CHAPTER XV.

The next morning Helen was very ill--so ill that, shortly after rising, she

was forced to creep back to bed. Her frame shivered--her eyes were

heavy--her hand burned like fire. Fever had set in. Perhaps she might have

caught cold on the bridge--perhaps her emotions had proved too much for her

frame. Leonard, in great alarm, called on the nearest apothecary. The

apothecary looked grave, and said there was danger. And danger soon

declared itself--Helen became delirious. For several days she lay in this

state, between life and death. Leonard then felt that all the sorrows of

earth are light, compared with the fear of losing what we love. How

valueless the envied laurel seemed beside the dying rose.

Thanks, perhaps, more to his heed and tending than to medical skill, she

recovered sense at last--immediate peril was over. But she was very weak

and reduced--her ultimate recovery doubtful--convalescence, at best, likely

to be very slow.

But when she learned how long she had been thus ill, she looked anxiously

at Leonard's face as he bent over her, and faltered forth--"Give me my

work! I am strong enough for that now--it would amuse me."

Leonard burst into tears.

Alas! he had no work himself; all their joint money had melted away; the

apothecary was not like good Dr. Morgan; the medicines were to be paid for,

and the rent. Two days before, Leonard had pawned Riccabocca's watch; and

when the last shilling thus raised was gone, how should he support Helen?

Nevertheless he conquered his tears, and assured her that he had

employment; and that so earnestly that she believed him, and sank into soft

sleep. He listened to her breathing, kissed her forehead, and left the

room. He turned into his own neighboring garret, and, leaning his face on

his hands, collected all his thoughts.

He must be a beggar at last. He must write to Mr. Dale for money--Mr. Dale,

too, who knew the secret of his birth. He would rather have begged of a

stranger--it served to add a new dishonor to his mother's memory for the

child to beg of one who was acquainted with her shame. Had he himself been

the only one to want and to starve, he would have sunk inch by inch into

the grave of famine, before he would have so subdued his pride. But Helen,

there on that bed--Helen needing, for weeks perhaps, all support, and

illness making luxuries themselves like necessaries! Beg he must. And when

he so resolved, had you but seen the proud bitter soul he conquered, you

would have said--"This which he thinks is degradation--this is heroism. Oh,

strange human heart!--no epic ever written achieves the Sublime and the

Beautiful which are graven, unread by human eye, in thy secret leaves," Of

whom else should he beg? His mother had nothing, Riccabocca was poor, and

the stately Violante, who had exclaimed, "Would that I were a man!"--he

could not endure the thought that she should pity him, and despise. The

Avenels! No--thrice No. He drew towards him hastily ink and paper, and

wrote rapid lines that were wrung from him as from the bleeding strings of

life.

But the hour for the post had passed--the letter must wait till the next

day; and three days at least would elapse before he could receive an

answer. He left the letter on the table, and, stifling as for air, went

forth. He crossed the bridge--he passed on mechanically--and was borne

along by a crowd pressing towards the doors of Parliament. A debate that

excited popular interest was fixed for that evening, and many bystanders

collected in the street to see the members pass to and fro, or hear what

speakers had yet risen to take part in the debate, or try to get orders for

the gallery.

He halted amidst these loiterers, with no interest, indeed, in common with

them, but looking over their heads abstractedly towards the tall Funeral

Abbey--Imperial Golgotha of Poets, and Chiefs, and Kings.

Suddenly his attention was diverted to those around by the sound of a

name--displeasingly known to him. "How are you, Randal Leslie? Coming to

hear the debate?" said a member who was passing through the street.

"Yes; Mr. Egerton promised to get me under the gallery. He is to speak

himself to-night, and I have never heard him. As you are going into the

House, will you remind him?"

"I can't now, for he is speaking already, and well too. I hurried from the

Athenaeum, where I was dining, on purpose to be in time, as I heard that his

speech was making a great effect."

"This is very unlucky," said Randal, "I had no idea he would speak so

early."

"M---- brought him up by a direct personal attack. But follow me; perhaps I

can get you into the House; and a man like you, Leslie, of whom we expect

great things some day, I can tell you, should not miss any such opportunity

of knowing what this House of ours is on a field night. Come on!"

The member hurried towards the door; and as Randal followed him, a

bystander cried--"That's the young man who wrote the famous

pamphlet--Egerton's relation."

"Oh, indeed!" said another. "Clever man, Egerton--I am waiting for him."

"So am I."

"Why, you are not a constituent, as I am."

"No; but he has been very kind to my nephew, and I must thank him. You are

a constituent--he is an honor to your town."

"So he is; enlightened man!"

"And so generous!"

"Brings forward really good measures," quoth the politician.

"And clever young men," said the uncle.

Therewith one or two others joined in the praise of Audley Egerton, and

many anecdotes of his liberality were told.

Leonard listened at first listlessly, at last with thoughtful attention. He

had heard Burley, too, speak highly of this generous statesman, who,

without pretending to genius himself, appreciated it in others. He suddenly

remembered, too, that Egerton was half-brother to the Squire. Vague notions

of some appeal to this eminent person, not for charity, but employ to his

mind, gleamed across him--inexperienced boy that he yet was! And while thus

meditating, the door of the House opened, and out came Audley Egerton

himself. A partial cheering, followed by a general murmur, apprised Leonard

of the presence of the popular statesman. Egerton was caught hold of by

some five or six persons in succession; a shake of the hand, a nod, a brief

whispered word or two, sufficed the practised member for graceful escape;

and soon, free from the crowd, his tall erect figure passed on, and turned

towards the bridge. He paused at the angle and took out his watch, looking

at it by the lamp-light.

"Harley will be here soon," he muttered--"he is always punctual; and now

that I have spoken, I can give him an hour or so. That is well."

As he replaced his watch in his pocket, and re-buttoned his coat over his

firm broad chest, he lifted his eyes, and saw a young man standing before

him.

"Do you want me?" asked the statesman, with the direct brevity of his

practical character.

"Mr. Egerton," said the young man, with a voice that slightly trembled, and

yet was manly amidst emotion, "you have a great name, and great power--I

stand here in these streets of London without a friend, and without employ.

I believe that I have it in me to do some nobler work than that of bodily

labor, had I but one friend--one opening for my thoughts. And now I have

said this, I scarcely know how, or why, but from despair, and the sudden

impulse which that despair took from the praise that follows your success,

I have nothing more to add."

Audley Egerton was silent for a moment, struck by the tone and address of

the stranger; but the consummate and wary man of the world, accustomed to

all manner of strange applications, and all varieties of imposture, quickly

recovered from a passing and slight effect.

"Are you a native of ----?" (naming the town he represented as member.)

"No, sir."

"Well, young man, I am very sorry for you; but the good sense you must

possess (for I judge of that by the education you have evidently received)

must tell you that a public man, whatever be his patronage, has it too

fully absorbed by claimants who have a right to demand it, to be able to

listen to strangers."

He paused a moment, and, as Leonard stood silent, added, with more kindness

than most public men so accosted would have showed--"You say you are

friendless--poor fellow. In early life that happens to many of us, who find

friends enough before the close. Be honest, and well-conducted; lean on

yourself, not on strangers; work with the body if you can't with the mind;

and, believe me, that advice is all I can give you, unless this

trifle,"--and the minister held out a crown piece.

Leonard bowed, shook his head sadly, and walked away. Egerton looked after

him with a slight pang.

"Pooh!" said he to himself, "there must be thousands in the same state in

these streets of London. I cannot redress the necessities of civilization.

Well educated! It is not from ignorance henceforth that society will

suffer--it is from over-educating the hungry thousands who, thus unfitted

for manual toil, and with no career for mental, will some day or other

stand like that boy in our streets, and puzzle wiser ministers than I am."

As Egerton thus mused, and passed on to the bridge, a bugle-horn rang

merrily from the box of a gay four-in-hand. A drag-coach with superb

blood-horses rattled over the causeway, and in the driver Egerton

recognised his nephew--Frank Hazeldean.

The young Guardsman was returning, with a lively party of men, from dining

at Greenwich; and the careless laughter of these children of pleasure

floated far over the still river.

It vexed the ear of the careworn statesman--sad, perhaps, with all his

greatness, lonely amidst all his crowd of friends. It reminded him,

perhaps, of his own youth, when such parties and companionships were

familiar to him, though through them all he bore an ambitious aspiring

soul--"_Le jeu vaut-il la chandelle?_" said he, shrugging his shoulders.

The coach rolled rapidly past Leonard, as he stood leaning against the

corner of the bridge, and the mire of the kennel splashed over him from the

hoofs of the fiery horses. The laughter smote on his ear more discordantly

than on the minister's, but it begot no envy.

"Life is a dark riddle," said he, smiting his breast.

And he walked slowly on, gained the recess where he had stood several

nights before with Helen; and dizzy with want of food, and worn out for

want of sleep, he sank down into the dark corner; while the river that

rolled under the arch of stone muttered dirge-like in his ear;--as under

the social key-stone wails and rolls on for ever the mystery of Human

Discontent. Take comfort, O Thinker by the stream! 'Tis the river that

founded and gave pomp to the city; and without the discontent, where were

progress--what were Man? Take comfort, O Thinker! wherever the stream over

which thou bendest, or beside which thou sinkest, weary and desolate, frets

the arch that supports thee;--never dream that, by destroying the bridge,

thou canst silence the moan of the wave!

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Continued from page 259.

[19] Fact. In a work by M. GIBERT, a celebrated French physician, on

diseases of the skin, he states that that minute troublesome kind of rash,

known by the name of _prurigo_, though not dangerous in itself, has often

driven the individual afflicted by it to--suicide. I believe that our more

varying climate, and our more heating drinks and ailments, render the skin

complaint more common in England than in France, yet I doubt if any English

physician could state that it had ever driven one of his _English_ patients

to suicide.

From the London Art-Journal.

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.

The recent judgment of Lord Campbell in Boosey _v._ Jeffreys, which has

settled finally the much litigated question of the right of a foreigner to

copyright in this country, whether of books, pictures, or music, has been

alleged as an excuse for a public meeting of authors and publishers, to

appeal against the concession of such a right, and to procure a reversal of

the decision, should his lordship be disposed to overrule his own judgment

in the House of Lords. The direct impulse to the present agitation,

however, appears to have been certain proceedings commenced against Mr.

Bohn and others, by Mr. Murray, for their alleged invasion of his

copyrights in the works of Washington Irving; of which cheap editions have

been issued, on the faith of a recent opinion of Lord Cranworth, wholly at

variance with that which has lately been pronounced by the Court of Error,

by no fewer than four publishers. The defendants in these cases are of

course the leading instigators of this movement, and appear to have

prevailed upon Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton to take the chair at a public

meeting of Authors and Publishers, at the Hanover Square Rooms, for the

purpose of discussing the question in all its bearings. Although the

authors and publishers of England were but slenderly represented on the

occasion, and even those who were present were far from unanimous, several

ingenious and even brilliant speeches were delivered, and resolutions were

carried, tending to support the Chairman's view of the subject; viz., to

procure a revision of the law which declares foreign authors resident

abroad, to be entitled to copyright in this country; to form a society to

consider the steps necessary to obtain the proposed readjustment of the

law; and lastly, to collect subscriptions to indemnify the gentlemen now

acting on the defensive, in the various actions for the alleged invasion of

copyright, in the expensive process of appealing against Lord Campbell's

decision to the House of Lords. We confess that we have not been convinced

by any of the arguments adduced on this occasion, able and plausible as

many of them were, that we should violate that great principle of justice,

which forbids that we should do evil that good may come; and that because

foreign nations cannot be brought to a sense of the dishonesty of their

habitual invasions of British Copyright, we should make reprisals upon

their authors, and deny them that protection which they so dishonestly

withhold to us. Still less can we affirm a proposition which would go back

from twenty five to thirty years, and deprive English booksellers of

copyrights for which, on the faith of the law as it then stood, they have

paid very considerable sums of money. The impression, that if we deprive

American authors of the copyright they have hitherto enjoyed in England, we

shall force them and their readers to agree to an international

arrangement, we believe to be entirely fallacious. There are very few

American authors whose copyrights have proved of any material value to

English publishers; and even of that few, the majority have retired for

some years past, almost wholly from the field of literature. Washington

Irving, Cooper, and Prescott, are almost the only authors who have a

marketable value in this country; and two out of the three have written

little that is worthy of their genius for many years. Besides, the American

buccaneer knows full well that the chief weight of the sacrifice, if

American copyrights were to be declared null and void in this country,

would fall upon neither Mr. Irving, Mr. Cooper, nor Mr. Prescott, but upon

Messrs. Murray and Bentley, the British possessors of their copyrights. If,

therefore, the question be mooted at all, it should not be with a view to a

retrospective operation. But we more than doubt, if America, uninfluenced

by worthier motives, will ever be driven to a recognition of the rights of

British authors, for the sake of protecting the interests of the very few

of its native writers who look to England for the chief reward of their

literary labor. America, in her rage for cheap editions, has almost

annihilated her own literature, and her unwarrantable piracy of our best

authors, does but react on those of her own. If unable to understand the

impolicy of her present course, will mulcting Mr. Murray and Mr. Bentley

induce her to abandon her wholesale appropriations of English literary

property? or, will our becoming robbers ourselves diminish the wholesale

piracy of our neighbors? We think not. The arguments of Sir Edward Bulwer

Lytton, which apply to the conduct of America in refusing to entertain the

question of international copyright, are unanswerable; but if she prefers

the selfish demands of the million to the interests of her own writers, she

is not likely to be deterred from continuing the work of spoliation because

we, at length, determine to follow her example. It cannot be doubted, for

one moment, that it was the _intention_ of the act at present in force, to

recognize the copyright of foreigners whose works were first published in

this country, and it is equally clear that the law for the protection of

the patents of foreigners in England, was conceived in the same spirit. Why

should we refuse protection to the writings of a foreign author, and

concede it to his scientific discoveries? If we are to interpret the law as

Sir E. Bulwer Lytton and Mr. Bohn would have us do, why should we grant to

any foreign inventor the patent by which his property is secured in this

country? More than twenty years ago the late Mr. Murray paid Washington

Irving 1500_l._ for his Tales of a Traveller; 3000_l._ for his Columbus;

1000_l._, for his Granada; and 1000_l._ for his Bracebridge Hall. Is it to

be endured, that because American booksellers are engaged in an

unauthorized republication of every English book which they consider worth

reprinting, we should, after so long a forbearance, become pirates in our

turn; and thus despoil, not the foreign aggressor, but our own respectable

publishers, of a right in which so large an amount of capital and

enterprise has been embarked.

Whatever difference of opinion, therefore, there may be as to the measures

which are most likely to force upon our neighbors a fair recognition of the

rights of our authors, by a system of reprisal which we could never be

brought to admire, and which we consider beneath the dignity of our

national character, there can be none as to the absurdity of attempting so

to do, by a retrospective operation which has neither justice nor common

honesty to recommend it. We are far from desiring to attach any moral blame

to the gentlemen whose reprints, in this country, of the works of Irving

and others, have given occasion for the present controversy. The state of

the law, as interpreted by Lord Cranworth, and other of our eminent

jurists, appears to have warranted their belief that they were perfectly

authorized in so doing. There are, however, considerations of courtesy

which ought always to be observed by persons of the same profession towards

each other, which should prevent them from doing all that even the law

entitles them to do, where, by such a course, they are prejudicing the

interests of their respectable brother tradesmen, on occasions on which

they had good ground to believe that they have done every thing they could

to secure the rights to which they lay claim. Neither is the position of

the author to be wholly overlooked. So far back as 1813 or 1814, Washington

Irving was a resident in this country, engaged in mercantile pursuits, as a

partner in a British firm, and was as much an Englishman as either Mr.

Leslie or Mr. Stuart Newton. He was, indeed, a resident in England at the

date of the publication of several of his works. But the principle, if

carried out fairly, would compromise the interests of painters and

print-publishers, as well as of litterateurs and booksellers. If the

arguments employed at the late meeting, are at all tenable, the valuable

copyrights of Messrs. Moon, Graves & Co., Colnaghi, or Hogarth, and other

printsellers, in the engravings executed from the works of Leslie, Newton,

Ohalon, and others, are completely at the mercy of any one who may think it

worth his while to reproduce them. The sort of retaliation, therefore,

which is now suggested, would be equivalent to that of cutting off the nose

for the purpose of being revenged upon the face.

It is quite true that in 1845, in Chappell _v._ Purday, the Court of

Exchequer was of opinion that a foreign author residing abroad, who

composed a work there, could have no copyright in this country; a decision

which was subsequently confirmed in the same Court in Boosey v. Purday.

These judgments have, however, been entirely overruled by Lord Campbell,

who on a late occasion pronounced an opinion in the teeth of these

decisions, and whose impressions on this question are said to be shared by

a large majority of the Judges of the Court of Queen's Bench. The point may

therefore be considered as settled; and as further litigation in the Court

of Chancery can only be productive of ruinous expense and vexation, it is

much to be desired that an amicable arrangement of the differences of the

respective publishers may be entered into, which, whilst it recognizes the

proper principle, will avert the necessity of further contests on the

subject. Mr. Colburn was, it appears, in favor of the anti-foreign

copyright disputants, and has, therefore, clearly invited the invasion of

his own copyrights of the works of American authors. As, however, he is

understood to have virtually, if not ostensibly, retired from the

publishing trade, he has for the future, at least, but little interest in

the matter.

The speeches of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton and of Mr. Bohn, at the late

meeting, contain many facts and illustrations, which will be found of

service in considering the question of international copyright. Mr. Bohn

has already done much by the publication of cheap editions of standard

authors, at a very moderate price, to render good books accessible to the

public, and is placed by his position as a bookseller, beyond the suspicion

of having been actuated by mercenary or unworthy motives in the matter. We

question however if the general interests of authors and publishers have

not suffered materially from his reprints. When Mr. Colburn attributed to

American piracy the discouraging fact that for books for which he could

once afford to pay 1000_l._, he cannot now give more than from 100_l._ to

150_l._, he appears to have overlooked the prevalence of cheap literature

generally in this country; and the ruinous competition which is now going

on among rival booksellers. Who is likely to purchase his guinea and a half

editions of Cooper's novels, when he can obtain from Mr. Bohn the works of

Washington Irving (large and handsomely printed volumes) at two shillings

each? Besides, the same system of piracy was at work when he purchased Mr.

Cooper's copyrights, as is in operation now. He recommends British

publishers not to purchase another copyright from an American author until

his government have consented to enter into some international arrangement;

and so far we agree with him in his suggestion. It is a remarkable fact,

however, that whilst British authors are protesting in their speeches and

writings against foreign appropriations of their copyrights, they are often

very much flattered by their adoption. The audacious single-volume piracies

of Galignani and Baudry of Paris, of the poetry of Byron, Scott, Southey,

Moore, Coleridge, Shelley and others, were often looked upon by the parties

who might be expected to consider themselves most aggrieved, as conferring

a distinction upon their writings calculated to increase their reputation

in this country. In several instances within our knowledge, the materials

for the biographical notices which prefaced the respective volumes were

supplied by the authors themselves! Lord Byron, so far from expressing any

indignation at the liberty which Messrs. Galignani had taken with his

writings, assisted them in identifying them, and wrote interesting

autograph letters to aid in their illustration.

Southey, as we gather from one of his letters, was rather flattered than

otherwise at the republication of his poetry in Paris, and if rumor may be

credited, Moore corrected the proofs, and furnished materials for the

biography of one or more of the foreign editions of his works. Mr. Bowles

and several other poets whose writings were included in this series, not

only furnished notes for the Biographical Prefaces, but indicated to the

editor the publications from which their fugitive writings should be

collected. Mrs. Hemans furnished several notes and suggestions for one of

the American editions of her works, and sent copies to her friends as

evidence of her translantic popularity. In fact we have rarely met with an

author whose writings have been deemed worthy of being reprinted abroad,

who has not considered himself flattered by the preference. We do not of

course profess to believe that their publishers were equally complimented

by this unceremonious invasion of their property. So long as the sale of

such piracies were limited to the continent, we doubt if they were the

means of abstracting a great deal from the pockets of either the author or

publisher; but for very many years they were allowed to be imported in

single copies, during which period they were introduced into this country

in large quantities. They were, however, purchased rather from their

compactness than for their cheapness, and the instant Mr. Murray published

a handsomely printed single volume edition of the Poetry of Lord Byron at a

moderate price, the trade in French and Belgian piracies of British

copyrights was almost destroyed. Why should we not print cheap editions for

exportation? The drawback on the paper, and the superiority of our printing

and binding would be sufficiently obvious to enable us to obtain a better

price than would be given for such coarse reprints as are usually hurried

into circulation in America. We cannot but believe that such an enterprise

might be carried out successfully. There is scarcely an edition, at a

moderate price, of any American author, that is worthy of the library; and

looking at the quality of the paper and print, we doubt if the American

booksellers could afford a volume of similar quality at the price charged

by Mr. Bohn for his reprints.

Any plan is, however, better than that suggested at the late meeting, of

becoming pirates ourselves to cure our neighbors of their buccaneering

propensities. The comparatively small number of works of mark which are now

produced in America (there have been no prose writers of any very great

eminence since the heyday of the literary lives of Irving, Cooper, and

Channing, if we except Mr. Prescott) goes far to show that national

literature is all but annihilated in that country, and that the evil must

eventually, in a great measure, correct itself. In a recent American

newspaper it is stated that protection is not refused in that country to

any British author who will go through the necessary forms by which he

becomes qualified for the privilege. Our readers will smile to hear that

one of these conditions consists of an oath, by which the candidate for

copyright in America is required to "renounce for ever all allegiance and

fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereign, whatever,

and particularly _to the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and

Ireland!"_ The late Captain Marryat declined to comply with these terms,

although another English author, of undeniable reputation, has, it is

affirmed, not scrupled to bolt this denationalizing pill. We have not heard

if he has turned his privilege to any account.

From Fraser's Magazine.

A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN AT HOME.

BY C. ASTOR BRISTED.

It was a lovely October day; the temperature perfectly Elysian--not half a

degree too hot or too cold--and the air moister than is usual in the dry

climate of the Northern States, altogether reminding one of Florence in

early autumn, only less enervating. Ashburner and the Harry Bensons were

gliding up the Hudson in a 'floating palace,' which is American

penny-a-liner for a northriver steamboat. Gerard Ludlow was on board,

handsome and _distingue_ as ever, but a little thinned and worn by

numberless polkas. He had got rid of his wife by a mighty effort, and was

going to play _le Mari a la Campagne_--not at Ravenswood, however, but with

some of the Van Hornes who lived higher up the river. While the young

exquisite was rattling on in a sort of Macaronic French to Mrs. Benson

about the mountains of Switzerland and the pictures of Italy, the ascent of

the Nile and "that glorious _Clos-Vougeot Blanc Mousseux_ at the

_Anglais_"--every topic, in short, that had not the least connection with

America--Ashburner was witnessing for the third time, with unabated

admiration, the magnificent scenery of the classic American river--for

classic it is to a New-Yorker since Washington Irving has immortalized its

legends.

"I am glad to see you are not ashamed to show a little enthusiasm," said

Benson, as he marked his friend leaning over the forward railing, absorbed

in the view before him. "Some people don't care much for this sort of

thing. There's my cousin Ludlow, how supremely indifferent he is to it all!

He is talking to my wife about the last comic opera he saw in Paris, which

represents Shakespeare and Queen Bess getting very jolly together."

"Certainly one would hardly be able to tell what countryman Ludlow was,

without previous knowledge. He seems, like many of your fashionables, very

much out of place here."

"That's true enough; and the man most out of place among them all is my

brother Carl, whom we are just going to visit."

Ashburner's recollection and knowledge of Carl Benson were pretty much

comprised in a certain luncheon at Ravenswood, which he had found very much

in place, and a very good place for. Henry went on to explain himself.

"He prides himself on a regard for two things--sincerity and equity--two

very estimable virtues, no doubt, but capable of being ridden to death like

all hobbies."

Benson further proceeded to state that he was afraid they would find his

brother in no very genial mood--that, in fact, he had two special reasons

at that time for being in bad humor. The anti-rent epidemic had broken out

in the vicinity, and his place was threatened with perforation by a

railroad. The former, however perilous to some of his acquaintance, was no

very terrible danger to Carl himself, he having as many tenants in the

country as his brother had in town--to wit, just one. The latter was

considerably more serious in itself, and rendered particularly aggravating

by attendant circumstances. An equally convenient and much safer inland

route for the railway had been originally proposed; but Mr. Jobson, the

chief engineer, started the project of a new one close along the shore,

running through the beautiful private grounds that lined the whole east

bank of the river for a hundred and fifty miles. The true motive for this

change was, that the company would thus have to pay less for right of way,

since the inland route would have passed through the cornfields and

vegetable-grounds of farmers, to whom they must have made full compensation

at the market value of the land, whereas by cutting through a private lawn

they could take the ground at a merely nominal rate, the damage caused to a

gentleman by the destruction of his place for all the purposes of a

country-seat being a "fancy value," which jurors and commissioners chosen

from the mass of the people, and regarding the aristocratic landholder with

an envious eye, would never pay the least attention to. But either from a

lingering regard for outward decency, or from some other motive, this, the

real reason, met with only a passing allusion in Mr. Jobson's report. He

came out boldly, and recommended the river route as calculated to improve

the appearance of the shore, by filling up bays and cutting off sharp

points.[20] What made it worse was, that the majority of these very

gentlemen proprietors had been induced to subscribe largely to the road

under the solemn assurance from leading members of the company (which took

care not to make itself officially and corporately responsible) that the

inland route would be adopted, which assurance was thrown to the winds as

soon as the books were filled up. Carl was not to be taken in so; he had

refused to subscribe to the road, and opposed it to the extent of his small

influence from the first; he might be the victim of such people, but he

would not be their dupe. This was one consolation to him. Another was, that

the railway, when it did come upon him, which would not be for two years

yet, would not absolutely ruin his place. It would not go through his

house, or across the lawn in front of it, or break down his terrace, for

which Nature was to be thanked, and not Mr. Jobson. Ravenswood was partly

within one of the to-be-improved bays, and, consequently, the rails would

cut it close along the water under the terraced bank. It merely stopped his

access to the river, which, as he did not yacht, and had room for the

little boating he wanted in the adjoining bay, was no great deprivation. At

any rate, the danger anticipated by Harry turned out all moonshine. When

they stopped at Van Burenopolis (the landing nearest Ravenswood), Carl's

rockaway was on the ground, and in ten minutes their host received them at

his front door, both his hands out-stretched, and his face lighted up with

unfeigned pleasure.

Carl Benson was an unflattered likeness of his brother, with a larger nose,

large feet, that got into every one's way, coarser hair, and narrower

chest; altogether a rougher and inferior type of form; but he had a fresh

and ruddy complexion, and though he was Henry's senior by six years, there

did not seem to be more than a twelve-month between them. In dress he was

as quiet as Harry was gay; never cared how old his clothes were, so long as

he had plenty of clean linen; was often two years behind the fashion;

affected black coats and gray trousers; eschewed enamelled chains, jewelled

waistcoat-buttons, and other similar fopperies of Young New-York; preferred

shoes (not of patent leather) to boots, and usually tied his cravat in the

smallest possible bow. Nor was the contrast in manner between the two

brothers less marked; the elder was shy and retiring before strangers, and

would have been called a very awkward man anywhere but in England. You

might easily guess from his way of behaving himself on a first

introduction, the uncertain style of his movements, and his "butter-finger"

fashion of taking hold of things, that he had none of that dexterity in the

little every-day occasions of life which distinguished Harry; who, for

instance, could harness a horse about as soon as his groom, while Carl

would have been half the day about it, and not have done it well after all;

Harry could carry out a complicated affair of business at one interview,

without coming off worst; but his elder brother would have pottered about

it three days, and probably been cheated in the end. This inaptitude for

small business, this want of promptitude and dexterity, of presence of mind

and body, so to speak, is not very detrimental in Europe, where a gentleman

with a tolerably well-filled purse can have so much done for him; but in

America, where the richest man has to do so much for himself, it is a

constantly recurring inconvenience, and it struck the Englishman almost

immediately that this, though not especially alluded to by Henry, was one

of the things that made Carl out of place in his own fatherland.

The mansion at Ravenswood, which had braved the storms of eighty-five

winters (a venerable age for an American house), was pitched on a hill

commanding a view of the Hudson for forty miles. Without, it was built of

rough stone, with an ample wooden _stoop_ running all round it, and a great

variety of vines and creepers running round all the pillars of the

stoop;--within, it branched off into large halls and spacious rooms, filled

with antediluvian furniture, and guiltless of the ambitious upholstery

attempts of Young New-York, which in such matters goes ahead of Paris

itself. The library alone, in which Carl lived,--that is to say, he did

everything but dining and sleeping there,--was fitted up in modern style,

furnished with luxurious arm-chairs and sofas, the walls and ceiling neatly

painted in oak, and the principal window composed of one oval pane of glass

set in a frame, to which the external landscape supplied an exquisite

picture. The hill swept down to the water's edge almost, where it

terminated abruptly in a lofty terrace, ninety feet above the level of the

shore. The woodlands all about--on Benson's place, on the places adjoining,

on the opposite bank--would have been beautiful at any time of the year;

now, when the foliage was changing color, in anticipation of the coming

frost, they were surpassingly so. As the trees change not all at once, but

different ones assume different tints successively, the natural

kaleidoscope is varied from day to day. The sumach leaf is one of the first

to alter; it becomes a vivid scarlet; then the maple assumes a brilliant

red and gold; then others put on a rich sienna, and others a warm olive.

Here and there were interspersed patches of evergreens, pines looking

almost blue, and cedars looking quite black from the contrast of the

gorgeous and fiery coloring that surrounded them. The river water was deep

blue; in the little bay north of Ravenswood it shaded off into a soft olive

from the reflection of the foliage and grass about it; while beyond the

further bank of the Hudson rose the Kaatskill[21] chain, richly wooded to

their summits, and painted with the myriad dyes of autumn,--a fitting

background to the landscape. Of course the finest part of this view was

beyond the limits of Ravenswood, but so much of it as belonged to Carl (and

his grounds covered some two hundred acres) was cleverly disposed with the

help of an ingenious landscape-gardener; the trees were cut into

picturesque clumps and vistas, opened at the desirable points. Henry, who

bragged for all the family as well as for himself, took care to inform

Ashburner how, when the place came into Carl's possession (or rather into

his wife's, for by the laws of New-York, the wife's property is absolutely

hers, and out of her husband's control) by the demise of his father-in-law,

there was hardly a carriage-road on it, and how he had devoted all his

spare income to it for seven years, "and made it what you see it."

As the Englishman had nothing to do for some days but to ramble about

Ravenswood, and talk to the owner of it, he had full opportunity of

ascertaining how far his brother's estimate of him was correct, and also

how far the difference between the two, particularly in their practical

aptitude for business, was attributable to the fact, that one of them had

finished his education in England, and the other in America, which, for a

New-Yorker, means in Paris, in Germany, half over the continent of Europe,

in short. His conclusion was, that some of the qualities which made his

host so "out of place" were natural, and that others had been superinduced

upon these by his English education.

Harry Benson had truly stated, that his brother's prominent trait of

character was sincerity. He used to say of himself, that the fairy had

bestowed on him true Thomas's gift, "the tongue that ne'er could lie," and

that the consequent incapacities predicted by the Scottish minstrel had

fallen upon him; he could neither buy nor sell, nor pay court to prince or

peer, (that is, in America, to the sovereign people,) nor win favor of fair

lady. Certainly this is a dangerous quality in any country, unless tempered

with an exquisite tact, which was not among Carl's possessions; but it is

peculiarly dangerous in America, for there is no public (not excepting the

French or Irish) that feeds so greedily on pure humbug as the American.

_Populus vult decipi_ there with a vengeance; and when the general current

of feeling has set towards any show or phantasm, moral, political,

literary, or social, woe to the individual who plants himself in its way!

Equally correct was the assertion that equity was a leading idea of his

mind. "Give the devil his due," was one of his favorite proverbs; and when

he said that a thing "was not fair," it seemed to him a conclusive argument

against it. His conception of the virtues was the genuine Aristotelian

one--a medium between two extremes. Not that he was a lukewarm partisan on

all subjects; but of the people he most disliked--and he was a really "good

hater" of some classes, Romanists, for instance, and Frenchmen, and

Southern slaveholders--he could not bring himself to take any unfair

advantage. Now it is no news to any one who knows anything of the

Americans, that they are a nation of violent extremes; the different

political parties, theological sects, geographical divisions--the literati

of different cities, even--vituperate and assail one another fearfully,

hardly respecting the laws of the land, much less the principles of natural

justice. Add to all this, that Carl had a naturally elegant and fastidious

taste, certain to make him aristocratic in sentiment, however democratic he

might be in principle, and it will be seen that he had a tolerable stock of

incompatibilities to start with before having anything to do with England.

But, as if to settle his business completely, and prevent him from ever

becoming a contented and contenting citizen of his own country, it chanced

that just at the period of his youth, when, according to the wont of Young

America, dress and billiards formed the main topic of his conversation, and

he was aspiring to the possession of a fast trotter, accident took him to

England, and a series of accidents kept him there, and caused him to make

it his home for several years, and his standpoint for all his continental

excursions. He grew up to mature manhood among and along with a generation

of Englishmen. He acquired a taste for classical studies, and for that

literary society, and those habits of literary and ethical criticism which

are nowhere else found in such perfection. His life had always been

strictly, even prudishly moral; and while casting off the frivolities and

fopperies of his boyhood, he also parted with much of the impulsive and

imperfectly understood religion of his younger days, and replaced it by a

more sedate and permanent feeling, which never rose to ecstasy of emotion,

but was always present to him as a daily habit, and was deeply earnest,

with little outward show.

Such a man's tendencies were visibly towards the church; and had Carl been

an Englishman, or continued his sojourn in England, he would have taken

orders naturally and inevitably, and might have made a tolerable parson.

But at home he soon found it impossible to assimilate himself to that

Evangelical party which constitutes the great bulk of the American

religious community.

The three leading tendencies of his character already alluded to, fostered

as they were by his residence abroad, had ended by making him very eclectic

and very unconventional. He took what seemed good to him from every

quarter, without reference to antecedents; and the fact that all the world

about him were going one way, was just the reason to make him go the other.

The Puritan denunciations of all who differed from them on points of

transcendental theology, or of social institutions, seemed to him illiberal

and uncharitable. His religion acted upon him somewhat like the Socratic

Daemon; it restrained him from actions, rather than prompted him to them. He

abhorred all parade of godliness, and shrunk from disclosing his religious

experiences, as he would have done from disclosing his loves to a mixed

assemblage. There were many things about these people besides their

abhorrence of the fine arts, that shocked his aesthetic sensibility, and

their inquisitive censoriousness he deemed ungentlemanly in point of

manners, and little short of persecution in point of principle. What most

of all repelled him was their unmitigated "seriousness." A certain

notorious personage, whom it is no scandal to call the greatest of living

charlatans, is reported to have taken for his motto, "Praise God, and be

merry." Now this was exactly what Carl wanted to do, to praise God, and be

merry; and he did not think the latter clause of the device implied any

necessary incompatibility with the former. He held strongly to the "_neque

semper arcum_," and thought that a man was all the better man, and better

Christian, for an occasional season of healthy enjoyment. He did not think

"teetotalism" necessary to prevent gentlemen from becoming drunkards, and

he took his regular exercise on Sunday as well as on other days. His

sincere nature revolted equally from the idea of dissembling a merriment

which he felt, and from that of simulating a religious enthusiasm which he

did not feel. With all personal respect for such men, and all reverence for

the service they had done to the cause of vital religion, and civil, no

less than religious liberty, he very soon found that he could not

amalgamate with them, and gave up all intention of going into the church.

Thus it came to pass, that letting himself slide into the place which his

fortune and connections had marked out for him, he became a man of society,

and a gentleman of the world. It proved that he was not entirely free from

the national error of quitting one extreme for another: it could only be

said in his defence, that his new _role_ rather came to, than was sought

for by him. Perhaps his fastidiousness partly led him into it; but this

trait of his mind showed itself more in intellectual criticism than in

material Sybaritism, and more in the choice of companions than either.

Certainly he had no great qualifications for the part, especially in

New-York, and very wild work he made of it with his peculiar ideas, some of

which were rather English, and all of which were considerably the reverse

of American.

The first offence that Carl gave was by getting married in church as

quietly as anything can be done in New-York, and going out of the way

immediately afterwards, instead of standing his bride up for eight hundred

people to look at. He was shamefully negligent of his duties to society in

not having given "a reception." Carl said that he married for the present

happiness and future comfort of himself and his wife, not for the amusement

of society; and that was all the explanation he deigned to give his

fashionable acquaintances.

His next eccentricity was refusing to read _The Sewer_, to let it enter his

house, or to talk about it. He said, that in Europe, scandalous newspapers

were not taken in by respectable families, that even young men read them at

their clubs and by stealth, and never mentioned them before ladies; that

people making pretensions to superior morality and decency ought not to

patronize an immoral and blasphemous print--and more to the same effect.

Men and women who referred to France as the standard of half the things

they did, taunted him with referring to England. Benson did not think it

worth while to discuss the merits of that case, but answered by a quotation

from Aristophanes, how "clever folks learn many things from their

enemies,"--which he had to translate before his auditors understood

it,--and by another of like purport from a Latin bard, which they were less

slow to comprehend, as it has become part of the stock in trade of our

public speakers, and even the editors know what it means. Then one man

liked _The Sewer_ because it had the best reports of trotting matches; and

another, because it published the news from Washington half-an-hour sooner

than any of its contemporaries; and they all said, that all the papers were

so bad, it was merely a question of degree, and not of kind. Nobody agreed

with Carl, not even the people who were abused by _The Sewer_, and he made

no converts out of his own family--his wife, brother, and sister.

But his great crime was blaspheming the polka, for which I believe Young

New-York thought him absolutely insane, and would gladly have put him into

a straight-jacket. He thought that a _matinee_ which lasted from noon to

midnight was an absurd and wicked waste of time; that even six hours a day

was too much for a reasonable being to devote to the Redowa; that at a ball

or party there should be some place for people who like to converse, and a

non-dancing man should not be stuck into a corner all the evening on pain

of being knocked over by the waltzers; that the tipsy excesses of the young

gentlemen who lorded it in the ball-room rendered their society not the

most edifying for ladies; and as whatever he thought he gave utterance to

in pretty plain language, he made himself prodigiously unpopular, and was a

great nuisance to the exclusives.

On the other hand, he found things enough to annoy him. He had no

like-minded, and it seemed no _like-bodied_ men to associate with; no

gentlemen to converse with on classical subjects, no acquaintances to join

him in his long walks and drives. He was not over-fond of the French. "They

make the best coffee and gloves in the world," he used to say, "but coffee

and gloves, after all, are a very small part of life." Therefore it was

irksome to him to hear the French always appealed to as the standard of

dress, furniture, and manners. Above all, it worried him to find their

language the recognized one of the _salon_ and the opera. That two or three

persons, whose native tongue was English, should go on talking imperfect

French, (for the knowledge acquired by a two years' residence in Paris must

be comparatively imperfect,) though no foreigners were present, struck him

as a mischievous absurdity, and directly calculated to hinder mental

growth. But all these were petty troubles compared to the misery he endured

from the gossiping and scandalous propensities of his fashionable

acquaintance. He now found his error in supposing that there is any

peculiar illiberality and uncharitableness in a religious community, as

distinguished from a worldly one; and discovered, that in avoiding the

Evangelical connection, he had not escaped the spirit of inquisitive

censoriousness. A common error of young men is this: they fancy, that

because people of the world talk of their liberality, and parade it

ostentatiously, they must possess an extra share of it. And doubtless they

are more charitable towards their favorite propensities; the "jolly good

fellow" will judge leniently of his bottle companion's trippings, and so on

through the calender of vices: though even this proposition is not to be

received absolutely. Catiline will sometimes be found complaining of

sedition; most offenders have some lingering sense remaining of original

right and wrong; not enough to keep them straight, but enough to blame

others for the self-same obliquities. But to try the question correctly, we

should examine the worldly, not in their judgments of one another, but in

their judgments of the religious, and see how much liberality they show

them. We should watch the hatred of virtue and purity, and the envy of fair

fame, developing themselves in every form of slander and detraction, from

the sly innuendo to the open falsehood. All merely fashionable society has

a necessary tendency to be scandalous; fashionable people must talk a great

deal without any definite purpose, and personal topics are always the

readiest at hand for small talk, in a momentary dearth of others--this

one's dress and appearance--that one's style of living--who is attentive to

whom--and so on; so that besides the gossip which springs from deliberate

wickedness, there is a great deal that is the result of mere

thoughtlessness and vacuity. And New-York fashionable society is probably

more scandalous than any other, because there are fewer public amusements

for persons of leisure than in the continental cities of Europe, while the

men have not that vent in political life, or the women in outdoor exercise,

which Londoners find.

Now Carl was imbued with the idea (I believe it was one of his acquired

English ones), that the first duty of a gentleman is to mind his own

business. He had a horror of interfering with any one's private affairs,

and an equal horror of any one interfering with his. It sickened him,

therefore, to be among people who were always speaking ill of one another,

and fetching and carrying stories. He grew tired of every one in the not

very large circle of his acquaintance, which his fastidiousness, before

adverted to, had always kept small; for he hated immoral people, and had a

very imperfect sympathy for vulgar ones; and the man who begins by

excluding these two classes, will make a large hole in his visiting list.

He was in danger of becoming morbid and misanthropic. The natural and

proper resource for a person so situated, is to take up some active and

steady occupation--ride some hobby, if he can do nothing better,--at any

rate, give himself enough to do. Carl was not a man of hobbies, and all the

available ones were ridden to death already. The first resort of a young

Englishman, with good fortune and connections, is politics; it is the very

last resort of a New-Yorker similarly situated. He usually has enough of it

at college; is a violent politician at sixteen, and by nineteen gives up

all thoughts of shining in that way. _Why_ this is so, I will not stop to

explain at present, as I have no intention of writing a treatise _a la De

Tocqueville_ on the working of democratic institutions in America. I only

mention the fact; perhaps you will find some further light thrown on it

before we get to the end of this paper.

Two refuges lay open before him--business and literature.

"Business"--banking, or commerce of some sort, is the shortest way for a

New-Yorker to dispose of himself; but Carl had neither taste nor ability

for trading or finance, and was too frank and unsuspecting to make his way

profitably in a very sharp mercantile community. To literature his ideas

naturally turned; and in some countries a productive literary life might

have been his happy destiny. He was not necessitated to write for a

livelihood, and was just the sort of man to write for reputation. It was

the occupation for which his tastes and his education fitted him.

But he had been too well educated for an American _litterateur_. His

standard of excellence was pitched too high. The popular models provoked

his criticism, not his emulation. The exaggerated flattery of newspaper

puffs, and the Little-Peddlingtonism of sectional cliques disgusted him. He

would not toady others, and disliked being toadied himself. He had too

correct an appreciation of newspaper editors, and too much candor to

disguise this appreciation. His accurate taste was shocked by little

mechanical deficiencies--the carelessness of compositors and

proofreaders--the impossibility of getting a Greek quotation set up

correctly. He wrote for elegantly and thoroughly educated men, such as had

been the associates of his youth, and found few of his countrymen to read,

and fewer to understand him; consequently, after a brief experience, he

gave up all writing for publication except one species of authorship, which

had only a semblance of doing others any good, and which did himself a

great deal of harm.

This was the controversial and satirical, to which he was prompted by an

honest abhorrence of shams, and in which he was encouraged by the morbid

public appetite for any thing savoring of personality or approaching to a

"row" upon paper. Carl had a knack of saying disagreeable things in a

disagreeable way, with some point and smartness--was clever in prose

parody, in the _reductio ad absurdum_, in quoting a man against

himself,--in short, up to all the "dodges" of belligerent criticism, and

had a lively sense and keen perception of the ridiculous; but not priding

himself as a gentleman and a Christian on these accomplishments, he did his

best to keep them down, just as he did to keep down any tendency to say

ill-natured things in social intercourse, and only gave them play when

provoked by any flagrant exhibition of imposture. But having once found by

experiment how this sort of writing took, how an hour's ebullition of

sarcasm would command attention, when two months of research and polish

were unheeded, and having no lack of material to tempt him, he was seduced

into it again and again. If a sciolist undertook to put forth a new theory

of the Platonic philosophy without having mastered his Greek grammar, Carl

Benson was at hand to turn him inside out, and show up his pretensions. If

a demagogue took up the formulas and watchwords of other times and

countries, to malign his betters, and stir up one class against another,

Carl was the first to dissent from the popular voice of panegyric, and

demonstrate in plain terms what mischievous nonsense the lecturer had been

uttering. If a Radical magazine blazoned out the discovery of some

prodigious mare's nest--some awful conspiracy of England against American

liberty or letters, who was so ready as Carl to point out that the editor

could not spell the most ordinary foreign name straight, and did not

exactly know the difference between _Fraser_ and the _Edinburgh!_

Booksellers and periodicals were glad enough to publish these squibs, and

the reading public read them fast enough, with considerable amusement, and

no profit or intention of profiting by them; it was _parvis componere

magna_, like Aristophanes and Cleon; the bystanders cheered the exposer,

and followed the exposed as fast as ever. Carl began to set up for a

professed satirist,--one of the worst things that can befall a man, for the

benefit he confers on others is very problematical, and the evil he

inflicts on himself positive and inevitable.

He who had been the merriest of young men found himself growing ill-natured

and morbid when he should have been in the prime of life. It was hard to

say which he disliked most, the exclusives or the democracy, and he uttered

his mind about both pretty freely. He was sick of the newspapers, with

their bad print and worse principles--of the endless debates about the same

old questions in Congress--of literary pretenders and the thousand and one

"most remarkable men among us,"--of all the continuously succeeding popular

delusions--of the gossiping young men in illimitable cravats, and all the

personal intelligence about Mr. Brown and Miss Jones. Still he clung to old

Gotham for a reason that influenced few people in it. He had strong

conservative feelings and local attachments; his childhood (unlike his

brother's) had been spent in the city, and the scenes of his childhood were

dear to him, however little interest he might feel in the new characters

that peopled them. But when in the rapid march of "up town" progress, the

house which his father built, where his parents had died, and he and his

brother and sister played as children, became so surrounded by shops, and

stores, and manufactories, that he was fairly driven out of it, then he

withdrew from the city altogether, and established himself for all the year

round at his--that is to say, at his wife's--place on the Hudson. His

contemporaries speedily forgot him, or if they ever thought of him, it was

only as an unhappy recluse, Bellerophon-like, eating his own heart, and

shunning the ways of men.

He was nothing of the sort. In quitting the town, he quitted most of his

sources of discontent. He had great capacity of self-amusement when fairly

left to himself, and could always find interesting occupation in his

library. He now reaped the fruit of his early studies, though not exactly

in the way he had once hoped and anticipated. His place, too, amused him

greatly, and, not keeping up two establishments, he had money in abundance

to spend on it. He revelled in out-of-door exercise; it was a constant

pleasure to him to gallop his blood mare (a taste for horses ran in the

family) over fresh grass, where there were no omnibuses or fast trotters in

his way. Nor was he without society; those who are unpopular with the

majority can generally boast a few of the warmest personal friends, and it

was so in his case. They came to visit him by intervals and relays,--real

worthies of literature, who had been his father's friends before they were

his,--quiet men of general tastes and accomplishments, like Philip Van

Horne; now and then a like-minded stranger, such as Ashburner, or his

sister and her husband, a good-natured, gentlemanly, ornamental

Philadelphian; or his brother Harry. But most of all was he happy in his

family circle: a man of the warmest domestic affections, he rejoiced in the

society of his children and the cheering presence of his wife. We owe this

lady an apology for not bringing her forward sooner: it would have been

more in accordance with the grammar of gallantry to "put the more worthy

person first." And yet, reader, may it not be better to keep the good wine

till the last, and after telling you a great deal about a man whom you may

not like, then to tell you something about a woman whom you must, or, at

least, you ought to like? So let me present you to Mrs. Carl Benson.

Henry Benson used to say that Carl had carried out his eclectic principles

in the choice of his wife, for she was something between a blonde and a

brunette, and had dark eyes and light hair. She was a tall woman (according

to the American standard of female height--I am not sure that she would

have been considered so in England), and her figure rose up straight and

springy as a reed. Altogether, she was in beautiful preservation, which is

more than can be said for every American woman who has mounted into "the

thirties," and is the mother of three children. Her shoulders were

magnificent, her bust good, her arms and hands exquisitely moulded, her

feet and ankles neatly turned, her features regular, yet not wanting in

expression, and her complexion almost perfect. Still, with all these

elements of beauty, and though of good family (she was one of the Van

Hornes) and sufficient worldly prospects, she had never been a great belle,

and this was an additional charm in her husband's eyes, who would never

have deeply loved a woman that all the world ran after. Indeed, she had not

belle accomplishments or tastes, preferred singing English ballads to

Italian arias, and galloping over the county all the morning to dancing at

a ball all night. And she was so insensible to the advantage of a cavalier

_per se_, that she would rather talk to an amusing woman than to a stupid

man, however handsome and fashionable. Of toilet mysteries she knew enough

to keep her from dressing badly, but not enough to make her dress well and

effectively. Her talents were not of the showy order, and did not fit her

for shining in a _salon_. She had good (not extraordinary) natural

abilities, and had been beautifully "coached," first by her father, and

afterwards by her husband, so that without any pedantry or _bas-bleu_-ism,

she displayed an extensive acquaintance with literary topics, but she was

not brilliant in small talk, in playful raillery, or cut-and-thrust

repartee. When she was in Paris (as Miss Louisa Van Horne), the French

could make nothing of her; they thought her a handsome bit of marble, cold,

unimpassioned, and uninteresting. And when more lately Vincent Le Roi came,

as Henry's _umbra_, to pass a few days at Ravenswood, the Vicomte went away

saying that Madame Carl Benson was undoubtedly an angel, but, for his part,

he didn't like angels; they were very misty and insipid; he much preferred

_les filles d'Eve_. And all who knew Le Roi agreed that he would not know

well what to do with an angel. On the other hand, it must be set off

against the deficiencies above mentioned, that she was a true and loving

wife, a fond mother, a benevolent lady, and a sincere Christian.

Such was--no, such was not the mistress of Ravenswood. I feel the attempted

portrait is inadequate. A passing description cannot do justice to the

woman any more than a passing interview. Her superficial blemishes--want of

ease in her conversation, or of crinoline in her dress,--were obvious to

the casual observer; but the sterling qualities of her character, her truth

and honesty, her constancy of affection, her unworldly disposition, her

loftiness of soul--all these, as they could only be properly appreciated by

those who had known her for years, so can they only be generally and

vaguely hinted at in a brief sketch like this. The great mystery was, how

she came to marry Carl. Every one said she was too good for him, and he

would have been the last man to deny it. Perhaps she was pleased with his

simple integrity, and foresaw that he would make a most affectionate

husband, though it was not in his nature to be a passionate lover. Perhaps

she pardoned his awkwardness in regard for his honesty.

After all, I would not claim that she was morally perfect; very few of us

are. I am afraid she was rather censorious, and judged harshly of sinners;

that in her own comfortable position she did not always weigh accurately

the temptations of others. It is a common practice of very good and moral

people to indemnify themselves for their virtue by depreciation of others;

'tis an error that lurks at the heels of Christian duty; for are we not

_commanded_ to hate sin? and the transition from the abstract to the

concrete is so easy.

I fancy, too, she did not harmonize altogether with Mrs. Henry Benson.

Indeed, the two sisters-in law made little secret of their mutual

incompatibility. Clara said that Louisa was very proper and very stupid,

regular as a machine, and with no fun or frolic in her--that the only man

she ever had about her, her cousin Philip, was as dull as herself,--that

she dressed badly, and talked bad French,--that she went to church in the

morning, and gossiped in the afternoon, and was more charitable to the

bodies of her inferiors than to the souls of her equals. Louisa looked down

upon Clara as a worldly and frivolous little creature, who fostered her

beauty to attract admirers and worried her husband to death by her

caprices, who wasted her time in dancing and flirting, and her money in

Parisian nick-nacks, or in giving parties to people who did not care for

her. In short, the two ladies said many hard things of each other when

separate, and were painfully amiable when together.

But these bickerings did not greatly impair the happiness of our party at

Ravenswood. The brothers loved each other as much as if they had _not_ been

brothers, and had not had to divide a large family estate between them.

Even their wives' quarrels could not make them quarrel.

Many a jolly turn had they and their guest, lounging with their cigars

after breakfast on the vine-trellised stoop, or under the spreading

horse-chesnuts at one corner of the house, watching the white sails that

glided by on the sunny water, and the fantastic cloudlets that floated in

the clear sky; strolling through the winding walks, or across the terrace

at evening, when the setting sun had piled red clouds like a huge volcano

over the Hudson, and the Kaatskills looked like great blocks of lapis

lazuli, their summits half veiled in fiery mist; riding through the

adjacent country in bright moonlight nights, now threading their way among

the uncertain bridle-paths of a dense wood, and anon startling a village

with their clattering hoofs and boisterous merriment as they swept by it at

full gallop; driving four-in-hand a livelong day to visit friends who lived

north or south of them on the rivers, by roads that rose up over the hills

and showed all the glorious panorama of the Hudson, and then dipped down

inland among picturesque glens and water-courses and mill-streams. Capital

game breakfast they had, which the women were not too sentimental to help

them in doing justice to; and excellent plain dinners, with oceans of iced

champagne; and when the cloth was drawn, Carl would chirp over his claret

with as comfortable a melancholy as ever any "ruined" Protectionist

gentleman in Old England gave utterance to.

At a very early period of their acquaintance, Henry Benson had put

Ashburner up to the way of getting at the dark side of things in America.

"Never assail anything," he said; "if you do, the people will tackle you,

from the highest to the lowest. _Let an American gentleman talk_; give him

his head, and he will soon lead you on the track you want." Acting on this

hint, the Englishman let his host talk; what little he said himself would

come in the form of a query or suggestion. "You lead a very nice life

here," he would say, "but it is rather quiet. I should think an active man

like yourself would choose some more stirring form of existence." Then Carl

blazed out.

"Go into politics, I suppose! A nice business that for an honest man and a

gentleman! Why, Ashburner, the democracy of our State, who are always in

fear of being reduced to vassalage by a few thousand easy and unambitious

rich men, have lost their liberties without perceiving it to hundreds of

thousands of alien settlers with their foreign priests. A successful

politician here is either a hack lawyer of thirty years' standing, who has

had opportunity enough of getting used to the devil's work in his first

business, or an upstart demagogue, who has made his way by dint of sheer

brass; either a blind partisan, who knows nothing outside of "the regular

ticket," or a "non-committal" man, who says everything to everybody, and

never gave an intelligible, manly, straightforward opinion in his life. One

party would sell us body and soul to the Slaveholders, and the other to the

Anti-renters, and both to the Irish. If I could bring myself to enter the

lists with such people, I should have to start with the dead weight of

being a "millionaire" (as they call every man here who has two or three

hundred thousand dollars) and an "aristocrat" (as they call every man who

has the habits and education of a gentleman). There is not a voter in this

county has less influence than I have;--to be sure, I don't try for any,

because I well know that by doing so, I should only make myself more

unpopular, without becoming any more influential. Or be a leader of

fashion, perhaps--one of those people who talk scandal about one another

all day long when they are not dancing, who try to pursue pleasure in a

place where every one else is at work, and are so destitute of resources,

that they quarrel for pure want of something to do. See what they have made

of my brother, who is a clever fellow and a well-educated man, though I say

it. He is becoming a third-rate dancer--one of Tom Edwards's _corps_; is

growing frivolous and scandalous, and getting his earnest honesty knocked

out of him every day. Or profess literature, possibly--Henry does a little

of that too; you may see him in the magazines sandwiched between the last

learned cobbler and the newest Laura Matilda of the West. No, I don't want

to belong to any "Mutual Admiration" Society, and if I did, it's too late

now. My mind has been spoken so often and so freely, that were I to write

a book as good as one of Fenimore Cooper's, (if you can imagine the

possibility of such a thing even in hypothesis) no editor would notice it,

and no one read it--unless it contained something personal. Here I shall

stay and amuse myself in what one of our ex-great men used to call

"dignified retiracy;" and if this railroad drives me out, why, then,

_ingens iterabimus aequor_--to England, were I a bachelor, but my wife

couldn't live there; no American woman can, after the attention she has

been used to at home, except the ambassador's wife--so it will probably be

to Italy, or perhaps to Paris, for a man can find occupation there,

whatever be his peculiar bent, and fill up his time well in the place

without knowing or liking the people."

"It does surprise me," said Ashburner, "that the terminus of a refined

American's dream should always be Paris,--that whenever a man has means and

leisure, he runs off thither, and stays as long as he can: and if not

there, in some other place--anywhere but at home."

"Come now," broke in Henry Benson; he had retired with the ladies after

dinner, and now rejoined the men to have some more claret,--"don't you

English run over to Paris perpetually, and all around the continent? Don't

we meet you everywhere in the four quarters of the globe? You don't like to

stay at home any more than we do; only we are franker than you, and avow

it."

"We _go_ away from home, but we don't like to _stay_ away," replied the

Englishman.

"Exactly; and if we had a _pied-a-terre_ close to the continent as you

have, we should not like to stay away from home either--more than half the

year. Here has Carl been making his moan to you about our unappreciated

condition; it's always his way over the decanters--one of his amusements

merely. (Carl, old fellow, pass the Laffitte this way.) Well, I think," and

he paused to fill a brimming glass, "that we are very jolly victims; and

for my part, I am quite disposed to play, regardless of my doom. Look at

our wives and children, our houses and horses, our whole style of living.

Ponder well on this _Bourdeaux;_ ruminate on those woodcocks we have been

discussing. What miserable misused fellows we are! We _do_ live in a great

country--we have such civil and religious liberty as is enjoyed in only one

other country in the world; and if we don't have the management of the

government, why no one here or abroad holds us responsible for what the

government does, and that is just the condition Plato thought a philosopher

should pray for. Fill up again, brother mine, and thank your stars that you

have your time to yourself, and are not a parliament man, as Ashburner is

going to be, and are not set to work twelve hours a day among blue books

and red tape."

And now, reader, these papers, which have been running on for a year or

more, are wound up. I did not begin them intending to give you anything

marvellous, or new, or profound about the aspect, prospects, and destiny,

political, religious, or literary, of the great people among whom I am a

small unit. I only intended to present you with some phases of outward life

and manners--such things as would strike or interest a stranger in our

beloved Gotham, and in the places to which regular Gothamites--American

cockneys, so to speak--are wont to repair. For I am but a cockney in my own

country; I have never travelled far in it,--good reason why, when they are

apt to hang up a man at one end of the Union for what is a sort of religion

at the other. They did not aspire to be "Sketches of American Society"

(that was an honorary prefix of yours, Mr. Editor), nor even Sketches of

New-York Society, but only of a very small class of persons in New-York;

and therefore I had originally headed them "The Upper Ten Thousand," in

accordance with a phrase established by Mr. Willis, though even that is an

exaggeration, for the people so designated are hardly as many hundred. In

truth, I began the series chiefly to amuse some Cantab friends of mine, who

were curious to know how the gentlemen that were their contemporaries and

representatives in our Atlantic cities, lived, and eat, and dressed, and

amused themselves; what their habits and pursuits and propensities were.

The last thing that I expected was that any of them should be read, much

less republished, on my side the water. To a New-Yorker, many things which

they contain must necessarily appear stale, stupid, and commonplace. For

instance, in one number half a page is taken up with the description of a

trotting-wagon; to an American I should as soon think of describing a pair

of boots; the one is as familiar an object to him as the other. But at the

very first number, some clever folks took it into their heads that they

were to be very personal,--that every character described or even alluded

to in them was to represent a real living prototype; that was enough to

make them sought after. And it really did happen that in that first number

I had described a sleigh which actually existed in real wood and iron

somewhere about the city; and the inference above detailed was obvious. It

is not every story in Gotham that has so much foundation; in fact, they get

them up frequently without any foundation to speak of, only unfortunately

the narratives don't fall to the ground as readily as the houses do. It is

hardly worth while contradicting such idle rumors, but to my American

readers (since I have some, much to my own amazement) I wish to say one

thing once for all--that Harry Benson is not meant to represent any living

individual whatsoever, and that his wife, house, horses, and other

accessaries, are not designed after the corresponding appurtenances of any

real person. And the same remark applies with equal force to all the

appendages of Carl Benson, as delineated in this very sketch.

Still, I suppose I ought to be obliged to the members of "our set" who got

up this idea; for the factitious interest thus communicated to these papers

has caused them to be reprinted (in the cheap and multitudinous style of

American reprints), and thus to become known to the outsiders both of our

own city and of other parts of the country, who could perhaps judge them

more fairly on their own merits, from having no knowledge of, or interest

in, the local celebrities supposed to be portrayed in them. Some have been

disposed to accept them as what they were really meant for--light sketches

of life and manners in a certain circle; some have had the bad taste to wax

furious at them. I understand that a few southern editors have departed

from their usual stoical calmness and dignified reserve on the subject, to

assail me for my occasional allusions to "the peculiar institution;" and am

told (life is too short, and time too precious, to read such things

oneself, but there are always good-natured friends to put you up to them)

that a correspondent of the _Ochloratic Review and No Government Advocate_,

who probably never wore a decent coat in his life, and regards every man in

a clean shirt as an oppressor of the people, has seriously taken me to ask

for representing some of my characters as elegantly dressed! If this

individual could find nothing worse to say of my papers, _after nine months

examination of them_, methinks he might have continued to hold his tongue;

but I suppose any trash will do for the _Ochlocratic_.

Whether the abuse of these persons, or the praise of others, or my own

inclination, may tempt me hereafter to essay something more definite and

connected, I will not say at present. Of the things that "lie on the knees

of the Gods," it becomes no man to speak prematurely. Meanwhile, make a

long arm across the Atlantic--So--shake hands, and good-bye!

FRANK MANHATTAN.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] A literal fact. Washington Irving's residence was among those

disfigured by this operation, which made havoc of all the oldest and most

beautiful properties in the State.

[21] Commonly written _Catskill_; but I believe the above is the genuine

Dutch orthography.

From Dickens's Household Words.

THE FLYING ARTIST.

Karl Herwitz is a German. He is about fifty years of age, and one of the

most original of characters. Since I have know [known] him, I have passed

whole nights in listening to his adventures, which are in general as

instructive as they are amusing. Married at a very early age, he left the

military career for that of inventions. He had a most marvellous talent for

conceiving novel machines, often of practical utility; but his soul was set

upon perfecting a flying machine. To this he had devoted nearly his whole

life. He made models, he tried experiments, he brought to bear all his

prodigious knowledge of mathematics on the subject of travelling in air,

with an enthusiasm, a childish earnestness, which is not uncharacteristic

of genius. He studied every natural law which was likely to advance him

towards the consummation of all his hopes and desires--namely, the ability

to fly. At one time his little garden was turned into an aviary. He filled

it with birds of various kinds, to study the mechanism of their powers of

flight. There was the eagle and the dove, the vulture and the sparrow, all

of which were made subservient to his darling object. He has often

explained all this to me. "The Golden Eagle," he once said, "can cleave the

air at the rate of forty miles an hour. Now, if I can succeed in imitating

the mechanism by which he travels in space, exactly and efficiently, of

course, my machine will move in the air at the same pace." What could I

say? No argument, no warning, availed. Still he went on, hoping and

working, and buying expensive tools and materials. He completed aerial

ships one after another; and although none of them answered, he was never

discouraged.

At one time, however, he thought he had succeeded. His contrivance was a

curious affair, shot out of a bomb; but it was about as buoyant as a shot,

fell, and failed, disheartening everybody but the persevering projector.

Still he did not wholly neglect useful productions, and several times made

improvements in mechanism, and sold them for very good prices. But the

money went as fast as it came. His winged Pegasus was a merciless Ogre,

which swallowed up all the money the old German earned.

Last Christmas-eve, in Paris, five of us were collected, after dinner,

round a roaring fire, half wood, half charcoal. For some time the

conversation was general enough. We spoke of England and of an English

Christmas. The magic spell of the fireside was felt, and the word "home"

hung on the trembling lip of all; for we were in a foreign land; we were

all English, save one. There was a lawyer, the most unlawyer-like man I

ever knew, a noble-hearted fellow, whom to know is to like; there was a

poet, of an eccentric order of merit, whose love of invective, bitter

satire, and intense propensity to hate--whose fantastic and Germanic cast

of philosophy will ever prevent his succeeding among rational beings; then

there was an artist, a young man well known in the world, not half so much

as he deserves, if kindness of soul could ever make a man famous; there was

Citizen Karl Herwitz, as he loved to be called; lastly myself. I had been

speaking of some far-off land, relating some personal adventure; and, with

commendable modesty, feeling that I had held possession of the chair quite

long enough, paused for a reply.

"Tell us your adventures at the Court of Konningen," said the poet,

standing up to see that his hair hung tastefully around his shoulders,

addressing at the same time Karl, and mentioning the name of one of the

smaller German states. "I have heard it before, but it will be new to the

rest, and I promise them a rich treat."

"Ah!" sighed the German, with a huge puff at his long pipe; "that _was_ an

adventure--or rather a whole string of adventures. I have told it several

times; but, if you like, I will tell it again."

All warmly called on the German to keep his promise. After freshly loading

his pipe, and taking a drain at his glass, he drew his arm-chair closer to

the fire, settled his feet on the _chenets_, and began his narrative in a

quaint and strange English, which I shall not seek to copy:--

"I had spent all my money. I had sold all my property. There remained

nothing but a little furniture in my house, which was in a quiet retired

quarter of the town; but then I had completed a machine, and sent it for

the approval of the Minister of the Interior, who promised to purchase it

for the government. I now looked forward with delight to a long career of

success, and saw the completion of my flying machine in prospect. On this I

depended, and still depend, for fame, reputation, and fortune.

"I had then a good wife and four children; she is dead now." The German

paused, puffed away vigorously at his pipe, and tried to hide his emotion

from our view by enveloping himself in smoke.

"I was naturally impatient for some result," he continued, when his face

became once more visible.--"I used to go every day to the Minister, and

wait in the antechamber, with other suitors, for my turn. Weeks passed, and

then months, and yet it never came. But we must all eat, and six mouths are

not fed for nothing. We had no resources, save our clothes and our

furniture. My clothes were needed to go out with, so the furniture went

first. One article was sold, and the produce applied by my careful wife to

the wants of the family. We had come to that point when food is the only

thing which must be looked on as a necessity. We lived hardly indeed.

Bread, and a little soup, was all we ever attempted to indulge in."

Six months passed without any change for the better. I went to the

Minister's every day; sometimes I saw him, and sometimes I did not. He was

always very polite, bowed to me affably, said my machine was under

consideration, should be reported on immediately, and passed on his way. It

was the dead of winter. Every article of furniture was now gone, my wife

and children having not gone out for two months for want of clothes. We

huddled together, for warmth, on two straw mattresses, in the corner of an

empty room, without table, without chairs, without fire. Catherine had

nothing to wear but an old cotton gown and one under-garment. We had not

eaten food for a day and a night, when I rose in the morning to go to the

Minister's. I felt savage, irate, furious. I thought of my starving and

perishing family, of the long delay which had taken place in the

consideration of my machine. I compared the luxurious ease of the Minister

with my own position, and was inclined to do some desperate act. I think I

could have turned conspirator, and have overthrown the Government. I was

already half a misanthrope.

When I entered the Minister's antechamber, I placed myself, as usual, near

the stove. I kept away from the well-dressed mob as much as possible. They

were solicitors, it is true, and humble enough, some of them; but then they

had good coats on, smart uniforms, polite boots, and came, perhaps, in

carriages. I came on foot, clad in a long frock reaching almost to my

heels, patched in several places; with trousers so darned about the calves

as to be almost falling to pieces; with boots which were absolutely only

worn for look, for they had no soles to them. My hat, too, was a

dreadful-looking thing. This day, being faint with hunger, and pinched by

the cold, the heat of the room overcame me, and I grew dizzy. I am sure I

knew nothing of what passed around. I saw my wife and children, through a

misty haze, starving with hunger and cold. A basket full of logs of wood

lay beside my knee. Reckless, wild, not caring who saw me, I took a thick

log, huddled it under my frock, and went away. I passed the porter's lodge

unseen; I was in the open air; I was proud, I was happy. _I had stolen a

log of wood_; but my children would have fire for one day.

When I got home I went to bed. I was feverish and ill; wild shapes floated

round me; I saw the officers of justice after me; I beheld a furious mob

chasing me along interminable fields; and on every hedge, and every tree,

and every house, and every post, I read, in large letters, the word

"thief." It was evening when I awoke. I looked around for some minutes

without moving or speaking; a delicious fragrance seemed to fill the air, a

fire blazed on the hearth, and round it huddled my wife and children,

sitting on logs of wood. I rubbed my eyes. The presence of these logs of

wood seemed to convince me that I still dreamed. But there was an odor of

mutton broth, which was too real to be mistaken.

"Catherine," said I, "why, you seem to have some food."

All came rushing to my bedside, mother and children. They scarcely spoke;

but one brought a basin of broth, another a hunch of bread, another a plate

of meat and potatoes, which had been kept hot before the fire. I was too

faint and sick to talk. I took my broth slowly. Never did food prove a

greater blessing. Life, reason, courage, hope, all seemed to return, as

mouthful by mouthful I swallowed the nourishing liquid. It spread warmth

and comfort through every fibre of my frame. When I had taken this, I ate

the meat, and vegetables, and bread, without fear. While I did so, my

wife, sending the children back to the fire-place, told me, in a whisper,

how she had procured such unexpected subsistence. It seems that scarcely

had I got home, and, after flinging my log on the ground, rushed to bed,

when a knock came to the door. Catherine went to answer it. A man of middle

age entered. He gave a hurried glance around, seemed to shudder at its

emptiness, looked at the next room through the open door, saw that it was

as bare as the other, turned his eyes away from the crouching form of my

half-dressed wife, and spoke:--

"Have you any children?"

"Four," said Catherine, tremblingly; but, still, answering at once, so

peremptory was the tone of the stranger.

"How long have you been in this state?"

"Six months."

"Your husband is Karl Herwitz, the mechanist?"

"He is, sir."

"Well, madam, please to tell him that I recognized him as he came out of

the Minister's of the Interior, and, noticing what he clutched with such

wild energy, followed him here. Tell him, I am not rich, but I can pay my

debts; I owe him the sum contained in this purse. I am happy to pay it."

"And did he owe it you?" said I, anxiously.

No, replied Karl; he had never seen me or heard of me before. Generous

Englishman! I shall never forget him. I found out afterwards that he was a

commercial traveller, with a large family and a moderate income. On what he

left we lived a month, by exercising strict economy. I did not go to the

Minister's for several days. I feared some one might have seen me, and I

was bowed by shame. But, at last, I mustered courage, and presented myself

at the audience. I was, as usual, totally unnoticed, and I resumed my

wretched dangling in the antechamber, as usual. The result was always the

same. Generally I caught a glimpse of the Minister; but, when I did, it was

eternally the same words. Meanwhile time swept rapidly by, and soon my

misery was as great as ever. My children, who during the past month had

recovered a little their health and looks, looked pale and wan again. I was

more shabby, more dirty, more haggard and starved-looking than ever. Once

again I went out, after our all being without food for some twenty-four

hours. I knew not what to do. I walked along the street turning over every

possible expedient in my mind.

Suddenly I saw, on the opposite side of the way, a lieutenant belonging to

the regiment I had quitted. He had been my intimate friend, but so shabby

was I, that I sought to avoid him. He saw me, however, and, to my surprise,

hurried across and shook me heartily by the hand. I could scarcely restrain

tears; so sure was I, in my present state, to be cut by even old friends.

But, in my worst troubles, something has always turned up to make me love

and cherish the human heart.

"My poor Karl," said he, "the world uses you badly."

"Very;" said I: and in a few words I told my story.

"My dear Karl!" he exclaimed, when I had concluded, "I was going to ask you

to dine with me on what I have left. I am come up to claim a year's arrears

of pay, and have been sent back with a free passage and promises. But I

have a little silver; and, as I said, meant to ask you to devour it. But

after what you have told me, will you share my purse with me for your wife

and children's sake?" And he pulled out a purse containing about the value

of five shillings English, forced me to take half, shook me heartily by the

hand, and hurried away to escape my thanks.

Home I rushed with mad eagerness, a loaf in one hand, the rest of the money

in the other. My poor wife once more could give food to her little ones. On

the morning of the third day after I had obtained this little help, I lay

in bed, ruminating. I was turning over in my mind every possible expedient

by which to raise enough money to go on with, a brief time, until my

machine was really decided on by the Government. Suddenly I sat up in my

bed and addressed my wife:

"How much money have you got left, Catherine?"

She had threepence of your money.

"Can you manage with the loaf of bread then, and three-halfpence for

to-day?"

"I have often managed on less," said she.

"Then give me three-halfpence to take out with me."

"But what are you going to do? We may have nothing to-morrow, and then the

three-halfpence will be missed."

"Give!" said I, rather sternly, reflecting as I was on my scheme; "be

assured, it is for our good."

My poor wife gave me the money with a very ill grace, but without another

word; and, rising, I went out. When in the street, I directed my footsteps

towards the outskirts. They were soon reached. I halted before a tavern

frequented wholly by workmen, and going into the public room, called for a

_choppe_ of beer. I had purposely chosen my position. Before me was a

handsome, neatly-dressed young workman, who, like all his companions, was

smoking and drinking beer. Quietly, without saying a word, I drew out a

small note-book and a drawing-pencil. I was then considered a very good

artist; but had only used my pencil to sketch models. But I now sketched

the human face with care and anxiety. Presently, as my pencil was laid

down, a man sitting next to me peeped over my shoulder.

"Why!" he cried, "that's Alexis, to the life."

"How so?" said the man I had been sketching, holding out his hand, into

which I put my note-book.

"Good!" cried he, while a smile of satisfaction covered his face. "Will you

sell this? I should like to keep it."

"I will sell it if you like," replied I, as quietly as I could, though my

heart was nigh bursting with excitement.

"How much?"

I knew my man, and asked but six sous, threepence, which the workman gladly

paid, while five others followed his example, at the same price. I went

home a proud and happy man with my thirty-six pence of copper. Would you

believe it? that was the commencement of a long and prosperous career,

which lasted until the Revolution of 1848 threw me back again. Six months

after, I received a thousand florins for a portrait in oil of the Grand

Duchess of B----; and about the end of the same year I drove up to the

Hotel of the Minister of the Interior in a splendid carriage, a gentleman

by my side; it was the English commercial traveller.

We had a letter of audience, and were admitted at once. The Minister rose,

and after a very warm greeting, requested us to be seated. We took chairs.

"My dear Herwitz," said the Minister, a little, bowing, smirking man, "what

can I do for you? Glad to see you doing so well. The Grand Duchess says

wonders of you. I will have the committee on your machine."

"I beg your pardon," said I, "but I have come to request your written order

for its removal. I have sold it to the English house represented by this

gentleman."

"Its removal!" cried the astonished Minister; "impossible! so excellent an

invention should not pass into the hands of foreigners."

"So I thought," replied I, coldly, "when for nine months I waited daily in

your antechamber, with my family starving at home. But it is now sold. My

word is my bond."

The Minister bit his lip, but made no reply. He took up a sheet of paper,

and wrote the order for removal. I took it, bowed stiffly, and came away.