKChairman, I move you, sir, that the words 'three millions of' be inserted.MMr.D Hadley--"Mr. CDChairman, I move that the words two and a half dollars be inserted.MMr.C Clawson--"Mr.BChairman, I move the insertion of the words five and twenty cents, as representing the true value of this barren and isolated tract of desolation. GHThe question, according to rule, was taken upon the smallest sum first.D It was lost.0 !Then upon the nest smallest sum.E Lost, also./!"And then upon the three millions.QRAfter a vigorous battle that lasted a considerable time, this motion was carried.2Then, clause by clause the bill was read, discussed, and amended in trifling particulars, and now the Committee rose and reported.KLThe moment the House had resumed its functions and received the report, Mr.:;Buckstone moved and carried the third reading of the bill.The same bitter war over the sum to be paid was fought over again, and now that the ayes and nays could be called and placed on record, every man was compelled to vote by name on the three millions, and indeed on every paragraph of the bill from the enacting clause straight through."rsBut as before, the friends of the measure stood firm and voted in a solid body every time, and so did its enemies.*z{The supreme moment was come, now, but so sure was the result that not even a voice was raised to interpose an adjournment.-#$The enemy were totally demoralized.klThe bill was put upon its final passage almost without dissent, and the calling of the ayes and nays began.=When it was ended the triumph was complete--the two-thirds vote held good, and a veto was impossible, as far as the House was concerned! Mr.)yzBuckstone resolved that now that the nail was driven home, he would clinch it on the other side and make it stay forever. DEHe moved a reconsideration of the vote by which the bill had passed.]The motion was lost, of course, and the great Industrial University act was an accomplished fact as far as it was in the power of the House of Representatives to make it so.')*There was no need to move an adjournment.iThe instant the last motion was decided, the enemies of the University rose and flocked out of the Hall, talking angrily, and its friends flocked after them jubilant and congratulatory.VWThe galleries disgorged their burden, and presently the house was silent and deserted.G When Col.-}~Sellers and Washington stepped out of the building they were surprised to find that the daylight was old and the sun well up..~Said the Colonel: "Give me your hand, my boy! You're all right at last! You're a millionaire! At least you're going to be.9The thing is dead sure.."#Don't you bother about the Senate.$,-Leave me and Dilworthy to take care of that.,$%Run along home, now, and tell Laura.>?Lord, it's magnificent news--perfectly magnificent! Run, now.9I'll telegraph my wife.#-.She must come here and help me build a house.sEverything's all right now!" Washington was so dazed by his good fortune and so bewildered by the gaudy pageant of dreams that was already trailing its long ranks through his brain, that he wandered he knew not where, and so loitered by the way that when at last he reached home he woke to a sudden annoyance in the fact that his news must be old to Laura, now, for of course Senator Dilworthy must have already been home and told her an hour before. 01He knocked at her door, but there was no answer.-#$That is like the Duchess," said he. DEAlways cool; a body can't excite her-can't keep her excited, anyway.)yzNow she has gone off to sleep again, as comfortably as if she were used to picking up a million dollars every day or two.<Then he vent to bed.mnBut he could not sleep; so he got up and wrote a long, rapturous letter to Louise, and another to his mother.SAnd he closed both to much the same effect: "Laura will be queen of America, now, and she will be applauded, and honored and petted by the whole nation.*z{Her name will be in every one's mouth more than ever, and how they will court her and quote her bright speeches.bcAnd mine, too, I suppose; though they do that more already, than they really seem to deserve.9Oh, the world is so bright, now, and so cheery; the clouds are all gone, our long struggle is ended, our troubles are all over.!/0Nothing can ever make us unhappy any more.MNYou dear faithful ones will have the reward of your patient waiting now.How father's Wisdom is proven at last! And how I repent me, that there have been times when I lost faith and said, the blessing he stored up for us a tedious generation ago was but a long-drawn curse, a blight upon us all.7But everything is well, now--we are done with poverty, sad toil, weariness and heart-break; all the world is filled with sunshine.C CHAPTER XLVI. \]Philip left the capitol and walked up Pennsylvania Avenue in company with Senator Dilworthy.&'It was a bright spring morning, the air was soft and inspiring; in the deepening wayside green, the pink flush of the blossoming peach trees, the soft suffusion on the heights of Arlington, and the breath of the warm south wind was apparent, the annual miracle of the resurrection of the earth.`aThe Senator took off his hat and seemed to open his soul to the sweet influences of the morning.wAfter the heat and noise of the chamber, under its dull gas-illuminated glass canopy, and the all night struggle of passion and feverish excitement there, the open, tranquil world seemed like Heaven.mThe Senator was not in an exultant mood, but rather in a condition of holy joy, befitting a Christian statesman whose benevolent plans Providence has made its own and stamped with approval.QThe great battle had been fought, but the measure had still to encounter the scrutiny of the Senate, and Providence sometimes acts differently in the two Houses.-.Still the Senator was tranquil, for he knew that there is an esprit de corps in the Senate which does not exist in the House, the effect of which is to make the members complaisant towards the projects of each other, and to extend a mutual aid which in a more vulgar body would be called "log-rolling.12It is, under Providence, a good night's work, Mr.G Sterling.jkThe government has founded an institution which will remove half the difficulty from the southern problem.@AAnd it is a good thing for the Hawkins heirs, a very good thing.-#$Laura will be almost a millionaire.?Do you think, Mr.=Dilworthy, that the Hawkinses will get much of the money?" asked Philip innocently, remembering the fate of the Columbus River appropriation.CThe Senator looked at his companion scrutinizingly for a moment to see if he meant anything personal, and then replied, "Undoubtedly, undoubtedly.$,-I have had their interests greatly at heart. [\There will of course be a few expenses, but the widow and orphans will realize all that Mr.3Hawkins, dreamed of for them."rsThe birds were singing as they crossed the Presidential Square, now bright with its green turf and tender foliage.[After the two had gained the steps of the Senator's house they stood a moment, looking upon the lovely prospect: "It is like the peace of God," said the Senator devoutly.klEntering the house, the Senator called a servant and said, "Tell Miss Laura that we are waiting to see her./I ought to have sent a messenger on horseback half an hour ago," he added to Philip, "she will be transported with our victory.34You must stop to breakfast, and see the excitement. \]The servant soon came back, with a wondering look and reported, "Miss Laura ain't dah, sah.QRI reckon she hain't been dah all night!" The Senator and Philip both started up./In Laura's room there were the marks of a confused and hasty departure, drawers half open, little articles strewn on the floor.1 The bed had not been disturbed.TUUpon inquiry it appeared that Laura had not been at dinner, excusing herself to Mrs.%uvDilworthy on the plea of a violent headache; that she made a request to the servants that she might not be disturbed.6The Senator was astounded.2Philip thought at once of Col.JSelby.=>Could Laura have run away with him? The Senator thought not.8In fact it could not be.LGen.gLeffenwell, the member from New Orleans, had casually told him at the house last night that Selby and his family went to New York yesterday morning and were to sail for Europe to-day.23Philip had another idea which, he did not mention.nHe seized his hat, and saying that he would go and see what he could learn, ran to the lodgings of Harry; whom he had not seen since yesterday afternoon, when he left him to go to the House.?Harry was not in./He had gone out with a hand-bag before six o'clock yesterday, saying that he had to go to New York, but should return next day.IJIn Harry's-room on the table Philip found this note: "Dear Mr.Brierly:--Can you meet me at the six o'clock train, and be my escort to New York? I have to go about this University bill, the vote of an absent member we must have here, Senator Dilworthy cannot go.F Yours, L.ABConfound it," said Phillip, "the noodle has fallen into her trap.')*And she promised she would let him alone.XHe only stopped to send a note to Senator Dilworthy, telling him what he had found, and that he should go at once to New York, and then hastened to the railway station. \]He had to wait an hour for a train, and when it did start it seemed to go at a snail's pace./!"Philip was devoured with anxiety.Where could they, have gone? What was Laura's object in taking Harry? Had the flight anything to do with Selby? Would Harry be such a fool as to be dragged into some public scandal? It seemed as if the train would never reach Baltimore."./Then there was a long delay at Havre de Grace.')*A hot box had to be cooled at Wilmington.jkWould it never get on? Only in passing around the city of Philadelphia did the train not seem to go slow.jPhilip stood upon the platform and watched for the Boltons' house, fancied he could distinguish its roof among the trees, and wondered how Ruth would feel if she knew he was so near her.{Then came Jersey, everlasting Jersey, stupid irritating Jersey, where the passengers are always asking which line they are on, and where they are to come out, and whether they have yet reached Elizabeth.ILaunched into Jersey, one has a vague notion that he is on many lines and no one in particular, and that he is liable at any moment to come to Elizabeth.WHe has no notion what Elizabeth is, and always resolves that the next time he goes that way, he will look out of the window and see what it is like; but he never does.PQOr if he does, he probably finds that it is Princeton or something of that sort. \]He gets annoyed, and never can see the use of having different names for stations in Jersey.F By and by.there is Newark, three or four Newarks apparently; then marshes; then long rock cuttings devoted to the advertisements of 'patent medicines and ready-made, clothing, and New York tonics for Jersey agues, and Jersey City is reached.iOn the ferry-boat Philip bought an evening paper from a boy crying "'Ere's the Evening Gram, all about the murder," and with breathless haste--ran his eyes over the following: SHOCKING MURDER!!! TRAGEDY IN HIGH LIFE!! A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN SHOOTS A DISTINGUISHED CONFEDERATE SOLDIER AT THE SOUTHERN HOTEL!!! JEALOUSY THE CAUSE!!! This morning occurred another of those shocking murders which have become the almost daily food of the newspapers, the direct result of the socialistic doctrines and woman's rights agitations, which have made every woman the avenger of her own wrongs, and all society the hunting ground for her victims.About nine o'clock a lady deliberately shot a man dead in the public parlor of the Southern Hotel, coolly remarking, as she threw down her revolver and permitted herself to be taken into custody, "He brought it on himself.#stOur reporters were immediately dispatched to the scene of the tragedy, and gathered the following particulars.>?Yesterday afternoon arrived at the hotel from Washington, Col.&vwGeorge Selby and family, who had taken passage and were to sail at noon to-day in the steamer Scotia for England.0The Colonel was a handsome man about forty, a gentleman Of wealth and high social position, a resident of New Orleans.iHe served with distinction in the confederate army, and received a wound in the leg from which he has never entirely recovered, being obliged to use a cane in locomotion.1This morning at about nine o'clock, a lady, accompanied by a gentleman, called at the office Of the hotel and asked for Col.JSelby.3The Colonel was at breakfast.Would the clerk tell him that a lady and gentleman wished to see him for a moment in the parlor? The clerk says that the gentleman asked her, "What do you want to see him for?" and that she replied, "He is going to Europe, and I ought to just say good by.LCol.4Selby was informed; and the lady and gentleman were shown to the parlor, in which were at the time three or four other persons.1Five minutes after two shots were fired in quick succession, and there was a rush to the parlor from which the reports came.LCol.;<Selby was found lying on the floor, bleeding, but not dead.PTwo gentlemen, who had just come in, had seized the lady, who made no resistance, and she was at once given in charge of a police officer who arrived.PQThe persons who were in the parlor agree substantially as to what occurred.HIThey had happened to be looking towards the door when the man--Col.@Selby--entered with his cane, and they looked at him, because he stopped as if surprised and frightened, and made a backward movement.At the same moment the lady in the bonnet advanced towards him and said something like, "George, will you go with me?" He replied, throwing up his hand and retreating, "My God I can't, don't fire," and the next instants two shots were heard and he fell.nThe lady appeared to be beside herself with rage or excitement, and trembled very much when the gentlemen took hold of her; it was to them she said, "He brought it on himself.LCol.#-.Selby was carried at once to his room and Dr."./Puffer, the eminent surgeon was sent for.NOIt was found that he was shot through the breast and through the abdomen.ZOther aid was summoned, but the wounds were mortal, and Col Selby expired in an hour, in pain, but his mind was clear to the last and he made a full deposition.PThe substance of it was that his murderess is a Miss Laura Hawkins, whom he had known at Washington as a lobbyist and had some business with her.?She had followed him with her attentions and solicitations, and had endeavored to make him desert his wife and go to Europe with her.89When he resisted and avoided her she had threatened him.,|}Only the day before he left Washington she had declared that he should never go out of the city alive without her./It seems to have been a deliberate and premeditated murder, the woman following him to Washington on purpose to commit it.yWe learn that the murderess, who is a woman of dazzling and transcendent beauty and about twenty six or seven, is a niece of Senator Dilworthy at whose house she has been spending the winter.WXShe belongs to a high Southern family, and has the reputation of being an heiress.?Like some other great beauties and belles in Washington however there have been whispers that she had something to do with the lobby.hIf we mistake not we have heard her name mentioned in connection with the sale of the Tennessee Lands to the Knobs University, the bill for which passed the House last night.<Her companion is Mr.ABHarry Brierly, a New York dandy, who has been in Washington.EHis connection with her and with this tragedy is not known, but he was also taken into custody, and will be detained at least as a witness.NP.One of the persons present in the parlor says that after Laura Hawkins had fired twice, she turned the pistol towards herself, but that Brierly sprung and caught it from her hand, and that it was he who threw it on the floor.VWFurther particulars with full biographies of all the parties in our next edition.^Philip hastened at once to the Southern Hotel, where he found still a great state of excitement, and a thousand different and exaggerated stories passing from mouth to mouth.^The witnesses of the event had told it over so many time that they had worked it up into a most dramatic scene, and embellished it with whatever could heighten its awfulness.*&'Outsiders had taken up invention also."./The Colonel's wife had gone insane, they said.VWThe children had rushed into the parlor and rolled themselves in their father's blood. YZThe hotel clerk said that he noticed there was murder in the woman's eye when he saw her. GHA person who had met the woman on the stairs felt a creeping sensation. [\Some thought Brierly was an accomplice, and that he had set the woman on to kill his rival. EFSome said the woman showed the calmness and indifference of insanity.'wxPhilip learned that Harry and Laura had both been taken to the city prison, and he went there; but he was not admitted.ANot being a newspaper reporter, he could not see either of them that night; but the officer questioned him suspiciously and asked him who he was.$,-He might perhaps see Brierly in the morning.HIThe latest editions of the evening papers had the result of the inquest.(xyIt was a plain enough case for the jury, but they sat over it a long time, listening to the wrangling of the physicians.MDr.MNPuffer insisted that the man died from the effects of the wound in the chest.MDr. EFDobb as strongly insisted that the wound in the abdomen caused death.MDr.$tuGolightly suggested that in his opinion death ensued from a complication of the two wounds and perhaps other causes. 01He examined the table waiter, as to whether Col. EFSelby ate any breakfast, and what he ate, and if he had any appetite.  The jury finally threw themselves back upon the indisputable fact that Selby was dead, that either wound would have killed him (admitted by the doctors), and rendered a verdict that he died from pistol-shot wounds inflicted by a pistol in the hands of Laura Hawkins.STThe morning papers blazed with big type, and overflowed with details of the murder. YZThe accounts in the evening papers were only the premonitory drops to this mighty shower.<=The scene was dramatically worked up in column after column.12There were sketches, biographical and historical.67There were long "specials" from Washington, giving a full history of Laura's career there, with the names of men with whom she was said to be intimate, a description of Senator Dilworthy's residence and of his family, and of Laura's room in his house, and a sketch of the Senator's appearance and what he said.9There was a great deal about her beauty, her accomplishments and her brilliant position in society, and her doubtful position in society.+%&There was also an interview with Col.JKSellers and another with Washington Hawkins, the brother of the murderess.9One journal had a long dispatch from Hawkeye, reporting the excitement in that quiet village and the reception of the awful intelligence.*&'All the parties had been "interviewed. YZThere were reports of conversations with the clerk at the hotel; with the call-boy; with the waiter at table with all the witnesses, with the policeman, with the landlord (who wanted it understood that nothing of that sort had ever happened in his house before, although it had always been frequented by the best Southern society,) and with Mrs.LCol.JSelby.,|}There were diagrams illustrating the scene of the shooting, and views of the hotel and street, and portraits of the parties.<There were three minute and different statements from the doctors about the wounds, so technically worded that nobody could understand them.Harry and Laura had also been "interviewed" and there was a statement from Philip himself, which a reporter had knocked him up out of bed at midnight to give, though how he found him, Philip never could conjecture.JWhat some of the journals lacked in suitable length for the occasion, they made up in encyclopaedic information about other similar murders and shootings.8The statement from Laura was not full, in fact it was fragmentary, and consisted of nine parts of, the reporter's valuable observations to one of Laura's, and it was, as the reporter significantly remarked, "incoherent", but it appeared that Laura claimed to be Selby's wife, or to have been his wife, that he had deserted her and betrayed her, and that she was going to follow him to Europe.89When the reporter asked: "What made you shoot him Miss. ]^Hawkins?" Laura's only reply was, very simply, "Did I shoot him? Do they say I shot him?".6And she would say no more.:;The news of the murder was made the excitement of the day.5Talk of it filled the town.[The facts reported were scrutinized, the standing of the parties was discussed, the dozen different theories of the motive, broached in the newspapers, were disputed over.During the night subtle electricity had carried the tale over all the wires of the continent and under the sea; and in all villages and towns of the Union, from the Atlantic to the territories, and away up and down the Pacific slope, and as far as London and Paris and Berlin, that morning the name of Laura Hawkins was spoken by millions and millions of people, while the owner of it--the sweet child of years ago, the beautiful queen of Washington drawing rooms--sat shivering on her cot-bed in the darkness of a damp cell in the Tombs.BCHAPTER XLVII.89Philip's first effort was to get Harry out of the Tombs.+{|He gained permission to see him, in the presence of an officer, during the day, and he found that hero very much cast down.KI never intended to come to such a place as this, old fellow," he said to Philip; "it's no place for a gentleman, they've no idea how to treat a gentleman.?@Look at that provender," pointing to his uneaten prison ration.WThey tell me I am detained as a witness, and I passed the night among a lot of cut-throats and dirty rascals--a pretty witness I'd be in a month spent in such company.?But what under heavens," asked Philip, "induced you to come to New York with Laura! What was it for?" "What for? Why, she wanted me to come.!/0I didn't know anything about that cursed Selby.23She said it was lobby business for the University. DEI'd no idea what she was dragging me into that confounded hotel for.UVI suppose she knew that the Southerners all go there, and thought she'd find her man.(()Oh! Lord, I wish I'd taken your advice.ghYou might as well murder somebody and have the credit of it, as get into the newspapers the way I have.4She's pure devil, that girl.ABYou ought to have seen how sweet she was on me; what an ass I am. 01Well, I'm not going to dispute a poor, prisoner."./But the first thing is to get you out of this.+{|I've brought the note Laura wrote you, for one thing, and I've seen your uncle, and explained the truth of the case to him.;He will be here soon.iHarry's uncle came, with; other friends, and in the course of the day made such a showing to the authorities that Harry was released, on giving bonds to appear as a witness when wanted.&'His spirits rose with their usual elasticity as soon as he was out of Centre Street, and he insisted on giving Philip and his friends a royal supper at Delmonico's, an excess which was perhaps excusable in the rebound of his feelings, and which was committed with his usual reckless generosity.XYHarry ordered, the supper, and it is perhaps needless to say, that Philip paid the bill.FNeither of the young men felt like attempting to see Laura that day, and she saw no company except the newspaper reporters, until the arrival of Col.LMSellers and Washington Hawkins, who had hastened to New York with all speed. GHThey found Laura in a cell in the upper tier of the women's department.0The cell was somewhat larger than those in the men's department, and might be eight feet by ten square, perhaps a little longer.>?It was of stone, floor and all, and tile roof was oven shaped.WA narrow slit in the roof admitted sufficient light, and was the only means of ventilation; when the window was opened there was nothing to prevent the rain coming in.%uvThe only means of heating being from the corridor, when the door was ajar, the cell was chilly and at this time damp.RIt was whitewashed and clean, but it had a slight jail odor; its only furniture was a narrow iron bedstead, with a tick of straw and some blankets, not too clean.G When Col.gSellers was conducted to this cell by the matron and looked in, his emotions quite overcame him, the tears rolled down his cheeks and his voice trembled so that he could hardly speak.AWashington was unable to say anything; he looked from Laura to the miserable creatures who were walking in the corridor with unutterable disgust.mnLaura was alone calm and self-contained, though she was not unmoved by the sight of the grief of her friends.JKAre you comfortable, Laura?" was the first word the Colonel could get out.:You see," she replied.+%&I can't say it's exactly comfortable.+%&Are you cold?" "It is pretty chilly.4The stone floor is like ice.-#$It chills me through to step on it.7I have to sit on the bed.9Poor thing, poor thing.23And can you eat any thing?" "No, I am not hungry.:;I don't know that I could eat any thing, I can't eat that. 01Oh dear," continued the Colonel, "it's dreadful. CDBut cheer up, dear, cheer up;" and the Colonel broke down entirely.*&'But," he went on, "we'll stand by you.4We'll do everything for you.ijI know you couldn't have meant to do it, it must have been insanity, you know, or something of that sort.&*+You never did anything of the sort before.IJLaura smiled very faintly and said, "Yes, it was something of that sort.?It's all a whirl./!"He was a villain; you don't know.@AI'd rather have killed him myself, in a duel you know, all fair.C I wish I had.:But don't you be down. \]We'll get you the best counsel, the lawyers in New York can do anything; I've read of cases.0 !But you must be comfortable now.12We've brought some of your clothes, at the hotel.zWhat else, can we get for you?" Laura suggested that she would like some sheets for her bed, a piece of carpet to step on, and her meals sent in; and some books and writing materials if it was allowed.eThe Colonel and Washington promised to procure all these things, and then took their sorrowful leave, a great deal more affected than the criminal was, apparently, by her situation.The colonel told the matron as he went away that if she would look to Laura's comfort a little it shouldn't be the worse for her; and to the turnkey who let them out he patronizingly said, "You've got a big establishment here, a credit to the city.78I've got a friend in there--I shall see you again, sir.5By the next day something more of Laura's own story began to appear in the newspapers, colored and heightened by reporters' rhetoric.|Some of them cast a lurid light upon the Colonel's career, and represented his victim as a beautiful avenger of her murdered innocence; and others pictured her as his willing paramour and pitiless slayer.Her communications to the reporters were stopped by her lawyers as soon as they were retained and visited her, but this fact did not prevent--it may have facilitated--the appearance of casual paragraphs here and there which were likely to beget popular sympathy for the poor girl.UThe occasion did not pass without "improvement" by the leading journals; and Philip preserved the editorial comments of three or four of them which pleased him most.)yzThese he used to read aloud to his friends afterwards and ask them to guess from which journal each of them had been cut.One began in this simple manner:-- History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.deWashington is not Corinth, and Lais, the beautiful daughter of Timandra, might not have been the prototype of the ravishing Laura, daughter of the plebeian house of Hawkins; but the orators add statesmen who were the purchasers of the favors of the one, may have been as incorruptible as the Republican statesmen who learned how to love and how to vote from the sweet lips of the Washington lobbyist; and perhaps the modern Lais would never have departed from the national Capital if there had been there even one republican Xenocrates who resisted her blandishments.3But here the parallel: fails. pqLais, wandering away with the youth Rippostratus, is slain by the women who are jealous of her charms.<Laura, straying into her Thessaly with the youth Brierly, slays her other lover and becomes the champion of the wrongs of her sex.STAnother journal began its editorial with less lyrical beauty, but with equal force.tIt closed as follows:-- With Laura Hawkins, fair, fascinating and fatal, and with the dissolute Colonel of a lost cause, who has reaped the harvest he sowed, we have nothing to do.But as the curtain rises on this awful tragedy, we catch a glimpse of the society at the capital under this Administration, which we cannot contemplate without alarm for the fate of the Republic.:;A third newspaper took up the subject in a different tone.78It said:-- Our repeated predictions are verified.)yzThe pernicious doctrines which we have announced as prevailing in American society have been again illustrated.$,-The name of the city is becoming a reproach.+{|We may have done something in averting its ruin in our resolute exposure of the Great Frauds; we shall not be deterred from insisting that the outraged laws for the protection of human life shall be vindicated now, so that a person can walk the streets or enter the public houses, at least in the day-time, without the risk of a bullet through his brain.yA fourth journal began its remarks as follows:-- The fullness with which we present our readers this morning the details of the Selby-Hawkins homicide is a miracle of modern journalism. DESubsequent investigation can do little to fill out the picture.<It is the old story.A beautiful woman shoots her absconding lover in cold-blood; and we shall doubtless learn in due time that if she was not as mad as a hare in this month of March, she was at least laboring under what is termed "momentary insanity.It would not be too much to say that upon the first publication of the facts of the tragedy, there was an almost universal feeling of rage against the murderess in the Tombs, and that reports of her beauty only heightened the indignation.>It was as if she presumed upon that and upon her sex, to defy the law; and there was a fervent, hope that the law would take its plain course.IJYet Laura was not without friends, and some of them very influential too.NOShe had in keeping a great many secrets and a great many reputations, perhaps. 01Who shall set himself up to judge human motives.JWhy, indeed, might we not feel pity for a woman whose brilliant career had been so suddenly extinguished in misfortune and crime? Those who had known her so well in Washington might find it impossible to believe that the fascinating woman could have had murder in her heart, and would readily give ear to the current sentimentality about the temporary aberration of mind under the stress of personal calamity. ]^Senator Dilworthy, was greatly shocked, of course, but he was full of charity for the erring.."#We shall all need mercy," he said.sLaura as an inmate of my family was a most exemplary female, amiable, affectionate and truthful, perhaps too fond of gaiety, and neglectful of the externals of religion, but a woman of principle.9She may have had experiences of which I am ignorant, but she could not have gone to this extremity if she had been in her own right mind.ghTo the Senator's credit be it said, he was willing to help Laura and her family in this dreadful trial.She, herself, was not without money, for the Washington lobbyist is not seldom more fortunate than the Washington claimant, and she was able to procure a good many luxuries to mitigate the severity of her prison life.STIt enabled her also to have her own family near her, and to see some of them daily.uThe tender solicitude of her mother, her childlike grief, and her firm belief in the real guiltlessness of her daughter, touched even the custodians of the Tombs who are enured to scenes of pathos.LMrs.STHawkins had hastened to her daughter as soon as she received money for the journey.89She had no reproaches, she had only tenderness and pity.^She could not shut out the dreadful facts of the case, but it had been enough for her that Laura had said, in their first interview, "mother, I did not know what I was doing.%uvShe obtained lodgings near, the prison and devoted her life to her daughter, as if she had been really her own child.MNShe would have remained in the prison day and night if it had been permitted.NOShe was aged and feeble, but this great necessity seemed to give her new life.The pathetic story of the old lady's ministrations, and her simplicity and faith, also got into the newspapers in time, and probably added to the pathos of this wrecked woman's fate, which was beginning to be felt by the public.TIt was certain that she had champions who thought that her wrongs ought to be placed against her crime, and expressions of this feeling came to her in various ways.+{|Visitors came to see her, and gifts of fruit and flowers were sent, which brought some cheer into her hard and gloomy cell. !Laura had declined to see either Philip or Harry, somewhat to the former's relief, who had a notion that she would necessarily feel humiliated by seeing him after breaking faith with him, but to the discomfiture of Harry, who still felt her fascination, and thought her refusal heartless. ]^He told Philip that of course he had got through with such a woman, but he wanted to see her.OPhilip, to keep him from some new foolishness, persuaded him to go with him to Philadelphia; and, give his valuable services in the mining operations at Ilium.-#$The law took its course with Laura.VWShe was indicted for murder in the first degree and held for trial at the summer term.The two most distinguished criminal lawyers in the city had been retained for her defence, and to that the resolute woman devoted her days with a courage that rose as she consulted with her counsel and understood the methods of criminal procedure in New York.@AShe was greatly depressed, however, by the news from Washington.>?Congress adjourned and her bill had failed to pass the Senate.."#It must wait for the next session.abCHAPTER XLVIII It had been a bad winter, somehow, for the firm of Pennybacker, Bigler and Small.^These celebrated contractors usually made more money during the session of the legislature at Harrisburg than upon all their summer work, and this winter had been unfruitful.1 It was unaccountable to Bigler.D You see, Mr.RSBolton," he said, and Philip was present at the conversation, "it puts us all out.)'(It looks as if politics was played out. 01We'd counted on the year of Simon's re-election.TUAnd, now, he's reelected, and I've yet to see the first man who's the better for it.<You don't mean to say," asked Philip, "that he went in without paying anything?" "Not a cent, not a dash cent, as I can hear," repeated Mr.<Bigler, indignantly./!"I call it a swindle on the state.8How it was done gets me.67I never saw such a tight time for money in Harrisburg.ZWere there no combinations, no railroad jobs, no mining schemes put through in connection with the election? "Not that I knew," said Bigler, shaking his head in disgust. DEIn fact it was openly said, that there was no money in the election.6It's perfectly unheard of.tPerhaps," suggested Philip, "it was effected on what the insurance companies call the 'endowment,' or the 'paid up' plan, by which a policy is secured after a certain time without further payment.7You think then," said Mr.dBolton smiling, "that a liberal and sagacious politician might own a legislature after a time, and not be bothered with keeping up his payments?" "Whatever it is," interrupted Mr.1Bigler, "it's devilish ingenious and goes ahead of my calculations; it's cleaned me out, when I thought we had a dead sure thing.;<I tell you what it is, gentlemen, I shall go in for reform. [\Things have got pretty mixed when a legislature will give away a United States senatorship.6It was melancholy, but Mr.7Bigler was not a man to be crushed by one misfortune, or to lose his confidence in human nature, on one exhibition of apparent honesty.45He was already on his feet again, or would be if Mr.78Bolton could tide him over shoal water for ninety days.:;We've got something with money in it," he explained to Mr.+%&Bolton, "got hold of it by good luck.RSWe've got the entire contract for Dobson's Patent Pavement for the city of Mobile.G See here.MMr.abBigler made some figures; contract so; much, cost of work and materials so much, profits so much.HAt the end of three months the city would owe the company three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars-two hundred thousand of that would be profits.LMThe whole job was worth at least a million to the company--it might be more. FGThere could be no mistake in these figures; here was the contract, Mr. DEBolton knew what materials were worth and what the labor would cost.MMr.kBolton knew perfectly well from sore experience that there was always a mistake in figures when Bigler or Small made them, and he knew that he ought to send the fellow about his business./!"Instead of that, he let him talk.$tuThey only wanted to raise fifty thousand dollars to carry on the contract--that expended they would have city bonds.MMr.0 !Bolton said he hadn't the money.*&'But Bigler could raise it on his name.MMr.;<Bolton said he had no right to put his family to that risk.&vwBut the entire contract could be assigned to him--the security was ample--it was a fortune to him if it was forfeited.E Besides Mr.efBigler had been unfortunate, he didn't know where to look for the necessaries of life for his family.JKIf he could only have one more chance, he was sure he could right himself.?He begged for it.IAnd Mr.ABolton yielded.-#$He could never refuse such appeals.lmIf he had befriended a man once and been cheated by him, that man appeared to have a claim upon him forever.SHe shrank, however, from telling his wife what he had done on this occasion, for he knew that if any person was more odious than Small to his family it was Bigler.:Philip tells me," Mrs.OPBolton said that evening, "that the man Bigler has been with thee again to-day.23I hope thee will have nothing more to do with him.&*+He has been very unfortunate," replied Mr.?Bolton, uneasily. EFHe is always unfortunate, and he is always getting thee into trouble./But thee didn't listen to him again?" "Well, mother, his family is in want, and I lent him my name--but I took ample security.9:The worst that can happen will be a little inconvenience.LMrs.NBolton looked grave and anxious, but she did not complain or remonstrate; she knew what a "little inconvenience" meant, but she knew there was no help for it.JIf Mr.kBolton had been on his way to market to buy a dinner for his family with the only dollar he had in the world in his pocket, he would have given it to a chance beggar who asked him for it.LMrs.BCBolton only asked (and the question showed that she was no mere provident than her husband where her heart was interested), "But has thee provided money for Philip to use in opening the coal mine?" "Yes, I have set apart as much as it ought to cost to open the mine, as much as we can afford to lose if no coal is found.^_Philip has the control of it, as equal partner in the venture, deducting the capital invested. YZHe has great confidence in his success, and I hope for his sake he won't be disappointed.jkPhilip could not but feel that he was treated very much like one of the Bolton-family--by all except Ruth.klHis mother, when he went home after his recovery from his accident, had affected to be very jealous of Mrs.Bolton, about whom and Ruth she asked a thousand questions --an affectation of jealousy which no doubt concealed a real heartache, which comes to every mother when her son goes out into the world and forms new ties.E And to Mrs.)yzSterling; a widow, living on a small income in a remote Massachusetts village, Philadelphia was a city of many splendors.bcAll its inhabitants seemed highly favored, dwelling in ease and surrounded by superior advantages.JSome of her neighbors had relations living in Philadelphia, and it seemed to them somehow a guarantee of respectability to have relations in Philadelphia.LMrs.ISterling was not sorry to have Philip make his way among such well-to-do people, and she was sure that no good fortune could be too good for his deserts.bcSo, sir," said Ruth, when Philip came from New York, "you have been assisting in a pretty tragedy.2I saw your name in the papers.eIs this woman a specimen of your western friends?" "My only assistance," replied Philip, a little annoyed, "was in trying to keep Harry out of a bad scrape, and I failed after all.9:He walked into her trap, and he has been punished for it.ghI'm going to take him up to Ilium to see if he won't work steadily at one thing, and quit his nonsense.Is she as beautiful as the newspapers say she is?" "I don't know, she has a kind of beauty--she is not like--' "Not like Alice?" "Well, she is brilliant; she was called the handsomest woman in Washington--dashing, you know, and sarcastic and witty.cdRuth, do you believe a woman ever becomes a devil?" "Men do, and I don't know why women shouldn't.<But I never saw one.)'(Well, Laura Hawkins comes very near it.(()But it is dreadful to think of her fate.zWhy, do you suppose they will hang a woman? Do you suppose they will be so barbarous as that?" "I wasn't thinking of that--it's doubtful if a New York jury would find a woman guilty of any such crime.#-.But to think of her life if she is acquitted.eIt is dreadful," said Ruth, thoughtfully, "but the worst of it is that you men do not want women educated to do anything, to be able to earn an honest living by their own exertions.,|}They are educated as if they were always to be petted and supported, and there was never to be any such thing as misfortune.bcI suppose, now, that you would all choose to have me stay idly at home, and give up my profession.=>Oh, no," said Philip, earnestly, "I respect your resolution.But, Ruth, do you think you would be happier or do more good in following your profession than in having a home of your own?" "What is to hinder having a home of my own?" "Nothing, perhaps, only you never would be in it--you would be away day and night, if you had any practice; and what sort of a home would that make for your husband?" "What sort of a home is it for the wife whose husband is always away riding about in his doctor's gig?" "Ah, you know that is not fair.7The woman makes the home.mnPhilip and Ruth often had this sort of discussion, to which Philip was always trying to give a personal turn.He was now about to go to Ilium for the season, and he did not like to go without some assurance from Ruth that she might perhaps love him some day; when he was worthy of it, and when he could offer her something better than a partnership in his poverty.3I should work with a great deal better heart, Ruth," he said the morning he was taking leave, "if I knew you cared for me a little.OPRuth was looking down; the color came faintly to her cheeks, and she hesitated. [\She needn't be looking down, he thought, for she was ever so much shorter than tall Philip.It's not much of a place, Ilium," Philip went on, as if a little geographical remark would fit in here as well as anything else, "and I shall have plenty of time to think over the responsibility I have taken, and--" his observation did not seem to be coming out any where.RSBut Ruth looked up, and there was a light in her eyes that quickened Phil's pulse.VWShe took his hand, and said with serious sweetness: "Thee mustn't lose heart, Philip.deAnd then she added, in another mood, "Thee knows I graduate in the summer and shall have my diploma.HIAnd if any thing happens--mines explode sometimes--thee can send for me.G Farewell. \]The opening of the Ilium coal mine was begun with energy, but without many omens of success.%uvPhilip was running a tunnel into the breast of the mountain, in faith that the coal stratum ran there as it ought to.IJHow far he must go in he believed he knew, but no one could tell exactly.0Some of the miners said that they should probably go through the mountain, and that the hole could be used for a railway tunnel.#-.The mining camp was a busy place at any rate.UQuite a settlement of board and log shanties had gone up, with a blacksmith shop, a small machine shop, and a temporary store for supplying the wants of the workmen. ]^Philip and Harry pitched a commodious tent, and lived in the full enjoyment of the free life.There is no difficulty in digging a bole in the ground, if you have money enough to pay for the digging, but those who try this sort of work are always surprised at the large amount of money necessary to make a small hole.cdThe earth is never willing to yield one product, hidden in her bosom, without an equivalent for it.QRAnd when a person asks of her coal, she is quite apt to require gold in exchange.#-.It was exciting work for all concerned in it.MNAs the tunnel advanced into the rock every day promised to be the golden day.$,-This very blast might disclose the treasure.XYThe work went on week after week, and at length during the night as well as the daytime.$tuGangs relieved each other, and the tunnel was every hour, inch by inch and foot by foot, crawling into the mountain.12Philip was on the stretch of hope and excitement.'wxEvery pay day he saw his funds melting away, and still there was only the faintest show of what the miners call "signs. EFThe life suited Harry, whose buoyant hopefulness was never disturbed.bcHe made endless calculations, which nobody could understand, of the probable position of the vein.67He stood about among the workmen with the busiest air.When he was down at Ilium he called himself the engineer of the works, and he used to spend hours smoking his pipe with the Dutch landlord on the hotel porch, and astonishing the idlers there with the stories of his railroad operations in Missouri.EHe talked with the landlord, too, about enlarging his hotel, and about buying some village lots, in the prospect of a rise, when the mine was opened.?He taught the Dutchman how to mix a great many cooling drinks for the summer time, and had a bill at the hotel, the growing length of which Mr.56Dusenheimer contemplated with pleasant anticipations.MMr.?@Brierly was a very useful and cheering person wherever he went.#-.Midsummer arrived: Philip could report to Mr.MBolton only progress, and this was not a cheerful message for him to send to Philadelphia in reply to inquiries that he thought became more and more anxious.hiPhilip himself was a prey to the constant fear that the money would give out before the coal was struck.RSAt this time Harry was summoned to New York, to attend the trial of Laura Hawkins.ghIt was possible that Philip would have to go also, her lawyer wrote, but they hoped for a postponement./There was important evidence that they could not yet obtain, and he hoped the judge would not force them to a trial unprepared.There were many reasons for a delay, reasons which of course are never mentioned, but which it would seem that a New York judge sometimes must understand, when he grants a postponement upon a motion that seems to the public altogether inadequate.."#Harry went, but he soon came back.:The trial was put off.OPEvery week we can gain, said the learned counsel, Braham, improves our chances.."#The popular rage never lasts long.C CHAPTER XLIX.YWe've struck it!" This was the announcement at the tent door that woke Philip out of a sound sleep at dead of night, and shook all the sleepiness out of him in a trice.12What! Where is it? When? Coal? Let me see it.efWhat quality is it?" were some of the rapid questions that Philip poured out as he hurriedly dressed.12Harry, wake up, my boy, the coal train is coming.^_Struck it, eh? Let's see?" The foreman put down his lantern, and handed Philip a black lump.BThere was no mistake about it, it was the hard, shining anthracite, and its freshly fractured surface, glistened in the light like polished steel.;<Diamond never shone with such lustre in the eyes of Philip.VWHarry was exuberant, but Philip's natural caution found expression in his next remark.lmNow, Roberts, you are sure about this?" "What--sure that it's coal?" "O, no, sure that it's the main vein.F Well, yes.PQWe took it to be that" "Did you from the first?" "I can't say we did at first.BNo, we didn't.IJMost of the indications were there, but not all of them, not all of them.."#So we thought we'd prospect a bit.mnWell?" "It was tolerable thick, and looked as if it might be the vein--looked as if it ought to be the vein./!"Then we went down on it a little.5Looked better all the time.#-.When did you strike it?" "About ten o'clock."./Then you've been prospecting about four hours.23Yes, been sinking on it something over four hours.>I'm afraid you couldn't go down very far in four hours--could you?" "O yes--it's a good deal broke up, nothing but picking and gadding stuff.noWell, it does look encouraging, sure enough--but then the lacking indications--" "I'd rather we had them, Mr.XYSterling, but I've seen more than one good permanent mine struck without 'em in my time.2Well, that is encouraging too.FYes, there was the Union, the Alabama and the Black Mohawk--all good, sound mines, you know--all just exactly like this one when we first struck them.$,-Well, I begin to feel a good deal more easy.4I guess we've really got it.45I remember hearing them tell about the Black Mohawk.@AI'm free to say that I believe it, and the men all think so too.(()They are all old hands at this business.QRCome Harry, let's go up and look at it, just for the comfort of it," said Philip.=>They came back in the course of an hour, satisfied and happy.$,-There was no more sleep for them that night.+{|They lit their pipes, put a specimen of the coal on the table, and made it a kind of loadstone of thought and conversation.efOf course," said Harry, "there will have to be a branch track built, and a 'switch-back' up the hill. CDYes, there will be no trouble about getting the money for that now."./We could sell-out tomorrow for a handsome sum.BCThat sort of coal doesn't go begging within a mile of a rail-road.AI wonder if Mr.1Bolton' would rather sell out or work it?" "Oh, work it," says Harry, "probably the whole mountain is coal now you've got to it. EFPossibly it might not be much of a vein after all," suggested Philip.!/0Possibly it is; I'll bet it's forty feet thick.E I told you.89I knew the sort of thing as soon as I put my eyes on it.RSPhilip's next thought was to write to his friends and announce their good fortune.JTo Mr. FGBolton he wrote a short, business letter, as calm as he could make it. pqThey had found coal of excellent quality, but they could not yet tell with absolute certainty what the vein was.-#$The prospecting was still going on."rsPhilip also wrote to Ruth; but though this letter may have glowed, it was not with the heat of burning anthracite.deHe needed no artificial heat to warm his pen and kindle his ardor when he sat down to write to Ruth.GBut it must be confessed that the words never flowed so easily before, and he ran on for an hour disporting in all the extravagance of his imagination.LMWhen Ruth read it, she doubted if the fellow had not gone out of his senses.bcAnd it was not until she reached the postscript that she discovered the cause of the exhilaration.=We have found coal.."#The news couldn't have come to Mr.:Bolton in better time.,$%He had never been so sorely pressed._A dozen schemes which he had in hand, any one of which might turn up a fortune, all languished, and each needed just a little more, money to save that which had been invested.oHe hadn't a piece of real estate that was not covered with mortgages, even to the wild tract which Philip was experimenting on, and which had, no marketable value above the incumbrance on it.45He had come home that day early, unusually dejected.LMI am afraid," he said to his wife, "that we shall have to give up our house.78I don't care for myself, but for thee and the children.12That will be the least of misfortunes," said Mrs.'wxBolton, cheerfully, "if thee can clear thyself from debt and anxiety, which is wearing thee out, we can live any where.JKThee knows we were never happier than when we were in a much humbler home."rsThe truth is, Margaret, that affair of Bigler and Small's has come on me just when I couldn't stand another ounce.+%&They have made another failure of it.LI might have known they would; and the sharpers, or fools, I don't know which, have contrived to involve me for three times as much as the first obligation.>?The security is in my hands, but it is good for nothing to me.67I have not the money to do anything with the contract.34Ruth heard this dismal news without great surprise.ghShe had long felt that they were living on a volcano, that might go in to active operation at any hour.fInheriting from her father an active brain and the courage to undertake new things, she had little of his sanguine temperament which blinds one to difficulties and possible failures.GHShe had little confidence in the many schemes which had been about to lift her father out of all his embarrassments and into great wealth, ever since she was a child; as she grew older, she rather wondered that they were as prosperous as they seemed to be, and that they did not all go to smash amid so many brilliant projects.(xyShe was nothing but a woman, and did not know how much of the business prosperity of the world is only a bubble of credit and speculation, one scheme helping to float another which is no better than it, and the whole liable to come to naught and confusion as soon as the busy brain that conceived them ceases its power to devise, or when some accident produces a sudden panic.gPerhaps, I shall be the stay of the family, yet," said Ruth, with an approach to gaiety; "When we move into a little house in town, will thee let me put a little sign on the door: DR.<RUTH BOLTON?" "Mrs.%+,Longstreet, thee knows, has a great income.%+,Who will pay for the sign, Ruth?" asked Mr.IBolton.:;A servant entered with the afternoon mail from the office.MMr.:;Bolton took his letters listlessly, dreading to open them.RSHe knew well what they contained, new difficulties, more urgent demands fox money.4Oh, here is one from Philip.D Poor fellow.;<I shall feel his disappointment as much as my own bad luck.+%&It is hard to bear when one is young.2He opened the letter and read.NOAs he read his face lightened, and he fetched such a sigh of relief, that Mrs.1 Bolton and Ruth both exclaimed.RSRead that," he cried, "Philip has found coal!" The world was changed in a moment.0 !One little sentence had done it.6There was no more trouble.:Philip had found coal.>That meant relief.=That meant fortune.TUA great weight was taken off, and the spirits of the whole household rose magically.yGood Money! beautiful demon of Money, what an enchanter thou art! Ruth felt that she was of less consequence in the household, now that Philip had found Coal, and perhaps she was not sorry to feel so.MMr."./Bolton was ten years younger the next morning.78He went into the city, and showed his letter on change. DEIt was the sort of news his friends were quite willing to listen to.0 !They took a new interest in him.67If it was confirmed, Bolton would come right up again. GHThere would be no difficulty about his getting all the money he wanted.KLThe money market did not seem to be half so tight as it was the day before.nBolton spent a very pleasant day in his office, and went home revolving some new plans, and the execution of some projects he had long been prevented from entering upon by the lack of money.78The day had been spent by Philip in no less excitement.cBy daylight, with Philip's letters to the mail, word had gone down to Ilium that coal had been found, and very early a crowd of eager spectators had come up to see for themselves.lThe "prospecting" continued day and night for upwards of a week, and during the first four or five days the indications grew more and more promising, and the telegrams and letters kept Mr.=Bolton duly posted.QRBut at last a change came, and the promises began to fail with alarming rapidity.)yzIn the end it was demonstrated without the possibility of a doubt that the great "find" was nothing but a worthless seam.BPhilip was cast down, all the more so because he had been so foolish as to send the news to Philadelphia before he knew what he was writing about.2And now he must contradict it.klIt turns out to be only a mere seam," he wrote, "but we look upon it as an indication of better further in.F Alas! Mr.12Bolton's affairs could not wait for "indications.TUThe future might have a great deal in store, but the present was black and hopeless.:;It was doubtful if any sacrifice could save him from ruin.noYet sacrifice he must make, and that instantly, in the hope of saving something from the wreck of his fortune.0 !His lovely country home must go.*&'That would bring the most ready money.vThe house that he had built with loving thought for each one of his family, as he planned its luxurious apartments and adorned it; the grounds that he had laid out, with so much delight in following the tastes of his wife, with whom the country, the cultivation of rare trees and flowers, the care of garden and lawn and conservatories were a passion almost; this home, which he had hoped his children would enjoy long after he had done with it, must go.12The family bore the sacrifice better than he did.They declared in fact --women are such hypocrites--that they quite enjoyed the city (it was in August) after living so long in the country, that it was a thousand tunes more convenient in every respect; Mrs.NBolton said it was a relief from the worry of a large establishment, and Ruth reminded her father that she should have had to come to town anyway before long.MMr.LBolton was relieved, exactly as a water-logged ship is lightened by throwing overboard the most valuable portion of the cargo--but the leak was not stopped.QRIndeed his credit was injured instead of helped by the prudent step he had taken.jIt was regarded as a sure evidence of his embarrassment, and it was much more difficult for him to obtain help than if he had, instead of retrenching, launched into some new speculation.abPhilip was greatly troubled, and exaggerated his own share in the bringing about of the calamity.0 !You must not look at it so!" Mr.?Bolton wrote him.JKYou have neither helped nor hindered--but you know you may help by and by.KLIt would have all happened just so, if we had never begun to dig that hole.<That is only a drop.F Work away.:;I still have hope that something will occur to relieve me. FGAt any rate we must not give up the mine, so long as we have any show.1 Alas! the relief did not come.3New misfortunes came instead.STWhen the extent of the Bigler swindle was disclosed there was no more hope that Mr.@Bolton could extricate himself, and he had, as an honest man, no resource except to surrender all his property for the benefit of his creditors.STThe Autumn came and found Philip working with diminished force but still with hope.klHe had again and again been encouraged by good "indications," but he had again and again been disappointed.5He could not go on much longer, and almost everybody except himself had thought it was useless to go on as long as he had been doing.7When the news came of Mr.#-.Bolton's failure, of course the work stopped.{The men were discharged, the tools were housed, the hopeful noise of pickman and driver ceased, and the mining camp had that desolate and mournful aspect which always hovers over a frustrated enterprise.IJPhilip sat down amid the ruins, and almost wished he were buried in them. EFHow distant Ruth was now from him, now, when she might need him most.)yzHow changed was all the Philadelphia world, which had hitherto stood for the exemplification of happiness and prosperity.89He still had faith that there was coal in that mountain.He made a picture of himself living there a hermit in a shanty by the tunnel, digging away with solitary pick and wheelbarrow, day after day and year after year, until he grew gray and aged, and was known in all that region as the old man of the mountain.HIPerhaps some day--he felt it must be so some day--he should strike coal.SBut what if he did? Who would be alive to care for it then? What would he care for it then? No, a man wants riches in his youth, when the world is fresh to him.gHe wondered why Providence could not have reversed the usual process, and let the majority of men begin with wealth and gradually spend it, and die poor when they no longer needed it.4Harry went back to the city.78It was evident that his services were no longer needed.XIndeed, he had letters from his uncle, which he did not read to Philip, desiring him to go to San Francisco to look after some government contracts in the harbor there. pqPhilip had to look about him for something to do; he was like Adam; the world was all before him whereto choose.)yzHe made, before he went elsewhere, a somewhat painful visit to Philadelphia, painful but yet not without its sweetnesses.BThe family had never shown him so much affection before; they all seemed to think his disappointment of more importance than their own misfortune.ZAnd there was that in Ruth's manner--in what she gave him and what she withheld--that would have made a hero of a very much less promising character than Philip Sterling.kAmong the assets of the Bolton property, the Ilium tract was sold, and Philip bought it in at the vendue, for a song, for no one cared to even undertake the mortgage on it except himself.:He went away the owner of it, and had ample time before he reached home in November, to calculate how much poorer he was by possessing it.F CHAPTER L.NIt is impossible for the historian, with even the best intentions, to control events or compel the persons of his narrative to act wisely or to be successful.SIt is easy to see how things might have been better managed; a very little change here and there would have made a very, different history of this one now in hand.If Philip had adopted some regular profession, even some trade, he might now be a prosperous editor or a conscientious plumber, or an honest lawyer, and have borrowed money at the saving's bank and built a cottage, and be now furnishing it for the occupancy of Ruth and himself.Instead of this, with only a smattering of civil engineering, he is at his mother's house, fretting and fuming over his ill-luck, and the hardness and, dishonesty of men, and thinking of nothing but how to get the coal out of the Ilium hills.TUIf Senator Dilworthy had not made that visit to Hawkeye, the Hawkins family and Col.^Sellers would not now be dancing attendance upon Congress, and endeavoring to tempt that immaculate body into one of those appropriations, for the benefit of its members, which the members find it so difficult to explain to their constituents; and Laura would not be lying in the Tombs, awaiting her trial for murder, and doing her best, by the help of able counsel, to corrupt the pure fountain of criminal procedure in New York.7If Henry Brierly had been blown up on the first Mississippi steamboat he set foot on, as the chances were that he would be, he and Col.abSellers never would have gone into the Columbus Navigation scheme, and probably never into the East Tennessee Land scheme, and he would not now be detained in New York from very important business operations on the Pacific coast, for the sole purpose of giving evidence to convict of murder the only woman he ever loved half as much as he loves himself.JIf Mr.%+,Bolton had said the little word "no" to Mr.^_Bigler, Alice Montague might now be spending the winter in Philadelphia, and Philip also (waiting to resume his mining operations in the spring); and Ruth would not be an assistant in a Philadelphia hospital, taxing her strength with arduous routine duties, day by day, in order to lighten a little the burdens that weigh upon her unfortunate family.0 !It is altogether a bad business.}An honest historian, who had progressed thus far, and traced everything to such a condition of disaster and suspension, might well be justified in ending his narrative and writing --"after this the deluge.lmHis only consolation would be in the reflection that he was not responsible for either characters or events.And the most annoying thought is that a little money, judiciously applied, would relieve the burdens and anxieties of most of these people; but affairs seem to be so arranged that money is most difficult to get when people need it most.<A little of what Mr.jBolton has weakly given to unworthy people would now establish his family in a sort of comfort, and relieve Ruth of the excessive toil for which she inherited no adequate physical vigor.&*+A little money would make a prince of Col.SSellers; and a little more would calm the anxiety of Washington Hawkins about Laura, for however the trial ended, he could feel sure of extricating her in the end..~And if Philip had a little money he could unlock the stone door in the mountain whence would issue a stream of shining riches.%+,It needs a golden wand to strike that rock.;If the Knobs University bill could only go through, what a change would be wrought in the condition of most of the persons in this history.^_Even Philip himself would feel the good effects of it; for Harry would have something and Col.Sellers would have something; and have not both these cautious people expressed a determination to take an interest in the Ilium mine when they catch their larks? Philip could not resist the inclination to pay a visit to Fallkill.,|}He had not been at the Montague's since the time he saw Ruth there, and he wanted to consult the Squire about an occupation.{He was determined now to waste no more time in waiting on Providence, but to go to work at something, if it were nothing better, than teaching in the Fallkill Seminary, or digging clams on Hingham beach.klPerhaps he could read law in Squire Montague's office while earning his bread as a teacher in the Seminary.OPIt was not altogether Philip's fault, let us own, that he was in this position.There are many young men like him in American society, of his age, opportunities, education and abilities, who have really been educated for nothing and have let themselves drift, in the hope that they will find somehow, and by some sudden turn of good luck, the golden road to fortune.NOHe was not idle or lazy, he had energy and a disposition to carve his own way.But he was born into a time when all young men of his age caught the fever of speculation, and expected to get on in the world by the omission of some of the regular processes which have been appointed from of old.!/0And examples were not wanting to encourage him.nHe saw people, all around him, poor yesterday, rich to-day, who had come into sudden opulence by some means which they could not have classified among any of the regular occupations of life.=>A war would give such a fellow a career and very likely fame.34He might have been a "railroad man," or a politician, or a land speculator, or one of those mysterious people who travel free on all rail-roads and steamboats, and are continually crossing and recrossing the Atlantic, driven day and night about nobody knows what, and make a great deal of money by so doing.SProbably, at last, he sometimes thought with a whimsical smile, he should end by being an insurance agent, and asking people to insure their lives for his benefit.!qrPossibly Philip did not think how much the attractions of Fallkill were increased by the presence of Alice there.HHe had known her so long, she had somehow grown into his life by habit, that he would expect the pleasure of her society without thinking mach about it.Latterly he never thought of her without thinking of Ruth, and if he gave the subject any attention, it was probably in an undefined consciousness that, he had her sympathy in his love, and that she was always willing to hear him talk about it.If he ever wondered that Alice herself was not in love and never spoke of the possibility of her own marriage, it was a transient thought for love did not seem necessary, exactly, to one so calm and evenly balanced and with so many resources in her herself.)yzWhatever her thoughts may have been they were unknown to Philip, as they are to these historians; if she was seeming to be what she was not, and carrying a burden heavier than any one else carried, because she had to bear it alone, she was only doing what thousands of women do, with a self-renunciation and heroism, of which men, impatient and complaining, have no conception.uHave not these big babies with beards filled all literature with their outcries, their griefs and their lamentations? It is always the gentle sex which is hard and cruel and fickle and implacable.KDo you think you would be contented to live in Fallkill, and attend the county Court?" asked Alice, when Philip had opened the budget of his new programme. ]^Perhaps not always," said Philip, "I might go and practice in Boston maybe, or go to Chicago.+%&Or you might get elected to Congress.IJPhilip looked at Alice to see if she was in earnest and not chaffing him.7Her face was quite sober.IAlice was one of those patriotic women in the rural districts, who think men are still selected for Congress on account of qualifications for the office.PQNo," said Philip, "the chances are that a man cannot get into congress now without resorting to arts and means that should render hint unfit to go there; of course there are exceptions; but do you know that I could not go into politics if I were a lawyer, without losing standing somewhat in my profession, and without raising at least a suspicion of my intentions and unselfishness? Why, it is telegraphed all over the country and commented on as something wonderful if a congressman votes honestly and unselfishly and refuses to take advantage of his position to steal from the government.!qrBut," insisted Alice, "I should think it a noble ambition to go to congress, if it is so bad, and help reform it.;I don't believe it is as corrupt as the English parliament used to be, if there is any truth in the novels, and I suppose that is reformed.34I'm sure I don't know where the reform is to begin.opI've seen a perfectly capable, honest man, time and again, run against an illiterate trickster, and get beaten.PQI suppose if the people wanted decent members of congress they would elect them. FGPerhaps," continued Philip with a smile, "the women will have to vote.Well, I should be willing to, if it were a necessity, just as I would go to war and do what I could, if the country couldn't be saved otherwise," said Alice, with a spirit that surprised Philip, well as he thought he knew her. GHIf I were a young gentleman in these times--" Philip laughed outright.45It's just what Ruth used to say, 'if she were a man. CDI wonder if all the young ladies are contemplating a change of sex.8No, only a changed sex," retorted Alice; "we contemplate for the most part young men who don't care for anything they ought to care for.opWell," said Philip, looking humble, "I care for some things, you and Ruth for instance; perhaps I ought not to.<=Perhaps I ought to care for Congress and that sort of thing.7Don't be a goose, Philip.4I heard from Ruth yesterday.,$%Can I see her letter?" "No, indeed. \]But I am afraid her hard work is telling on her, together with her anxiety about her father.hiDo you think, Alice," asked Philip with one of those selfish thoughts that are not seldom mixed with real love, "that Ruth prefers her profession to--to marriage?" "Philip," exclaimed Alice, rising to quit the room, and speaking hurriedly as if the words were forced from her, "you are as blind as a bat; Ruth would cut off her right hand for you this minute.8Philip never noticed that Alice's face was flushed and that her voice was unsteady; he only thought of the delicious words he had heard.OAnd the poor girl, loyal to Ruth, loyal to Philip, went straight to her room, locked the door, threw herself on the bed and sobbed as if her heart world break. FGAnd then she prayed that her Father in Heaven would give her strength.9And after a time she was calm again, and went to her bureau drawer and took from a hiding place a little piece of paper, yellow with age.=>Upon it was pinned a four-leaved clover, dry and yellow also.(()She looked long at this foolish memento.OPUnder the clover leaf was written in a school-girl's hand--"Philip, June, 186-.78Squire Montague thought very well of Philip's proposal.`It would have been better if he had begun the study of the law as soon as he left college, but it was not too late now, and besides he had gathered some knowledge of the world.UBut," asked the Squire, "do you mean to abandon your land in Pennsylvania?" This track of land seemed an immense possible fortune to this New England lawyer-farmer.deHasn't it good timber, and doesn't the railroad almost touch it?" "I can't do anything with it now.9Perhaps I can sometime.iWhat is your reason for supposing that there is coal there?" "The opinion of the best geologist I could consult, my own observation of the country, and the little veins of it we found.5I feel certain it is there.7I shall find it some day.F I know it.BCIf I can only keep the land till I make money enough to try again.APhilip took from his pocket a map of the anthracite coal region, and pointed out the position of the Ilium mountain which he had begun to tunnel.VWDoesn't it look like it?" "It certainly does," said the Squire, very much interested.GIt is not unusual for a quiet country gentleman to be more taken with such a venture than a speculator who, has had more experience in its uncertainty. pqIt was astonishing how many New England clergymen, in the time of the petroleum excitement, took chances in oil.bThe Wall street brokers are said to do a good deal of small business for country clergymen, who are moved no doubt with the laudable desire of purifying the New York stock board.ABI don't see that there is much risk," said the Squire, at length.mnThe timber is worth more than the mortgage; and if that coal seam does run there, it's a magnificent fortune.XWould you like to try it again in the spring, Phil?" Like to try it! If he could have a little help, he would work himself, with pick and barrow, and live on a crust.2Only give him one more chance.And this is how it came about that the cautious old Squire Montague was drawn into this young fellow's speculation, and began to have his serene old age disturbed by anxieties and by the hope of a great stroke of luck.78To be sure, I only care about it for the boy," he said.KLThe Squire was like everybody else; sooner or later he must "take a chance.6It is probably on account of the lack of enterprise in women that they are not so fond of stock speculations and mine ventures as men.QRIt is only when woman becomes demoralized that she takes to any sort of gambling.ghNeither Alice nor Ruth were much elated with the prospect of Philip's renewal of his mining enterprise.8But Philip was exultant.VHe wrote to Ruth as if his fortune were already made, and as if the clouds that lowered over the house of Bolton were already in the deep bosom of a coal mine buried.UVTowards spring he went to Philadelphia with his plans all matured for a new campaign.0 !His enthusiasm was irresistible.|Philip has come, Philip has come," cried the children, as if some great good had again come into the household; and the refrain even sang itself over in Ruth's heart as she went the weary hospital rounds.MMr.%uvBolton felt more courage than he had had in months, at the sight of his manly face and the sound of his cheery voice.Ruth's course was vindicated now, and it certainly did not become Philip, who had nothing to offer but a future chance against the visible result of her determination and industry, to open an argument with her.XYRuth was never more certain that she was right and that she was sufficient unto herself.YShe, may be, did not much heed the still small voice that sang in her maiden heart as she went about her work, and which lightened it and made it easy, "Philip has come. EFI am glad for father's sake," she said to Philip, that thee has come.89I can see that he depends greatly upon what thee can do.efHe thinks women won't hold out long," added Ruth with the smile that Philip never exactly understood. ]^And aren't you tired sometimes of the struggle?" "Tired? Yes, everybody is tired I suppose.0 !But it is a glorious profession.3And would you want me to be dependent, Philip?" "Well, yes, a little," said Philip, feeling his way towards what he wanted to say.RSOn what, for instance, just now?" asked Ruth, a little maliciously Philip thought.Why, on----" he couldn't quite say it, for it occurred to him that he was a poor stick for any body to lean on in the present state of his fortune, and that the woman before him was at least as independent as he was.+%&I don't mean depend," he began again.5But I love you, that's all.lAm I nothing--to you?" And Philip looked a little defiant, and as if he had said something that ought to brush away all the sophistries of obligation on either side, between man and woman.:Perhaps Ruth saw this.<Perhaps she saw that her own theories of a certain equality of power, which ought to precede a union of two hearts, might be pushed too far.RPerhaps she had felt sometimes her own weakness and the need after all of so dear a sympathy and so tender an interest confessed, as that which Philip could give.*z{Whatever moved her--the riddle is as old as creation--she simply looked up to Philip and said in a low voice, "Everything.And Philip clasping both her hands in his, and looking down into her eyes, which drank in all his tenderness with the thirst of a true woman's nature-- "Oh! Philip, come out here," shouted young Eli, throwing the door wide open.#stAnd Ruth escaped away to her room, her heart singing again, and now as if it would burst for joy, "Philip has come.MNThat night Philip received a dispatch from Harry--"The trial begins tomorrow.=>CHAPTER, LI December 18--, found Washington Hawkins and Col.XYSellers once more at the capitol of the nation, standing guard over the University bill.89The former gentleman was despondent, the latter hopeful.=>Washington's distress of mind was chiefly on Laura's account.:The court would soon sit to try her, case, he said, and consequently a great deal of ready money would be needed in the engineering of it.iThe University bill was sure to pass this, time, and that would make money plenty, but might not the help come too late? Congress had only just assembled, and delays were to be feared.MNWell," said the Colonel, "I don't know but you are more or less right, there.34Now let's figure up a little on, the preliminaries.UVI think Congress always tries to do as near right as it can, according to its lights.*&'A man can't ask any fairer, than that.PQThe first preliminary it always starts out on, is, to clean itself, so to speak.KIt will arraign two or three dozen of its members, or maybe four or five dozen, for taking bribes to vote for this and that and the other bill last winter.It goes up into the dozens, does it?" "Well, yes; in a free country likes ours, where any man can run for Congress and anybody can vote for him, you can't expect immortal purity all the time--it ain't in nature.oSixty or eighty or a hundred and fifty people are bound to get in who are not angels in disguise, as young Hicks the correspondent says; but still it is a very good average; very good indeed.PQAs long as it averages as well as that, I think we can feel very well satisfied.NEven in these days, when people growl so much and the newspapers are so out of patience, there is still a very respectable minority of honest men in Congress. DEWhy a respectable minority of honest men can't do any good, Colonel.@AOh, yes it can, too" "Why, how?" "Oh, in many ways, many ways.5But what are the ways?" "Well--I don't know--it is a question that requires time; a body can't answer every question right off-hand.<But it does do good.9I am satisfied of that. GHAll right, then; grant that it does good; go on with the preliminaries.4That is what I am coming to.LMFirst, as I said, they will try a lot of members for taking money for votes.6That will take four weeks.2Yes, that's like last year; and it is a sheer waste of the time for which the nation pays those men to work--that is what that is. 01And it pinches when a body's got a bill waiting.%uvA waste of time, to purify the fountain of public law? Well, I never heard anybody express an idea like that before. pqBut if it were, it would still be the fault of the minority, for the majority don't institute these proceedings.fgThere is where that minority becomes an obstruction --but still one can't say it is on the wrong side.,|}Well, after they have finished the bribery cases, they will take up cases of members who have bought their seats with money.."#That will take another four weeks.?Very good; go on.12You have accounted for two-thirds of the session.0Next they will try each other for various smaller irregularities, like the sale of appointments to West Point cadetships, and that sort of thing--mere trifling pocket-money enterprises that might better, be passed over in silence, perhaps, but then one of our Congresses can never rest easy till it has thoroughly purified itself of all blemishes--and that is a thing to be applauded.ijHow long does it take to disinfect itself of these minor impurities?" "Well, about two weeks, generally. FGSo Congress always lies helpless in quarantine ten weeks of a session.=That's encouraging.=>Colonel, poor Laura will never get any benefit from our bill.@AHer trial will be over before Congress has half purified itself.tAnd doesn't it occur to you that by the time it has expelled all its impure members there, may not be enough members left to do business legally?" "Why I did not say Congress would expel anybody. 01Well won't it expel anybody?" "Not necessarily./!"Did it last year? It never does.6That would not be regular..~Then why waste all the session in that tomfoolery of trying members?" "It is usual; it is customary; the country requires it.,$%Then the country is a fool, I think.IOh, no.45The country thinks somebody is going to be expelled.sWell, when nobody is expelled, what does the country think then?" "By that time, the thing has strung out so long that the country is sick and tired of it and glad to have a change on any terms./!"But all that inquiry is not lost.5It has a good moral effect.?@Who does it have a good moral effect on?" "Well--I don't know.2On foreign countries, I think.89We have always been under the gaze of foreign countries.XYThere is no country in the world, sir, that pursues corruption as inveterately as we do..~There is no country in the world whose representatives try each other as much as ours do, or stick to it as long on a stretch. \]I think there is something great in being a model for the whole civilized world, Washington.$,-You don't mean a model; you mean an example.23Well, it's all the same; it's just the same thing.bcIt shows that a man can't be corrupt in this country without sweating for it, I can tell you that.QRHang it, Colonel, you just said we never punish anybody for villainous practices.LBut good God we try them, don't we! Is it nothing to show a disposition to sift things and bring people to a strict account? I tell you it has its effect.&vwOh, bother the effect!--What is it they do do? How do they proceed? You know perfectly well--and it is all bosh, too.$tuCome, now, how do they proceed?" "Why they proceed right and regular--and it ain't bosh, Washington, it ain't bosh.oThey appoint a committee to investigate, and that committee hears evidence three weeks, and all the witnesses on one side swear that the accused took money or stock or something for his vote.Then the accused stands up and testifies that he may have done it, but he was receiving and handling a good deal of money at the time and he doesn't remember this particular circumstance--at least with sufficient distinctness to enable him to grasp it tangibly.OPSo of course the thing is not proven--and that is what they say in the verdict.*&'They don't acquit, they don't condemn.."#They just say, 'Charge not proven.MIt leaves the accused is a kind of a shaky condition before the country, it purifies Congress, it satisfies everybody, and it doesn't seriously hurt anybody._`It has taken a long time to perfect our system, but it is the most admirable in the world, now.STSo one of those long stupid investigations always turns out in that lame silly way.;Yes, you are correct. DEI thought maybe you viewed the matter differently from other people.XDo you think a Congress of ours could convict the devil of anything if he were a member?" "My dear boy, don't let these damaging delays prejudice you against Congress.:;Don't use such strong language; you talk like a newspaper.OPCongress has inflicted frightful punishments on its members--now you know that.=When they tried Mr.Fairoaks, and a cloud of witnesses proved him to be--well, you know what they proved him to be--and his own testimony and his own confessions gave him the same character, what did Congress do then?--come!" "Well, what did Congress do?" "You know what Congress did, Washington.Congress intimated plainly enough, that they considered him almost a stain upon their body; and without waiting ten days, hardly, to think the thing over, the rose up and hurled at him a resolution declaring that they disapproved of his conduct! Now you know that, Washington.23It was a terrific thing--there is no denying that.EIf he had been proven guilty of theft, arson, licentiousness, infanticide, and defiling graves, I believe they would have suspended him for two days./!"You can depend on it, Washington.LMCongress is vindictive, Congress is savage, sir, when it gets waked up once.?@It will go to any length to vindicate its honor at such a time.oAh well, we have talked the morning through, just as usual in these tiresome days of waiting, and we have reached the same old result; that is to say, we are no better off than when we began.KLThe land bill is just as far away as ever, and the trial is closer at hand./!"Let's give up everything and die.LMDie and leave the Duchess to fight it out all alone? Oh, no, that won't do.7Come, now, don't talk so.."#It is all going to come out right.ANow you'll see.%+,It never will, Colonel, never in the world.8Something tells me that.!/0I get more tired and more despondent every day.23I don't see any hope; life is only just a trouble.lmI am so miserable, these days!" The Colonel made Washington get up and walk the floor with him, arm in arm.UVThe good old speculator wanted to comfort him, but he hardly knew how to go about it.JHe made many attempts, but they were lame; they lacked spirit; the words were encouraging; but they were only words--he could not get any heart into them.>?He could not always warm up, now, with the old Hawkeye fervor.78By and by his lips trembled and his voice got unsteady.78He said: "Don't give up the ship, my boy--don't do it.67The wind's bound to fetch around and set in our favor.F I know it."./And the prospect was so cheerful that he wept.Then he blew a trumpet-blast that started the meshes of his handkerchief, and said in almost his breezy old-time way: "Lord bless us, this is all nonsense! Night doesn't last always; day has got to break some time or other.AEvery silver lining has a cloud behind it, as the poet says; and that remark has always cheered me; though --I never could see any meaning to it.@AEverybody uses it, though, and everybody gets comfort out of it.(()I wish they would start something fresh.QRCome, now, let's cheer up; there's been as good fish in the sea as there are now.QRIt shall never be said that Beriah Sellers --Come in?" It was the telegraph boy.YThe Colonel reached for the message and devoured its contents: "I said it! Never give up the ship! The trial's, postponed till February, and we'll save the child yet.Bless my life, what lawyers they, have in New-York! Give them money to fight with; and the ghost of an excuse, and they: would manage to postpone anything in this world, unless it might be the millennium or something like that.6Now for work again my boy.TUThe trial will last to the middle of March, sure; Congress ends the fourth of March.UWithin three days of the end of the session they will be done putting through the preliminaries then they will be ready for national business: Our bill will go through in forty-eight hours, then, and we'll telegraph a million dollar's to the jury--to the lawyers, I mean--and the verdict of the jury will be 'Accidental murder resulting from justifiable insanity'--or something to, that effect, something to that effect.3Everything is dead sure, now.fgCome, what is the matter? What are you wilting down like that, for? You mustn't be a girl, you know.IOh, Colonel, I am become so used to troubles, so used to failures, disappointments, hard luck of all kinds, that a little good news breaks me right down.HIEverything has been so hopeless that now I can't stand good news at all.."#It is too good to be true, anyway. pqDon't you see how our bad luck has worked on me? My hair is getting gray, and many nights I don't sleep at all.')*I wish it was all over and we could rest.=I wish we could lie, down and just forget everything, and let it all be just a dream that is done and can't come back to trouble us any more.BI am so tired. FGAh, poor child, don't talk like that-cheer up--there's daylight ahead.ADon't give, up.vYou'll have Laura again, and--Louise, and your mother, and oceans and oceans of money--and then you can go away, ever so far away somewhere, if you want to, and forget all about this infernal place.MNAnd by George I'll go with you! I'll go with you--now there's my word on it.G Cheer up.%+,I'll run out and tell the friends the news.<=And he wrung Washington's hand and was about to hurry away when his companion, in a burst of grateful admiration said: "I think you are the best soul and the noblest I ever knew, Colonel Sellers! and if the people only knew you as I do, you would not be tagging around here a nameless man--you would be in Congress.The gladness died out of the Colonel's face, and he laid his hand upon Washington's shoulder and said gravely: "I have always been a friend of your family, Washington, and I think I have always tried to do right as between man and man, according to my lights.-}~Now I don't think there has ever been anything in my conduct that should make you feel Justified in saying a thing like that. [\He turned, then, and walked slowly out, leaving Washington abashed and somewhat bewildered.cWhen Washington had presently got his thoughts into line again, he said to himself, "Why, honestly, I only meant to compliment him--indeed I would not have hurt him for the world.D CHAPTER LII."./The weeks drifted by monotonously enough, now.The "preliminaries" continued to drag along in Congress, and life was a dull suspense to Sellers and Washington, a weary waiting which might have broken their hearts, maybe, but for the relieving change which they got out of am occasional visit to New York to see Laura.Standing guard in Washington or anywhere else is not an exciting business in time of peace, but standing guard was all that the two friends had to do; all that was needed of them was that they should be on hand and ready for any emergency that might come up.aThere was no work to do; that was all finished; this was but the second session of the last winter's Congress, and its action on the bill could have but one result--its passage.jkThe house must do its work over again, of course, but the same membership was there to see that it did it. YZThe Senate was secure--Senator Dilworthy was able to put all doubts to rest on that head._Indeed it was no secret in Washington that a two-thirds vote in the Senate was ready and waiting to be cast for the University bill as soon as it should come before that body.abWashington did not take part in the gaieties of "the season," as he had done the previous winter.JKHe had lost his interest in such things; he was oppressed with cares, now.kSenator Dilworthy said to Washington that an humble deportment, under punishment, was best, and that there was but one way in which the troubled heart might find perfect repose and peace.ghThe suggestion found a response in Washington's breast, and the Senator saw the sign of it in his face.VWFrom that moment one could find the youth with the Senator even oftener than with Col.H Sellers.cWhen the statesman presided at great temperance meetings, he placed Washington in the front rank of impressive dignitaries that gave tone to the occasion and pomp to the platform.ABHis bald headed surroundings made the youth the more conspicuous.VWhen the statesman made remarks in these meetings, he not infrequently alluded with effect to the encouraging spectacle of one of the wealthiest and most brilliant young favorites of society forsaking the light vanities of that butterfly existence to nobly and self-sacrificingly devote his talents and his riches to the cause of saving his hapless fellow creatures from shame and misery here and eternal regret hereafter.$%At the prayer meetings the Senator always brought Washington up the aisle on his arm and seated him prominently; in his prayers he referred to him in the cant terms which the Senator employed, perhaps unconsciously, and mistook, maybe, for religion, and in other ways brought him into notice.PHe had him out at gatherings for the benefit of the negro, gatherings for the benefit of the Indian, gatherings for the benefit of the heathen in distant lands.RSHe had him out time and again, before Sunday Schools, as an example for emulation.CDUpon all these occasions the Senator made casual references to many benevolent enterprises which his ardent young friend was planning against the day when the passage of the University bill should make his means available for the amelioration of the condition of the unfortunate among his fellow men of all nations and all.Iclimes.Thus as the weeks rolled on Washington grew up, into an imposing lion once more, but a lion that roamed the peaceful fields of religion and temperance, and revisited the glittering domain of fashion no more.A great moral influence was thus brought, to bear in favor of the bill; the weightiest of friends flocked to its standard; its most energetic enemies said it was useless to fight longer; they had tacitly surrendered while as yet the day of battle was not come.C CHAPTER LIII.')*The session was drawing toward its close.opSenator Dilworthy thought he would run out west and shake hands with his constituents and let them look at him.klThe legislature whose duty it would be to re-elect him to the United States Senate, was already in session.MMr.Dilworthy considered his re-election certain, but he was a careful, painstaking man, and if, by visiting his State he could find the opportunity to persuade a few more legislators to vote for him, he held the journey to be well worth taking.%uvThe University bill was safe, now; he could leave it without fear; it needed his presence and his watching no longer.lmBut there was a person in his State legislature who did need watching --a person who, Senator Dilworthy said, was a narrow, grumbling, uncomfortable malcontent--a person who was stolidly opposed to reform, and progress and him,--a person who, he feared, had been bought with money to combat him, and through him the commonwealth's welfare and its politics' purity.1 If this person Noble," said Mr.#stDilworthy, in a little speech at a dinner party given him by some of his admirers, "merely desired to sacrifice me.I would willingly offer up my political life on the altar of my dear State's weal, I would be glad and grateful to do it; but when he makes of me but a cloak to hide his deeper designs, when he proposes to strike through me at the heart of my beloved State, all the lion in me is roused--and I say here I stand, solitary and alone, but unflinching, unquailing, thrice armed with my sacred trust; and whoso passes, to do evil to this fair domain that looks to me for protection, must do so over my dead body.OPHe further said that if this Noble were a pure man, and merely misguided, he could bear it, but that he should succeed in his wicked designs through, a base use of money would leave a blot upon his State which would work untold evil to the morals of the people, and that he would not suffer; the public morals must not be contaminated.^_He would seek this man Noble; he would argue, he would persuade, he would appeal to his honor.*z{When he arrived on the ground he found his friends unterrified; they were standing firmly by him and were full of courage. [\Noble was working hard, too, but matters were against him, he was not making much progress.34Dilworthy took an early opportunity to send for Mr.9Noble; he had a midnight interview with him, and urged him to forsake his evil ways; he begged him to come again and again, which he did.PQHe finally sent the man away at 3 o'clock one morning; and when he was gone, Mr.UVDilworthy said to himself, "I feel a good deal relieved, now, a great deal relieved.QRThe Senator now turned his attention to matters touching the souls of his people.FHe appeared in church; he took a leading part in prayer meetings; he met and encouraged the temperance societies; he graced the sewing circles of the ladies with his presence, and even took a needle now and then and made a stitch or two upon a calico shirt for some poor Bibleless pagan of the South Seas, and this act enchanted the ladies, who regarded the garments thus honored as in a manner sanctified.9The Senator wrought in Bible classes, and nothing could keep him away from the Sunday Schools--neither sickness nor storms nor weariness.oHe even traveled a tedious thirty miles in a poor little rickety stagecoach to comply with the desire of the miserable hamlet of Cattleville that he would let its Sunday School look upon him.$%All the town was assembled at the stage office when he arrived, two bonfires were burning, and a battery of anvils was popping exultant broadsides; for a United States Senator was a sort of god in the understanding of these people who never had seen any creature mightier than a county judge.WXTo them a United States Senator was a vast, vague colossus, an awe inspiring unreality.^Next day everybody was at the village church a full half hour before time for Sunday School to open; ranchmen and farmers had come with their families from five miles around, all eager to get a glimpse of the great man--the man who had been to Washington; the man who had seen the President of the United States, and had even talked with him; the man who had seen the actual Washington Monument--perhaps touched it with his hands.ZWhen the Senator arrived the Church was crowded, the windows were full, the aisles were packed, so was the vestibule, and so indeed was the yard in front of the building.As he worked his way through to the pulpit on the arm of the minister and followed by the envied officials of the village, every neck was stretched and, every eye twisted around intervening obstructions to get a glimpse. ]^Elderly people directed each other's attention and, said, "There! that's him, with the grand, noble forehead!" Boys nudged each other and said, "Hi, Johnny, here he is, there, that's him, with the peeled head!" The Senator took his seat in the pulpit, with the minister' on one side of him and the Superintendent of the Sunday School on the other.NOThe town dignitaries sat in an impressive row within the altar railings below.=>The Sunday School children occupied ten of the front benches.opdressed in their best and most uncomfortable clothes, and with hair combed and faces too clean to feel natural.,|}So awed were they by the presence of a living United States Senator, that during three minutes not a "spit ball" was thrown.?After that they began to come to themselves by degrees, and presently the spell was wholly gone and they were reciting verses and pulling hair.The usual Sunday School exercises were hurried through, and then the minister, got up and bored the house with a speech built on the customary Sunday School plan; then the Superintendent put in his oar; then the town dignitaries had their say.They all made complimentary reference to "their friend the Senator," and told what a great and illustrious man he was and what he had done for his country and for religion and temperance, and exhorted the little boys to be good and diligent and try to become like him some day.KThe speakers won the deathless hatred of the house by these delays, but at last there was an end and hope revived; inspiration was about to find utterance.STSenator Dilworthy rose and beamed upon the assemblage for a full minute in silence. pqThen he smiled with an access of sweetness upon the children and began: "My little friends--for I hope that all these bright-faced little people are my friends and will let me be their friend--my little friends, I have traveled much, I have been in many cities and many States, everywhere in our great and noble country, and by the blessing of Providence I have been permitted to see many gatherings like this--but I am proud, I am truly proud to say that I never have looked upon so much intelligence, so much grace, such sweetness of disposition as I see in the charming young countenances I see before me at this moment.5I have been asking myself as I sat here, Where am I? Am I in some far-off monarchy, looking upon little princes and princesses? No.NAm I in some populous centre of my own country, where the choicest children of the land have been selected and brought together as at a fair for a prize? No. [\Am I in some strange foreign clime where the children are marvels that we know not of? No.DThen where am I? Yes--where am I? I am in a simple, remote, unpretending settlement of my own dear State, and these are the children of the noble and virtuous men who have made me what I am! My soul is lost in wonder at the thought! And I humbly thank Him to whom we are but as worms of the dust, that he has been pleased to call me to serve such men! Earth has no higher, no grander position for me..~Let kings and emperors keep their tinsel crowns, I want them not; my heart is here! "Again I thought, Is this a theatre? No.)'(Is it a concert or a gilded opera? No.`aIs it some other vain, brilliant, beautiful temple of soul-staining amusement and hilarity? No.fThen what is it? What did my consciousness reply? I ask you, my little friends, What did my consciousness reply? It replied, It is the temple of the Lord! Ah, think of that, now.67I could hardly keep the tears back, I was so grateful.Oh, how beautiful it is to see these ranks of sunny little faces assembled here to learn the way of life; to learn to be good; to learn to be useful; to learn to be pious; to learn to be great and glorious men and women; to learn to be props and pillars of the State and shining lights in the councils and the households of the nation; to be bearers of the banner and soldiers of the cross in the rude campaigns of life, and raptured souls in the happy fields of Paradise hereafter.&vwChildren, honor your parents and be grateful to them for providing for you the precious privileges of a Sunday School._Now my dear little friends, sit up straight and pretty--there, that's it--and give me your attention and let me tell you about a poor little Sunday School scholar I once knew.45He lived in the far west, and his parents were poor.opThey could not give him a costly education; but they were good and wise and they sent him to the Sunday School.5He loved the Sunday School.I hope you love your Sunday School--ah, I see by your faces that you do! That is right! "Well, this poor little boy was always in his place when the bell rang, and he always knew his lesson; for his teachers wanted him to learn and he loved his teachers dearly.VWAlways love your teachers, my children, for they love you more than you can know, now.?@He would not let bad boys persuade him to go to play on Sunday.WXThere was one little bad boy who was always trying to persuade him, but he never could.*z{So this poor little boy grew up to be a man, and had to go out in the world, far from home and friends to earn his living.hTemptations lay all about him, and sometimes he was about to yield, but he would think of some precious lesson he learned in his Sunday School a long time ago, and that would save him.`aBy and by he was elected to the legislature--Then he did everything he could for Sunday Schools.QRHe got laws passed for them; he got Sunday Schools established wherever he could.^_And by and by the people made him governor--and he said it was all owing to the Sunday School.$tuAfter a while the people elected him a Representative to the Congress of the United States, and he grew very famous.%+,Now temptations assailed him on every hand.67People tried to get him to drink wine; to dance, to go to theatres; they even tried to buy his vote; but no, the memory of his Sunday School saved him from all harm; he remembered the fate of the bad little boy who used to try to get him to play on Sunday, and who grew up and became a drunkard and was hanged. GHHe remembered that, and was glad he never yielded and played on Sunday.1Well, at last, what do you think happened? Why the people gave him a towering, illustrious position, a grand, imposing position.^And what do you think it was? What should you say it was, children? It was Senator of the United States! That poor little boy that loved his Sunday School became that man.JKThat man stands before you! All that he is, he owes to the Sunday School.qMy precious children, love your parents, love your teachers, love your Sunday School, be pious, be obedient, be honest, be diligent, and then you will succeed in life and be honored of all men.')*Above all things, my children, be honest.$,-Above all things be pure-minded as the snow.:Let us join in prayer.VWhen Senator Dilworthy departed from Cattleville, he left three dozen boys behind him arranging a campaign of life whose objective point was the United States Senate.45When he arrived at the State capital at midnight Mr.=Noble came and held a three-hours' conference with him, and then as he was about leaving said: "I've worked hard, and I've got them at last.CDSix of them haven't got quite back-bone enough to slew around and come right out for you on the first ballot to-morrow; but they're going to vote against you on the first for the sake of appearances, and then come out for you all in a body on the second--I've fixed all that! By supper time to-morrow you'll be re-elected.')*You can go to bed and sleep easy on that.G After Mr.$tuNoble was gone, the Senator said: "Well, to bring about a complexion of things like this was worth coming West for.D CHAPTER LIV.XThe case of the State of New York against Laura Hawkins was finally set down for trial on the 15th day of February, less than a year after the shooting of George Selby.~If the public had almost forgotten the existence of Laura and her crime, they were reminded of all the details of the murder by the newspapers, which for some days had been announcing the approaching trial.5But they had not forgotten.ABThe sex, the age, the beauty of the prisoner; her high social position in Washington, the unparalleled calmness with which the crime was committed had all conspired to fix the event in the public mind, although nearly three hundred and sixty-five subsequent murders had occurred to vary the monotony of metropolitan life.HINo, the public read from time to time of the lovely prisoner, languishing in the city prison, the tortured victim of the law's delay; and as the months went by it was natural that the horror of her crime should become a little indistinct in memory, while the heroine of it should be invested with a sort of sentimental interest.%+,Perhaps her counsel had calculated on this.Perhaps it was by their advice that Laura had interested herself in the unfortunate criminals who shared her prison confinement, and had done not a little to relieve, from her own purse, the necessities of some of the poor creatures.:That she had done this, the public read in the journals of the day, and the simple announcement cast a softening light upon her character.`aThe court room was crowded at an early hour, before the arrival of judges, lawyers and prisoner.cdThere is no enjoyment so keen to certain minds as that of looking upon the slow torture of a human being on trial for life, except it be an execution; there is no display of human ingenuity, wit and power so fascinating as that made by trained lawyers in the trial of an important case, nowhere else is exhibited such subtlety, acumen, address, eloquence.@AAll the conditions of intense excitement meet in a murder trial.IJThe awful issue at stake gives significance to the lightest word or look..~How the quick eyes of the spectators rove from the stolid jury to the keen lawyers, the impassive judge, the anxious prisoner.NNothing is lost of the sharp wrangle of the counsel on points of law, the measured decision's of the bench; the duels between the attorneys and the witnesses.HThe crowd sways with the rise and fall of the shifting, testimony, in sympathetic interest, and hangs upon the dicta of the judge in breathless silence.noIt speedily takes sides for or against the accused, and recognizes as quickly its favorites among the lawyers.jkNothing delights it more than the sharp retort of a witness and the discomfiture of an obnoxious attorney.lmA joke, even if it be a lame, one, is no where so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder trial.FWithin the bar the young lawyers and the privileged hangers-on filled all the chairs except those reserved at the table for those engaged in the case.TUWithout, the throng occupied all the seats, the window ledges and the standing room."./The atmosphere was already something horrible.KIt was the peculiar odor of a criminal court, as if it were tainted by the presence, in different persons, of all the crimes that men and women can commit.KThere was a little stir when the Prosecuting Attorney, with two assistants, made his way in, seated himself at the table, and spread his papers before him.=>There was more stir when the counsel of the defense appeared.C They were Mr.5Braham, the senior, and Mr.AQuiggle and Mr.;O'Keefe, the juniors.,$%Everybody in the court room knew Mr.HBraham, the great criminal lawyer, and he was not unaware that he was the object of all eyes as he moved to his place, bowing to his friends in the bar.A large but rather spare man, with broad shoulders and a massive head, covered with chestnut curls which fell down upon his coat collar and which he had a habit of shaking as a lion is supposed to shake his mane.opHis face was clean shaven, and he had a wide mouth and rather small dark eyes, set quite too near together: Mr.)yzBraham wore a brown frock coat buttoned across his breast, with a rose-bud in the upper buttonhole, and light pantaloons.KA diamond stud was seen to flash from his bosom; and as he seated himself and drew off his gloves a heavy seal ring was displayed upon his white left hand.MMr.Braham having seated himself, deliberately surveyed the entire house, made a remark to one of his assistants, and then taking an ivory-handled knife from his pocket began to pare his finger nails, rocking his chair backwards and forwards slowly. !A moment later Judge O'Shaunnessy entered at the rear door and took his seat in one of the chairs behind the bench; a gentleman in black broadcloth, with sandy hair, inclined to curl, a round; reddish and rather jovial face, sharp rather than intellectual, and with a self-sufficient air.(()His career had nothing remarkable in it.VHe was descended from a long line of Irish Kings, and he was the first one of them who had ever come into his kingdom--the kingdom of such being the city of New York.He had, in fact, descended so far and so low that he found himself, when a boy, a sort of street Arab in that city; but he had ambition and native shrewdness, and he speedily took to boot-polishing, and newspaper hawking, became the office and errand boy of a law firm, picked up knowledge enough to get some employment in police courts, was admitted to the bar, became a rising young politician, went to the legislature, and was finally elected to the bench which he now honored. YZIn this democratic country he was obliged to conceal his royalty under a plebeian aspect.Judge O'Shaunnessy never had a lucrative practice nor a large salary but he had prudently laid away money-believing that a dependant judge can never be impartial--and he had lands and houses to the value of three or four hundred thousand dollars.opHad he not helped to build and furnish this very Court House? Did he not know that the very "spittoon" which his judgeship used cost the city the sum of one thousand dollars? As soon as the judge was seated, the court was opened with the "oi yis, oi yis" of the officer in his native language, the case called, and the sheriff was directed to bring in the prisoner.-}~In the midst of a profound hush Laura entered, leaning on the arm of the officer, and was conducted to a seat by her counsel.XYShe was followed by her mother and by Washington Hawkins, who were given seats near her.0Laura was very pale, but this pallor heightened the lustre of her large eyes and gave a touching sadness to her expressive face.OPShe was dressed in simple black, with exquisite taste, and without an ornament.cdThe thin lace vail which partially covered her face did not so much conceal as heighten her beauty.hiShe would not have entered a drawing room with more self-poise, nor a church with more haughty humility.CThere was in her manner or face neither shame nor boldness, and when she took her seat in fall view of half the spectators, her eyes were downcast.$,-A murmur of admiration ran through the room.!/0The newspaper reporters made their pencils fly.MMr.=>Braham again swept his eyes over the house as if in approval.-}~When Laura at length raised her eyes a little, she saw Philip and Harry within the bar, but she gave no token of recognition.@AThe clerk then read the indictment, which was in the usual form.cdIt charged Laura Hawkins, in effect, with the premeditated murder of George Selby, by shooting him with a pistol, with a revolver, shotgun, rifle, repeater, breech-loader, cannon, six-shooter, with a gun, or some other, weapon; with killing him with a slung-shot, a bludgeon, carving knife, bowie knife, pen knife, rolling pin, car, hook, dagger, hair pin, with a hammer, with a screw-driver; with a nail, and with all other weapons and utensils whatsoever, at the Southern hotel and in all other hotels and places wheresoever, on the thirteenth day of March and all other days of the Christian era wheresoever.FLaura stood while the long indictment was read; and at the end, in response to the inquiry, of the judge, she said in a clear, low voice; "Not guilty.78She sat down and the court proceeded to impanel a jury.89The first man called was Michael Lanigan, saloon keeper. pqHave you formed or expressed any opinion on this case, and do you know any of the parties?" "Not any," said Mr.H Lanigan. ]^Have you any conscientious objections to capital punishment?" "No, sir, not to my knowledge.TUHave you read anything about this case?" "To be sure, I read the papers, y'r Honor.>Objected to by Mr.."#Braham, for cause, and discharged.?Patrick Coughlin. FGWhat is your business?" "Well--I haven't got any particular business.4Haven't any particular business, eh? Well, what's your general business? What do you do for a living?" "I own some terriers, sir.XYOwn some terriers, eh? Keep a rat pit?" "Gentlemen comes there to have a little sport.;I never fit 'em, sir.HIOh, I see--you are probably the amusement committee of the city council.@AHave you ever heard of this case?" "Not till this morning, sir.%+,Can you read?" "Not fine print, y'r Honor.)'(The man was about to be sworn, when Mr. [\Braham asked, "Could your father read?" "The old gentleman was mighty handy at that, sir.MMr.ABBraham submitted that the man was disqualified Judge thought not.C Point argued.)'(Challenged peremptorily, and set aside.8Ethan Dobb, cart-driver. 01Can you read?" "Yes, but haven't a habit of it. DEHave you heard of this case?" "I think so--but it might be another.5I have no opinion about it.KDist.klTha--tha--there! Hold on a bit? Did anybody tell you to say you had no opinion about it?" "N--n--o, sir.7Take care now, take care.klThen what suggested it to you to volunteer that remark?" "They've always asked that, when I was on juries.@All right, then.qHave you any conscientious scruples about capital punishment?" "Any which?" "Would you object to finding a person guilty--of murder on evidence?" "I might, sir, if I thought he wan't guilty.#-.The district attorney thought he saw a point.?Would this feeling rather incline you against a capital conviction?" The juror said he hadn't any feeling, and didn't know any of the parties.=Accepted and sworn.:Dennis Lafin, laborer.#-.Have neither formed nor expressed an opinion.4Never had heard of the case."./Believed in hangin' for them that deserved it.1 Could read if it was necessary.MMr.@Braham objected.,$%The man was evidently bloody minded.8Challenged peremptorily.6Larry O'Toole, contractor.abA showily dressed man of the style known as "vulgar genteel," had a sharp eye and a ready tongue.OPHad read the newspaper reports of the case, but they made no impression on him.-#$Should be governed by the evidence.67Knew no reason why he could not be an impartial juror.2Question by District Attorney.hiHow is it that the reports made no impression on you?" "Never believe anything I see in the newspapers.@ALaughter from the crowd, approving smiles from his Honor and Mr.IBraham.AJuror sworn in.MMr.#-.Braham whispered to O'Keefe, "that's the man.3Avery Hicks, pea-nut peddler.78Did he ever hear of this case? The man shook his head.<Can you read?" "No.#-.Any scruples about capital punishment?" "No.^He was about to be sworn, when the district attorney turning to him carelessly, remarked, "Understand the nature of an oath?" "Outside," said the man, pointing to the door. FGI say, do you know what an oath is?" "Five cents," explained the man.:;Do you mean to insult me?" roared the prosecuting officer./!"Are you an idiot?" "Fresh baked.F I'm deefe.4I don't hear a word you say.9The man was discharged.=>He wouldn't have made a bad juror, though," whispered Braham.12I saw him looking at the prisoner sympathizingly.+%&That's a point you want to watch for.HIThe result of the whole day's work was the selection of only two jurors.*&'These however were satisfactory to Mr.IBraham.&*+He had kept off all those he did not know.klNo one knew better than this great criminal lawyer that the battle was fought on the selection of the jury.ghThe subsequent examination of witnesses, the eloquence expended on the jury are all for effect outside.."#At least that is the theory of Mr.IBraham.3But human nature is a queer thing, he admits; sometimes jurors are unaccountably swayed, be as careful as you can in choosing them.:It was four weary days before this jury was made up, but when it was finally complete, it did great credit to the counsel for the defence.C So far as Mr.BCBraham knew, only two could read, one of whom was the foreman, Mr.*&'Braham's friend, the showy contractor.opLow foreheads and heavy faces they all had; some had a look of animal cunning, while the most were only stupid.bcThe entire panel formed that boasted heritage commonly described as the "bulwark of our liberties.6The District Attorney, Mr.)'(McFlinn, opened the case for the state.XYHe spoke with only the slightest accent, one that had been inherited but not cultivated.89He contented himself with a brief statement of the case.kThe state would prove that Laura Hawkins, the prisoner at the bar, a fiend in the form of a beautiful woman, shot dead George Selby, a Southern gentleman, at the time and place described.jThat the murder was in cold blood, deliberate and without provocation; that it had been long premeditated and threatened; that she had followed the deceased from Washington to commit it.45All this would be proved by unimpeachable witnesses.efThe attorney added that the duty of the jury, however painful it might be, would be plain and simple."./They were citizens, husbands, perhaps fathers.9:They knew how insecure life had become in the metropolis.jTomorrow our own wives might be widows, their own children orphans, like the bereaved family in yonder hotel, deprived of husband and father by the jealous hand of some murderous female.=>The attorney sat down, and the clerk called? "Henry Brierly.E CHAPTER LV.3Henry Brierly took the stand.PRequested by the District Attorney to tell the jury all he knew about the killing, he narrated the circumstances substantially as the reader already knows them.\He accompanied Miss Hawkins to New York at her request, supposing she was coming in relation to a bill then pending in Congress, to secure the attendance of absent members.1 Her note to him was here shown.?@She appeared to be very much excited at the Washington station.XYAfter she had asked the conductor several questions, he heard her say, "He can't escape.12Witness asked her "Who?" and she replied "Nobody./!"Did not see her during the night.0 !They traveled in a sleeping car. GHIn the morning she appeared not to have slept, said she had a headache.%uvIn crossing the ferry she asked him about the shipping in sight; he pointed out where the Cunarders lay when in port.78They took a cup of coffee that morning at a restaurant.>?She said she was anxious to reach the Southern Hotel where Mr. CDSimons, one of the absent members, was staying, before he went out.WXShe was entirely self-possessed, and beyond unusual excitement did not act unnaturally./!"After she had fired twice at Col.VWSelby, she turned the pistol towards her own breast, and witness snatched it from her.WXShe had seen a great deal with Selby in Washington, appeared to be infatuated with him.;Cross-examined by Mr.IBraham.H Mist-er.?er Brierly!" (Mr.Braham had in perfection this lawyer's trick of annoying a witness, by drawling out the "Mister," as if unable to recall the name, until the witness is sufficiently aggravated, and then suddenly, with a rising inflection, flinging his name at him with startling unexpectedness.H Mist-er.=>er Brierly! What is your occupation?" "Civil Engineer, sir. 01Ah, civil engineer, (with a glance at the jury). CDFollowing that occupation with Miss Hawkins?" (Smiles by the jury).0 !No, sir," said Harry, reddening.89How long have you known the prisoner?" "Two years, sir.#-.I made her acquaintance in Hawkeye, Missouri.NM.H Mist-er.ABer Brierly! Were you not a lover of Miss Hawkins?" Objected to. pqI submit, your Honor, that I have the right to establish the relation of this unwilling witness to the prisoner.G Admitted.67Well, sir," said Harry hesitatingly, "we were friends.)'(You act like a friend!" (sarcastically.@AThe jury were beginning to hate this neatly dressed young sprig.IMister.`aBrierly! Didn't Miss Hawkins refuse you?" Harry blushed and stammered and looked at the judge.*&'You must answer, sir," said His Honor.5She--she--didn't accept me.MNo.=I should think not.abBrierly do you dare tell the jury that you had not an interest in the removal of your rival, Col.>Selby?" roared Mr.3Braham in a voice of thunder.BCNothing like this, sir, nothing like this," protested the witness.6That's all, sir," said Mr.@Braham severely.*&'One word," said the District Attorney.7Had you the least suspicion of the prisoner's intention, up to the moment of the shooting?" "Not the least," answered Harry earnestly.')*Of course not, of course-not," nodded Mr.=Braham to the jury.5The prosecution then put upon the stand the other witnesses of the shooting at the hotel, and the clerk and the attending physicians.12The fact of the homicide was clearly established.NONothing new was elicited, except from the clerk, in reply to a question by Mr.9:Braham, the fact that when the prisoner enquired for Col.ABSelby she appeared excited and there was a wild look in her eyes.4The dying deposition of Col.8Selby was then produced."rsIt set forth Laura's threats, but there was a significant addition to it, which the newspaper report did not have.AIt seemed that after the deposition was taken as reported, the Colonel was told for the first time by his physicians that his wounds were mortal.^_He appeared to be in great mental agony and fear; and said he had not finished his deposition.<=He added, with great difficulty and long pauses these words.7I--have --not--told--all.$,-I must tell--put--it--down--I--wronged--her.BCYears --ago--I--can't see--O--God--I--deserved----" That was all.,$%He fainted and did not revive again.mThe Washington railway conductor testified that the prisoner had asked him if a gentleman and his family went out on the evening train, describing the persons he had since learned were Col.?Selby and family.@ASusan Cullum, colored servant at Senator Dilworthy's, was sworn.G Knew Col.JSelby.STHad seen him come to the house often, and be alone in the parlor with Miss Hawkins.%+,He came the day but one before he was shot.AShe let him in.5He appeared flustered like.ABShe heard talking in the parlor, I peared like it was quarrelin'. YZWas afeared sumfin' was wrong: Just put her ear to--the--keyhole of the back parlor-door. GHHeard a man's voice, "I--can't--I can't, Good God," quite beggin' like.23Heard--young Miss' voice, "Take your choice, then.$,-If you 'bandon me, you knows what to 'spect.2Then he rushes outen the house, I goes in--and I says, "Missis did you ring?" She was a standin' like a tiger, her eyes flashin'.?I come right out.klThis was the substance of Susan's testimony, which was not shaken in the least by severe cross-examination.AIn reply to Mr.ijBraham's question, if the prisoner did not look insane, Susan said, "Lord; no, sir, just mad as a hawnet.3Washington Hawkins was sworn.(xyThe pistol, identified by the officer as the one used in the homicide, was produced Washington admitted that it was his.abShe had asked him for it one morning, saying she thought she had heard burglars the night before.78Admitted that he never had heard burglars in the house.!/0Had anything unusual happened just before that.5Nothing that he remembered.%+,Did he accompany her to a reception at Mrs.)'(Shoonmaker's a day or two before? Yes.JWhat occurred? Little by little it was dragged out of the witness that Laura had behaved strangely there, appeared to be sick, and he had taken her home. YZUpon being pushed he admitted that she had afterwards confessed that she saw Selby there.QRAnd Washington volunteered the statement that Selby, was a black-hearted villain.MNThe District Attorney said, with some annoyance; "There--there! That will do.-#$The defence declined to examine Mr.=Hawkins at present.(()The case for the prosecution was closed.Of the murder there could not be the least doubt, or that the prisoner followed the deceased to New York with a murderous intent: On the evidence the jury must convict, and might do so without leaving their seats.MNThis was the condition of the case two days after the jury had been selected. FGA week had passed since the trial opened; and a Sunday had intervened.XYThe public who read the reports of the evidence saw no chance for the prisoner's escape.ghThe crowd of spectators who had watched the trial were moved with the most profound sympathy for Laura.MMr.)'(Braham opened the case for the defence.>His manner was subdued, and he spoke in so low a voice that it was only by reason of perfect silence in the court room that he could be heard.BHe spoke very distinctly, however, and if his nationality could be discovered in his speech it was only in a certain richness and breadth of tone.dHe began by saying that he trembled at the responsibility he had undertaken; and he should, altogether despair, if he did not see before him a jury of twelve men of rare intelligence, whose acute minds would unravel all the sophistries of the prosecution, men with a sense, of honor, which would revolt at the remorseless persecution of this hunted woman by the state, men with hearts to feel for the wrongs of which she was the victim.VFar be it from him to cast any suspicion upon the motives of the able, eloquent and ingenious lawyers of the state; they act officially; their business is to convict.;<It is our business, gentlemen, to see that justice is done.noIt is my duty, gentlemen, to untold to you one of the most affecting dramas in all, the history of misfortune.I shall have to show you a life, the sport of fate and circumstances, hurried along through shifting storm and sun, bright with trusting innocence and anon black with heartless villainy, a career which moves on in love and desertion and anguish, always hovered over by the dark spectre of INSANITY--an insanity hereditary and induced by mental torture,--until it ends, if end it must in your verdict, by one of those fearful accidents, which are inscrutable to men and of which God alone knows the secret.dGentlemen, I, shall ask you to go with me away from this court room and its minions of the law, away from the scene of this tragedy, to a distant, I wish I could say a happier day.lThe story I have to tell is of a lovely little girl, with sunny hair and laughing eyes, traveling with her parents, evidently people of wealth and refinement, upon a Mississippi steamboat.*z{There is an explosion, one of those terrible catastrophes which leave the imprint of an unsettled mind upon the survivors.34Hundreds of mangled remains are sent into eternity.WWhen the wreck is cleared away this sweet little girl is found among the panic stricken survivors in the midst of a scene of horror enough to turn the steadiest brain.3Her parents have disappeared.(()Search even for their bodies is in vain.JThe bewildered, stricken child--who can say what changes the fearful event wrought in her tender brain--clings to the first person who shows her sympathy.F It is Mrs.78Hawkins, this good lady who is still her loving friend.')*Laura is adopted into the Hawkins family.89Perhaps she forgets in time that she is not their child.?She is an orphan.<=No, gentlemen, I will not deceive you, she is not an orphan.@Worse than that./!"There comes another day of agony.0 !She knows that her father lives.12Who is he, where is he? Alas, I cannot tell you.Through the scenes of this painful history he flits here and there a lunatic! If he, seeks his daughter, it is the purposeless search of a lunatic, as one who wanders bereft of reason, crying where is my child? Laura seeks her father.abIn vain just as she is about to find him, again and again-he disappears, he is gone, he vanishes.#-.But this is only the prologue to the tragedy.1 Bear with me while I relate it.MMr. pqBraham takes out a handkerchief, unfolds it slowly; crashes it in his nervous hand, and throws it on the table).SLaura grew up in her humble southern home, a beautiful creature, the joy, of the house, the pride of the neighborhood, the loveliest flower in all the sunny south.#-.She might yet have been happy; she was happy.&*+But the destroyer came into this paradise.#stHe plucked the sweetest bud that grew there, and having enjoyed its odor, trampled it in the mire beneath his feet._`George Selby, the deceased, a handsome, accomplished Confederate Colonel, was this human fiend.cHe deceived her with a mock marriage; after some months he brutally, abandoned her, and spurned her as if she were a contemptible thing; all the time he had a wife in New Orleans.>Laura was crushed.&vwFor weeks, as I shall show you by the testimony of her adopted mother and brother, she hovered over death in delirium.MGentlemen, did she ever emerge from this delirium? I shall show you that when she recovered her health, her mind was changed, she was not what she had been.PQYou can judge yourselves whether the tottering reason ever recovered its throne.E Years pass.KLShe is in Washington, apparently the happy favorite of a brilliant society.|Her family have become enormously rich by one of those sudden turns, in fortune that the inhabitants of America are familiar with--the discovery of immense mineral wealth in some wild lands owned by them.fgShe is engaged in a vast philanthropic scheme for the benefit of the poor, by, the use of this wealth. DEBut, alas, even here and now, the same, relentless fate pursued her.bcThe villain Selby appears again upon the scene, as if on purpose to complete the ruin of her life.+{|He appeared to taunt her with her dishonor, he threatened exposure if she did not become again the mistress of his passion. !Gentlemen, do you wonder if this woman, thus pursued, lost her reason, was beside herself with fear, and that her wrongs preyed upon her mind until she was no longer responsible for her acts? I turn away my head as one who would not willingly look even upon the just vengeance of Heaven.MMr.#-.Braham paused as if overcome by his emotions.LMrs.JKHawkins and Washington were in tears, as were many of the spectators also.9The jury looked scared.hGentlemen, in this condition of affairs it needed but a spark--I do not say a suggestion, I do not say a hint--from this butterfly Brierly; this rejected rival, to cause the explosion.]I make no charges, but if this woman was in her right mind when she fled from Washington and reached this city in company--with Brierly, then I do not know what insanity is.H When Mr.78Braham sat down, he felt that he had the jury with him. EFA burst of applause followed, which the officer promptly, suppressed. GHLaura, with tears in her eyes, turned a grateful look upon her counsel.?@All the women among the spectators saw the tears and wept also.)'(They thought as they also looked at Mr./!"Braham; how handsome he is! Mrs.9Hawkins took the stand.(xyShe was somewhat confused to be the target of so many, eyes, but her honest and good face at once told in Laura's favor.LMrs.>Hawkins," said Mr.jkBraham, "will you' be kind enough to state the circumstances of your finding Laura?" "I object," said Mr.4McFlinn; rising to his feet.:;This has nothing whatever to do with the case, your honor.OPI am surprised at it, even after the extraordinary speech of my learned friend.+%&How do you propose to connect it, Mr.7Braham?" asked the judge./!"If it please the court," said Mr._Braham, rising impressively, "your Honor has permitted the prosecution, and I have submitted without a word; to go into the most extraordinary testimony to establish a motive.AAre we to be shut out from showing that the motive attributed to us could not by reason of certain mental conditions exist? I purpose, may, it please your Honor, to show the cause and the origin of an aberration of mind, to follow it up, with other like evidence, connecting it with the very moment of the homicide, showing a condition of the intellect, of the prisoner that precludes responsibility. GHThe State must insist upon its objections," said the District Attorney.SThe purpose evidently is to open the door to a mass of irrelevant testimony, the object of which is to produce an effect upon the jury your Honor well understands.&vwPerhaps," suggested the judge, "the court ought to hear the testimony, and exclude it afterwards, if it is irrelevant.45Will your honor hear argument on that!" "Certainly.12And argument his honor did hear, or pretend to, for two whole days, from all the counsel in turn, in the course of which the lawyers read contradictory decisions enough to perfectly establish both sides, from volume after volume, whole libraries in fact, until no mortal man could say what the rules were.3The question of insanity in all its legal aspects was of course drawn into the discussion, and its application affirmed and denied.KLThe case was felt to turn upon the admission or rejection of this evidence.<=It was a sort of test trial of strength between the lawyers.LAt the end the judge decided to admit the testimony, as the judge usually does in such cases, after a sufficient waste of time in what are called arguments.LMrs.3Hawkins was allowed to go on.D CHAPTER LVI.LMrs.\Hawkins slowly and conscientiously, as if every detail of her family history was important, told the story of the steamboat explosion, of the finding and adoption of Laura.=Silas, that its Mr.IJHawkins, and she always loved Laura, as if she had been their own, child.8She then narrated the circumstances of Laura's supposed marriage, her abandonment and long illness, in a manner that touched all hearts.$,-Laura had been a different woman since then.ACross-examined.:At the time of first finding Laura on the steamboat, did she notice that Laura's mind was at all deranged? She couldn't say that she did.;<After the recovery of Laura from her long illness, did Mrs. pqHawkins think there, were any signs of insanity about her? Witness confessed that she did not think of it then.:Re-Direct examination.12But she was different after that?" "O, yes, sir. YZWashington Hawkins corroborated his mother's testimony as to Laura's connection with Col.JSelby.?@He was at Harding during the time of her living there with him.F After Col. YZSelby's desertion she was almost dead, never appeared to know anything rightly for weeks.56He added that he never saw such a scoundrel as Selby.3Checked by District attorney.@AHad he noticed any change in, Laura after her illness? Oh, yes.lmWhenever, any allusion was made that might recall Selby to mind, she looked awful--as if she could kill him.=You mean," said Mr.!qrBraham, "that there was an unnatural, insane gleam in her eyes?" "Yes, certainly," said Washington in confusion. Z[All this was objected to by the district attorney, but it was got before the jury, and Mr.9:Braham did not care how much it was ruled out after that.%+,Beriah Sellers was the next witness called.LMThe Colonel made his way to the stand with majestic, yet bland deliberation.Having taken the oath and kissed the Bible with a smack intended to show his great respect for that book, he bowed to his Honor with dignity, to the jury with familiarity, and then turned to the lawyers and stood in an attitude of superior attention.MMr.2Sellers, I believe?" began Mr.IBraham.XYBeriah Sellers, Missouri," was the courteous acknowledgment that the lawyer was correct.MMr.hiSellers; you know the parties here, you are a friend of the family?" "Know them all, from infancy, sir.efIt was me, sir, that induced Silas Hawkins, Judge Hawkins, to come to Missouri, and make his fortune.bcIt was by my advice and in company with me, sir, that he went into the operation of--" "Yes, yes.MMr.^_Sellers, did you know a Major Lackland?" "Knew him, well, sir, knew him and honored him, sir.:;He was one of the most remarkable men of our country, sir.;A member of congress.&*+He was often at my mansion sir, for weeks.5He used to say to me, 'Col.YSellers, if you would go into politics, if I had you for a colleague, we should show Calhoun and Webster that the brain of the country didn't lie east of the Alleganies.7But I said--" "Yes, yes.aI believe Major Lackland is not living, Colonel?" There was an almost imperceptible sense of pleasure betrayed in the Colonel's face at this prompt acknowledgment of his title.BBless you, no.ABDied years ago, a miserable death, sir, a ruined man, a poor sot.THe was suspected of selling his vote in Congress, and probably he did; the disgrace killed' him, he was an outcast, sir, loathed by himself and by his constituents./!"And I think; sir"---- The Judge.1 You will confine yourself, Col.(()Sellers to the questions of the counsel.:Of course, your honor.PQThis," continued the Colonel in confidential explanation, "was twenty years ago.JKI shouldn't have thought of referring to such a trifling circumstance now.RSIf I remember rightly, sir"-- A bundle of letters was here handed to the witness.ABDo you recognize, that hand-writing?" "As if it was my own, sir.:It's Major Lackland's.@AI was knowing to these letters when Judge Hawkins received them. 01The Colonel's memory was a little at fault here.MMr.>?Hawkins had never gone into detail's with him on this subject.`aHe used to show them to me, and say, 'Col, Sellers you've a mind to untangle this sort of thing.*&'Lord, how everything comes back to me.2Laura was a little thing then._`The Judge and I were just laying our plans to buy the Pilot Knob, and--" "Colonel, one moment.#-.Your Honor, we put these letters in evidence.\The letters were a portion of the correspondence of Major Lackland with Silas Hawkins; parts of them were missing and important letters were referred to that were not here.56They related, as the reader knows, to Laura's father./Lackland had come upon the track of a man who was searching for a lost child in a Mississippi steamboat explosion years before.MNThe man was lame in one leg, and appeared to be flitting from place to place.0It seemed that Major Lackland got so close track of him that he was able to describe his personal appearance and learn his name.56But the letter containing these particulars was lost.1Once he heard of him at a hotel in Washington; but the man departed, leaving an empty trunk, the day before the major went there.9:There was something very mysterious in all his movements.LCol.hiSellers, continuing his testimony, said that he saw this lost letter, but could not now recall the name.Search for the supposed father had been continued by Lackland, Hawkins and himself for several years, but Laura was not informed of it till after the death of Hawkins, for fear of raising false hopes in her mind.FHere the Distract Attorney arose and said, "Your Honor, I must positively object to letting the witness wander off into all these irrelevant details.MMr.IBraham. pqI submit your honor, that we cannot be interrupted in this manner we have suffered the state to have full swing.3Now here is a witness, who has known the prisoner from infancy, and is competent to testify upon the one point vital to her safety.|Evidently he is a gentleman of character, and his knowledge of the case cannot be shut out without increasing the aspect of persecution which the State's attitude towards the prisoner already has assumed. 01The wrangle continued, waxing hotter and hotter.'(The Colonel seeing the attention of the counsel and Court entirely withdrawn from him, thought he perceived here his opportunity, turning and beaming upon the jury, he began simply to talk, but as the grandeur of his position grew upon him --talk broadened unconsciously into an oratorical vein.<You see how she was situated, gentlemen; poor child, it might have broken her, heart to let her mind get to running on such a thing as that."rsYou see, from what we could make out her father was lame in the left leg and had a deep scar on his left forehead.mAnd so ever since the day she found out she had another father, she never could, run across a lame stranger without being taken all over with a shiver, and almost fainting where she, stood.67And the next minute she would go right after that man.fOnce she stumbled on a stranger with a game leg; and she was the most grateful thing in this world--but it was the wrong leg, and it was days and days before she could leave her bed.jOnce she found a man with a scar on his forehead and she was just going to throw herself into his arms,` but he stepped out just then, and there wasn't anything the matter with his legs.^_Time and time again, gentlemen of the jury, has this poor suffering orphan flung herself on her knees with all her heart's gratitude in her eyes before some scarred and crippled veteran, but always, always to be disappointed, always to be plunged into new despair--if his legs were right his scar was wrong, if his scar was right his legs were wrong. 01Never could find a man that would fill the bill.6Gentlemen of the jury; you have hearts, you have feelings, you have warm human sympathies; you can feel for this poor suffering child.FGentlemen of the jury, if I had time, if I had the opportunity, if I might be permitted to go on and tell you the thousands and thousands and thousands of mutilated strangers this poor girl has started out of cover, and hunted from city to city, from state to state, from continent to continent, till she has run them down and found they wan't the ones; I know your hearts--" By this time the Colonel had become so warmed up, that his voice, had reached a pitch above that of the contending counsel; the lawyers suddenly stopped, and they and the Judge turned towards the Colonel and remained far several seconds too surprised at this novel exhibition to speak.{In this interval of silence, an appreciation of the situation gradually stole over the audience, and an explosion of laughter followed, in which even the Court and the bar could hardly keep from joining.H Sheriff.=Order in the Court.F The Judge.=>The witness will confine his remarks to answers to questions. YZThe Colonel turned courteously to the Judge and said, "Certainly, your Honor--certainly.0I am not well acquainted with the forms of procedure in the courts of New York, but in the West, sir, in the West--" The Judge.There, there, that will do, that will do!" "You see, your Honor, there were no questions asked me, and I thought I would take advantage of the lull in the proceedings to explain to the jury a very significant train of--" The Judge.2That will DO sir! Proceed Mr.IBraham.LCol.klSellers, have you any, reason to suppose that this man is still living?" "Every reason, sir, every reason.23State why" "I have never heard of his death, sir.."#It has never come to my knowledge.In fact, sir, as I once said to Governor--" "Will you state to the jury what has been the effect of the knowledge of this wandering and evidently unsettled being, supposed to be her father, upon the mind of Miss Hawkins for so many years!" Question objected to.=Question ruled out.ACross-examined.Major Sellers, what is your occupation?" The Colonel looked about him loftily, as if casting in his mind what would be the proper occupation of a person of such multifarious interests and then said with dignity: "A gentleman, sir.$,-My father used to always say, sir"-- "Capt. FGSellers, did you; ever see this man, this supposed father?" "No, Sir.But upon one occasion, old Senator Thompson said to me, its my opinion, Colonel Sellers"-- "Did you ever see any body who had seen him?" "No, sir: It was reported around at one time, that"-- "That is all.rThe defense then sent a day in the examination of medical experts in insanity who testified, on the evidence heard, that sufficient causes had occurred to produce an insane mind in the prisoner.23Numerous cases were cited to sustain this opinion.gThere was such a thing as momentary insanity, in which the person, otherwise rational to all appearances, was for the time actually bereft of reason, and not responsible for his acts.RSThe causes of this momentary possession could often be found in the person's life.$tuIt afterwards came out that the chief expert for the defense, was paid a thousand dollars for looking into the case.cdThe prosecution consumed another day in the examination of experts refuting the notion of insanity.These causes might have produced insanity, but there was no evidence that they have produced it in this case, or that the prisoner was not at the time of the commission of the crime in full possession of her ordinary faculties.-#$The trial had now lasted two weeks.56It required four days now for the lawyers to "sum up.IThese arguments of the counsel were very important to their friends, and greatly enhanced their reputation at the bar but they have small interest to us.MMr.2Braham in his closing speech surpassed himself; his effort is still remembered as the greatest in the criminal annals of New York.MMr.DBraham re-drew for the jury the picture, of Laura's early life; he dwelt long upon that painful episode of the pretended marriage and the desertion.LCol.ZSelby, he said, belonged, gentlemen; to what is called the "upper classes:" It is the privilege of the "upper classes" to prey upon the sons and daughters of the people.klThe Hawkins family, though allied to the best blood of the South, were at the time in humble circumstances.0 !He commented upon her parentage.cdPerhaps her agonized father, in his intervals of sanity, was still searching for his lost daughter._Would he one day hear that she had died a felon's death? Society had pursued her, fate had pursued her, and in a moment of delirium she had turned and defied fate and society.12He dwelt upon the admission of base wrong in Col.8Selby's dying statement.UVHe drew a vivid, picture of the villain at last overtaken by the vengeance of Heaven.IWould the jury say that this retributive justice, inflicted by an outraged, and deluded woman, rendered irrational by the most cruel wrongs, was in the nature of a foul, premeditated murder? "Gentlemen; it is enough for me to look upon the life of this most beautiful and accomplished of her sex, blasted by the heartless villainy of man, without seeing, at the-end of it; the horrible spectacle of a gibbet.KLGentlemen, we are all human, we have all sinned, we all have need of mercy../But I do not ask mercy of you who are the guardians of society and of the poor waifs, its sometimes wronged victims; I ask only that justice which you and I shall need in that last, dreadful hour, when death will be robbed of half its terrors if we can reflect that we have never wronged a human being.bcGentlemen, the life of this lovely and once happy girl, this now stricken woman, is in your hands.1 The jury were risibly affected./!"Half the court room was in tears.4If a vote of both spectators and jury could have been taken then, the verdict would have been, "let her go, she has suffered enough.34But the district attorney had the closing argument.BCCalmly and without malice or excitement he reviewed the testimony.ABAs the cold facts were unrolled, fear settled upon the listeners.9:There was no escape from the murder or its premeditation.:;Laura's character as a lobbyist in Washington which had been made to appear incidentally in the evidence was also against her: the whole body of the testimony of the defense was shown to be irrelevant, introduced only to excite sympathy, and not giving a color of probability to the absurd supposition of insanity..~The attorney then dwelt upon, the insecurity of life in the city, and the growing immunity with which women committed murders.MMr.UVMcFlinn made a very able speech; convincing the reason without touching the feelings.OPThe Judge in his charge reviewed the testimony with great show of impartiality.UVHe ended by saying that the verdict must be acquittal or murder in the first, degree.9If you find that the prisoner committed a homicide, in possession of her reason and with premeditation, your verdict will be accordingly.\If you find she was not in her right mind, that she was the victim of insanity, hereditary or momentary, as it has been explained, your verdict will take that into account. YZAs the Judge finished his charge, the spectators anxiously watched the faces of the jury.0 !It was not a remunerative study.>In the court room the general feeling was in favor of Laura, but whether this feeling extended to the jury, their stolid faces did not reveal.JThe public outside hoped for a conviction, as it always does; it wanted an example; the newspapers trusted the jury would have the courage to do its duty.mnWhen Laura was convicted, then the public would tern around and abuse the governor if he did; not pardon her.>The jury went out.MMr.LMBraham preserved his serene confidence, but Laura's friends were dispirited.=Washington and Col.tSellers had been obliged to go to Washington, and they had departed under the unspoken fear the verdict would be unfavorable, a disagreement was the best they could hope for, and money was needed. GHThe necessity of the passage of the University bill was now imperative.JKThe Court waited, for, some time, but the jury gave no signs of coming in.MMr./!"Braham said it was extraordinary.34The Court then took a recess for a couple of hours.HIUpon again coming in, word was brought that the jury had not yet agreed.3But the jury, had a question.78The point upon which, they wanted instruction was this.5They wanted to know if Col.&*+Sellers was related to the Hawkins family.*&'The court then adjourned till morning.MMr.67Braham, who was in something of a pet, remarked to Mr.jkO'Toole that they must have been deceived, that juryman with the broken nose could read! CHAPTER LVII.opThe momentous day was at hand--a day that promised to make or mar the fortunes of Hawkins family for all time.5Washington Hawkins and Col.<=Sellers were both up early, for neither of them could sleep.lmCongress was expiring, and was passing bill after bill as if they were gasps and each likely to be its last.The University was on file for its third reading this day, and to-morrow Washington would be a millionaire and Sellers no longer, impecunious but this day, also, or at farthest the next, the jury in Laura's Case would come to a decision of some kind or other--they would find her guilty, Washington secretly feared, and then the care and the trouble would all come back again, and these would be wearing months of besieging judges for new trials; on this day, also, the re-election of Mr.')*Dilworthy to the Senate would take place.&vwSo Washington's mind was in a state of turmoil; there were more interests at stake than it could handle with serenity.^_He exulted when he thought of his millions; he was filled with dread when he thought of Laura.."#But Sellers was excited and happy.IJHe said: "Everything is going right, everything's going perfectly right.OPPretty soon the telegrams will begin to rattle in, and then you'll see, my boy.Let the jury do what they please; what difference is it going to make? To-morrow we can send a million to New York and set the lawyers at work on the judges; bless your heart they will go before judge after judge and exhort and beseech and pray and shed tears.')*They always do; and they always win, too.4And they will win this time.They will get a writ of habeas corpus, and a stay of proceedings, and a supersedeas, and a new trial and a nolle prosequi, and there you are! That's the routine, and it's no trick at all to a New York lawyer.That's the regular routine --everything's red tape and routine in the law, you see; it's all Greek to you, of course, but to a man who is acquainted with those things it's mere--I'll explain it to you sometime.ABEverything's going to glide right along easy and comfortable now.23You'll see, Washington, you'll see how it will be.8And then, let me think .PDilwortby will be elected to-day, and by day, after to-morrow night he will be in New York ready to put in his shovel--and you haven't lived in Washington all this time not to know that the people who walk right by a Senator whose term is up without hardly seeing him will be down at the deepo to say 'Welcome back and God bless you; Senator, I'm glad to see you, sir!' when he comes along back re-elected, you know.|Well, you see, his influence was naturally running low when he left here, but now he has got a new six-years' start, and his suggestions will simply just weigh a couple of tons a-piece day after tomorrow.KLord bless you he could rattle through that habeas corpus and supersedeas and all those things for Laura all by himself if he wanted to, when he gets back. GHI hadn't thought of that," said Washington, brightening, "but it is so. 01A newly-elected Senator is a power, I know that.?Yes indeed he is.3Why it, is just human nature.E Look at me.."#When we first came here, I was Mr.ESellers, and Major Sellers, Captain Sellers, but nobody could ever get it right, somehow; but the minute our bill went, through the House, I was Col.=Sellers every time.AAnd nobody could do enough for me, and whatever I said was wonderful, Sir, it was always wonderful; I never seemed to say any flat things at all.It was Colonel, won't you come and dine with us; and Colonel why don't we ever see you at our house; and the Colonel says this; and the Colonel says that; and we know such-and-such is so-and-so because my husband heard Col.ASellers say so.eDon't you see? Well, the Senate adjourned and left our bill high, and dry, and I'll be hanged if I warn't Old Sellers from that day, till our bill passed the House again last week.INow I'm the Colonel again; and if I were to eat all the dinners I am invited to, I reckon I'd wear my teeth down level with my gums in a couple of weeks.5Well I do wonder what you will be to-morrow; Colonel, after the President signs the bill!" "General, sir?--General, without a doubt.Yes, sir, tomorrow it will be General, let me congratulate you, sir; General, you've done a great work, sir;--you've done a great work for the niggro; Gentlemen allow me the honor to introduce my friend General Sellers, the humane friend of the niggro.~Lord bless me; you'll' see the newspapers say, General Sellers and servants arrived in the city last night and is stopping at the Fifth Avenue; and General Sellers has accepted a reception and banquet by the Cosmopolitan Club; you'll see the General's opinions quoted, too --and what the General has to say about the propriety of a new trial and a habeas corpus for the unfortunate Miss Hawkins will not be without weight in influential quarters, I can tell you.And I want to be the first to shake your faithful old hand and salute you with your new honors, and I want to do it now--General!" said Washington, suiting the action to the word, and accompanying it with all the meaning that a cordial grasp and eloquent eyes could give it.STThe Colonel was touched; he was pleased and proud, too; his face answered for that.<=Not very long after breakfast the telegrams began to arrive.ijThe first was from Braham, and ran thus: "We feel certain that the verdict will be rendered to-day.?Be it good or bad, let it find us ready to make the next move instantly, whatever it may be:" "That's the right talk," said Sellers.2That Graham's a wonderful man.WXHe was the only man there that really understood me; he told me so himself, afterwards.2The next telegram was from Mr.)yzDilworthy: "I have not only brought over the Great Invincible, but through him a dozen more of the opposition.<=Shall be re-elected to-day by an overwhelming majority.2Good again!" said the Colonel.:;That man's talent for organization is something marvelous.He wanted me to go out there and engineer that thing, but I said, No, Dilworthy, I must be on hand here,--both on Laura's account and the bill's--but you've no trifling genius for organization yourself, said I--and I was right.56You go ahead, said I --you can fix it--and so he has.DBut I claim no credit for that--if I stiffened up his back-bone a little, I simply put him in the way to make his fight--didn't undertake it myself.8He has captured Noble--.0I consider that a splendid piece of diplomacy--Splendid, Sir!" By and by came another dispatch from New York: "Jury still out.0 !Laura calm and firm as a statue.KLThe report that the jury have brought her in guilty is false and premature.#-.Premature!" gasped Washington, turning white.>?Then they all expect that sort of a verdict, when it comes in. FGAnd so did he; but he had not had courage enough to put it into words.MHe had been preparing himself for the worst, but after all his preparation the bare suggestion of the possibility of such a verdict struck him cold as death.3The friends grew impatient, now; the telegrams did not come fast enough: even the lightning could not keep up with their anxieties.KLThey walked the floor talking disjointedly and listening for the door-bell.3Telegram after telegram came.@Still no result. pqBy and by there was one which contained a single line: "Court now coming in after brief recess to hear verdict.E Jury ready.!/0Oh, I wish they would finish!" said Washington._`This suspense is killing me by inches!" Then came another telegram: "Another hitch somewhere.67Jury want a little more time and further instructions.45Well, well, well, this is trying," said the Colonel.BCAnd after a pause, "No dispatch from Dilworthy for two hours, now.OPEven a dispatch from him would be better than nothing, just to vary this thing.5They waited twenty minutes.9It seemed twenty hours.9Come!" said Washington.?@I can't wait for the telegraph boy to come all the way up here.45Let's go down to Newspaper Row--meet him on the way.rWhile they were passing along the Avenue, they saw someone putting up a great display-sheet on the bulletin board of a newspaper office, and an eager crowd of men was collecting abort the place.;Washington and the Colonel ran to the spot and read this: "Tremendous Sensation! Startling news from Saint's Rest! On first ballot for U.$,-Senator, when voting was about to begin, Mr."rsNoble rose in his place and drew forth a package, walked forward and laid it on the Speaker's desk, saying, 'This contains $7,000 in bank bills and was given me by Senator Dilworthy in his bed-chamber at midnight last night to buy --my vote for him--I wish the Speaker to count the money and retain it to pay the expense of prosecuting this infamous traitor for bribery.KLThe whole legislature was stricken speechless with dismay and astonishment.3Noble further said that there were fifty members present with money in their pockets, placed there by Dilworthy to buy their votes.?@Amidst unparalleled excitement the ballot was now taken, and J.@Smith elected U.GSenator; Dilworthy receiving not one vote! Noble promises damaging exposures concerning Dilworthy and certain measures of his now pending in Congress.!/0Good heavens and earth!" exclaimed the Colonel./!"To the Capitol!" said Washington.8Fly!" And they did fly.3Long before they got there the newsboys were running ahead of them with Extras, hot from the press, announcing the astounding news.rArrived in the gallery of the Senate, the friends saw a curious spectacle very Senator held an Extra in his hand and looked as interested as if it contained news of the destruction of the earth.OPNot a single member was paying the least attention to the business of the hour.abThe Secretary, in a loud voice, was just beginning to read the title of a bill: "House-Bill--No.An-Act-to-Found-and-Incorporate-the Knobs- Industrial-University!--Read-first-and-second-time-considered-in- committee-of-the-whole-ordered-engrossed and-passed-to-third-reading-and- final passage!" The President--"Third reading of the bill!" The two friends shook in their shoes.XYSenators threw down their extras and snatched a word or two with each other in whispers. Z[Then the gavel rapped to command silence while the names were called on the ayes and nays.MWashington grew paler and paler, weaker and weaker while the lagging list progressed; and when it was finished, his head fell helplessly forward on his arms. FGThe fight was fought, the long struggle was over, and he was a pauper.)'(Not a man had voted for the bill! Col.89Sellers was bewildered and well nigh paralyzed, himself.bcBut no man could long consider his own troubles in the presence of such suffering as Washington's.deHe got him up and supported him--almost carried him indeed--out of the building and into a carriage.ijAll the way home Washington lay with his face against the Colonel's shoulder and merely groaned and wept.#stThe Colonel tried as well as he could under the dreary circumstances to hearten him a little, but it was of no use.%+,Washington was past all hope of cheer, now. EFHe only said: "Oh, it is all over--it is all over for good, Colonel.5We must beg our bread, now.6We never can get up again.)'(It was our last chance, and it is gone.VWThey will hang Laura! My God they will hang her! Nothing can save the poor girl now.YOh, I wish with all my soul they would hang me instead!" Arrived at home, Washington fell into a chair and buried his face in his hands and gave full way to his misery.67The Colonel did not know where to turn nor what to do.ghThe servant maid knocked at the door and passed in a telegram, saying it had come while they were gone.BThe Colonel tore it open and read with the voice of a man-of-war's broadside: "VERDICT OF JURY, NOT GUILTY AND LAURA IS FREE!" CHAPTER LVIII.The court room was packed on the morning on which the verdict of the jury was expected, as it had been every day of the trial, and by the same spectators, who had followed its progress with such intense interest./There is a delicious moment of excitem