CHAPTER XXI.

MEETING AND PARTING.

The appearance of Sheila in Mrs. Lavender's house certainly surprised

Ingram, but the motives which led her to go thither were simple enough.

On the morning on which she had left her husband's house she and Mairi

had been driven up to Euston Square Station before she seemed capable

of coming to any decision. Mairi guessed at what had happened with a

great fear at her heart, and did not dare to speak of it. She sat, mute

and frightened, in a corner of the cab, and only glanced from time to

time at her companion's pale face and troubled and distant eyes.

They were driven in to the station. Sheila got out, still seeming to

know nothing of what was around her. The cabman took down Mairi's trunk

and handed it to a porter.

"Where for, miss?" said the man. And she started.

"Where will you be going, Miss Sheila?" said Mairi timidly.

"It is no matter just now," said Sheila to the porter, "if you will be

so kind as to take charge of the trunk. And how much must I pay the

cabman from Notting Hill?"

She gave him the money and walked into the great stone-paved hall, with

its lofty roof and sounding echoes.

"Mairi," she said, "I have gone away from my own home, and I have no

home for you or myself either. What are we to do?"

"Are you quite sure, Miss Sheila," said the girl, dismayed beyond

expression, "that you will not go back to your own house? It wass a bad

day this day that I wass come to London to find you going away from your

own house;" and Mairi began to cry. "Will we go back to the Lewis, Miss

Sheila?" she said. "It is many a one there will be proud and pleased to

see you again in sa Lewis, and there will be plenty of homes for you

there--oh yes, ferry many that will be glad to see you! And it wass a

bad day sa day you left the Lewis whatever; and if you will go back

again, Miss Sheila, you will neffer hef to go away again, not any more."

Sheila looked at the girl--at the pretty pale face, the troubled

light-blue eyes and the abundant fair-yellow hair. It was Mairi, sure

enough, who was talking to her, and yet it was in a strange place. There

was no sea dashing outside, no tide running in from the Atlantic. And

where was old Scarlett, with her complaints and her petulance and her

motherly kindness?

"It is a pity you have come to London, Mairi," Sheila said wistfully;

"for I have no house to take you into; and we must go now and find one."

"You will not go back to sa Lewis, Miss Sheila?"

"They would not know me in the Lewis any more, Mairi. I have been too

long away, and I am quite changed. It is many a time I will think of

going back; but when I left the Lewis I was married, and now--How could

I go back to the Lewis, Mairi? They would look at me. They would ask

questions. My father would come down to the quay, and he would say,

'Sheila, have you come back alone?' And all the story of it would go

about the island, and every one would say I had been a bad wife, and my

husband had gone away from me."

"There is not any one," said Mairi, with the tears starting to her eyes

again--"not from one end of sa island to sa other--would say that of

you, Miss Sheila; and there is no one would not come to meet you, and be

glad sat you will come again to your own home. And as for going back, I

will be ferry glad to go back whatever, for it was you I was come to

see, and not any town; and I do not like this town, what I hef seen of

it, and I will be ferry glad to go away wis you, Miss Sheila."

Sheila did not answer. She felt that it was impossible she could go back

to her own people with this disgrace upon her, and did not even argue

the question with herself. All her trouble now was to find some harbor

of refuge into which she could flee, so that she might have quiet and

solitude, and an opportunity of studying all that had befallen her. The

noise around her--the arrival of travelers, the transference of luggage,

the screaming of trains--stunned and confused her; and she could only

vaguely think of all the people she knew in London, to see to whom she

could go for advice and direction. They were not many. One after the

other she went over the acquaintances she had made, and not one of them

appeared to her in the light of a friend. One friend she had who would

have rejoiced to be of the least assistance to her, but her husband had

forbidden her to hold communication with him, and she felt a strange

sort of pride, even at this moment, in resolving to obey that

injunction. In all this great city that lay around her there was no

other to whom she could frankly and readily go. That one friend she had

possessed before she came to London: in London she had not made another.

And yet it was necessary to do something, for who could tell but that

her husband might come to this station in search of her? Mairi's

anxiety, too, was increasing every moment, insomuch that she was fairly

trembling with excitement and fatigue. Sheila resolved that she would go

down and throw herself on the tender mercies of that terrible old lady

in Kensington Gore. For one thing, she instinctively sought the help of

a woman in her present plight; and perhaps this harshly-spoken old lady

would be gentle to her when all her story was told. Another thing that

prompted this decision was a sort of secret wish to identify herself

even yet with her husband's family--to prove to herself, as it were,

that they had not cast her off as being unworthy of him. Nothing was

farther from her mind at this moment than any desire to pave the way for

reconciliation and reunion with her husband. Her whole anxiety was to

get away from him, to put an end to a state of things which she had

found to be more than she could bear. And yet, if she had had friends in

London called respectively Mackenzie and Lavender, and if she had been

equally intimate with both, she would at this moment have preferred to

go for help to those bearing the name of Lavender.

There was doubtless something strangely inconsistent in this instinct of

wifely loyalty and duty in a woman who had just voluntarily left her

husband's house. Lavender had desired her not to hold communication with

Edward Ingram: even now she would respect his wish. Lavender would

prefer that she should, in any great extremity, go to his aunt for

assistance and counsel; and to his aunt, despite her own dislike of the

woman, she would go. At this moment, when Sheila's proud spirit had

risen up in revolt against a system of treatment that had become

insufferable to her, when she had been forced to leave her home and

incur the contemptuous compassion of friends and acquaintances, if

Edward Ingram himself had happened to meet her, and had begun to say

hard things of Lavender, she would have sharply recalled him to a sense

of the discretion that one must use in speaking to a wife of her

husband.

The two homeless girls got into another cab, and were driven down to

Kensington Gore. Sheila asked if she could see Mrs. Lavender. She knew

that the old lady had had another bad fit, but she was supposed to be

recovering rapidly. Mrs. Lavender would see her in her bedroom, and so

Sheila went up. The girl could not speak.

"Yes, I see it--something wrong about that precious husband of yours,"

said the old lady, watching her keenly. "I expected it. Go on. What is

the matter?"

"I have left him," Sheila said with her face very pale, but no sign of

emotion about the firm lips.

"Oh, good gracious, child! Left him? How many people know it?"

"No one but yourself and a young Highland girl who has come up to see

me."

"You came to me first of all?"

"Yes."

"Have you no other friends to go to?"

"I considered that I ought to come to you."

There was no cunning in the speech: it was the simple truth. Mrs.

Lavender looked at her hard for a second or two, and then said, in what

she meant to be a kind way, "Come here and sit down, child, and tell me

all about it. If no one else knows it there is no harm done. We can

easily patch it up before it gets abroad."

"I did not come to you for that, Mrs. Lavender," said Sheila calmly.

"That is impossible: that is all over. I have come to ask you where I

may get lodgings for my friend and myself."

"Tell me all about it first, and then we'll see whether it can't be

mended. Mind, I am ready to be on your side, though I am your husband's

aunt. I think you're a good girl: a bit of a temper, you know, but you

manage to keep it quiet ordinarily. You tell me all about it, and you'll

see if I haven't means to bring him to reason. Oh yes, oh yes, I'm an

old woman, but I can find some means to bring him to reason." And she

laughed an odd, shrill laugh.

A hot flush came over Sheila's face. Had she come to this old woman only

to make her husband's degradation more complete? Was he to be

intimidated into making friends with her by a threat of the withdrawal

of that money that Sheila had begun to detest? And this was what her

notions of wifely duty had led to!

"Mrs. Lavender," she said, with the proud lips very proud indeed, "I

must say this to you before I tell you anything. It is very good of you

to say you will take my side, but I did not come to you to complain. And

I would rather not have any sympathy from you if it only means that you

will speak ill of my husband. And if you think you can make him do

things because you give him money, perhaps that is true at present, but

it may not always be true, and you cannot expect me to wish it to

continue. I would rather have my present trouble twenty times over than

see him being bought over to any woman's wishes."

Mrs. Lavender stared at her: "Why, you astonishing girl, I believe you

are still in love with that man!"

Sheila said nothing.

"Is it true?" she said.

"I suppose a woman ought to love her husband," Sheila answered.

"Even if he turns her out of the house?"

"Perhaps it is she who is to blame," Sheila said humbly. "Perhaps her

education was wrong, or she expects too much that is unreasonable, or

perhaps she has a bad temper. You think I have a bad temper, Mrs.

Lavender, and might it not be that?"

"Well, I think you want your own way, and doubtless you expect to have

it now. I suppose I am to listen to all your story, and I must not say a

word about my own nephew. But sit down and tell me all about it, and

then you can justify him afterward, if you like."

It was probably, however, the notion that Sheila would try to justify

Lavender all through that put the old lady on her guard, and made her,

indeed, regard Lavender's conduct in an unfairly bad light. Sheila told

the story as simply as she could, putting everything down to her

husband's advantage that was possible, and asking for no sympathy

whatsoever. She only wanted to remain away from his house; and by what

means could she and this young cousin of hers find cheap lodgings where

they could live quietly and without much fear of detection?

Mrs. Lavender was in a rage, and as she was not allowed to vent it on

the proper object, she turned upon Sheila herself. "The Highlanders are

a proud race," she said sharply. "I should have thought that rooms in

this house, even with the society of a cantankerous old woman, would

have been tolerated for a time."

"It is very kind of you to make the offer," Sheila said, "but I do not

wish to have to meet my husband or any of his friends. There is enough

trouble without that. If you could tell me where to get lodgings not far

from this neighborhood, I would come to see you sometimes at such hours

as I know he cannot be here."

"But I don't understand what you mean. You won't go back to your

husband, although I could manage that for you directly--you won't hear

of negotiations, or of any prospect of your going back--and yet you

won't go home to your father."

"I cannot do either," Sheila said.

"Do you mean to live in those lodgings always?"

"How can I tell?" said the girl piteously. "I only wish to be away, and

I cannot go back to my papa, with all this story to tell him."

"Well, I didn't want to distress you," said the old woman. "You know

your own affairs best. I think you are mad. If you would calmly reason

with yourself, and show to yourself that, in a hundred years, or less

than that, it won't matter whether you gratified your pride or no, you

would see that the wisest thing you can do now is to take an easy and

comfortable course. You are in an excited and nervous state at present,

for example; and that is destroying so much of the vital portion of your

frame. If you go into these lodgings and live like a rat in a hole, you

will have nothing to do but nurse these sorrows of yours, and find them

grow bigger and bigger while you grow more and more wretched. All that

is mere pride and sentiment and folly. On the other hand, look at this.

Your husband is sorry you are away from him: you may take that for

granted. You say he was merely thoughtless: now he has got something to

make him think, and would without doubt come and beg your pardon if you

gave him a chance. I write to him, he comes down here, you kiss and make

good friends again, and to-morrow morning you are comfortable and happy

again."

"To-morrow morning!" said Sheila sadly. "Do you know how we should be

situated to-morrow morning? The story of my going away would become

known to his friends: he would go among them as though he had suffered

some disgrace, and I the cause of it. And though he is a man, and would

soon be careless of that, how could I go with him amongst his friends,

and feel that I had shamed him? It would be worse than ever between us;

and I have no wish to begin again what ended this morning--none at all,

Mrs. Lavender."

"And do you mean to say that you intend to live permanently apart from

your husband?"

"I do not know," said Sheila in a despairing tone. "I cannot tell you.

What I feel is that, with all this trouble, it is better that our life

as it was in that house should come to an end."

Then she rose. There was a tired look about the face, as if she were too

weary to care whether this old woman would help her or no. Mrs. Lavender

regarded her for a moment, wondering, perhaps, that a girl so handsome,

fine-colored and proud-eyed should be distressing herself with imaginary

sentiments, instead of taking life cheerfully, enjoying the hour as it

passed, and being quite assured of the interest and liking and homage of

every one with whom she came in contact. Sheila turned to the bed once

more, about to say that she had troubled Mrs. Lavender too much already,

and that she would look after these lodgings. But the old woman

apparently anticipated as much, and said with much deliberation that if

Sheila and her companion would only remain one or two days in the house,

proper rooms should be provided for them somewhere. Young girls could

not venture into lodgings without strict inquiries being made. Sheila

should have suitable rooms, and Mrs. Lavender would see that she was

properly looked after and that she wanted for nothing. In the mean time

she must have some money.

"It is kind of you," said the girl, blushing hotly, "but I do not

require it."

"Oh, I suppose we are too proud," said the old woman. "If we disapprove

of our husband taking money, we must not do it either. Why, child, you

have learnt nothing in London. You are a savage yet. You must let me

give you something for your pocket, or what are you to do? You say you

have left everything at home: do you think hair-brushes, for example,

grow on trees, that you can go into Kensington Gardens and stock your

rooms?"

"I have some money--a few pounds--that my papa gave me," Sheila said.

"And when that is done?"

"He will give me more."

"And yet you don't wish him to know you have left your husband's house!

What will he make of these repeated demands for money?"

"My papa will give me anything I want without asking any questions."

"Then he is a bigger fool than I expected. Oh, don't get into a temper

again. Those sudden shocks of color, child, show me that your heart is

out of order. How can you expect to have a regular pulsation if you

flare up at anything any one may say? Now go and fetch me your Highland

cousin."

Mairi came into the room in a very timid fashion, and stared with her

big, light-blue eyes into the dusky recess in which the little old woman

sat up in bed. Sheila took her forward: "This is my cousin Mairi, Mrs.

Lavender."

"And are you ferry well, ma'am?" said Mairi, holding out her hand very

much as a boy pretends to hold out his hand to a tiger in the Zoological

Gardens.

"Well, young lady," said Mrs. Lavender, staring at her, "and a pretty

mess you have got us into!"

"Me!" said Mairi, almost with a cry of pain: she had not imagined before

that she had anything to do with Sheila's trouble.

"No, no, Mairi," her companion said, taking her hand, "it was not you.

Mrs. Lavender, Mairi does not understand our way of joking in London.

Perhaps she will learn before she goes back to the Highlands."

"There is one thing," said Mrs. Lavender, observing that Mairi's eyes

had filled the moment she was charged with bringing trouble on

Sheila--"there is one thing you people from the Highlands seem never

disposed to learn, and that is to have a little control over your

passions. If one speaks to you a couple of words, you either begin to

cry or go off into a flash of rage. Don't you know how bad that is for

the health?"

"And yet," said Sheila with a smile--and it seemed so strange to Mairi

to see her smile--"we will not compare badly in health with the people

about us here."

Mrs. Lavender dropped the question, and began to explain to Sheila what

she advised her to do. In the mean time both the girls were to remain

in her house. She would guarantee their being met by no one. When

suitable rooms had been looked out by Paterson they were to remove

thither. The whole situation of affairs was at once perceived by Mrs.

Lavender's attendant, who was given to understand that no one was to

know of young Mrs. Lavender's being in the house. Then the old woman,

much contented with what she had done, resolved that she would reward

herself with a joke, and sent for Edward Ingram.

When Sheila, as already described, came into the room, and found her old

friend there, the resolution she had formed went clean out of her mind.

She forgot entirely the ban that had been placed on Ingram by her

husband. But after her first emotion on seeing him was over, and when he

began to discuss what she ought to do, and even to advise her in a

diffident sort of way, she remembered all that she had forgotten, and

was ashamed to find herself sitting there and talking to him as if it

were in her father's house at Borva. Indeed, when he proposed to take

the management of her affairs into his own hands, and to go and look at

certain apartments that Paterson had proposed, she was forced, with

great heart-burning and pain, to hint to him that she could not avail

herself of his kindness.

"But why?" he asked with a stare of surprise.

"You remember Brighton," she answered, looking down. "You had a bad

return for your kindness to me then."

"Oh, I know," he said carelessly. "And I suppose Mr. Lavender wished you

to cut me after my impertinent interference. But things are very much

changed now. But for the time he went North, he has been with me nearly

every hour since you left."

"Has Frank been to the Lewis?" she said suddenly, with a look of fear on

her face.

"Oh no: he has only been to Glasgow to see if you had gone to catch the

Clansman and go North from there."

"Did he take the trouble to do all that?" she asked slowly and

wistfully.

"Trouble!" cried Ingram. "He appears to me neither to eat nor sleep day

or night, but to go wandering about in search of you in every place

where he fancies you may be. I never saw a man so beside himself with

anxiety."

"I did not wish to make him anxious," said Sheila in a low voice. "Will

you tell him that I am well?"

Mrs. Lavender began to smile. Were there not evident signs of softening?

But Ingram, who knew the girl better, was not deceived by these

appearances. He could see that Sheila merely wished that her husband

should not suffer pain on her account: that was all.

"I was about to ask you," he said gently, "what I may say to him. He

comes to me continually, for he has always fancied that you would

communicate with me. What shall I say to him, Sheila?"

"You may tell him that I am well," she answered.

Mairi had by this time stepped out of the room. Sheila sat with her eyes

fixed on the floor, her fingers working nervously with a paper-knife she

held.

"Nothing more than that?" he said.

"Nothing more."

He saw by her face, and he could tell by the sound of her voice, that

her decision was resolute.

"Don't be a fool, child!" said Mrs. Lavender emphatically. "Here is your

husband's friend, who can make everything straight and comfortable for

you in an hour or two, and you quietly put aside the chance of

reconciliation and bring on yourself any amount of misery. I don't speak

for Frank. Men can take care of themselves: they have clubs and friends,

and amusements for the whole day long. But you!--what a pleasant life

you would have, shut up in a couple of rooms, scarcely daring to show

yourself at a window! Your fine sentiments are all very well, but they

won't stand in the place of a husband to you; and you will soon find out

the difference between living by yourself like that, and having some one

in the house to look after you. Am I right, Mr. Ingram, or am I wrong?"

Ingram paused for a moment, and said, "I have not the same courage that

you have, Mrs. Lavender. I dare not advise Sheila one way or the other

just at present. But if she feels in her own heart that she would rather

return now to her husband, I can safely say that she would find him

deeply grateful to her, and that he would try to do everything that she

desired. That I know. He wants to see you, Sheila, if only for five

minutes, to beg your forgiveness."

"I cannot see him," she said with the same sad and settled air.

"I am not to tell him where you are?"

"Oh no!" she cried with a sudden and startled emphasis. "You must not do

that, Mr. Ingram. Promise me you will not do that?"

"I do promise you; but you put a painful duty on me, Sheila, for you

know how he will believe that a short interview with you would put

everything right, and he will look on me as preventing that."

"Do you think a short interview at present would put everything right?"

she said, suddenly looking up and regarding him with her clear and

steadfast eyes.

He dared not answer. He felt in his inmost heart that it would not.

"Ah, well," said Mrs. Lavender, "young people have much satisfaction in

being proud: when they come to my age, they may find they would have

been happier if they had been less disdainful."

"It is not disdain, Mrs. Lavender," said Sheila gently.

"Whatever it is," said the old woman, "I must remind you two people that

I am an invalid. Go away and have luncheon: Paterson will look after

you. Mr. Ingram, give me that book, that I may read myself into a nap,

and don't forget what I expect of you."

Ingram suddenly remembered. He and Sheila and Mairi sat down to luncheon

in the dining-room, and while he strove to get them to talk about Borva

he was thinking all the time of the extraordinary position he was

expected to assume toward Sheila. Not only was he to be the repository

of the secret of her place of residence, and the message-carrier between

herself and her husband, but he was also to take Mrs. Lavender's

fortune, in the event of her dying, and hold it in trust for the young

wife. Surely this old woman, with her suspicious ways and her worldly

wisdom, would not be so foolish as to hand him over all her property,

free of conditions, on the simple understanding that when he chose he

could give what he chose to Sheila? And yet that was what she had vowed

she would do, to Ingram's profound dismay.

He labored hard to lighten the spirits of those two girls. He talked of

John the Piper, and said he would invite him up to London, and described

his probable appearance in the Park. He told them stories of his

adventures while he was camping out with some young artists in the

Western Highlands, and told them anecdotes, old, recent and of his own

invention, about the people he had met. Had they heard of the steward on

board one of the Clyde steamers who had a percentage on the drink

consumed in the cabin, and who would call out to the captain, "Why wass

you going so fast? Dinna put her into the quay so fast! There is a gran'

company down below, and they are drinking fine!" Had he ever told them

of the porter at Arran who had demanded sixpence for carrying up some

luggage, but who, after being sent to get a sovereign changed, came back

with only eighteen shillings, saying, "Oh yes, it iss sexpence! Oh, ay,

it iss sexpence! But it iss two shullens _ta you!_" Or of the other, who

after being paid hung about the cottage-door for nearly an hour, until

Ingram, coming out, asked him why he had waited; whereupon he said, with

an air of perfect indifference, "Oo, ay, there was something said about

a dram; but hoot toots! it is of no consequence whatever!" And was it

true that the sheriff of Stornoway was so kind-hearted a man that he

remitted the punishment of certain culprits, ordained by the statute to

be whipped with birch rods, on the ground that the island of Lewis

produced no birch, and that he was not bound to import it? And had Mairi

heard any more of the Black Horse of Loch Suainabhal? And where had she

pulled those splendid bunches of bell-heather?

He suddenly stopped, and Sheila looked up with inquiring eyes. How did

he know that Mairi had brought those things with her? Sheila saw that he

must have gone up with her husband, and must have seen the room which

she had decorated in imitation of the small parlor at Borvabost. She

would rather not think of that room now.

"When are you going to the Lewis?" she asked of him with her eyes cast

down.

"Well, I think I have changed my mind about that, Sheila. I don't think

I shall go to the Lewis this autumn."

Her face became more and more embarrassed: how was she to thank him for

his continued thoughtfulness and self-sacrifice?

"There is no necessity," he said lightly. "The man I am going with has

no particular purpose in view. We shall merely go cruising about those

wonderful lochs and islands, and I am sure to run against some of those

young fellows I know, who are prowling about the fishing-villages with

portable easels. They are good boys, those boys. They are very

hospitable, if they have only a single bedroom in a small cottage as

their studio and reception-room combined. I should not wonder, Sheila,

if I went ashore somewhere, and put up my lot with those young fellows,

and listened to their wicked stories, and lived on whisky and herrings

for a month. Would you like to see me return to Whitehall in kilts? And

I should go into the office and salute everybody with 'And are you ferry

well?' just as Mairi does. But don't be downhearted, Mairi. You speak

English a good deal better than many English folks I know; and by the

time you go back to the Lewis we shall have you fit to become a

school-mistress, not only in Borva, but in Stornoway itself."

"I wass told it is ferry good English they hef in Stornoway," said

Mairi, not very sure whether Mr. Ingram was joking or not.

"My dear child," he cried, "I tell you it is the best English in the

world. If the queen only knew, she would send her grandchildren to be

educated there. But I must go now. Good-bye, Mairi. I mean to come and

take you to a theatre some night soon."

Sheila accompanied him out into the hall. "When shall you see him?" she

said with her eyes cast down.

"This evening," he answered.

"I should like you to tell him that I am well, and that he need not be

anxious about me."

"And that is all?"

"Yes, that is all."

"Very well, Sheila. I wish you had given me a pleasanter message to

carry, but when you think of doing that I shall be glad to take it."

Ingram left, and hastened in to his office. Sheila's affairs were

considerably interfering with his attendance there--there could be no

question of that--but he had the reputation of being able to get through

his work thoroughly, whatever might be the hours he devoted to it, so

that he did not greatly fear being rebuked for his present

irregularities. Perhaps if a grave official warning had been probable,

even that would not have interfered much with his determination to do

what could be done for Sheila.

But this business of carrying a message to Lavender was the most serious

he had as yet undertaken. He had to make sundry and solemn resolves to

put a bold face on the matter at the outset, and declare that wild

horses would not tear from him any further information. He feared the

piteous appeals that might be made to him; the representations that,

merely for the sake of an imprudent promise, he was delaying a

reconciliation between these two until that might be impossible; the

reasons that would be urged on him for considering Sheila's welfare as

paramount to his own scruples. He went through the interview, as he

foresaw it, a dozen times over, and constructed replies to each

argument and entreaty. Of course it would be simple enough to meet all

Lavender's demands with a simple "No," but there are circumstances in

which the heroic method of solving difficulties becomes a trifle

inhuman.

He had promised to dine with Lavender that evening at his club. When he

went along to St. James's street at the appointed hour his host had not

arrived. He walked for about ten minutes, and then Lavender appeared,

haggard and wornout with fatigue. "I have heard nothing--I can hear

nothing--I have been everywhere," he said, leading the way at once into

the dining-room. "I am sorry I have kept you waiting, Ingram."

They sat down at a small side-table: there were few men in the club at

this late season, so that they could talk freely enough when the waiter

had come and gone.

"Well, I have some news for you, Lavender," Ingram said.

"Do you know where she is?" said the other eagerly.

"Yes."

"Where?" he almost called aloud in his anxiety.

"Well," Ingram said slowly, "she is in London, and she is very well; and

you need have no anxiety about her."

"But where is she?" demanded Lavender, taking no heed of the waiter who

was standing by and uncorking a bottle.

"I promised her not to tell you."

"You have spoken with her, then?"

"Yes."

"What did she say? Where has she been? Good Heavens, Ingram! you don't

mean to say you are going to keep it a secret?"

"Oh no," said the other: "I will tell you everything she said to me, if

you like. Only I will not tell you where she is."

"I will not ask you," said Lavender at once, "if she does not wish me to

know. But you can tell me about herself. What did she say? What was she

looking like? Is Mairi with her?"

"Yes, Mairi is with her. And of course she is looking a little troubled

and pale, and so forth; but she is very well, I should think, and quite

comfortably situated. She said I was to tell you that she was well, and

that you need not be anxious."

"She sent a message to me?"

"That is it."

"By Jove, Ingram! how can I ever thank you enough? I feel as glad just

now as if she had really come home again. And how did you manage it?"

Lavender, in his excitement and gratitude, kept filling up his friend's

glass the moment the least quantity had been taken out of it: the wonder

was he did not fill all the glasses on that side of the table, and

beseech Ingram to have two or three dinners all at once.

"Oh, you needn't give me any credit about it," Ingram said. "I stumbled

against her by accident: at least, I did not find her out myself."

"Did she send for you?"

"No. But look here, Lavender, this sort of cross-examination will lead

to but one thing; and you say yourself you won't try to find out where

she is."

"Not from you, any way. But how can I help wanting to know where she is?

And my aunt was saying just now that very likely she had gone right away

to the other end of London--to Peckham or some such place."

"You have seen Mrs. Lavender, then?"

"I have just come from there. The old heathen thinks the whole affair

rather a good joke; but perhaps that was only her way of showing her

temper, for she was in a bit of a rage, to be sure. And so Sheila sent

me that message?"

"Yes."

"Does she want money? Would you take her some money from me?" he said

eagerly. Any bond of union between him and Sheila would be of some

value.

"I don't think she needs money; and in any case I know she wouldn't take

it from you."

"Well, now, Ingram, you have seen her and talked with her, what do you

think she intends to do? What do you think she would have me do?"

"These are very dangerous questions for me to answer," Ingram said. "I

don't see how you can expect me to assume the responsibility."

"I don't ask you to do that at all. But I never found your advice to

fail. And if you give me any hint as to what I should do, I will do it

on my own responsibility."

"Then I won't. But this I will do: I will tell you as nearly as ever I

can what she said, and you can judge for yourself."

Very cautiously indeed did Ingram set out on this perilous undertaking.

It was no easy matter so to shut out all references to Sheila's

surroundings that no hint should be given to this anxious listener as to

her whereabouts. But Ingram got through it successfully; and when he had

finished Lavender sat some time in silence, merely toying with his

knife, for indeed he had eaten nothing. "If it is her wish," he said

slowly, "that I should not go to see her, I will not try to do so. But I

should like to know where she is. You say she is comfortable, and she

has Mairi for a companion; and that is something. In the mean time, I

suppose I must wait."

"I don't see, myself, how waiting is likely to do much good," said

Ingram. "That won't alter your relations much."

"It may alter her determination. A woman is sure to soften into charity

and forgiveness: she can't help it."

"If you were to ask Sheila now, she would say she had forgiven you

already. But that is a different matter from getting her to resume her

former method of life with you. To tell you the truth, I should strongly

advise her, if I were to give advice at all, not to attempt anything of

the sort. One failure is bad enough, and has wrought sufficient

trouble."

"Then what am I to do, Ingram?"

"You must judge for yourself what is the most likely way of winning back

Sheila's confidence in you, and the most likely conditions under which

she might be induced to join you again. You need not expect to get her

back into that square, I should fancy: _that_ experiment has rather

broken down."

"Well," said Lavender, "I sha'n't bore you any more just now about my

affairs. Look after your dinner, old fellow: your starving yourself

won't help me much."

"I don't mean to starve myself at all," said Ingram, steadily making his

way through the abundant dishes his friend had ordered. "But I had a

very good luncheon this morning with--"

"With Sheila," Lavender said quickly.

"Yes. Does it surprise you to find that she is in a place where she can

get food? I wish the poor child had made better use of her

opportunities."

"Ingram," he said after a minute, "could you take some money from me,

without her knowing of it, and try to get her some of the little things

she likes--some delicacies, you know: they might be smuggled in, as it

were, without her knowing who had paid for them? There was ice-pudding,

you know, with strawberries in it, that she was fond of--"

"My dear fellow, a woman in her position thinks of something else than

ice-pudding in strawberries."

"But why shouldn't she have it all the same? I would give twenty pounds

to get some little gratification of that sort conveyed to her; and if

you could try, Ingram--"

"My dear fellow, she has got everything she can want: there was no

ice-pudding at luncheon, but doubtless there will be at dinner."

So Sheila was staying in a house in which ices could be prepared?

Lavender's suggestion had had no cunning intention in it, but here was

an obvious piece of information. She was in no humble lodging-house,

then. She was either staying with some friends--and she had no friends

but Lavender's friends--or she was staying at a hotel. He remembered

that she had once dined at the Langham, Mrs. Kavanagh having persuaded

her to go to meet some American visitors. Might she have gone thither?

Lavender was somewhat silent during the rest of that meal, for he was

thinking of other things besides the mere question as to where Sheila

might be staying. He was trying to imagine what she might have felt

before she was driven to this step. He was trying to recall all manner

of incidents of their daily life that he now saw might have appeared to

her in a very different light from that in which he saw them. He was

wondering, too, how all this could be altered, and a new life begun for

them both, if that were still possible.

They had gone up stairs into the smoking-room when a card was brought to

Lavender.

"Young Mosenberg is below," he said to Ingram. "He will be a livelier

companion for you than I could be. Waiter, ask this gentleman to come

up."

The handsome Jew-boy came eagerly into the room, with much excitement

visible on his face.

"Oh, do you know," he said to Lavender, "I have found out where Mrs.

Lavender is--yes? She is at your aunt's house. I saw her this afternoon

for one moment--" He stopped, for he saw by the vexation on Ingram's

face that he had done something wrong. "Is it a mistake?" he said. "Is

it a secret?"

"It is not likely to be a secret if you have got hold of it," said

Ingram sharply.

"I am very sorry," said the boy. "I thought you were all anxious to

know--"

"It does not matter in the least," said Lavender quietly to both of

them. "I shall not seek to disturb her. I am about to leave London."

"Where are you going?" said the boy.

"I don't know yet."

That, at least, had been part of the result of his meditations; and

Ingram, looking at him, wondered whether he meant to go away without

trying to say one word to Sheila.

"Look here, Lavender," he said, "you must not fancy we were trying to

play any useless and impertinent trick. To-morrow or next day Sheila

will leave your aunt's house, and then I should have told you that she

had been there, and how the old lady received her. It was Sheila's own

wish that the lodgings she is going to should not be known. She fancies

that would save both of you a great deal of unnecessary and fruitless

pain, do you see? That really is her only object in wishing to have any

concealment about the matter."

"But there is no need for any such concealment," he said. "You may tell

Sheila that if she likes to stay on with my aunt, so much the better;

and I take it very kind of her that she went there, instead of going

home or to a strange house."

"Am I to tell her that you mean to leave London?"

"Yes."

They went into the billiard-room. Mosenberg was not permitted to play,

as he had not dined in the club, but Ingram and Lavender proceeded to

have a game, the former being content to accept something like thirty in

a hundred. It was speedily very clear that Lavender's heart was not in

the contest. He kept forgetting which ball he had been playing, missing

easy shots, playing a perversely wrong game, and so forth. And yet his

spirits were not much downcast.

"Is Peter Hewetson still at Tarbert, do you know?" he asked of Ingram.

"I believe so. I heard of him lately. He and one or two more are there."

"I suppose you'll look in on them if you go North?"

"Certainly. The place is badly perfumed, but picturesque, and there is

generally plenty of whisky about."

"When do you go North?"

"I don't know. In a week or two."

That was all that Lavender hinted of his plans. He went home early that

night, and spent an hour or two in packing up some things, and in

writing a long letter to his aunt, which was destined considerably to

astonish that lady. Then he lay down and had a few hours' rest.

In the early morning he went out and walked across Kensington Gardens

down to the Gore. He wished to have one look at the house in which

Sheila was, or perhaps he might, from a distance, see her come out on a

simple errand? He knew, for example, that she had a superstitious liking

for posting her letters herself: in wet weather or dry she invariably

carried her own correspondence to the nearest pillar-post. Perhaps he

might have one glimpse of her face, to see how she was looking, before

he left London.

There were few people about: one or two well-known lawyers and merchants

were riding by to have their morning canter in the Park; the shops were

being opened. Over there was the house--with its dark front of bricks,

its hard ivy, and its small windows with formal red curtains--in which

Sheila was immured. That was certainly not the palace that a beautiful

sea-princess should have inhabited. Where were the pine woods around it,

and the lofty hills, and the wild beating of the waves on the sands

below? And now it seemed strange and sad that just as he was about to go

away to the North, and breathe the salt air again, and find the strong

west winds blowing across the mountain-peaks and through the furze,

Sheila, a daughter of the sea and the rocks, should be hiding herself in

obscure lodgings in the heart of a great city. Perhaps--he could not but

think at this time--if he had only the chance of speaking to her for a

couple of moments, he could persuade her to forgive him everything that

had happened, and go away with him--away from London and all the

associations that had vexed her and almost broken her heart--to the free

and open and joyous life on the far sea-coasts of the Hebrides.

Something caused him to turn his head for a second, and he knew that

Sheila was coming along the pavement--not from, but toward the house. It

was too late to think of getting out of her way, and yet he dared not go

up to her and speak to her, as he had wished to do. She, too, had seen

him. There was a quick, frightened look in her eyes, and then she came

along, with her face pale and her head downcast. He did not seek to

interrupt her. His eyes too were lowered as she passed him without

taking any notice of his presence, although the sad face and the

troubled lips told of the pain at her heart. He had hoped, perchance,

for one word, for even a sign of recognition, but she went by him

calmly, gravely and silently. She went into the house, and he turned

away with a weight at his heart, as though the gates of heaven had been

closed against him.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

LAKESHORE RELICS.

We were sitting on the sand looking off over the blue water veiled with

the soft haze of Indian summer. A point covered with pine trees

stretched boldly out into the lake, its rocky cliffs rising

perpendicularly eighty feet above the beach, a sheer precipice from

whose summit a pebble dropped would strike the water below. On the west

a stream came rippling over the stones between bluffs high and massive

enough for a deep rapid river--bluffs of wild majesty worn into varied

outlines, as though a mighty torrent had once surged between them,

forcing the very rocks to crumble before its headlong career. But now

only a gentle stream wandered through the broad bed, here shallow over

the sand, there darkling in a still pool, now making a green

willow-shaded island, and now a deep rock-bordered channel, doing its

best with the various graceful devices of a happy little stream to

compensate for the absence of the river, to whose former existence the

cliffs bore silent witness and the pines testified in sighing

lamentations all the day long. On the east the lake swept inland in a

gradual curve to the piers and wharves of a city with a cloud of smoke

hanging above its spires, and then outward again to a wooded point

twelve miles away, the eastern boundary of the bay. Looking north, we

could see only water, apparently as deep as the ocean: no land was

visible on the Canadian horizon, no island to break the harmony--nothing

but vessels sailing gayly toward the east or tacking patiently toward

the west, some distinct and snowy, others dark in the distance, and all

with the graceful rigging peculiar to the lake-craft. Although November

was far advanced, the warm sunshine and soft breeze gave no indications

of approaching winter: the leaves had fallen from the trees and lay in

brilliant heaps upon the ground, and children running through the groves

waded in their glowing masses and tossed them high in the air with many

a shout and half-finished song. The bare branches basked motionless in

the hazy warmth, and the brown and empty farm-lands expanded their broad

breasts to the heat, the care of the crops well over, the last sheaf

safely housed and their labors ended. Nature works hard in these Western

fields, conquering them from the forest, redeeming them from the swamp

and tending the delicate grain amid the rank growth of prairie-grass;

but when the last load is driven home and the last leaf has fallen, then

she rests, and the hazy atmosphere and peculiar stillness mark her

repose. Indian summer! what is it? It is Nature's _dolce far niente_,

her one holiday. Wise will he be who, working with her through the

dreary winter, the budding spring, yes, and even the sultry summer,

earns the right to rest with her in Indian summer, the vacation of the

year.

We had come from the East to visit friends at the West, from a venerable

village on the Atlantic Ocean to a new city on the Western lake-shore;

and although we acknowledged that the country was advancing with the

strides of a giant, we also maintained that the charm of old

associations, the mystery of the past, the interest of stirring events,

were all wanting, and therefore the West, prosperous as it was, could

not be compared to the rock-bound coasts of New England or the

beautiful shores of New York Bay, so filled with legends and adventures,

memories of the past, battles and shipwrecks, all dating back before the

first axe resounded in the Western wilderness. Everything here was new.

There were no houses with the marks of Revolutionary bullets, no

families of unbroken aristocratic descent from over the ocean, no

traditions of Colonial times, no stories of danger, no interesting

relics: a few tales of pioneer life, a few encounters with the Indians,

composed the annals of the town; and the prosaic reality of its life was

as new and glaring as the white paint on its houses.

These thoughts we expressed to Uncle John as he joined us on the beach,

bringing the baskets containing our picnic dinner: over the sandwiches,

cakes and native Catawba we dilated upon the subject, and invited him to

visit us at Winthrop, where the very atmosphere was redolent with old

associations and the beach a treasure-house of strange relics. Our quiet

uncle smiled as we talked, and when we had finished our lunch and

climbed the cliff he took us to a pleasant stone house and introduced us

to its owner, a silver-haired gentleman of the old school, whose

personal appearance and courtly manners filled us with admiration and

respect. Living thus quietly on the lake-shore, this man of learning and

science had spent many years absorbed in natural history and its kindred

pursuits, in close communion with Nature, loved by his neighbors and

honored by the naturalists of the whole country for his persevering

industry and valuable discoveries. Surrounded by his birds, bees and

flowers, the beautiful old man received us with kindly courtesy, and

from him we heard a story of the past, authenticated by records and old

letters, and illustrated by relics found on the beach below, washed up

by the waves or exposed to view by the shifting of the sands. Deeply

interested in the narrative, we yet found it hard to believe that the

peaceful hazy lake and the little stream rippling over the bar had ever

been the scene of the raging tempest, desolation and death described in

the story. But as we drove homeward in the evening the sun went down in

a lurid cloud, and a wind came driving up from the east, whirling the

dry leaves in circles and blowing the dust in eddies at the corners of

the streets. All night it raged over land and water, increasing to a

gale as the pale dawn broke, lashing the lake into a sheet of foam, and

growing colder and colder as the flying watery clouds obscured the sun

and the dismal day waxed and waned. With our faces pressed against the

window-panes we watched the fresh-water sea in its fury. Out in the

offing several vessels were scudding under bare poles, and a steamer

trying to make the harbor was blown over almost horizontally in the

water before she reached the piers. Darkness fell and the wind howled

over the city, changing to the north and bringing a storm of sleet and

snow in its train, so that the ground was white when daylight broke, and

the air so thick with the stinging hail that we could not see the lake.

Anxiously we waited, but in vain: our thoughts were with the sailors out

on the raging waters. Not until twilight did the atmosphere grow clear;

and as an angry gleam of sunshine shot from under the heavy bank of

clouds, we saw two schooners, one near the shore, the other out on the

horizon, driving before the gale.

"Are they in danger, Uncle John?" we asked.

"Yes, I should say so, although I am no sailor."

"Why do not the tugs go out to help them?"

"Each one for himself, my two little nieces. The tugs could do nothing

in such a sea."

Another night came, and after its long hours had passed the sky grew

clearer and the gale abated: there was still a high wind and the dark

lake looked threatening, but the worst was over, at least for the time.

One of the schooners had disappeared, but the other was coming in under

a rag of a sail, plunging and almost unmanageable. As she neared the

shore a tug ventured out, and succeeded in reaching her safely, but

close to the end of the pier a furious gust broke the fastenings and

threw the vessel up on the stone foundation of an old wharf at the

western side of the entrance, where she pounded to pieces in a few

moments. The crew made desperate efforts to escape, and we could see

their black forms clinging to the spars and the logs of the wharf

between the waves. All possible aid was given, and all but one were

saved: he, poor fellow! was washed out to sea and lost.

"A cruel lake!" exclaimed Ada. "Who would suppose that such a

comparatively small body of water could rival the great ocean in

danger?"

"In a storm navigation is more dangerous on our Western lakes than on

the ocean," said Uncle John: "there is not space enough for safety, and

the short waves and narrow channels require more skill than the broad

sweep of the ocean. There is always a lee shore near, and you cannot run

away from it, as you can at sea."

At noon the wind had somewhat subsided, and a faint sunshine gleamed

through the ragged clouds. Driving out to the scene of our picnic a few

days before, we stood on the edge of the cliff and watched the great

waves come rolling in and dash against the rocks sixty feet in the air,

so that our faces were wet with their spray. The little river was white

with surf rushing in over the bar: not a leaf remained on the bare

ground, the naked trees tossed their arms wildly to and fro, and the

pines were coated with ice. A short distance to the west a boy pointed

out some timbers floating in the surf. "Them's the schooner that come

ashore last night," he explained. "This here beach is a bad place in a

storm. The crew's all drownded: guess the bodies will be coming ashore

in a few days." We turned away with a shudder. The story of the

silver-haired professor came vividly back to our minds. We relate it in

almost his own words, as it forms part of the unwritten history of

ante-Revolutionary times, but vaguely known and appreciated by this busy

generation.

In the spring of 1763 the great conspiracy of the North-western

Indians, headed by Pontiac, the celebrated chief, made its first

demonstration against the whites. By the influence and wisdom of Pontiac

the attack was simultaneous upon every fort and post in the West, and

the result successful for the conqueror and disastrous for the

conquered. Had the Indians possessed many chiefs endowed with the energy

and prudence of this remarkable red man, their history would not be

merely a monotonous repetition of defeat and extermination. But it was

not to be: the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. After the

massacre, the British, awakened to the power of their savage foes,

endeavored to send troops across the country to the relief of the

garrisons at Forts Pitt and Detroit, the only posts which had escaped

destruction; and in the fall of the same year a number of batteaux

loaded with troops and supplies started from Albany, by way of the

Mohawk, and after stopping at the fort on the Niagara River, entered

Lake Erie, intending to coast along the southern shore to Detroit. One

can easily imagine the scene. Six hundred regulars with their officers,

a train of artillery and supplies, and the boatmen, who were probably

the hardy, merry voyageurs, sailing over the placid lake covered with

the purple haze of the Indian summer, camping on the beach at night,

their fires shining through the silent forest where now towns and cities

dot the shore. They passed the mouth of the Cuyahoga in safety, and

steered northward to clear the bold headland covered with evergreens

known as the Point-aux-Pins, when suddenly a gale came upon them,

darkness fell, and, tossing on the furious waves, they knew not where to

steer, even if their frail boats had not become unmanageable in the

storm. Separated from each other, shipping water at every plunge, they

drifted toward the shore, and finding the mouth of Rocky River close

upon them, they made a desperate effort to enter, hoping to find a

harbor where they could obtain shelter. The channel is very narrow, and

but few of the boats succeeded in entering, the rest being cast upon

the rocks, engulfed in the surf or stranded on the bar, where the waves

soon tore them to pieces. In the darkness, amid the roaring of the winds

and waters, the survivors rushed wildly to and fro, seeking to climb the

perpendicular rock wet with spray, and falling headlong in the seething

waves below. The only route to the plateau above was through a ravine

within the point, and when the stormy morning broke, through this gully

the dispirited soldiers climbed to the summit of the cliff, and, making

a fire, dried their clothing and cooked a scanty meal. Here they

remained during the storm, probably for three days, crowded within a

circle of boulders, and relieving each other in the watch on the beach

as the bodies of their drowned comrades came ashore--seventy men and

three officers, Lieutenant Davidson, Lieutenant Paynter, and the

surgeon, Dr. Williams of the Eightieth Regiment. When the storm ceased,

the dead were buried, the remaining boats repaired, and the forlorn band

started back down the lake, unable to render any assistance to the

besieged garrison at Detroit on account of the loss of their ammunition

and arms.

In the fall of the next year, 1764, General Bradstreet with three

thousand men opened a campaign against the Indians on Lake Erie, and

after various successes and defeats started in batteaux from Sandusky

Bay to coast down the lake, his forces consisting of British regulars,

provincials and a large body of Indian allies. It is probable that the

beautiful autumn weather peculiar to the Western lakes deceived him as

it had deceived Major Wilkins in the preceding year, for when a sudden

gale overtook him, surprised and confused, he ran the boats ashore on an

open beach, where twenty-five were broken into fragments by the surf,

and six cannon, together with most of the ammunition and baggage, were

lost. This open beach was within a mile of the scene of the previous

year's disaster. As before, the storm continued three days, and many of

the men were lost, swept away by the waves and overcome with hunger and

fatigue. When the skies cleared, Bradstreet reviewed his diminished

forces, and after burying the remaining cannon and ammunition, started

onward with the regulars in the batteaux which had escaped the storm,

leaving the provincials and Indians to make their way by land, on foot

and without provisions, four hundred miles through the forest as best

they could. These provincials came from New York, Connecticut and New

Jersey, and were commanded by Major Israel Putnam, afterward

major-general in the United States army. The story of their terrible

journey is unwritten, but it is known that many died of slow starvation

and fatigue along the route, which led through swamps and thickets, with

deep rivers barring their path; and not until the last of December did

they reach the forts, after having been twelve weeks in the wilderness.

The number of those who perished in the wreck or died on the journey is

not recorded, but it was so large as to occasion petitions to the

government--an unusual proceeding at that early date.

These are the narratives as compiled from authorities most vague and

diverse, and yet, when taken together, most indisputable. At that time,

before the Revolution, when, save a narrow belt on the Atlantic coast,

the whole country was a forest, authentic news was rare, and records

carelessly kept, if kept at all. Soldiers marching hundreds of miles

through a wilderness had no time to compose elaborate journals, and had

something else to think of than the curiosity of posterity. When a man

lives in a state of uncertainty as to his scalp, we cannot expect from

him systematic habits of writing; and therefore we are compelled to call

upon the earth and sea for information concerning these early

adventures. Generously have they responded, producing silent witnesses

who tell the tale of disaster with a melancholy fidelity more real than

the printed page.

From time to time after heavy storms portions of the old batteaux have

been thrown up on the Rocky River beach. One of these fragments was a

bow-stem chafed and water-soaked, the iron ring-bolt secured by a

nut--both covered with rust. From its appearance it had evidently been

for a long time buried in the sand. In ploughing a field on the

bottom-lands the nails, rudder-hangings, bow-ring and other irons of a

boat were discovered, together with a heap of ashes: having been cast

high and dry upon the shore by the waves, no doubt this batteau was

burned to keep it from falling into the enemy's hands.

In 1842, during a severe gale, the sand-bar shifted its position at the

mouth of the river, and from the quantity of gun-flints, brass

musket-guards, musket-barrels and bayonets washed ashore it became

evident that one of the submerged boats had been uncovered and broken

up, after having been in the sand nearly a century.

The beach beyond Rock River, although a good fishing-ground, has been

abandoned on account of the hidden obstacles which cut and break the

nets: these are without doubt portions of Bradstreet's batteaux; and

concealed in the same locality are probably some of the cannon, as

six-pound cannon balls have been discovered there. Along this beach many

relics have been found, and every storm washes up new ones: bayonets,

muskets and bullets are to be seen in most of the houses of the

neighborhood, preserved as curiosities. Silver teaspoons have been found

in several places: they are of antique design, heavily moulded, and

engraved with various initials. No doubt they belonged to the British

officers. An ancient and elaborately finished sword was discovered on

the beach, with the hilt terminating in a lion's head of solid silver:

the guard was also of silver.

On the land, traces of the soldiers are numerous. In one of the ravines

leading up from the narrow beach a bayonet was found firmly thrust into

the clay about six feet from the bottom, which had evidently been used

as a fixture by which the soldiers drew themselves up to the top of the

bank; and on the plateau a circle of boulders with the ashes of a fire

was found in ploughing, together with a case-knife. Near by the blade of

a surgeon's amputating knife was discovered in the soil; and this

relic, perhaps the most indisputable one yet found, probably belonged to

Surgeon Williams of Wilkins's expedition, lost on the point in 1763.

A mound not far from the locality of the camp-fire had long been avoided

by the settlers on account of the human bones within it. Recent

investigations have shown it to be composed of skeletons arranged in

tiers, with earth thrown over the whole, and the skulls have been

identified as those of Anglo-Saxons, with a few Indian skulls mixed

among them. Here, then, the survivors buried their dead comrades,

English soldiers left behind, cold and still, on the shores of the

Western lake. No doubt as the boats started from the point there were

some who looked back at the new mound with sad regret for such a

burial-place. But what difference will it make when the earth and sea

give up their dead? He who made us will keep us in safety, no matter

where we lie.

The route of the provincials and Indians left by Bradstreet to find

their way by land is marked by various objects dropped at the start or

soon after. A stack of bayonets covered with soil and rubbish was found

piled systematically at the foot of a tree, forgotten perhaps, or else

left behind as too heavy for the long journey. A musket barrel was also

found enclosed in a fork of a tree by the growth of the wood: it had

been placed in an inclined position, and had remained undisturbed until

the tree had completely enveloped it. A number of gun-flints, a peck or

more, were ploughed up on the high ground back of the lake, also a

sword and bayonets. Farther on, French and English coins bearing the

date of 1714 were found, and in another locality a silver teaspoon and

some pennies of 1749: these articles were probably thrown down in

discarded clothing or knapsacks.

Every year discoveries are made of articles thrown up by the waves,

washed out of the cliffs or ploughed up in the fields. Many of these

relics are in the possession of the silver-haired professor, who has

studied the localities and invested the point with a legendary interest

rare in this busy West. When we recall the early date of these

expeditions, the great loss of life, the tragic scenes on the shore, and

the terrible journey of the provincials through the forest, we must feel

that the story with its silent illustrations is as worthy of a place in

American history as many other events of less interest, whose minutest

details have been described over and over again in the current

literature of the day.

In the words of the venerable professor: "The correctness of my

conclusions will be confirmed by an examination of the peculiar and

dangerous character of these localities during a storm, and of the

manner in which these vestiges must have been lost; and a more complete

comprehension of the terrific scenes attendant on those disasters would

thereby be gained, together with a full conception of the horrors of the

catastrophe. Few of the present generation know that either of these

events have occurred: fewer still are aware of the pecuniary loss and

human suffering they involved."

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A FRIEND OF MY CHILDHOOD.

I suppose I must have pulled the bell very hard that day, for otherwise

I don't think she would have kept me waiting twenty minutes, as she did.

_She_ was only my mother's servant-woman, whose duty was to wait upon

the dinner-table and the door, the latter function being the more

onerous one. Looking back at my conduct over the lapse of eighteen

years, I am disposed to acknowledge that she was right in the abstract

in punishing the inconsiderate impatience which made me keep the

door-bell upon a continuous ring till I was let in. But how wrong did

the event prove her! Scarcely was I warmed up to my work, when, turning

my head, I saw a tall gentleman with broad shoulders and a round face,

whose look, at first one of inquiry, and perhaps bewilderment as he

tried to distinguish the house he was in search of from among a dozen,

all characterized by that unity of design which in Philadelphia strikes

forcibly the intelligent foreigner, suddenly changed to one of

amusement, not, I thought then, unmixed with approval, as he caught

sight of me at my reprehensible employment. And as I rang with a

persistency which nothing can now call from me, he stood on the bottom

step (for it was my mother whom he had come to see) with that expression

in which I found so little discouragement, still looking forth from

those great eyes of his, which had pierced deeply and sternly so many of

the false and hollow things of this world, and which now, not, I am

sure, for the first time, were bent kindly down upon a rude boy and his

ruder pranks. How little did the latter know about the tall gentleman,

and how little too would he have cared even if he had known all there

was to know about him:--known that then the age was beginning to

recognize its philosopher, whose lessons, sharp and bitter enough at

first, were to make it better and truer and purer, if such a thing were

possible of accomplishment.

But that he was tall I did know, and my standard of eminence was a

purely physical one. Five feet eight I did not despise, but six feet

alone commanded absolute and genuine respect; and he, I believe, stood

six feet one. The presumption which could keep such a height of

perfection waiting at the front door shocked me beyond expression. No,

not beyond expression, for the triumphant yell with which the hapless

servant-girl was greeted when at last she admitted me, and I burst in

exclaiming, "You have kept the tall gentleman waiting half an hour!"

must have given, I think, some adequate idea of my feelings. To that

incident may I not justly look back with satisfaction? Am I not right in

taking pride to myself for having amused for so long a time one whose

momentary attention the witty and the wise have thought it no slight

thing to have gained? And--who knows?--perhaps he himself did not

altogether forget it, and with the two sturdy _Buben_ on the Rhine-boat,

and those little men he used to meet at Eton or on the play-ground of

the Charterhouse, may not the American boy also have found a place in

his kindly memory? But I wish it clearly understood that I did not force

myself upon his acquaintance: no lion-hunting can be laid to my charge.

On the contrary, after giving him a glance of approbation for proving

such an effectual weapon to me in subduing my enemy in the gate--or

rather the enemy whose offence was that she was anywhere but in the

gate--I did not, I can truly say, bestow another thought upon him till I

was sent for to afford him, at his own special request, the honor of

knowing me. Were there no servants in the kitchen to be tormented? No

cats in the back yard to be chased with wild halloo? No rowdy boys in

the alley with whom to fraternize over pies of communistic mud? No

little sister up stairs much nicer than any tall gentleman, even though

he might have come from across the ocean and be thought a great deal of

by the grown-up people, that I should go out of my way to see him, and

abandon my cherished pursuits to listen to him talking of what I did not

understand, and did not believe was worth understanding? No: my position

was a high one, and I kept to it, for, though I gave up my occupations a

little while and went down to the parlor, it was simply because

politeness and filial obedience were the ruling motives of my conduct.

Of the first formal introduction to my friend I have but a shadowy

recollection. He said, I think, that he wanted to know the impetuous

little boy he had met outside; but nothing more which I can recall. My

own share in the conversation has entirely faded from my memory: it is

probable indeed that I had no share in it at all, being less at my ease

in the conventional sphere of a drawing-room than in the more

unconstrained atmosphere of a back alley. Yet in hours of depression,

when, in spite of the most sincere desire to think favorably of mankind,

I cannot fail to notice that I am not appreciated as I should be by the

undiscerning world, and my soul seeks consolation and forgetfulness from

higher sources, I half believe that when he went back to his own

country, and spoke there, as I have heard he did very often, of the

pleasant people he had met here, of the American friends he valued so

much, it was perhaps not without an _arrière-pensée_ of his noisy

acquaintance of the doorstep in Locust street.

The intercourse so tempestuously begun was threatened with an early

extinction, for my newly acquired friend returned soon after this to his

home, where were the two little girls whom he was fond of describing

while saying that he would not dare to bring them to this country, lest

they should come to despise the simple muslin gowns with which they were

then quite content; home to the toil of the hard-worked brain, the

steady labor of the untiring pen, which was to give us before it rested

for ever nothing indeed like his earlier works, but much which we shall

not willingly let die; home to England, in truth, but only that, having

written the story of certain of its kings, as he had before written the

worthier history of some of its unsceptred monarchs, whose sovereign

sway is over our spirits still, he might come again across the ocean to

greet all who should wish to hear him tell of the Britain of a century

past, when our own history had as yet scarcely seen the conclusion of

its opening chapter; giving as he did, so minute, life-like details

relating to the great men of that time, whose familiar names were to

most of his hearers not much more than names, but which, thanks in great

part to him, are now as household words. And so we met, and being two

years older, I was accorded the honor of becoming one of his auditors,

going with my mother to hear each of his lectures. We sat in a box on

one side of the stage in Concert Hall, and at this moment I recall the

tall, dignified figure standing before the desk on which were placed his

notes, and the crowded room full of indistinguishable attentive faces. I

sometimes fancy too that I cannot have forgotten what are now favorite

passages from those lectures--passages read and re-read, and then read

again, till they are known almost by heart. I cannot acknowledge to

myself that I do not remember his voice and look, and the tribute of

listening silence which waited upon him while he spoke.

One at least of these evenings is well remembered. Its distinguishing

feature was my being tipped. My mother and I had gone on this occasion

quite early to our places--half an hour or three-quarters before the

time when the lecture should begin--and we found the lecturer already at

his post. He, with head thrown back, had been walking with long strides

up and down the little waiting-room, and talking in bright spirits to my

mother, when a sudden thought seemed to strike him, and diving into one

of his pockets he brought out a sovereign--perhaps it was a five-dollar

gold piece--and insisted upon giving it to me; but the proposal produced

at once a most severe parental resistance, while I disinterestedly

looked on--a resistance apparently quite unlooked for by "my illustrious

friend," who had much trouble in explaining that this species of

beneficence was a thing of course in England. But American pride was

silenced at last, though not convinced, as will be seen, for it planned

on the spot a compromise which should reconcile the differences of

national feeling, though _I_ was induced to suppose that the sovereign

was as far out of my reach as ever; and being then, as I said before,

above or below such things, I turned all my attention to the lecture,

which began soon afterward, and whose subject, the royal bugbear of

patriotic schoolboys of that time, I imagined I knew all about. It was

therefore with astonished awe that I heard the peroration, when the

speaker said, appealing directly to us all: "O brothers speaking the

same dear mother-tongue! O comrades! enemies no more, let us take a

mournful hand together as we stand by this royal corpse and call a truce

to battle! Low he lies to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who

was cast lower than the poorest--dead whom millions prayed for in vain.

Driven off his throne, buffeted by rude hands, with his children in

revolt, the darling of his old age killed before him untimely--our Lear

hangs over her breathless lips and cries, Cordelia! Cordelia! stay a

little!

Vex not his ghost: oh, let him pass! He hates him

That would upon the rack of this tough world

Stretch him out longer.

Hush, strife and quarrel, over the solemn grave! Sound, trumpets, a

mournful march. Fall, dark curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, his

grief, his awful tragedy." This view of the subject was altogether new.

The compromise just spoken of--and I must bring to an end my story,

already too long--consisted in the expenditure of the five-dollar piece

in two of the books written by the bestower of that inflammatory coin.

I open the volumes of _Pendennis_ and _Vanity Fair_ which have been

lying at my elbow, and across the title-page of each I see written, in

curiously small and delicate hand, "---- ----, with W. M. Thackeray's

kind regards. April, 1856." These were the books.

H. R.

HAMLET IN A FRENCH DRESS.

If any one, on a rainy day or a lonely evening, wishes to drive away the

blue devils by the perusal of some laughter-compelling volume, we can

recommend for the purpose no better reading than the tragedy of _Hamlet_

done into French verse by the Chevalier de Chatelain, a gentleman well

known as a very successful translator of English poetry. With singular

good sense and feeling he has selected, not the play as Shakespeare

wrote it, but the stage-version thereof, as the foundation of his work.

For which Heaven be praised! for what he has done is sufficient, in all

conscience. Not that his translation is totally devoid of merit. On the

contrary, some passages are admirably rendered, and give the sense and

sound of the original in a manner really remarkable when the difference

between the two languages is considered. But there is such a calm

conviction on M. de Chatelain's part that he is doing his work

faultlessly, that, in view of the ludicrous errors, additions and

variations with which his text abounds, the effect is irresistible.

For instance, to begin at the beginning, the phrase

Looks it not like the king?

is translated

C'est le roi _tout craché_.

And in the same scene--

Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life

Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,

For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,

is rendered--

Si, prévaricateur, tu volas des trésors

Par ton ordre enfouis dans le sein de la terre,

De tels fails vous font faire _école buissonière_

À vous autres esprits.

In the next scene we are treated to a small specimen of M. de

Chatelain's genius as an emendator of Shakespeare. For no one can

consider this passage a translation of the text:

Venez, Dame, venez. Ce J'y consens si doux,

Si spontané de Hamlet m'enchante et m'enivre.

C'est pour moi _le charmant feuillet d'un charmant livre._

That charming page of a delightful book will, we think, be sought for in

the original in vain. Still more delicious is the interpellation into

Hamlet's first soliloquy of the following lines, referring to the

"unweeded garden":

Ces jours qu'on nous montre superbes

Sont un vilain jardin, rempli de folles herbes,

Qui donnent de l'ivraie et certes rien de plus,

Si ce n'est les engins du _choléra morbus_.

Angels and ministers of grace, defend us! When _did_ Hamlet talk about

the cholera morbus?

Passing over some minor variations, we come to the brief closing

soliloquy of the scene:

My father's spirit in arms! all is not well;

I doubt some foul play: would the night were come!

Thus Shakespeare, and thus M. de Chatelain:

Le spectre de mon père--armé! Vraiment ça cloche!

Je flaire, je le crains, _quelqu' anguille sous roche_!

Doubtless Hamlet did "smell a rat," but this is the first intimation we

have had of his scenting an eel.

Thus Hamlet addresses the ghost:

Mais oh dis moi, pourquoi tes ossemens par chance

Déposés dans la tombe, out brisé leurs liens,

Pour te jeter ici _comme une langue aux chiens_.

Probably the "ponderous and marble jaws" suggested this extraordinary

comparison.

In the next, act, evidently thinking that poor Ophelia has been

neglected by her creator, M. de Chatelain makes Polonius speak of her to

the king and queen as "un vrai morceau de roi"--a gentle method of

suggesting that she is worthy of the distinguished honor of a royal

alliance. But the fair Ophelia is destined to suffer nearly as unkind

treatment from the hands of her French usher as she endures from her

princely lover. We give entire the translation of her beautiful lament,

which begins--

O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!

and which M. de Chatelain thus renders:

Oh! quelle triste fin pour si grande épopée

Le soldat, l'érudit, l'oeil, la langue et l'épée,

Tout cela culbuté--perdu. Le noble espoir,

La fleur de ce pays--le plus riant miroir

De la mode toujours;--le plus parfait modèle

De gout;--des observes la plus _fine dentelle_--

Entièrement à bas! oui, _sans ressource_ à bas!

Et moi qui dans ses voeux trouvais tant de soulas,

Qui du miel _de ses vers_ ai sucé la musique,

De sa raison je vois descendre la tunique

Sur moi, malheur!... C'est comme au lointain le tin-tin

De la cloche ... de près qui se change en tocsin.

De tout ce que j'ai vu conserver souvenance

Et voir ce que je vois! Quelle désespérance!

We are at a loss which to admire most--Ophelia sucking the music from

Hamlet's honeyed verses, or the "sweet bells" whose tin-tin changes to a

tocsin, or the comparison of Hamlet to fine lace, or the "melancholy

ending to a grand epic."

The passage--

We shall obey, were she ten times our mother,

is thus translated:

Nous obeirons, plutôt dix fois qu'une. N'est elle pas notre mere?

M. de Chatelain confesses in a note that his translation is not in

accordance with the text, but he adds: "Nous ne concevons pas la penée

ainsi exprimée." It is a good thing for Shakespeare that he has found a

French commentator who understands what he meant to say better than he

did himself.

Ophelia's first exclamation in the mad scene, "Where is the beauteous

majesty of Denmark?" is translated,

De Danemarck où donc est _la reine jolie_?

Such an epithet applied to the middle-aged and matronly Gertrude, the

mother of the thirty-years'-old Hamlet, is pretty--very pretty, indeed.

A few pages farther on the "bonny-sweet Robin" of Ophelia's song is

supposed by the translator to be a bird, as he thus renders the passage:

Car le gentil Robin n'est un oiseau de proie,

Il fait tout ma joie!

It is also exceedingly amusing to note how the old adjective "whoreson"

bothers M. de Chatelain, who seems to consider it a word of weight and

meaning. The "whoreson dead body" of the gravediggers' scene is turned

into "le cadavre des enfants de nos mères;" and in like manner that

"whoreson mad fellow Yorick" is presented to us as "un fou né d'une

fille à la morale elastique."

The tragedy of _Hamlet_ by Ducis does no wrong to the manes of

Shakespeare, for though the title-page declares that it is "imitated

from the English," nothing is left of Shakespeare's play save the names

and the fact that Hamlet's father had been murdered before the action of

the drama begins. Hamlet is the reigning king of Denmark, Claudius is

first prince of the blood and father of Ophelia, and Polonius is an

ordinary conspirator. There is no ghost and no gravedigger. Ophelia does

not go mad, there is no fencing-scene, and Hamlet, after declaiming

through innumerable pages in the set style of French classic tragedy,

solemnly stabs Claudius, and then declares that as he is a king he must

consent to live for the good of his people.

L. H. H.

ANECDOTES OF PUBLIC WORTHIES.

GEORGE WASHINGTON. One day, in a fit of abstraction the juvenile George

cut down Bushrod's favorite cherry tree with a hatchet. His purpose was

to cut--and run.

But the old gentleman came sailing round the corner of the barn just as

the future Father of his Country had started on the retreat.

"Look here, sonny," thundered the stern old Virginian, "who cut that

tree down?"

George reflected a moment. There wasn't another boy or another hatchet

within fifteen miles. Besides, it occurred to him that to be virtuous is

to be happy. Just as Washington senior turned to go in and get his

horsewhip, our little hero burst into tears, and, nestling among his

father's coat-tails, exclaimed, "Father, I cannot tell a lie. It must

have been a frost."

"My son, my son," stammered the fond parent as he made a pass for his

off-spring, "when you get to be first in war and first in peace, just

cover your back-pay into the Treasury, and the newspaper press will

respect you!"

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Early in the war a party of distinguished gentlemen

from New England called on Mr. Lincoln to urge the appointment of a

certain Mr. Brown to the post of quarter-master. The President, who was

amusing himself by splitting portions of the staircase of the White

House into rails, received them cordially. They stated their errand in

an earnest but respectful tone, and calmly awaited his answer. Mr.

Lincoln, drawing himself up to his full height and clapping the

spokesman of the party on the shoulder, began to tell a story about a

dog-fight he once saw in Kentucky.

By and by it had gradually grown dark: several hours had passed away,

and neither dog appeared to get killed or to gain any advantage over the

other. One by one the party had dropped out, till the leader (who did

not wish to disturb Mr. Lincoln's hold on his shoulder) was left alone,

trying to conceal a yawn and to look interested. Suddenly, Mr. Lincoln,

with that peculiar smile on his countenance which Mr. Carpenter can talk

about, but can't paint, remarked, "By the way, my friend, I'm sorry for

Brown, but I gave that appointment to the other man yesterday."

DANIEL WEBSTER. The following anecdote of the great Massachusetts

statesman has never before appeared in print:

One day, Clay, Webster and Calhoun met upon the steps of the Capitol.

Mr. Clay ventured to remark, in his most affable style, that it looked

like rain. Calhoun looked wise, but said nothing. Evidently he took in

the whole situation at a glance. It was a crisis for Webster. Carefully

laying his thumb behind the third brass button of his blue coat, he

gazed from out of those cavernous eyes and grandly uttered these

prophetic words: "No, gentlemen, the American people will never forsake

the Constitution. We shall have fair weather."

And so it proved.

ALONZO SAVAGE. This time it was the pupil who put the question. The

Sabbath-school teacher encouraged her children to bring each a Scripture

question to be propounded to the class. Alonzo Savage said he would like

to be told why St. Stephen was like a thanksgiving raisin? He allowed

it was because they stoned him.

That boy has grown up and entered on a career of usefulness. He gets

steady wages as a railroad brakeman, and last week he celebrated his

golden wedding. All because Alonzo was faithful at Sabbath-school.

SARSFIELD YOUNG.

THE CANADIANS.

A New York oracle, discoursing lately upon Canadian affairs, concludes

that American ideas are pervading that region because the people speak

of "baggage" and take the right hand in driving on the road. Having

traveled somewhat in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and

"the Island," I have never heard the term "baggage" used there except by

Americans, as they call people from the States. The word is invariably

"luggage" in hotels, steamers and stage-wagons. On the road all the

people in those provinces whom I met took the left hand, and if any one

should attempt to deviate from this old custom of England, he would

surely come to grief. When Canadians take greenbacks at par, or make

their morning porridge of corn instead of oats, perhaps they may be

ready for those other innovations.

What causes the curious difference between the people on the two sides

of the boundary-line? for a difference exists in customs, in appearance

and in the tones of the voice. It has been a favorite theory that the

New England thinness of fibre and sharpness of voice came from the harsh

climate and piercing winds; but in Canada the climate is more severe,

and the winds are as piercing, yet the faces and forms of the people are

rounder and more robust, and their voices, especially those of the

women, have a soft and mellow intonation very different from those of

their cousins in New England. The customs and habits are also different.

In Canada one sees little of the hurried life of the States, always at

high pressure. The people take life more easily than we do, and look

less anxious. Do these differences arise from different political

institutions, and are the burdens of life greater in a republic than

under a monarchy?

C.

NOTES.

Self-deception and superstition nowhere reign more supremely, at least

in civilized communities, than among the wretched devotees of the

gaming-table, who are ever promising themselves to quit the mad pursuit,

ever flattering themselves that the next _coup_ will be their last, and

always expecting that some quite supernatural piece of luck in that

final _coup_ will secure the long-sought fortune. Some time ago we

referred in a "Note" to the fanciful combinations which the gamesters of

Europe had been making, in their play, on the numerals connected with

the death of Napoleon III. M. de Villemessant in his last work gives a

very ludicrous instance of the extent to which a superstitious gambler

can carry his belief in presentiments, in theories of luck and in

prognostications. He tells us that a certain Paris vaudevillist was

persuaded that if a man unexpectedly found a piece of money when

destitute, it would bring him good luck. Accordingly, before setting

foot in a gambling-house he never failed to hide--from himself--a coin

in the bottom of a pocket, where he was fully determined to forget it.

When he had lost his all (except, of course, the aforesaid lucky piece)

he would put on his overcoat, tie up his comforter, seize his umbrella,

and open the door, when, all of a sudden, his hand happening to be

thrust by mere chance into his watch-fob, would, wonderful to relate!

hit upon the very piece whose existence he had pledged himself never to

suspect save in the case of direst need. "What a streak of luck!" he

then regularly exclaimed. "I can't be mistaken, can I? It isn't a louis,

any way? By George, it is! Well, if this isn't luck alive!" Then our

good vaudevillist would hurry back, deposit his umbrella, unroll his

muffler, shed his overcoat, throw his lucky louis on the cloth--and lose

it! After all, incredible as this story seems, M. Villemessant's

vaudevillist is but a type of a great class of men who deceive

themselves by devices which in others they would pronounce

monstrosities of silliness, and who hug their delusions with a gravity

none the less profound from their own half consciousness of the sham.

* * * * *

It was a theory, we believe, of that profound philosopher, Mr. Weller

senior, that turnpike-keepers were confirmed misanthropes, who, after a

bitter experience in life, had sought that occupation as a means of

venting their spleen against everybody who should come their way. We

have never observed in our own experience--more limited, it is true,

than the meditative Tony's--that the milk of human kindness is specially

sour in the breasts of tollgate-keepers; nevertheless, there are few

occupations in which a man delighting to worry his fellow-creatures in a

small way could more effectually do so. The pike-keeper inflicts daily a

legion of infinitesimal annoyances. He stops people who are in a hurry,

and forces them to find change for the toll--stops them in the fierce

sun, in the drenching rain, in the thick of a snow-storm or at dead of

night. He puts an ignoble end to the excited trotting-match on the road:

he alike mercilessly pulls up Paterfamilias hurrying for the doctor and

the city man struggling to catch the train. Often, though the toll

itself is a trifle, yet the loss of those two minutes which would have

saved the appointment or caught the train, nay, even the bore of pulling

off one's gloves and pulling out one's wallet with the mercury below

zero, tries the traveler's temper. The emancipation of highways from all

taxes levied upon wayfarers is a mark of modern civilization. The

mediæval plan was to extort a toll from every luckless traveler in the

name of baron or bandit. In our day Algerine corsairs, Italian brigands,

Chinese pirates and Mexican guerillas have continued the thievish custom

of "tributes," and not long ago even Montana Indians established

themselves on the leading roads and levied tolls from the passers-by.

The civilized differs from the savage or feudal practice in rendering an

equivalent for the contributions exacted--that is, it provides from

their proceeds a stout bridge or a smooth turnpike, and keeps it

steadily in repair. But the county or State should take care of highways

and bridges without putting an impost on travel. Especially in the

suburbs of cities is the preservation of tolls a relic of commercial

barbarism. In New England they have gradually become almost extinct,

cities or counties having bought the franchises originally granted to

private companies. These petty exactions upon the freedom of travel

ought to cease everywhere.

* * * * *

It is well known that many persons who scrupulously refrain from

perusing Lord Byron's _Don Juan_, yet enjoy witnessing Mozart's opera of

_Don Giovanni_, following the libretto with assiduity, and laughing with

special heartiness at Leporello's song as it rehearses the adventures of

his master. In the same way, many who are rather shocked at _Camille_,

find no trouble in listening to _La Traviata_, and weep for the woes of

_Favorita_ when that opera thrown into the form of an English novel

excites their censure or disgust. The fact is, that the Italian

language, like the cloak of charity, covereth a multitude of sins. Never

did it cover them more strikingly than in an instance recounted by

_L'Eclipse_. The present French government, according to that paper,

lately prohibited the theatre of La Porte Saint-Martin from playing _Le

Roi s'amuse_ of Victor Hugo, a piece familiar to Frenchmen in its

reading edition for two-score years. The edict seems to have been rather

arbitrary, since, whatever its morality, at least the play could give no

political offence, there being but the remotest kind of comparison

possible between the court of Francis I. and the government of Marshal

MacMahon. But be this as it may, on the very day after its prohibition

of _Le Roi s'amuse_ the government inserted in its budget a subvention

of a hundred thousand francs for the Théâtre Italien, whose favorite

performance is _Rigoletto_. Now, _Rigoletto_ is only a bad Italian

translation of _Le Roi s'amuse_; so that the droll spectacle was

offered of the government prohibiting one theatre, at a great loss, from

playing the very same piece which next day it offered another theatre

twenty thousand dollars for playing in Italian! The _Eclipse_

satirically suggests that the secret must be that "entrer par la

fenêtre" becomes harmless as _entrare per la finestra_, and "donner la

main" is innocent as "_donare la mano_" and that Italian purifies

everything. If this be so, could not the Paris journalists borrow a

useful hint from the affair, and avoid suspension by the government

through the simple device of turning into Italian verses, of the

operatic sort, those passages of the editorial articles which if printed

in French would provoke the censor's ire?

* * * * *

During the recent disgraceful squabble and riot of the monks around

Jerusalem there was one incident that should especially pain all lovers

of art. This was the destruction of the two pictures by Murillo in the

Bethlehem church that fell a victim to ecclesiastical fury. They were

true Murillos, and masterpieces; and, what is worse, having been

despatched to the church immediately on their execution, and there

retained, it is believed that they have never been engraved. They were

unusually well preserved, too, for, on being placed in the oratory of La

Crèche, both canvases had been covered with glass to protect them from

candle-smoke. One of the subjects was the Nativity, the other the

Adoration of the Magi. In reading with involuntary indignation and

disgust of this barbarous instance of iconoclasm, one is reminded of

what Thackeray wrote on the same scene and topic nearly thirty years

ago. In his _Journey from Cornhill to Cairo_, speaking of the leading

Christian sects in and around Jerusalem, he says: "These three main

sects hate each other; their quarrels are interminable; each bribes and

intrigues with the heathen lords of the soil to the prejudice of his

neighbor. Now it is the Latins who interfere, and allow the common

church to go to ruin, because the Greeks purpose to roof it; now the

Greeks demolish a monastery on Mount Olivet, and leave the ground to the

Turks, rather than allow the Armenians to possess it. On another

occasion, the Greeks having mended the Armenian steps which lead to the

(so-called) Cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem, the latter asked for

permission to destroy the work of the Greeks, and did so. And so round

this sacred spot, the centre of Christendom, the representatives of the

three great sects worship under one roof, and hate each other!" The

church of La Crèche is, as its name implies, the church of "The Manger"

(_i. e._, the reputed place of the nativity of Christ); and to this

spot, and the furious wrangles of which it has been the scene, we may

therefore apply the exclamation which Thackeray makes regarding the tomb

of Christ: "What a place to choose for imposture, good God!--to sully

with brutal struggles for self-aggrandizement or shameful schemes of

gain!" The Germans had the grace to try to spare with their bombs the

spire of Strasburg cathedral; religious fanaticism in the Middle Ages

directed itself to the destruction of "pagan" art, no matter how

beautiful; but in these enlightened days for ecclesiastical fury to take

up the barbarous _rôle_ of destruction, which even savage war discards,

is pitiable indeed.

* * * * *

Comeliness becomes every day more and more an affair of chemistry.

Science has now found what bids fair to be a very "glass of

fashion"--not a metaphorical, but a literal glass, at least for lean

people. The chemical properties of each color in the solar spectrum have

long been known, and of late years it has also been discovered that

plants may be made to thrive wonderfully in green-houses constructed of

blue or violet panes, the production of such nurseries being sometimes

doubled or trebled by this device. But the experiment has been pushed

further, for some English chemists maintain that rooms provided with

violet windows, or even with hangings of that color, will fatten the

occupants! Shakespeare's "glass wherein the noble youth did dress

themselves" was not so practical a possession as this. Surely, hereafter

those who would divest themselves of their lean and hungry look may grow

obese at will, and turn the scale at the very pound required; and this,

too, by no such regimen as the Oriental one of rice and indolence, but

merely by passing a season under a violet dome or a blue crystal

green-house. Such a remedy is good tidings for all the wan, the haggard

and the wizened of society, and for those "whom sharp misery has worn to

the bone." Henceforth there need be no "starvelings," "elf-skins" or

"dried neat's tongues" of leanness for the Falstaffs to mock. And the

fat men, too, the "huge hills of flesh," shall they not have their

complementary color in their windows to make them thin? Let the

compassionate Bantings look to it.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY

A Simpleton: A Story of the Day. By Charles Reade. New York: Harper &

Brothers.

In a preface to the English edition of this book Mr. Reade grapples with

the charge of plagiarism so often urged against his stories, and,

justifying his habitual course by precedents, forestalls the search of

the detectives in the present case by proclaiming the sources from which

incidents and descriptions have been gathered. Having treated of many

matters beyond the range of his personal knowledge and experience, he

has necessarily had recourse to the writings of other men, and by citing

his authorities he not only clears himself of the suspicion of

surreptitious borrowing, but establishes the truthfulness, or at least

the plausibility, of what might otherwise have been considered

improbable inventions. This frankness, which, after all, sheds no new

light upon his method of composition, seems to have had the happy, if

undesigned, effect of throwing his critics off the true scent. The real

plagiarism in _A Simpleton_ lies not in the details, but in the

conception. The "situation" which leads to all the embroilments and

developments is the apparently ill-assorted union of a man of science

and genius, absorbed in the labors of investigation and discovery,

practical in his views of life and upright in all his actions, with an

ill-trained and unintellectual beauty, whose perfections of form and

face, pretty coquetry, studied artlessness and sweet recognition of the

value of masculine knowledge and strength as the proper stay of feminine

weakness and the proper organ of the feminine will, assail the superior

being just at that point where his perceptions are weakest, and lead him

an easy captive. When we add that this Samson is a young medical man,

marked out for the highest honors of his profession, and that his career

is temporarily blighted at the outset through the extravagance,

silliness and deception of his wife, we have given an outline which no

reader of _Middlemarch_ will require to have paralleled. Dr. Christopher

Staines is matched and contrasted with Rosa Lusignan, precisely as

Lydgate is matched and contrasted with Rosamond Vincy. There is even a

further resemblance in the minor pairing and natural dissonance of Phebe

Dale and Reginald Falcon in the one book and of Mary Garth and Fred

Vincy in its predecessor; while Lady Cicely Treherne, though her

simplicity, unlike that of Dorothea, is merely assumed, is almost as

unworldly as that heroine, makes a similar use of her wealth and social

advantages, stands in much the same relation to the other characters,

serves them in the same manner, and ends by marrying her Will Ladislaw

under the designation of a "mercurial Irish gentleman" not further

introduced to the reader. It will be understood that it is not the

characters, in the proper sense of the word, that Mr. Reade has

borrowed. In fact, George Eliot's characters are too intimately

associated with their surroundings, the circumstances in which they are

placed enter too largely as elements into their nature, to allow of

their being transplanted without losing all identity. And on the other

hand, Mr. Reade, for a reason to be mentioned hereafter, is quite

incapable of borrowing characters--still using the word in its most

rigid meaning: the characters in his books are always in an emphatic

sense his own. The plot, too, and the action of the one book, bear as

little resemblance to those of the other as an exhibition of fireworks

bears to the "after-glow" of an Alpine sunset. It is, as we have said,

the "situation" which Mr. Reade has taken, and this with a palpable

purpose, as if, after reading _Middlemarch_, he had said: "Ha! here is a

good idea; but George Eliot, with her commonplace, humdrum way of

treating things, has missed the effects of which it was capable. I,

Charles Reade, who see beneath the surface, besides being a master of

pyrotechnics, will work up the theme in that flashing, whizzing,

startling, dazzling way which shall reveal its full proportions as well

as my own transcendent powers." Accordingly, while Rosamond continues to

be Rosamond throughout, each fresh exhibition of her traits only showing

their natural growth or furthering the reader's knowledge of them, Rosa

passes through the swift transformations which a "Hey, presto!" is quite

sufficient to announce. In the early part of the book she is an

embodiment of silliness, levity and selfishness--in the latter part she

is reason, self-devotion and passionate love personified. As for Dr.

Staines, there is no need of any apotheosis in his case: as the hero of

the book he must perforce be that renowned prestidigitateur whom Mr.

Reade long since presented to an admiring audience as the principal

performer in his troupe. It is needless, therefore, to say that he goes

through the programme with the highest dexterity and éclat, displaying

the marvelous knowledge, encountering the terrific dangers, achieving

the prodigies which belong to his part, without the least falling off in

vivacity or suppleness. When he finally hurls his treacherous friend

from a cottage window and impales him on the garden railings, who can

withhold the well-merited applause?

It may seem paradoxical to say of a very successful novel-writer that he

has mistaken his vocation, yet such, we think, is Mr. Reade's case. For

the novelist, as for the dramatist, an essential combination is that of

a strong individuality with an equal endowment of the imitative faculty.

This union is found, perhaps, in its perfection only in Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's personages bear the double stamp of their own

individuality and of their creator's. In their appropriate diversity

their origin is still apparent. Their fidelity to Nature is never that

of literal copies. When Lear says, "Undo this button," we are thrilled

with the reality of the trait, but we do not suspect it of having been

borrowed from real life. On the contrary, it glows with the heat of that

imaginative power whose office it is to transfuse reality--to seize

truth in its essence and idealize it in form. Descending to two writers

in whom this combination is also strong, we may notice how,

nevertheless, the balance inclines to one side or the other. There are

many passages of Jane Austen which read like transcripts of actual

conversations: one might suppose them to have been done by a skillful

reporter. In George Eliot's books, on the other hand, the spontaneity of

the actors is checked by the brooding, analytical spirit of the author:

their verisimilitude is perfect, but their dramatic capabilities do not

always have the free play necessary to their complete exhibition and

appropriate effect. Turning now to Mr. Reade, we find that in him one

element of this combination--the power of impersonation--is utterly

lacking. His own individuality protrudes itself at every point. His

characters are all identical in essence--all imbued with the confidence,

the unflagging ardor, the impetuosity and extravagance of the same

ideal. It is in vain that he labels them with different designations: no

sooner do they begin to speak and move than every tone and gesture

reveals the familiar type. The poor, mean-spirited creature intended to

contrast with the hero turns out to be only his pale reflection.

Distinctions of sex and age, of race and education, are merely

superficial. High or low, good or bad, they are all equally knowing and

equally self-willed. The women may talk of bonnets, but their lofty and

fiery souls glow through the twaddle. The children have an infantile

prattle, but the schoolmaster, overhearing it, would at once remark that

it was only _that boy Reade_ holding one of his strange colloquies with

himself.

With this incapacity to understand the diverse springs of human action,

Mr. Reade is clearly no novelist in the true sense of the term. He is,

however, an admirable describer and a capital story-teller. He is

consequently always entertaining and secure of his reader. Yet, inasmuch

as he professes to relate and describe only actual facts, we cannot but

regret that he should have adopted a form which is ill suited to this

object, and which makes him a mere retailer of other people's

observations. In the book before us he paints the interior of Africa

from somebody else's information: had he gone thither himself his

picture would have had great value. So, too, he is continually

instructing us about the processes used in the arts and manufactures;

but his knowledge being gained at second hand and crammed for the

occasion, we mistrust the teacher. If he would apply himself to such

matters, and give us the results of his experience, our gain would be

great. He could not, of course, as now, traverse the whole field; but

what his teaching might lose in superficial extent would be more than

made good by its greater accuracy and reliability. He might select, for

instance, the useful art of coopering. We know his powers, we appreciate

his genius. It is safe to say that a cask made in accordance with his

directions, after he had served a short apprenticeship, would not only

be fair to see and easy to handle, but would also hold water. This is

more than we should venture to affirm of the plot of any of his novels.

The Fishing Tourist. By Charles Hallock. New York: Harper & Brothers.

I Go A-Fishing. By W. C. Prime. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Mr. Hallock tells us in his preface that his province is to write an

anglers' guide without embellishment. It would have been well if he had

adhered to this plan. After some pages of high-flown periods he informs

us that twenty-six years ago fly-fishing was in its infancy, being

scarcely known in America, and but little practiced in England. If he

had asserted that fly-fishing was scarcely known among his "green hills"

at that period, and but little practiced in Hampshire county, the

statement need not have been impugned; but hundreds of books have been

written upon this art in England since the time of Dame Juliana Berners,

and in America fifty years ago there existed many such practitioners as

Fay, Eckley and Bethune.

When Mr. Hallock treats of the natural history of his favorite fishes he

is equally unfortunate; which is the less remarkable since he gets his

science from W. H. Herbert, a writer who knew little of American

ichthyology. As a specimen of the methods of that "cautious student," as

our author calls him, Herbert, pretending to quote from Agassiz, who in

his _Tour to Lake Superior_ described a new salmon of that lake under

the name of _Salmo Siskowet_, calls it _Salmo Siskowitz_, and this

mistake Hallock repeats. Again, Herbert writing of the great northern

pickerel, calls it "_Esox lucioides_, Agassiz;" the fact being that

Professor Agassiz describes it in his _Lake Superior_ as _Esox boreas_.

This mistake of Herbert has been perpetuated by most of the popular

writers, Norris, Roosevelt, etc. Mr. Hallock calls the sea-trout _Salmo

trutta_, again copying Herbert, while all naturalists now give it the

name bestowed upon it by Hamilton Smith, _Salmo Canadensis_, it being

very distinct from _Salmo trutta_, which is a European species. Mr.

Hallock writes of the "toag of Lakes Pepin, Moosehead and St. Croix."

Now, Lake Pepin contains no large gray trout; in fact, with the

exception of _Salmo fontinalis_, its fishes are all of the Western type.

He also mentions "the common lake-trout of New York and New England,

_Salmo confinis_, DeKay," which is identical with the toag, just

mentioned. Dr. A. L. Adams of the British army, in a recent work on the

_Natural History of New Brunswick_, calls it "the togue or toladi,

_Salmo confinis_, DeKay, the gray-spotted lake-trout." Mr. Hallock

asserts that _Salmo Sebago_ is a monster brook-trout, like those of the

Rangely lakes. Dr. Adams states that this name, _Salmo Sebago_, was

applied to the Schoodic salmon, _Salmo Gloveri_, by Girard, in 1853; the

species being first observed in that lake, where it is now said to be

extinct.

As a guide-book, _The Fishing Tourist_ is not without value, for a work

on this plan was needed. An unfortunate spirit of exaggeration seems,

however, to pervade the narrative. What remarkable good luck a man must

have who kills a four-pound trout at Bartlett's! How fortunate is he who

can make an average of two-pound trout in a New Hampshire river! Our

experience teaches us that it is dangerous to guarantee that no trout

under ten ounces will be found in the Tabasintoc, though one might say

that of the Novelle, another New Brunswick river. When Mr. Hallock

states that the trout in the "Big Woods" of Wisconsin are lamentably

ignorant of the angler's wiles, he must be referring to a remote period:

we find them now very wide awake, and meet almost as many anglers on

Rush River as on the Raquette.

Mr. Prime's book is a very pleasant one. Evidently the work of a

scholar, it indulges in none of those spasmodic efforts of eloquence

which are the joy of the newspaper correspondent. Perhaps there is

something too much of the Iskander Effendi and the Sea of Galilee to be

congruous with the St. Regis and Franconia Notch, but the dialogue is

natural, the fishing adventures are painted with a modest brush, the

trout are not incredibly large or numerous, and the whole tone of the

book is well suited to summer reading, when, on your return from a long

tramp by the river-side, you wish to take your ease in the society of a

sympathizing author. Mr. Prime treats of well-known resorts, the

much-whipped St. Regis lakes and the depleted streams of Connecticut and

New Hampshire, but even among these familiar scenes he is able to find

something new, or at least they are described in a fresh and lively way.

The book is worthy to rest on the same shelf with Walton, Davy, Wilson,

and the other classics of the angler's library. There are some sketches

of fly-fishing in European waters which will be interesting to American

anglers, and there is much pleasant talk about old books.

Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market. By Walter Bagehot.

New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.

In England, as in America, notes are a legal tender, the Bank of England

notes corresponding in that respect to our greenbacks. An American

banker is safe if he have enough greenbacks to pay all probable demands,

though the value of these changes as our government chooses to enlarge

or contract the issue. The number of attainable bank-notes is not so

elastic, however, in England as with us: the issue department of the

Bank of England is limited, by an act of Parliament passed in 1844, to

fifteen millions of pounds. For the last few years that bank, in

addition to its fifteen millions in notes, has retained something like

twenty millions in coin. It has not uniformly, though, been so rich:

three times since 1847 its banking department has been reduced to a

figure of three million pounds or under. On these occasions "Peel's Act"

has been suspended to tide over the affairs of the embarrassed bank, and

its business could not have survived if the law had not been broken. The

bank which has thus three times practically given out in a quarter of a

century is, however, so thoroughly protected by prestige, by national

and international confidence, that it is the custodian of the reserves

belonging to all Lombard street and to all the country banks of England,

as well as those of Scotch and Irish bankers. And "since the

Franco-German war," says Mr. Bagehot, "we may be said to keep the

European reserve also." All great communities have at times to pay large

sums in cash, and of that cash a great store must be kept somewhere.

Formerly, there were two such stores in Europe: one was the Bank of

France, and the other the Bank of England. But since the suspension of

specie payments by the Bank of France its use as a reservoir of specie

is at an end: no one can draw a cheque on it and be sure of getting gold

for it. Accordingly, the whole liability for such international payments

in cash is thrown on the Bank of England. The accumulations secured

ultimately by this bank represent a remarkable share of the national

wealth. England is the only European country where small savers commit

their money to custody: France has never recovered from the timidity

consequent on Law's failure, and still hoards its petty sums in

stockings; Holland and Germany have never felt secure from invasion.

England alone trusts its whole gain to a bank, and demands interest for

it. The vast amount of idle gold distributed through the homes of France

and Germany is not tangible, is not money "of the money market." The

hoards of France can only be tempted from their torpor by a vast

national misfortune and by a great loan in French securities. But the

English money is borrowable money. The British are bold lenders, and

even if they were not so, the mere fact that their money lies in a bank

makes it far more obtainable. Millions in the hand of a banker are a

power, whereas distributed through a nation they cannot be asked for,

and are no power at all. It is thus that Lombard street stands ready to

lend to all civilized or partly civilized governments at different

rates, and builds railways in indigent states all over the world. For,

though "English bankers are not themselves very great lenders to foreign

countries, they are great lenders to those who lend." Rude and poor

countries and undeveloped! colonies find in Lombard street a fund into

which they may dip at a suitable premium, and thus possess a chance of

material felicity which was never the privilege of any previous epoch.

This vast machine, however, the legacy of unnumbered years, is not an

ideally perfect custodian of the wealth entrusted to it. The reforms

called for by a long experience are what the most important part of Mr.

Bagehot's volume is devoted to. Some permanent and skilled authority to

rule the bank is the principal novelty suggested; but the French plan

will not do for England. The direct appointment of a governor by the

Crown would not lessen the difficulty. The American law, saying that

each national bank shall have a fixed proportion of cash to its

liabilities, Mr. Bagehot considers one of many reforms which the English

could not adopt if they would: "in a sensitive state of the British

money-market the near approach to the legal limit of reserve would be a

sure incentive to panic." The difficulties of remodeling such an

institution as the Bank of England are the most curiously developed

portion of Mr. Bagehot's treatise, where all is curiously and

intelligently handled. The book is interesting to outsiders as well as

to professionals.

Wau-Ban: The Early Day in the North-west. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott

& Co.

This is a reprint, in a condensed and convenient form, of a work written

some twenty years ago by Mrs. John H. Kinzie of Chicago. It is a real

contribution to the early history of the North-west, and contains enough

of romantic adventure to form the basis of half a dozen novels. The

story of the massacre of Chicago in 1812 is one of the most thrilling in

American history, and it is here told by an eye-witness. Still, it is

difficult to realize that sixty years ago a wagon-load of children were

tomahawked by Indians in what is now the heart of the great City of the

Lakes.

The family of Kinzie had certainly a remarkable history, beginning with

the female ancestor who was captured by savages in the early history of

the country, through that generation who were the founders of Chicago,

down to the living representative of the family, who in 1830 entered one

hundred and sixty acres of the present town at the government price, one

dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, and only paid for one hundred,

thinking, as he said, that that quantity of land would be all he should

ever want or could find a use for. The rejected portion is now worth

from two to three millions of dollars. A hundred years hence, when

Chicago will perhaps contain a million or two of inhabitants, the name

of this family of pioneers will be as memorable as that of Winthrop in

Boston or Stuyvesant in New York.

_Books Received._

De Witt's Acting Plays: No. 142. Dollars and Cents: A Comedy. By L. J.

Hollenius.--No. 145. First Love: A Comedy. From the French of Eugene

Scribe. By L. J. Hollenius. New York: R. M. De Witt.

Memoirs of the Founding and Progress of the United States Naval

Observatory. By Professor J. E. Nourse, U.S.N. Washington Government

Printing-Office.

America Picturesque: A Visit to the Academy. By Henry Blackburn, late

editor of "London Society." New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Expression: Its Anatomy and Philosophy. By Sir Charles Bell, K. H.

Illustrated. New York: S.R. Wells.

The Mystery of Metropolisville. By Edward Eggleston. Illustrated. New

York: Orange Judd & Co.

Bits of Talk about Home Matters, By H. H., author of "Bits of Travel."

Boston: Roberts Brothers.

The Lawrences: A Twenty-Years' History. By Charlotte Turnbull. New York:

American News Co.

The Forty-five Guardsmen. By Alexandre Dumas. Philadelphia: T. B.

Peterson & Brothers.

Lars: A Pastoral of Norway. By Bayard Taylor. Boston: James R. Osgood &

Co.

The New York City "Ring." By S. J. Tilden. New York: Press of John

Polhemus.

Poems of the Plains. By William Darwin Crabb. Cambridge: Riverside

Press.

Woman's Wrong. By Mrs. Eiloart. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers.

Adventures of Kwei, the Chinese Girl. By Myra. Boston: Henry Hoyt.