And these were bitter hard days for poor Sally, and mainly delivered up

to private crying. She kept her furniture pretty damp, and so caught

cold, and the dampness and the cold and the sorrow together undermined

her appetite, and she was a pitiful enough object, poor thing. Her state

was bad enough, as per statement of it above quoted; but all the forces

of nature and circumstance seemed conspiring to make it worse--and

succeeding. For instance, the morning after her dismissal of Tracy,

Hawkins and Sellers read in the associated press dispatches that a toy

puzzle called Pigs in the Clover, had come into sudden favor within the

past few weeks, and that from the Atlantic to the Pacific all the

populations of all the States had knocked off work to play with it,

and that the business of the country had now come to a standstill by

consequence; that judges, lawyers, burglars, parsons, thieves, merchants,

mechanics, murderers, women, children, babies--everybody, indeed, could

be seen from morning till midnight, absorbed in one deep project and

purpose, and only one--to pen those pigs, work out that puzzle

successfully; that all gayety, all cheerfulness had departed from the

nation, and in its place care, preoccupation and anxiety sat upon every

countenance, and all faces were drawn, distressed, and furrowed with the

signs of age and trouble, and marked with the still sadder signs of

mental decay and incipient madness; that factories were at work night and

day in eight cities, and yet to supply the demand for the puzzle was thus

far impossible. Hawkins was wild with joy, but Sellers was calm. Small

matters could not disturb his serenity. He said--

"That's just the way things go. A man invents a thing which could

revolutionize the arts, produce mountains of money, and bless the earth,

and who will bother with it or show any interest in it?--and so you are

just as poor as you were before. But you invent some worthless thing to

amuse yourself with, and would throw it away if let alone, and all of a

sudden the whole world makes a snatch for it and out crops a fortune.

Hunt up that Yankee and collect, Hawkins--half is yours, you know.

Leave me to potter at my lecture."

This was a temperance lecture. Sellers was head chief in the Temperance

camp, and had lectured, now and then in that interest, but had been

dissatisfied with his efforts; wherefore he was now about to try a new

plan. After much thought he had concluded that a main reason why his

lectures lacked fire or something, was, that they were too transparently

amateurish; that is to say, it was probably too plainly perceptible that

the lecturer was trying to tell people about the horrid effects of liquor

when he didn't really know anything about those effects except from

hearsay, since he had hardly ever tasted an intoxicant in his life.

His scheme, now, was to prepare himself to speak from bitter experience.

Hawkins was to stand by with the bottle, calculate the doses, watch the

effects, make notes of results, and otherwise assist in the preparation.

Time was short, for the ladies would be along about noon--that is to say,

the temperance organization called the Daughters of Siloam--and Sellers

must be ready to head the procession.

The time kept slipping along--Hawkins did not return--Sellers could not

venture to wait longer; so he attacked the bottle himself, and proceeded

to note the effects. Hawkins got back at last; took one comprehensive

glance at the lecturer, and went down and headed off the procession.

The ladies were grieved to hear that the champion had been taken suddenly

ill and violently so, but glad to hear that it was hoped he would be out

again in a few days.

As it turned out, the old gentleman didn't turn over or show any signs of

life worth speaking of for twenty-four hours. Then he asked after the

procession, and learned what had happened about it. He was sorry; said

he had been "fixed" for it. He remained abed several days, and his wife

and daughter took turns in sitting with him and ministering to his wants.

Often he patted Sally's head and tried to comfort her.

"Don't cry, my child, don't cry so; you know your old father did it by

mistake and didn't mean a bit of harm; you know he wouldn't intentionally

do anything to make you ashamed for the world; you know he was trying to

do good and only made the mistake through ignorance, not knowing the

right doses and Washington not there to help. Don't cry so, dear, it

breaks my old heart to see you, and think I've brought this humiliation

on you and you so dear to me and so good. I won't ever do it again,

indeed I won't; now be comforted, honey, that's a good child."

But when she wasn't on duty at the bedside the crying went on just the

same; then the mother would try to comfort her, and say:

"Don't cry, dear, he never meant any harm; it was all one of those

happens that you can't guard against when you are trying experiments,

that way. You see I don't cry. It's because I know him so well.

I could never look anybody in the face again if he had got into such an

amazing condition as that a-purpose; but bless you his intention was

pure and high, and that makes the act pure, though it was higher than was

necessary. We're not humiliated, dear, he did it under a noble impulse

and we don't need to be ashamed. There, don't cry any more, honey."

Thus, the old gentleman was useful to Sally, during several days, as an

explanation of her tearfulness. She felt thankful to him for the shelter

he was affording her, but often said to herself, "It's a shame to let him

see in my cryings a reproach--as if he could ever do anything that could

make me reproach him! But I can't confess; I've got to go on using him

for a pretext, he's the only one I've got in the world, and I do need one

so much."

As soon as Sellers was out again, and found that stacks of money had been

placed in bank for him and Hawkins by the Yankee, he said, "Now we'll

soon see who's the Claimant and who's the Authentic. I'll just go over

there and warm up that House of Lords." During the next few days he and

his wife were so busy with preparations for the voyage that Sally had all

the privacy she needed, and all the chance to cry that was good for her.

Then the old pair left for New York--and England.

Sally had also had a chance to do another thing. That was, to make up

her mind that life was not worth living upon the present terms. If she

must give up her impostor and die; doubtless she must submit; but might

she not lay her whole case before some disinterested person, first, and

see if there wasn't perhaps some saving way out of the matter? She

turned this idea over in her mind a good deal. In her first visit with

Hawkins after her parents were gone, the talk fell upon Tracy, and she

was impelled to set her case before the statesman and take his counsel.

So she poured out her heart, and he listened with painful solicitude.

She concluded, pleadingly, with--

"Don't tell me he is an impostor. I suppose he is, but doesn't it look

to you as if he isn't? You are cool, you know, and outside; and so,

maybe it can look to you as if he isn't one, when it can't to me.

Doesn't it look to you as if he isn't? Couldn't you--can't it look to

you that way--for--for my sake?"

The poor man was troubled, but he felt obliged to keep in the

neighborhood of the truth. He fought around the present detail a little

while, then gave it up and said he couldn't really see his way to

clearing Tracy.

"No," he said, "the truth is, he's an impostor."

"That is, you--you feel a little certain, but not entirely--oh, not

entirely, Mr. Hawkins!"

"It's a pity to have to say it--I do hate to say it, but I don't think

anything about it, I know he's an impostor."

"Oh, now, Mr. Hawkins, you can't go that far. A body can't really know

it, you know. It isn't proved that he's not what he says he is."

Should he come out and make a clean breast of the whole wretched

business? Yes--at least the most of it--it ought to be done. So he set

his teeth and went at the matter with determination, but purposing to

spare the girl one pain--that of knowing that Tracy was a criminal.

"Now I am going to tell you a plain tale; one not pleasant for me to tell

or for you to hear, but we've got to stand it. I know all about that

fellow; and I know he is no earl's son."

The girl's eyes flashed, and she said:

"I don't care a snap for that--go on!"

This was so wholly unexpected that it at once obstructed the narrative;

Hawkins was not even sure that he had heard aright. He said:

"I don't know that I quite understand. Do you mean to say that if he was

all right and proper otherwise you'd be indifferent about the earl part

of the business?"

"Absolutely."

"You'd be entirely satisfied with him and wouldn't care for his not being

an earl's son,--that being an earl's son wouldn't add any value to him?"

"Not the least value that I would care for. Why, Mr. Hawkins, I've

gotten over all that day-dreaming about earldoms and aristocracies and

all such nonsense and am become just a plain ordinary nobody and content

with it; and it is to him I owe my cure. And as to anything being able

to add a value to him, nothing can do that. He is the whole world to me,

just as he is; he comprehends all the values there are--then how can you

add one?"

"She's pretty far gone." He said that to himself. He continued, still

to himself, "I must change my plan again; I can't seem to strike one that

will stand the requirements of this most variegated emergency five

minutes on a stretch. Without making this fellow a criminal, I believe

I will invent a name and a character for him calculated to disenchant

her. If it fails to do it, then I'll know that the next rightest thing

to do will be to help her to her fate, poor thing, not hinder her."

Then he said aloud:

"Well, Gwendolen--"

"I want to be called Sally."

"I'm glad of it; I like it better, myself. Well, then, I'll tell you

about this man Snodgrass."

"Snodgrass! Is that his name?"

"Yes--Snodgrass. The other's his nom de plume."

"It's hideous!"

"I know it is, but we can't help our names."

"And that is truly his real name--and not Howard Tracy?"

Hawkins answered, regretfully:

"Yes, it seems a pity."

The girl sampled the name musingly, once or twice--

"Snodgrass. Snodgrass. No, I could not endure that. I could not get

used to it. No, I should call him by his first name. What is his first

name?"

"His--er--his initials are S. M."

"His initials? I don't care anything about his initials. I can't call

him by his initials. What do they stand for?"

"Well, you see, his father was a physician, and he--he--well he was an

idolater of his profession, and he--well, he was a very eccentric man,

and--"

"What do they stand for! What are you shuffling about?"

"They--well they stand for Spinal Meningitis. His father being a phy--"

"I never heard such an infamous name! Nobody can ever call a person

that--a person they love. I wouldn't call an enemy by such a name.

It sounds like an epithet." After a moment, she added with a kind of

consternation, "Why, it would be my name! Letters would come with it

on."

"Yes--Mrs. Spinal Meningitis Snodgrass."

"Don't repeat it--don't; I can't bear it. Was the father a lunatic?"

"No, that is not charged."

"I am glad of that, because that is transmissible. What do you think was

the matter with him, then?"

"Well, I don't really know. The family used to run a good deal to

idiots, and so, maybe--"

"Oh, there isn't any maybe about it. This one was an idiot."

"Well, yes--he could have been. He was suspected."

"Suspected!" said Sally, with irritation. "Would one suspect there was

going to be a dark time if he saw the constellations fall out of the sky?

But that is enough about the idiot, I don't take any interest in idiots;

tell me about the son."

Very well, then, this one was the eldest, but not the favorite. His

brother, Zylobalsamum--"

"Wait--give me a chance to realize that. It is perfectly stupefying.

Zylo--what did you call it?"

"Zylobalsamum."

"I never heard such a name: It sounds like a disease. Is it a disease?"

"No, I don't think it's a disease. It's either Scriptural or--"

"Well, it's not Scriptural."

"Then it's anatomical. I knew it was one or the other. Yes, I remember,

now, it is anatomical. It's a ganglion--a nerve centre--it is what is

called the zylobalsamum process."

"Well, go on; and if you come to any more of them, omit the names; they

make one feel so uncomfortable."

"Very well, then. As I said, this one was not a favorite in the family,

and so he was neglected in every way, never sent to school, always

allowed to associate with the worst and coarsest characters, and so of

course he has grown up a rude, vulgar, ignorant, dissipated ruffian,

and--"

"He? It's no such thing! You ought to be more generous than to make

such a statement as that about a poor young stranger who--who--why, he is

the very opposite of that! He is considerate, courteous, obliging,

modest, gentle, refined, cultivated-oh, for shame! how can you say such

things about him?"

"I don't blame you, Sally--indeed I haven't a word of blame for you for

being blinded by--your affection--blinded to these minor defects which

are so manifest to others who--"

"Minor defects? Do you call these minor defects? What are murder and

arson, pray?"

"It is a difficult question to answer straight off--and of course

estimates of such things vary with environment. With us, out our way,

they would not necessarily attract as much attention as with you, yet

they are often regarded with disapproval--"

"Murder and arson are regarded with disapproval?"

"Oh, frequently."

"With disapproval. Who are those Puritans you are talking about?

But wait--how did you come to know so much about this family? Where did

you get all this hearsay evidence?"

"Sally, it isn't hearsay evidence. That is the serious part of it.

I knew that family--personally."

This was a surprise.

"You? You actually knew them?"

"Knew Zylo, as we used to call him, and knew his father, Dr. Snodgrass.

I didn't know your own Snodgrass, but have had glimpses of him from time

to time, and I heard about him all the time. He was the common talk, you

see, on account of his--"

"On account of his not being a house-burner or an assassin, I suppose.

That would have made him commonplace. Where did you know these people?"

"In Cherokee Strip."

"Oh, how preposterous! There are not enough people in Cherokee Strip to

give anybody a reputation, good or bad. There isn't a quorum. Why the

whole population consists of a couple of wagon loads of horse thieves."

Hawkins answered placidly--

"Our friend was one of those wagon loads."

Sally's eyes burned and her breath came quick and fast, but she kept a

fairly good grip on her anger and did not let it get the advantage of her

tongue. The statesman sat still and waited for developments. He was

content with his work. It was as handsome a piece of diplomatic art as

he had ever turned out, he thought; and now, let the girl make her own

choice. He judged she would let her spectre go; he hadn't a doubt of it

in fact; but anyway, let the choice be made, and he was ready to ratify

it and offer no further hindrance.

Meantime Sally had thought her case out and made up her mind. To the

major's disappointment the verdict was against him. Sally said:

"He has no friend but me, and I will not desert him now. I will not

marry him if his moral character is bad; but if he can prove that it

isn't, I will--and he shall have the chance. To me he seems utterly good

and dear; I've never seen anything about him that looked otherwise--

except, of course, his calling himself an earl's son. Maybe that is only

vanity, and no real harm, when you get to the bottom of it. I do not

believe he is any such person as you have painted him. I want to see

him. I want you to find him and send him to me. I will implore him to

be honest with me, and tell me the whole truth, and not be afraid."

"Very well; if that is your decision I will do it. But Sally, you know,

he's poor, and--"

"Oh, I don't care anything about that. That's neither here nor there.

Will you bring him to me?"

"I'll do it. When?--"

"Oh, dear, it's getting toward dark, now, and so you'll have to put it

off till morning. But you will find him in the morning, won't you?

Promise."

"I'll have him here by daylight."

"Oh, now you're your own old self again--and lovelier than ever!"

"I couldn't ask fairer than that. Good-bye, dear."

Sally mused a moment alone, then said earnestly, "I love him in spite of

his name!" and went about her affairs with a light heart.

CHAPTER XXV.

Hawkins went straight to the telegraph office and disburdened his

conscience. He said to himself, "She's not going to give this galvanized

cadaver up, that's plain. Wild horses can't pull her away from him.

I've done my share; it's for Sellers to take an innings, now." So he

sent this message to New York:

"Come back. Hire special train. She's going to marry the materializee."

Meantime a note came to Rossmore Towers to say that the Earl of Rossmore

had just arrived from England, and would do himself the pleasure of

calling in the evening. Sally said to herself, "It is a pity he didn't

stop in New York; but it's no matter; he can go up to-morrow and see my

father. He has come over here to tomahawk papa, very likely--or buy out

his claim. This thing would have excited me, a while back; but it has

only one interest for me now, and only one value. I can say to--to--

Spine, Spiny, Spinal--I don't like any form of that name!--I can say to

him to-morrow, 'Don't try to keep it up any more, or I shall have to tell

you whom I have been talking with last night, and then you will be

embarrassed.'"

Tracy couldn't know he was to be invited for the morrow, or he might have

waited. As it was, he was too miserable to wait any longer; for his last

hope--a letter--had failed him. It was fully due to-day; it had not

come. Had his father really flung him away? It looked so. It was not

like his father, but it surely looked so. His father was a rather tough

nut, in truth, but had never been so with his son--still, this implacable

silence had a calamitous look. Anyway, Tracy would go to the Towers and

--then what? He didn't know; his head was tired out with thinking--

he wouldn't think about what he must do or say--let it all take care of

itself. So that he saw Sally once more, he would be satisfied, happen

what might; he wouldn't care.

He hardly knew how he got to the Towers, or when. He knew and cared for

only one thing--he was alone with Sally. She was kind, she was gentle,

there was moisture in her eyes, and a yearning something in her face and

manner which she could not wholly hide--but she kept her distance. They

talked. Bye and bye she said--watching his downcast countenance out of

the corner of her eye--

"It's so lonesome--with papa and mamma gone. I try to read, but I can't

seem to get interested in any book. I try the newspapers, but they do

put such rubbish in them. You take up a paper and start to read

something you thinks interesting, and it goes on and on and on about how

somebody--well, Dr. Snodgrass, for instance--"

Not a movement from Tracy, not the quiver of a muscle. Sally was amazed

--what command of himself he must have! Being disconcerted, she paused

so long that Tracy presently looked up wearily and said:

"Well?"

"Oh, I thought you were not listening. Yes, it goes on and on about this

Doctor Snodgrass, till you are so tired, and then about his younger son--

the favorite son--Zylobalsamum Snodgrass--"

Not a sign from Tracy, whose head was drooping again. What supernatural

self-possession! Sally fixed her eye on him and began again, resolved to

blast him out of his serenity this time if she knew how to apply the

dynamite that is concealed in certain forms of words when those words are

properly loaded with unexpected meanings.

"And next it goes on and on and on about the eldest son--not the

favorite, this one--and how he is neglected in his poor barren boyhood,

and allowed to grow up unschooled, ignorant, coarse, vulgar, the comrade

of the community's scum, and become in his completed manhood a rude,

profane, dissipated ruffian--"

That head still drooped! Sally rose, moved softly and solemnly a step or

two, and stood before Tracy--his head came slowly up, his meek eyes met

her intense ones--then she finished with deep impressiveness--

"--named Spinal Meningitis Snodgrass!"

Tracy merely exhibited signs of increased fatigue. The girl was outraged

by this iron indifference and callousness, and cried out--

"What are you made of?"

"I? Why?"

"Haven't you any sensitiveness? Don't these things touch any poor

remnant of delicate feeling in you?"

"N--no," he said wonderingly, "they don't seem to. Why should they?"

"O, dear me, how can you look so innocent, and foolish, and good, and

empty, and gentle, and all that, right in the hearing of such things as

those! Look me in the eye--straight in the eye. There, now then, answer

me without a flinch. Isn't Doctor Snodgrass your father, and isn't

Zylobalsamum your brother," [here Hawkins was about to enter the room,

but changed his mind upon hearing these words, and elected for a walk

down town, and so glided swiftly away], "and isn't your name Spinal

Meningitis, and isn't your father a doctor and an idiot, like all the

family for generations, and doesn't he name all his children after

poisons and pestilences and abnormal anatomical eccentricities of the

human body? Answer me, some way or somehow--and quick. Why do you sit

there looking like an envelope without any address on it and see me going

mad before your face with suspense!"

"Oh, I wish I could do--do--I wish I could do something, anything that

would give you peace again and make you happy; but I know of nothing--

I know of no way. I have never heard of these awful people before."

"What? Say it again!"

"I have never--never in my life till now."

"Oh, you do look so honest when you say that! It must be true--surely

you couldn't look that way, you wouldn't look that way if it were not

true--would you?"

"I couldn't and wouldn't. It is true. Oh, let us end this suffering--

take me back into your heart and confidence--"

"Wait--one more thing. Tell me you told that falsehood out of mere

vanity and are sorry for it; that you're not expecting to ever wear the

coronet of an earl--"

"Truly I am cured--cured this very day--I am not expecting it!"

"O, now you are mine! I've got you back in the beauty and glory of your

unsmirched poverty and your honorable obscurity, and nobody shall ever

take you from me again but the grave! And if--"

"De earl of Rossmore, fum Englan'!"

"My father!" The young man released the girl and hung his head.

The old gentleman stood surveying the couple--the one with a strongly

complimentary right eye, the other with a mixed expression done with the

left. This is difficult, and not often resorted to. Presently his face

relaxed into a kind of constructive gentleness, and he said to his son:

"Don't you think you could embrace me, too?"

The young man did it with alacrity. "Then you are the son of an earl,

after all," said Sally, reproachfully.

"Yes, I--"

"Then I won't have you!"

"O, but you know--"

"No, I will not. You've told me another fib."

"She's right. Go away and leave us. I want to talk with her."

Berkeley was obliged to go. But he did not go far. He remained on the

premises. At midnight the conference between the old gentleman and the

young girl was still going blithely on, but it presently drew to a close,

and the former said:

"I came all the way over here to inspect you, my dear, with the general

idea of breaking off this match if there were two fools of you, but as

there's only one, you can have him if you'll take him."

"Indeed I will, then! May I kiss you?"

"You may. Thank you. Now you shall have that privilege whenever you are

good."

Meantime Hawkins had long ago returned and slipped up into the

laboratory. He was rather disconcerted to find his late invention,

Snodgrass, there. The news was told him that the English Rossmore was

come,

--"and I'm his son, Viscount Berkeley, not Howard Tracy any more."

Hawkins was aghast. He said:

"Good gracious, then you're dead!"

"Dead?"

"Yes you are--we've got your ashes."

"Hang those ashes, I'm tired of them; I'll give them to my father."

Slowly and painfully the statesman worked the truth into his head that

this was really a flesh and blood young man, and not the insubstantial

resurrection he and Sellers had so long supposed him to be. Then he said

with feeling--

"I'm so glad; so glad on Sally's account, poor thing. We took you for a

departed materialized bank thief from Tahlequah. This will be a heavy

blow to Sellers." Then he explained the whole matter to Berkeley, who

said:

"Well, the Claimant must manage to stand the blow, severe as it is.

But he'll get over the disappointment."

"Who--the colonel? He'll get over it the minute he invents a new miracle

to take its place. And he's already at it by this time. But look here--

what do you suppose became of the man you've been representing all this

time?"

"I don't know. I saved his clothes--it was all I could do. I am afraid

he lost his life."

"Well, you must have found twenty or thirty thousand dollars in those

clothes, in money or certificates of deposit."

"No, I found only five hundred and a trifle. I borrowed the trifle and

banked the five hundred."

"What'll we do about it?"

"Return it to the owner."

"It's easy said, but not easy to manage. Let's leave it alone till we

get Sellers's advice. And that reminds me. I've got to run and meet

Sellers and explain who you are not and who you are, or he'll come

thundering in here to stop his daughter from marrying a phantom. But--

suppose your father came over here to break off the match?"

"Well, isn't he down stairs getting acquainted with Sally? That's all

safe."

So Hawkins departed to meet and prepare the Sellerses.

Rossmore Towers saw great times and late hours during the succeeding

week. The two earls were such opposites in nature that they fraternized

at once. Sellers said privately that Rossmore was the most extraordinary

character he had ever met--a man just made out of the condensed milk of

human kindness, yet with the ability to totally hide the fact from any

but the most practised character-reader; a man whose whole being was

sweetness, patience and charity, yet with a cunning so profound, an

ability so marvelous in the acting of a double part, that many a person

of considerable intelligence might live with him for centuries and never

suspect the presence in him of these characteristics.

Finally there was a quiet wedding at the Towers, instead of a big one at

the British embassy, with the militia and the fire brigades and the

temperance organizations on hand in torchlight procession, as at first

proposed by one of the earls. The art-firm and Barrow were present at

the wedding, and the tinner and Puss had been invited, but the tinner was

ill and Puss was nursing him--for they were engaged.

The Sellerses were to go to England with their new allies for a brief

visit, but when it was time to take the train from Washington,

the colonel was missing.

Hawkins was going as far as New York with the party, and said he would

explain the matter on the road.

The explanation was in a letter left by the colonel in Hawkins's hands.

In it he promised to join Mrs. Sellers later, in England, and then went

on to say:

The truth is, my dear Hawkins, a mighty idea has been born to me within

the hour, and I must not even stop to say goodbye to my dear ones.

A man's highest duty takes precedence of all minor ones, and must be

attended to with his best promptness and energy, at whatsoever cost to

his affections or his convenience. And first of all a man's duties is

his duty to his own honor--he must keep that spotless. Mine is

threatened. When I was feeling sure of my imminent future solidity,

I forwarded to the Czar of Russia--perhaps prematurely--an offer for the

purchase of Siberia, naming a vast sum. Since then an episode has warned

me that the method by which I was expecting to acquire this money--

materialization upon a scale of limitless magnitude--is marred by a taint

of temporary uncertainty. His imperial majesty may accept my offer at

any moment. If this should occur now, I should find myself painfully

embarrassed, in fact financially inadequate. I could not take Siberia.

This would become known, and my credit would suffer.

Recently my private hours have been dark indeed, but the sun shines main,

now; I see my way; I shall be able to meet my obligation, and without

having to ask an extension of the stipulated time, I think. This grand

new idea of mine--the sublimest I have ever conceived, will save me

whole, I am sure. I am leaving for San Francisco this moment, to test

it, by the help of the great Lick telescope. Like all of my more notable

discoveries and inventions, it is based upon hard, practical scientific

laws; all other bases are unsound and hence untrustworthy. In brief,

then, I have conceived the stupendous idea of reorganizing the climates

of the earth according to the desire of the populations interested.

That is to say, I will furnish climates to order, for cash or negotiable

paper, taking the old climates in part payment, of course, at a fair

discount, where they are in condition to be repaired at small cost and

let out for hire to poor and remote communities not able to afford a good

climate and not caring for an expensive one for mere display. My studies

have convinced me that the regulation of climates and the breeding of new

varieties at will from the old stock is a feasible thing. Indeed I am

convinced that it has been done before; done in prehistoric times by now

forgotten and unrecorded civilizations. Everywhere I find hoary

evidences of artificial manipulation of climates in bygone times. Take

the glacial period. Was that produced by accident? Not at all; it was

done for money. I have a thousand proofs of it, and will some day reveal

them.

I will confide to you an outline of my idea. It is to utilize the spots

on the sun--get control of them, you understand, and apply the stupendous

energies which they wield to beneficent purposes in the reorganizing of

our climates. At present they merely make trouble and do harm in the

evoking of cyclones and other kinds of electric storms; but once under

humane and intelligent control this will cease and they will become a

boon to man.

I have my plan all mapped out, whereby I hope and expect to acquire

complete and perfect control of the sun-spots, also details of the method

whereby I shall employ the same commercially; but I will not venture to

go into particulars before the patents shall have been issued. I shall

hope and expect to sell shop-rights to the minor countries at a

reasonable figure and supply a good business article of climate to the

great empires at special rates, together with fancy brands for

coronations, battles and other great and particular occasions. There are

billions of money in this enterprise, no expensive plant is required, and

I shall begin to realize in a few days--in a few weeks at furthest.

I shall stand ready to pay cash for Siberia the moment it is delivered,

and thus save my honor and my credit. I am confident of this.

I would like you to provide a proper outfit and start north as soon as I

telegraph you, be it night or be it day. I wish you to take up all the

country stretching away from the north pole on all sides for many degrees

south, and buy Greenland and Iceland at the best figure you can get now

while they are cheap. It is my intention to move one of the tropics up

there and transfer the frigid zone to the equator. I will have the

entire Arctic Circle in the market as a summer resort next year, and will

use the surplusage of the old climate, over and above what can be

utilized on the equator, to reduce the temperature of opposition resorts.

But I have said enough to give you an idea of the prodigious nature of my

scheme and the feasible and enormously profitable character of it.

I shall join all you happy people in England as soon as I shall have sold

out some of my principal climates and arranged with the Czar about

Siberia.

Meantime, watch for a sign from me. Eight days from now, we shall be

wide asunder; for I shall be on the border of the Pacific, and you far

out on the Atlantic, approaching England. That day, if I am alive and my

sublime discovery is proved and established, I will send you greeting,

and my messenger shall deliver it where you are, in the solitudes of the

sea; for I will waft a vast sun-spot across the disk like drifting smoke,

and you will know it for my love-sign, and will say "Mulberry Sellers

throws us a kiss across the universe."

APPENDIX.

WEATHER FOR USE IN THIS BOOK.

Selected from the Best Authorities.

A brief though violent thunderstorm which had raged over the city was

passing away; but still, though the rain had ceased more than an hour

before, wild piles of dark and coppery clouds, in which a fierce and

rayless glow was laboring, gigantically overhung the grotesque and

huddled vista of dwarf houses, while in the distance, sheeting high over

the low, misty confusion of gables and chimneys, spread a pall of dead,

leprous blue, suffused with blotches of dull, glistening yellow, and with

black plague-spots of vapor floating and faint lightnings crinkling on

its surface. Thunder, still muttering in the close and sultry air, kept

the scared dwellers in the street within, behind their closed shutters;

and all deserted, cowed, dejected, squalid, like poor, stupid, top-heavy

things that had felt the wrath of the summer tempest, stood the drenched

structures on either side of the narrow and crooked way, ghastly and

picturesque, under the giant canopy. Rain dripped wretchedly in slow

drops of melancholy sound from their projecting eaves upon the broken

flagging, lay there in pools or trickled into the swollen drains, where

the fallen torrent sullenly gurgled on its way to the river.

"The Brazen Android."-W. D. O'Connor.

The fiery mid-March sun a moment hung

Above the bleak Judean wilderness;

Then darkness swept upon us, and 't was night.

"Easter-Eve at Kerak-Moab."--Clinton Scollard.

The quick-coming winter twilight was already at hand. Snow was again

falling, sifting delicately down, incidentally as it were.

"Felicia." Fanny N. D. Murfree.

Merciful heavens! The whole west, from right to left, blazes up with a

fierce light, and next instant the earth reels and quivers with the awful

shock of ten thousand batteries of artillery. It is the signal for the

Fury to spring--for a thousand demons to scream and shriek--for

innumerable serpents of fire to writhe and light up the blackness.

Now the rain falls--now the wind is let loose with a terrible shriek--now

the lightning is so constant that the eyes burn, and the thunder-claps

merge into an awful roar, as did the 800 cannon at Gettysburg. Crash!

Crash! Crash! It is the cottonwood trees falling to earth. Shriek!

Shriek! Shriek! It is the Demon racing along the plain and uprooting

even the blades of grass. Shock! Shock! Shock! It is the Fury

flinging his fiery bolts into the bosom of the earth.--

"The Demon and the Fury." M. Quad.

Away up the gorge all diurnal fancies trooped into the wide liberties of

endless luminous vistas of azure sunlit mountains beneath the shining

azure heavens. The sky, looking down in deep blue placidities, only here

and there smote the water to azure emulations of its tint.--

"In the Stranger's Country." Charles Egbert Craddock.

There was every indication of a dust-storm, though the sun still shone

brilliantly. The hot wind had become wild and rampant. It was whipping

up the sandy coating of the plain in every direction. High in the air

were seen whirling spires and cones of sand--a curious effect against the

deep-blue sky. Below, puffs of sand were breaking out of the plain in

every direction, as though the plain were alive with invisible horsemen.

These sandy cloudlets were instantly dissipated by the wind; it was the

larger clouds that were lifted whole into the air, and the larger clouds

of sand were becoming more and more the rule.

Alfred's eye, quickly scanning the horizon, descried the roof of the

boundary-rider's hut still gleaming in the sunlight. He remembered the

hut well. It could not be farther than four miles, if as much as that,

from this point of the track. He also knew these dust-storms of old;

Bindarra was notorious for them: Without thinking twice, Alfred put

spurs to his horse and headed for the hut. Before he had ridden half the

distance the detached clouds of sand banded together in one dense

whirlwind, and it was only owing to his horse's instinct that he did not

ride wide of the hut altogether; for during the last half-mile he never

saw the hut, until its outline loomed suddenly over his horse's ears; and

by then the sun was invisible.--

"A Bride from the Bush."

It rained forty days and forty nights.--Genesis.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

EXTRACTS FROM ADAM'S DIARY

Translated from the original MS.

by Mark Twain

[NOTE.--I translated a portion of this diary some years ago, and

a friend of mine printed a few copies in an incomplete form, but

the public never got them. Since then I have deciphered some more

of Adam's hieroglyphics, and think he has now become sufficiently

important as a public character to justify this publication.--M. T.]

Monday

This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way.

It is always hanging around and following me about. I don't like

this; I am not used to company. I wish it would stay with the

other animals. Cloudy to-day, wind in the east; think we shall

have rain.... Where did I get that word?... I remember now

--the new creature uses it.

Tuesday

Been examining the great waterfall. It is the finest thing on the

estate, I think. The new creature calls it Niagara Falls--why,

I am sure I do not know. Says it looks like Niagara Falls. That

is not a reason; it is mere waywardness and imbecility. I get no

chance to name anything myself. The new creature names everything

that comes along, before I can get in a protest. And always that

same pretext is offered--it looks like the thing. There is the

dodo, for instance. Says the moment one looks at it one sees at

a glance that it "looks like a dodo." It will have to keep that

name, no doubt. It wearies me to fret about it, and it does no

good, anyway. Dodo! It looks no more like a dodo than I do.

Wednesday

Built me a shelter against the rain, but could not have it to

myself in peace. The new creature intruded. When I tried to put

it out it shed water out of the holes it looks with, and wiped it

away with the back of its paws, and made a noise such as some of

the other animals make when they are in distress. I wish it would

not talk; it is always talking. That sounds like a cheap fling

at the poor creature, a slur; but I do not mean it so. I have never

heard the human voice before, and any new and strange sound

intruding itself here upon the solemn hush of these dreaming

solitudes offends my ear and seems a false note. And this new

sound is so close to me; it is right at my shoulder, right at my

ear, first on one side and then on the other, and I am used only

to sounds that are more or less distant from me.

Friday

The naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything I can do. I

had a very good name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty

--GARDEN-OF-EDEN. Privately, I continue to call it that, but not

any longer publicly. The new creature says it is all woods and

rocks and scenery, and therefore has no resemblance to a garden.

Says it looks like a park, and does not look like anything but a

park. Consequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named

--NIAGARA FALLS PARK. This is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to

me. And already there is a sign up:

KEEP OFF

THE GRASS

My life is not as happy as it was.

Saturday

The new creature eats too much fruit. We are going to run short,

most likely. "We" again--that is its word; mine too, now, from

hearing it so much. Good deal of fog this morning. I do not go

out in the fog myself. The new creature does. It goes out in

all weathers, and stumps right in with its muddy feet. And talks.

It used to be so pleasant and quiet here.

Sunday

Pulled through. This day is getting to be more and more trying.

It was selected and set apart last November as a day of rest. I

already had six of them per week, before. This morning found the

new creature trying to clod apples out of that forbidden tree.

Monday

The new creature says its name is Eve. That is all right, I have

no objections. Says it is to call it by when I want it to come.

I said it was superfluous, then. The word evidently raised me in

its respect; and indeed it is a large, good word, and will bear

repetition. It says it is not an It, it is a She. This is probably

doubtful; yet it is all one to me; what she is were nothing to me

if she would but go by herself and not talk.

Tuesday

She has littered the whole estate with execrable names and offensive

signs:

THIS WAY TO THE WHIRLPOOL.

THIS WAY TO GOAT ISLAND.

CAVE OF THE WINDS THIS WAY.

She says this park would make a tidy summer resort, if there was

any custom for it. Summer resort--another invention of hers--just

words, without any meaning. What is a summer resort? But it is

best not to ask her, she has such a rage for explaining.

Friday

She has taken to beseeching me to stop going over the Falls. What

harm does it do? Says it makes her shudder. I wonder why. I have

always done it--always liked the plunge, and the excitement, and

the coolness. I supposed it was what the Falls were for. They

have no other use that I can see, and they must have been made for

something. She says they were only made for scenery--like the

rhinoceros and the mastodon.

I went over the Falls in a barrel--not satisfactory to her. Went

over in a tub--still not satisfactory. Swam the Whirlpool and the

Rapids in a fig-leaf suit. It got much damaged. Hence, tedious

complaints about my extravagance. I am too much hampered here.

What I need is change of scene.

Saturday

I escaped last Tuesday night, and travelled two days, and built

me another shelter, in a secluded place, and obliterated my tracks

as well as I could, but she hunted me out by means of a beast which

she has tamed and calls a wolf, and came making that pitiful noise

again, and shedding that water out of the places she looks with.

I was obliged to return with her, but will presently emigrate again,

when occasion offers. She engages herself in many foolish things:

among others, trying to study out why the animals called lions and

tigers live on grass and flowers, when, as she says, the sort of

teeth they wear would indicate that they were intended to eat each

other. This is foolish, because to do that would be to kill each

other, and that would introduce what, as I understand it, is called

"death;" and death, as I have been told, has not yet entered the

Park. Which is a pity, on some accounts.

Sunday

Pulled through.

Monday

I believe I see what the week is for: it is to give time to rest

up from the weariness of Sunday. It seems a good idea.... She

has been climbing that tree again. Clodded her out of it. She

said nobody was looking. Seems to consider that a sufficient

justification for chancing any dangerous thing. Told her that.

The word justification moved her admiration--and envy too, I

thought. It is a good word.

Thursday

She told me she was made out of a rib taken from my body. This

is at least doubtful, if not more than that. I have not missed

any rib.... She is in much trouble about the buzzard; says

grass does not agree with it; is afraid she can't raise it; thinks

it was intended to live on decayed flesh. The buzzard must get

along the best it can with what is provided. We cannot overturn

the whole scheme to accommodate the buzzard.

Saturday

She fell in the pond yesterday, when she was looking at herself

in it, which she is always doing. She nearly strangled, and said

it was most uncomfortable. This made her sorry for the creatures

which live in there, which she calls fish, for she continues to

fasten names on to things that don't need them and don't come when

they are called by them, which is a matter of no consequence to

her, as she is such a numskull anyway; so she got a lot of them

out and brought them in last night and put them in my bed to keep

warm, but I have noticed them now and then all day, and I don't

see that they are any happier there than they were before, only

quieter. When night comes I shall throw them out-doors. I will

not sleep with them again, for I find them clammy and unpleasant

to lie among when a person hasn't anything on.

Sunday

Pulled through.

Tuesday

She has taken up with a snake now. The other animals are glad,

for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them;

and I am glad, because the snake talks, and this enables me to

get a rest.

Friday

She says the snake advises her to try the fruit of that tree, and

says the result will be a great and fine and noble education. I

told her there would be another result, too--it would introduce

death into the world. That was a mistake--it had been better to

keep the remark to myself; it only gave her an idea--she could

save the sick buzzard, and furnish fresh meat to the despondent

lions and tigers. I advised her to keep away from the tree. She

said she wouldn't. I foresee trouble. Will emigrate.

Wednesday

I have had a variegated time. I escaped that night, and rode a

horse all night as fast as he could go, hoping to get clear out of

the Park and hide in some other country before the trouble should

begin; but it was not to be. About an hour after sunup, as I was

riding through a flowery plain where thousands of animals were

grazing, slumbering, or playing with each other, according to their

wont, all of a sudden they broke into a tempest of frightful noises,

and in one moment the plain was in a frantic commotion and every

beast was destroying its neighbor. I knew what it meant--Eve had

eaten that fruit, and death was come into the world.... The

tigers ate my horse, paying no attention when I ordered them to

desist, and they would even have eaten me if I had stayed--which

I didn't, but went away in much haste.... I found this place,

outside the Park, and was fairly comfortable for a few days, but

she has found me out. Found me out, and has named the place

Tonawanda--says it looks like that. In fact, I was not sorry she

came, for there are but meagre pickings here, and she brought some

of those apples. I was obliged to eat them, I was so hungry. It

was against my principles, but I find that principles have no real

force except when one is well fed.... She came curtained in

boughs and bunches of leaves, and when I asked her what she meant

by such nonsense, and snatched them away and threw them down, she

tittered and blushed. I had never seen a person titter and blush

before, and to me it seemed unbecoming and idiotic. She said I

would soon know how it was myself. This was correct. Hungry as

I was, I laid down the apple half eaten--certainly the best one I

ever saw, considering the lateness of the season--and arrayed

myself in the discarded boughs and branches, and then spoke to her

with some severity and ordered her to go and get some more and not

make such a spectacle of herself. She did it, and after this we

crept down to where the wild-beast battle had been, and collected

some skins, and I made her patch together a couple of suits proper

for public occasions. They are uncomfortable, it is true, but

stylish, and that is the main point about clothes. ... I find

she is a good deal of a companion. I see I should be lonesome and

depressed without her, now that I have lost my property. Another

thing, she says it is ordered that we work for our living hereafter.

She will be useful. I will superintend.

Ten Days Later

She accuses me of being the cause of our disaster! She says, with

apparent sincerity and truth, that the Serpent assured her that

the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts. I said I

was innocent, then, for I had not eaten any chestnuts. She said

the Serpent informed her that "chestnut" was a figurative term

meaning an aged and mouldy joke. I turned pale at that, for I

have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them could

have been of that sort, though I had honestly supposed that they

were new when I made them. She asked me if I had made one just

at the time of the catastrophe. I was obliged to admit that I had

made one to myself, though not aloud. It was this. I was thinking

about the Falls, and I said to myself, "How wonderful it is to see

that vast body of water tumble down there!" Then in an instant a

bright thought flashed into my head, and I let it fly, saying, "It

would be a deal more wonderful to see it tumble up there!"--and I

was just about to kill myself with laughing at it when all nature

broke loose in war and death, and I had to flee for my life.

"There," she said, with triumph, "that is just it; the Serpent

mentioned that very jest, and called it the First Chestnut, and

said it was coeval with the creation." Alas, I am indeed to blame.

Would that I were not witty; oh, would that I had never had that

radiant thought!

Next Year

We have named it Cain. She caught it while I was up country

trapping on the North Shore of the Erie; caught it in the timber

a couple of miles from our dug-out--or it might have been four,

she isn't certain which. It resembles us in some ways, and may

be a relation. That is what she thinks, but this is an error,

in my judgment. The difference in size warrants the conclusion

that it is a different and new kind of animal--a fish, perhaps,

though when I put it in the water to see, it sank, and she plunged

in and snatched it out before there was opportunity for the

experiment to determine the matter. I still think it is a fish,

but she is indifferent about what it is, and will not let me have

it to try. I do not understand this. The coming of the creature

seems to have changed her whole nature and made her unreasonable

about experiments. She thinks more of it than she does of any of

the other animals, but is not able to explain why. Her mind is

disordered--everything shows it. Sometimes she carries the fish

in her arms half the night when it complains and wants to get to

the water. At such times the water comes out of the places in

her face that she looks out of, and she pats the fish on the back

and makes soft sounds with her mouth to soothe it, and betrays

sorrow and solicitude in a hundred ways. I have never seen her

do like this with any other fish, and it troubles me greatly. She

used to carry the young tigers around so, and play with them,

before we lost our property; but it was only play; she never took

on about them like this when their dinner disagreed with them.

Sunday

She doesn't work Sundays, but lies around all tired out, and likes

to have the fish wallow over her; and she makes fool noises to

amuse it, and pretends to chew its paws, and that makes it laugh.

I have not seen a fish before that could laugh. This makes me

doubt.... I have come to like Sunday myself. Superintending

all the week tires a body so. There ought to be more Sundays.

In the old days they were tough, but now they come handy.

Wednesday

It isn't a fish. I cannot quite make out what it is. It makes

curious, devilish noises when not satisfied, and says "goo-goo"

when it is. It is not one of us, for it doesn't walk; it is not

a bird, for it doesn't fly; it is not a frog, for it doesn't hop;

it is not a snake, for it doesn't crawl; I feel sure it is not a

fish, though I cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim

or not. It merely lies around, and mostly on its back, with its

feet up. I have not seen any other animal do that before. I said

I believed it was an enigma, but she only admired the word without

understanding it. In my judgment it is either an enigma or some

kind of a bug. If it dies, I will take it apart and see what its

arrangements are. I never had a thing perplex me so.

Three Months Later

The perplexity augments instead of diminishing. I sleep but little.

It has ceased from lying around, and goes about on its four legs

now. Yet it differs from the other four-legged animals in that

its front legs are unusually short, consequently this causes the

main part of its person to stick up uncomfortably high in the air,

and this is not attractive. It is built much as we are, but its

method of travelling shows that it is not of our breed. The short

front legs and long hind ones indicate that it is of the kangaroo

family, but it is a marked variation of the species, since the

true kangaroo hops, whereas this one never does. Still, it is a

curious and interesting variety, and has not been catalogued before.

As I discovered it, I have felt justified in securing the credit

of the discovery by attaching my name to it, and hence have called

it Kangaroorum Adamiensis.... It must have been a young one

when it came, for it has grown exceedingly since. It must be five

times as big, now, as it was then, and when discontented is able

to make from twenty-two to thirty-eight times the noise it made

at first. Coercion does not modify this, but has the contrary

effect. For this reason I discontinued the system. She reconciles

it by persuasion, and by giving it things which she had previously

told it she wouldn't give it. As already observed, I was not at

home when it first came, and she told me she found it in the woods.

It seems odd that it should be the only one, yet it must be so,

for I have worn myself out these many weeks trying to find another

one to add to my collection, and for this one to play with; for

surely then it would be quieter, and we could tame it more easily.

But I find none, nor any vestige of any; and strangest of all, no

tracks. It has to live on the ground, it cannot help itself;

therefore, how does it get about without leaving a track? I have

set a dozen traps, but they do no good. I catch all small animals

except that one; animals that merely go into the trap out of

curiosity, I think, to see what the milk is there for. They never

drink it.

Three Months Later

The kangaroo still continues to grow, which is very strange and

perplexing. I never knew one to be so long getting its growth.

It has fur on its head now; not like kangaroo fur, but exactly

like our hair, except that it is much finer and softer, and instead

of being black is red. I am like to lose my mind over the capricious

and harassing developments of this unclassifiable zoological freak.

If I could catch another one--but that is hopeless; it is a new

variety, and the only sample; this is plain. But I caught a true

kangaroo and brought it in, thinking that this one, being lonesome,

would rather have that for company than have no kin at all, or any

animal it could feel a nearness to or get sympathy from in its

forlorn condition here among strangers who do not know its ways

or habits, or what to do to make it feel that it is among friends;

but it was a mistake--it went into such fits at the sight of the

kangaroo that I was convinced it had never seen one before. I

pity the poor noisy little animal, but there is nothing I can do

to make it happy. If I could tame it--but that is out of the

question; the more I try, the worse I seem to make it. It grieves

me to the heart to see it in its little storms of sorrow and

passion. I wanted to let it go, but she wouldn't hear of it. That

seemed cruel and not like her; and yet she may be right. It might

be lonelier than ever; for since I cannot find another one, how

could it?

Five Months Later

It is not a kangaroo. No, for it supports itself by holding to

her finger, and thus goes a few steps on its hind legs, and then

falls down. It is probably some kind of a bear; and yet it has

no tail--as yet--and no fur, except on its head. It still keeps

on growing--that is a curious circumstance, for bears get their

growth earlier than this. Bears are dangerous--since our

catastrophe--and I shall not be satisfied to have this one prowling

about the place much longer without a muzzle on. I have offered

to get her a kangaroo if she would let this one go, but it did no

good--she is determined to run us into all sorts of foolish risks,

I think. She was not like this before she lost her mind.

A Fortnight Later

I examined its mouth. There is no danger yet; it has only one

tooth. It has no tail yet. It makes more noise now than it ever

did before--and mainly at night. I have moved out. But I shall

go over, mornings, to breakfast, and to see if it has more teeth.

If it gets a mouthful of teeth, it will be time for it to go, tail

or no tail, for a bear does not need a tail in order to be

dangerous.

Four Months Later

I have been off hunting and fishing a month, up in the region that

she calls Buffalo; I don't know why, unless it is because there

are not any buffaloes there. Meantime the bear has learned to

paddle around all by itself on its hind legs, and says "poppa"

and "momma." It is certainly a new species. This resemblance to

words may be purely accidental, of course, and may have no purpose

or meaning; but even in that case it is still extraordinary, and

is a thing which no other bear can do. This imitation of speech,

taken together with general absence of fur and entire absence of

tail, sufficiently indicates that this is a new kind of bear. The

further study of it will be exceedingly interesting. Meantime I

will go off on a far expedition among the forests of the North and

make an exhaustive search. There must certainly be another one

somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it has company

of its own species. I will go straightway; but I will muzzle this

one first.

Three Months Later

It has been a weary, weary hunt, yet I have had no success. In

the mean time, without stirring from the home estate, she has

caught another one! I never saw such luck. I might have hunted

these woods a hundred years, I never should have run across that

thing.

Next Day

I have been comparing the new one with the old one, and it is

perfectly plain that they are the same breed. I was going to stuff

one of them for my collection, but she is prejudiced against it

for some reason or other; so I have relinquished the idea, though

I think it is a mistake. It would be an irreparable loss to science

if they should get away. The old one is tamer than it was, and

can laugh and talk like the parrot, having learned this, no doubt,

from being with the parrot so much, and having the imitative faculty

in a highly developed degree. I shall be astonished if it turns

out to be a new kind of parrot, and yet I ought not to be astonished,

for it has already been everything else it could think of, since

those first days when it was a fish. The new one is as ugly now

as the old one was at first; has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat

complexion and the same singular head without any fur on it. She

calls it Abel.

Ten Years Later

They are boys; we found it out long ago. It was their coming in

that small, immature shape that puzzled us; we were not used to it.

There are some girls now. Abel is a good boy, but if Cain had

stayed a bear it would have improved him. After all these years,

I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better

to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.

At first I thought she talked too much; but now I should be sorry

to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life. Blessed

be the chestnut that brought us near together and taught me to

know the goodness of her heart and the sweetness of her spirit!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

IN DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY

by Mark Twain

I

I have committed sins, of course; but I have not committed enough of them

to entitle me to the punishment of reduction to the bread and water of

ordinary literature during six years when I might have been living on the

fat diet spread for the righteous in Professor Dowden's Life of Shelley,

if I had been justly dealt with.

During these six years I have been living a life of peaceful ignorance.

I was not aware that Shelley's first wife was unfaithful to him, and that

that was why he deserted her and wiped the stain from his sensitive honor

by entering into soiled relations with Godwin's young daughter. This was

all new to me when I heard it lately, and was told that the proofs of it

were in this book, and that this book's verdict is accepted in the girls'

colleges of America and its view taught in their literary classes.

In each of these six years multitudes of young people in our country have

arrived at the Shelley-reading age. Are these six multitudes

unacquainted with this life of Shelley? Perhaps they are; indeed, one

may feel pretty sure that the great bulk of them are. To these, then, I

address myself, in the hope that some account of this romantic historical

fable and the fabulist's manner of constructing and adorning it may

interest them.

First, as to its literary style. Our negroes in America have several

ways of entertaining themselves which are not found among the whites

anywhere. Among these inventions of theirs is one which is particularly

popular with them. It is a competition in elegant deportment. They hire

a hall and bank the spectators' seats in rising tiers along the two

sides, leaving all the middle stretch of the floor free. A cake is

provided as a prize for the winner in the competition, and a bench of

experts in deportment is appointed to award it. Sometimes there are as

many as fifty contestants, male and female, and five hundred spectators.

One at a time the contestants enter, clothed regardless of expense in

what each considers the perfection of style and taste, and walk down the

vacant central space and back again with that multitude of critical eyes

on them. All that the competitor knows of fine airs and graces he throws

into his carriage, all that he knows of seductive expression he throws

into his countenance. He may use all the helps he can devise: watch-

chain to twirl with his fingers, cane to do graceful things with, snowy

handkerchief to flourish and get artful effects out of, shiny new

stovepipe hat to assist in his courtly bows; and the colored lady may

have a fan to work up her effects with, and smile over and blush behind,

and she may add other helps, according to her judgment. When the review

by individual detail is over, a grand review of all the contestants in

procession follows, with all the airs and graces and all the bowings and

smirkings on exhibition at once, and this enables the bench of experts to

make the necessary comparisons and arrive at a verdict. The successful

competitor gets the prize which I have before mentioned, and an abundance

of applause and envy along with it. The negroes have a name for this

grave deportment-tournament; a name taken from the prize contended for.

They call it a Cakewalk.

This Shelley biography is a literary cake-walk. The ordinary forms of

speech are absent from it. All the pages, all the paragraphs, walk by

sedately, elegantly, not to say mincingly, in their Sunday-best, shiny

and sleek, perfumed, and with boutonnieres in their button-holes; it is

rare to find even a chance sentence that has forgotten to dress. If the

book wishes to tell us that Mary Godwin, child of sixteen, had known

afflictions, the fact saunters forth in this nobby outfit: "Mary was

herself not unlearned in the lore of pain"--meaning by that that she had

not always traveled on asphalt; or, as some authorities would frame it,

that she had "been there herself," a form which, while preferable to the

book's form, is still not to be recommended. If the book wishes to tell

us that Harriet Shelley hired a wet-nurse, that commonplace fact gets

turned into a dancing-master, who does his professional bow before us in

pumps and knee-breeches, with his fiddle under one arm and his crush-hat

under the other, thus: "The beauty of Harriet's motherly relation to her

babe was marred in Shelley's eyes by the introduction into his house of a

hireling nurse to whom was delegated the mother's tenderest office."

This is perhaps the strangest book that has seen the light since

Frankenstein. Indeed, it is a Frankenstein itself; a Frankenstein with

the original infirmity supplemented by a new one; a Frankenstein with the

reasoning faculty wanting. Yet it believes it can reason, and is always

trying. It is not content to leave a mountain of fact standing in the

clear sunshine, where the simplest reader can perceive its form, its

details, and its relation to the rest of the landscape, but thinks it

must help him examine it and understand it; so its drifting mind settles

upon it with that intent, but always with one and the same result: there

is a change of temperature and the mountain is hid in a fog. Every time

it sets up a premise and starts to reason from it, there is a surprise in

store for the reader. It is strangely nearsighted, cross-eyed, and

purblind. Sometimes when a mastodon walks across the field of its vision

it takes it for a rat; at other times it does not see it at all.

The materials of this biographical fable are facts, rumors, and poetry.

They are connected together and harmonized by the help of suggestion,

conjecture, innuendo, perversion, and semi-suppression.

The fable has a distinct object in view, but this object is not

acknowledged in set words. Percy Bysshe Shelley has done something which

in the case of other men is called a grave crime; it must be shown that

in his case it is not that, because he does not think as other men do

about these things.

Ought not that to be enough, if the fabulist is serious? Having proved

that a crime is not a crime, was it worth while to go on and fasten the

responsibility of a crime which was not a crime upon somebody else? What

is the use of hunting down and holding to bitter account people who are

responsible for other people's innocent acts?

Still, the fabulist thinks it a good idea to do that. In his view

Shelley's first wife, Harriet, free of all offense as far as we have

historical facts for guidance, must be held unforgivably responsible for

her husband's innocent act in deserting her and taking up with another

woman.

Any one will suspect that this task has its difficulties. Any one will

divine that nice work is necessary here, cautious work, wily work, and

that there is entertainment to be had in watching the magician do it.

There is indeed entertainment in watching him. He arranges his facts,

his rumors, and his poems on his table in full view of the house, and

shows you that everything is there--no deception, everything fair and

above board. And this is apparently true, yet there is a defect, for

some of his best stock is hid in an appendix-basket behind the door, and

you do not come upon it until the exhibition is over and the enchantment

of your mind accomplished--as the magician thinks.

There is an insistent atmosphere of candor and fairness about this book

which is engaging at first, then a little burdensome, then a trifle

fatiguing, then progressively suspicious, annoying, irritating, and

oppressive. It takes one some little time to find out that phrases which

seem intended to guide the reader aright are there to mislead him; that

phrases which seem intended to throw light are there to throw darkness;

that phrases which seem intended to interpret a fact are there to

misinterpret it; that phrases which seem intended to forestall prejudice

are there to create it; that phrases which seem antidotes are poisons in

disguise. The naked facts arrayed in the book establish Shelley's guilt

in that one episode which disfigures his otherwise superlatively lofty

and beautiful life; but the historian's careful and methodical

misinterpretation of them transfers the responsibility to the wife's

shoulders as he persuades himself. The few meagre facts of Harriet

Shelley's life, as furnished by the book, acquit her of offense; but by

calling in the forbidden helps of rumor, gossip, conjecture, insinuation,

and innuendo he destroys her character and rehabilitates Shelley's--as he

believes. And in truth his unheroic work has not been barren of the

results he aimed at; as witness the assertion made to me that girls in

the colleges of America are taught that Harriet Shelley put a stain upon

her husband's honor, and that that was what stung him into repurifying

himself by deserting her and his child and entering into scandalous

relations with a school-girl acquaintance of his.

If that assertion is true, they probably use a reduction of this work in

those colleges, maybe only a sketch outlined from it. Such a thing as

that could be harmful and misleading. They ought to cast it out and put

the whole book in its place. It would not deceive. It would not deceive

the janitor.

All of this book is interesting on account of the sorcerer's methods and

the attractiveness of some of his characters and the repulsiveness of the

rest, but no part of it is so much so as are the chapters wherein he

tries to think he thinks he sets forth the causes which led to Shelley's

desertion of his wife in 1814.

Harriet Westbrook was a school-girl sixteen years old. Shelley was

teeming with advanced thought. He believed that Christianity was a

degrading and selfish superstition, and he had a deep and sincere desire

to rescue one of his sisters from it. Harriet was impressed by his

various philosophies and looked upon him as an intellectual wonder--

which indeed he was. He had an idea that she could give him valuable

help in his scheme regarding his sister; therefore he asked her to

correspond with him. She was quite willing. Shelley was not thinking of

love, for he was just getting over a passion for his cousin, Harriet

Grove, and just getting well steeped in one for Miss Hitchener, a school-

teacher. What might happen to Harriet Westbrook before the letter-

writing was ended did not enter his mind. Yet an older person could have

made a good guess at it, for in person Shelley was as beautiful as an

angel, he was frank, sweet, winning, unassuming, and so rich in

unselfishness, generosities, and magnanimities that he made his whole

generation seem poor in these great qualities by comparison. Besides,

he was in distress. His college had expelled him for writing an

atheistical pamphlet and afflicting the reverend heads of the university

with it, his rich father and grandfather had closed their purses against

him, his friends were cold. Necessarily, Harriet fell in love with him;

and so deeply, indeed, that there was no way for Shelley to save her from

suicide but to marry her. He believed himself to blame for this state of

things, so the marriage took place. He was pretty fairly in love with

Harriet, although he loved Miss Hitchener better. He wrote and explained

the case to Miss Hitchener after the wedding, and he could not have been

franker or more naive and less stirred up about the circumstance if the

matter in issue had been a commercial transaction involving thirty-five

dollars.

Shelley was nineteen. He was not a youth, but a man. He had never had

any youth. He was an erratic and fantastic child during eighteen years,

then he stepped into manhood, as one steps over a door-sill. He was

curiously mature at nineteen in his ability to do independent thinking

on the deep questions of life and to arrive at sharply definite decisions

regarding them, and stick to them--stick to them and stand by them at

cost of bread, friendships, esteem, respect, and approbation.

For the sake of his opinions he was willing to sacrifice all these

valuable things, and did sacrifice them; and went on doing it, too, when

he could at any moment have made himself rich and supplied himself with

friends and esteem by compromising with his father, at the moderate

expense of throwing overboard one or two indifferent details of his cargo

of principles.

He and Harriet eloped to Scotland and got married. They took lodgings in

Edinburgh of a sort answerable to their purse, which was about empty, and

there their life was a happy, one and grew daily more so. They had only

themselves for company, but they needed no additions to it. They were as

cozy and contented as birds in a nest. Harriet sang evenings or read

aloud; also she studied and tried to improve her mind, her husband

instructing her in Latin. She was very beautiful, she was modest, quiet,

genuine, and, according to her husband's testimony, she had no fine lady

airs or aspirations about her. In Matthew Arnold's judgment, she was

"a pleasing figure."

The pair remained five weeks in Edinburgh, and then took lodgings in

York, where Shelley's college mate, Hogg, lived. Shelley presently ran

down to London, and Hogg took this opportunity to make love to the young

wife. She repulsed him, and reported the fact to her husband when he got

back. It seems a pity that Shelley did not copy this creditable conduct

of hers some time or other when under temptation, so that we might have

seen the author of his biography hang the miracle in the skies and squirt

rainbows at it.

At the end of the first year of marriage--the most trying year for any

young couple, for then the mutual failings are coming one by one to

light, and the necessary adjustments are being made in pain and

tribulation--Shelley was able to recognize that his marriage venture had

been a safe one. As we have seen, his love for his wife had begun in a

rather shallow way and with not much force, but now it was become deep

and strong, which entitles his wife to a broad credit mark, one may

admit. He addresses a long and loving poem to her, in which both passion

and worship appear:

Exhibit A

"O thou

Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path

Which this lone spirit travelled,

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . wilt thou not turn

Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me.

Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven

And Heaven is Earth?

. . . . . . . .

Harriet! let death all mortal ties dissolve,

But ours shall not be mortal."

Shelley also wrote a sonnet to her in August of this same year in

celebration of her birthday:

Exhibit B

"Ever as now with hove and Virtue's glow

May thy unwithering soul not cease to burn,

Still may thine heart with those pure thoughts o'erflow

Which force from mine such quick and warm return."

Was the girl of seventeen glad and proud and happy? We may conjecture

that she was.

That was the year 1812. Another year passed still happily, still

successfully--a child was born in June, 1813, and in September, three

months later, Shelley addresses a poem to this child, Ianthe, in which he

points out just when the little creature is most particularly dear to

him:

Exhibit C

"Dearest when most thy tender traits express

The image of thy mother's loveliness."

Up to this point the fabulist counsel for Shelley and prosecutor of his

young wife has had easy sailing, but now his trouble begins, for Shelley

is getting ready to make some unpleasant history for himself, and it will

be necessary to put the blame of it on the wife.

Shelley had made the acquaintance of a charming gray-haired, young-

hearted Mrs. Boinville, whose face "retained a certain youthful beauty";

she lived at Bracknell, and had a young daughter named Cornelia Turner,

who was equipped with many fascinations. Apparently these people were

sufficiently sentimental. Hogg says of Mrs. Boinville:

"The greater part of her associates were odious. I generally

found there two or three sentimental young butchers, an

eminently philosophical tinker, and several very

unsophisticated medical practitioners or medical students, all

of low origin and vulgar and offensive manners. They sighed,

turned up their eyes, retailed philosophy, such as it was,"

etc.

Shelley moved to Bracknell, July 27th (this is still 1813) purposely to

be near this unwholesome prairie-dogs' nest. The fabulist says: "It was

the entrance into a world more amiable and exquisite than he had yet

known."

"In this acquaintance the attraction was mutual"--and presently it grew

to be very mutual indeed, between Shelley and Cornelia Turner, when they

got to studying the Italian poets together. Shelley, "responding like a

tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or of sentiment," had his

chance here. It took only four days for Cornelia's attractions to begin

to dim Harriet's. Shelley arrived on the 27th of July; on the 31st he

wrote a sonnet to Harriet in which "one detects already the little rift

in the lover's lute which had seemed to be healed or never to have gaped

at all when the later and happier sonnet to Ianthe was written"--in

September, we remember:

Exhibit D

"EVENING. TO HARRIET

"O thou bright Sun! Beneath the dark blue line

Of western distance that sublime descendest,

And, gleaming lovelier as thy beams decline,

Thy million hues to every vapor lendest,

And over cobweb, lawn, and grove, and stream

Sheddest the liquid magic of thy light,

Till calm Earth, with the parting splendor bright,

Shows like the vision of a beauteous dream;

What gazer now with astronomic eye

Could coldly count the spots within thy sphere?

Such were thy lover, Harriet, could he fly

The thoughts of all that makes his passion dear,

And turning senseless from thy warm caress

Pick flaws in our close-woven happiness."

I cannot find the "rift"; still it may be there. What the poem seems to

say is, that a person would be coldly ungrateful who could consent to

count and consider little spots and flaws in such a warm, great,

satisfying sun as Harriet is. It is a "little rift which had seemed to

be healed, or never to have gaped at all." That is, "one detects" a

little rift which perhaps had never existed. How does one do that?

How does one see the invisible? It is the fabulist's secret; he knows

how to detect what does not exist, he knows how to see what is not

seeable; it is his gift, and he works it many a time to poor dead Harriet

Shelley's deep damage.

"As yet, however, if there was a speck upon Shelley's happiness it was no

more than a speck"--meaning the one which one detects where "it may never

have gaped at all"--"nor had Harriet cause for discontent."

Shelley's Latin instructions to his wife had ceased. "From a teacher he

had now become a pupil." Mrs. Boinville and her young married daughter

Cornelia were teaching him Italian poetry; a fact which warns one to

receive with some caution that other statement that Harriet had no

"cause for discontent."

Shelley had stopped instructing Harriet in Latin, as before mentioned.

The biographer thinks that the busy life in London some time back, and

the intrusion of the baby, account for this. These were hindrances, but

were there no others? He is always overlooking a detail here and there

that might be valuable in helping us understand a situation. For

instance, when a man has been hard at work at the Italian poets with a

pretty woman, hour after hour, and responding like a tremulous instrument

to every breath of passion or of sentiment in the meantime, that man is

dog-tired when he gets home, and he can't teach his wife Latin; it would

be unreasonable to expect it.

Up to this time we have submitted to having Mrs. Boinville pushed upon

us as ostensibly concerned in these Italian lessons, but the biographer

drops her now, of his own accord. Cornelia "perhaps" is sole teacher.

Hogg says she was a prey to a kind of sweet melancholy, arising from

causes purely imaginary; she required consolation, and found it in

Petrarch. He also says, "Bysshe entered at once fully into her views and

caught the soft infection, breathing the tenderest and sweetest

melancholy, as every true poet ought."

Then the author of the book interlards a most stately and fine compliment

to Cornelia, furnished by a man of approved judgment who knew her well

"in later years." It is a very good compliment indeed, and she no doubt

deserved it in her "later years," when she had for generations ceased to

be sentimental and lackadaisical, and was no longer engaged in enchanting

young husbands and sowing sorrow for young wives. But why is that

compliment to that old gentlewoman intruded there? Is it to make the

reader believe she was well-chosen and safe society for a young,

sentimental husband? The biographer's device was not well planned. That

old person was not present--it was her other self that was there, her

young, sentimental, melancholy, warm-blooded self, in those early sweet

times before antiquity had cooled her off and mossed her back.

"In choosing for friends such women as Mrs. Newton, Mrs. Boinville, and

Cornelia Turner, Shelley gave good proof of his insight and

discrimination." That is the fabulist's opinion--Harriet Shelley's is

not reported.

Early in August, Shelley was in London trying to raise money. In

September he wrote the poem to the baby, already quoted from. In

the first week of October Shelley and family went to Warwick, then

to Edinburgh, arriving there about the middle of the month.

"Harriet was happy." Why? The author furnishes a reason, but hides from

us whether it is history or conjecture; it is because "the babe had borne

the journey well." It has all the aspect of one of his artful devices--

flung in in his favorite casual way--the way he has when he wants to draw

one's attention away from an obvious thing and amuse it with some trifle

that is less obvious but more useful--in a history like this. The

obvious thing is, that Harriet was happy because there was much territory

between her husband and Cornelia Turner now; and because the perilous

Italian lessons were taking a rest; and because, if there chanced to be

any respondings like a tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or

of sentiment in stock in these days, she might hope to get a share of

them herself; and because, with her husband liberated, now, from the

fetid fascinations of that sentimental retreat so pitilessly described by

Hogg, who also dubbed it "Shelley's paradise" later, she might hope to

persuade him to stay away from it permanently; and because she might also

hope that his brain would cool, now, and his heart become healthy, and

both brain and heart consider the situation and resolve that it would be

a right and manly thing to stand by this girl-wife and her child and see

that they were honorably dealt with, and cherished and protected and

loved by the man that had promised these things, and so be made happy and

kept so. And because, also--may we conjecture this?--we may hope for

the privilege of taking up our cozy Latin lessons again, that used to be

so pleasant, and brought us so near together--so near, indeed, that often

our heads touched, just as heads do over Italian lessons; and our hands

met in casual and unintentional, but still most delicious and thrilling

little contacts and momentary clasps, just as they inevitably do over

Italian lessons. Suppose one should say to any young wife: "I find that

your husband is poring over the Italian poets and being instructed in the

beautiful Italian language by the lovely Cornelia Robinson"--would that

cozy picture fail to rise before her mind? would its possibilities fail

to suggest themselves to her? would there be a pang in her heart and a

blush on her face? or, on the contrary, would the remark give her

pleasure, make her joyous and gay? Why, one needs only to make the

experiment--the result will not be uncertain.

However, we learn--by authority of deeply reasoned and searching

conjecture--that the baby bore the journey well, and that that was why

the young wife was happy. That accounts for two per cent. of the

happiness, but it was not right to imply that it accounted for the other

ninety-eight also.

Peacock, a scholar, poet, and friend of the Shelleys, was of their party

when they went away. He used to laugh at the Boinville menagerie, and

"was not a favorite." One of the Boinville group, writing to Hogg, said,

"The Shelleys have made an addition to their party in the person of a

cold scholar, who, I think, has neither taste nor feeling. This, Shelley

will perceive sooner or later, for his warm nature craves sympathy."

True, and Shelley will fight his way back there to get it--there will be

no way to head him off.

Towards the end of November it was necessary for Shelley to pay a

business visit to London, and he conceived the project of leaving Harriet

and the baby in Edinburgh with Harriet's sister, Eliza Westbrook,

a sensible, practical maiden lady about thirty years old, who had spent

a great part of her time with the family since the marriage. She was

an estimable woman, and Shelley had had reason to like her, and did like

her; but along about this time his feeling towards her changed. Part of

Shelley's plan, as he wrote Hogg, was to spend his London evenings with

the Newtons--members of the Boinville Hysterical Society. But, alas,

when he arrived early in December, that pleasant game was partially

blocked, for Eliza and the family arrived with him. We are left

destitute of conjectures at this point by the biographer, and it is my

duty to supply one. I chance the conjecture that it was Eliza who

interfered with that game. I think she tried to do what she could

towards modifying the Boinville connection, in the interest of her young

sister's peace and honor.

If it was she who blocked that game, she was not strong enough to block

the next one. Before the month and year were out--no date given, let us

call it Christmas--Shelley and family were nested in a furnished house in

Windsor, "at no great distance from the Boinvilles"--these decoys still

residing at Bracknell.

What we need, now, is a misleading conjecture. We get it with

characteristic promptness and depravity:

"But Prince Athanase found not the aged Zonoras, the friend of

his boyhood, in any wanderings to Windsor. Dr. Lind had died

a year since, and with his death Windsor must have lost, for

Shelley, its chief attraction."

Still, not to mention Shelley's wife, there was Bracknell, at any rate.

While Bracknell remains, all solace is not lost. Shelley is represented

by this biographer as doing a great many careless things, but to my mind

this hiring a furnished house for three months in order to be with a man

who has been dead a year, is the carelessest of them all. One feels for

him--that is but natural, and does us honor besides--yet one is vexed,

for all that. He could have written and asked about the aged Zonoras

before taking the house. He may not have had the address, but that is

nothing--any postman would know the aged Zonoras; a dead postman would

remember a name like that.

And yet, why throw a rag like this to us ravening wolves? Is it

seriously supposable that we will stop to chew it and let our prey

escape? No, we are getting to expect this kind of device, and to give it

merely a sniff for certainty's sake and then walk around it and leave it

lying. Shelley was not after the aged Zonoras; he was pointed for

Cornelia and the Italian lessons, for his warm nature was craving

sympathy.

II

The year 1813 is just ended now, and we step into 1814.

To recapitulate, how much of Cornelia's society has Shelley had, thus

far? Portions of August and September, and four days of July. That is

to say, he has had opportunity to enjoy it, more or less, during that

brief period. Did he want some more of it? We must fall back upon

history, and then go to conjecturing.

"In the early part of the year 1814, Shelley was a frequent

visitor at Bracknell."

"Frequent" is a cautious word, in this author's mouth; the very

cautiousness of it, the vagueness of it, provokes suspicion; it makes one

suspect that this frequency was more frequent than the mere common

everyday kinds of frequency which one is in the habit of averaging up

with the unassuming term "frequent." I think so because they fixed up a

bedroom for him in the Boinville house. One doesn't need a bedroom if

one is only going to run over now and then in a disconnected way to

respond like a tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or of

sentiment and rub up one's Italian poetry a little.

The young wife was not invited, perhaps. If she was, she most certainly

did not come, or she would have straightened the room up; the most

ignorant of us knows that a wife would not endure a room in the condition

in which Hogg found this one when he occupied it one night. Shelley was

away--why, nobody can divine. Clothes were scattered about, there were

books on every side: "Wherever a book could be laid was an open book

turned down on its face to keep its place." It seems plain that the wife

was not invited. No, not that; I think she was invited, but said to

herself that she could not bear to go there and see another young woman

touching heads with her husband over an Italian book and making thrilling

hand-contacts with him accidentally.

As remarked, he was a frequent visitor there, "where he found an easeful

resting-place in the house of Mrs. Boinville--the white-haired Maimuna--

and of her daughter, Mrs. Turner." The aged Zonoras was deceased, but

the white-haired Maimuna was still on deck, as we see. "Three charming

ladies entertained the mocker (Hogg) with cups of tea, late hours,

Wieland's Agathon, sighs and smiles, and the celestial manna of refined

sentiment."

"Such," says Hogg, "were the delights of Shelley's paradise in

Bracknell."

The white-haired Maimuna presently writes to Hogg:

"I will not have you despise home-spun pleasures. Shelley is

making a trial of them with us--"

A trial of them. It may be called that. It was March 11, and he had

been in the house a month. She continues:

Shelley "likes then so well that he is resolved to leave off

rambling--"

But he has already left it off. He has been there a month.

"And begin a course of them himself."

But he has already begun it. He has been at it a month. He likes it so

well that he has forgotten all about his wife, as a letter of his

reveals.

"Seriously, I think his mind and body want rest."

Yet he has been resting both for a month, with Italian, and tea, and

manna of sentiment, and late hours, and every restful thing a young

husband could need for the refreshment of weary limbs and a sore

conscience, and a nagging sense of shabbiness and treachery.

"His journeys after what he has never found have racked his

purse and his tranquillity. He is resolved to take a little

care of the former, in pity to the latter, which I applaud, and

shall second with all, my might."

But she does not say whether the young wife, a stranger and lonely

yonder, wants another woman and her daughter Cornelia to be lavishing so

much inflamed interest on her husband or not. That young wife is always

silent--we are never allowed to hear from her. She must have opinions

about such things, she cannot be indifferent, she must be approving or

disapproving, surely she would speak if she were allowed--even to-day and

from her grave she would, if she could, I think--but we get only the

other side, they keep her silent always.

"He has deeply interested us. In the course of your intimacy

he must have made you feel what we now feel for him. He is

seeking a house close to us--"

Ah! he is not close enough yet, it seems--

"and if he succeeds we shall have an additional motive to

induce you to come among us in the summer."

The reader would puzzle a long time and not guess the biographer's

comment upon the above letter. It is this:

"These sound like words of s considerate and judicious friend."

That is what he thinks. That is, it is what he thinks he thinks. No,

that is not quite it: it is what he thinks he can stupefy a particularly

and unspeakably dull reader into thinking it is what he thinks. He makes

that comment with the knowledge that Shelley is in love with this woman's

daughter, and that it is because of the fascinations of these two that

Shelley has deserted his wife--for this month, considering all the

circumstances, and his new passion, and his employment of the time,

amounted to desertion; that is its rightful name. We cannot know how the

wife regarded it and felt about it; but if she could have read the letter

which Shelley was writing to Hogg four or five days later, we could guess

her thought and how she felt. Hear him:

. . . . . . .

"I have been staying with Mrs. Boinville for the last month;

I have escaped, in the society of all that philosophy and

friendship combine, from the dismaying solitude of myself."

It is fair to conjecture that he was feeling ashamed.

"They have revived in my heart the expiring flame of life.

I have felt myself translated to a paradise which has nothing

of mortality but its transitoriness; my heart sickens at the

view of that necessity which will quickly divide me from the

delightful tranquillity of this happy home--for it has become

my home.

. . . . . . .

"Eliza is still with us--not here!--but will be with me when

the infinite malice of destiny forces me to depart."

Eliza is she who blocked that game--the game in London--the one where we

were purposing to dine every night with one of the "three charming

ladies" who fed tea and manna and late hours to Hogg at Bracknell.

Shelley could send Eliza away, of course; could have cleared her out long

ago if so minded, just as he had previously done with a predecessor of

hers whom he had first worshipped and then turned against; but perhaps

she was useful there as a thin excuse for staying away himself.

"I am now but little inclined to contest this point.

I certainly hate her with all my heart and soul . . . .

"It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible sensation of

disgust and horror, to see her caress my poor little Ianthe,

in whom I may hereafter find the consolation of sympathy.

I sometimes feel faint with the fatigue of checking the

overflowings of my unbounded abhorrence for this miserable

wretch. But she is no more than a blind and loathsome worm,

that cannot see to sting.

"I have begun to learn Italian again . . . . Cornelia

assists me in this language. Did I not once tell you that I

thought her cold and reserved? She is the reverse of this, as

she is the reverse of everything bad. She inherits all the

divinity of her mother . . . . I have sometimes forgotten

that I am not an inmate of this delightful home--that a time

will come which will cast me again into the boundless ocean of

abhorred society.

"I have written nothing but one stanza, which has no meaning,

and that I have only written in thought:

"Thy dewy looks sink in my breast;

Thy gentle words stir poison there;

Thou hast disturbed the only rest

That was the portion of despair.

Subdued to duty's hard control,

I could have borne my wayward lot:

The chains that bind this rained soul

Had cankered then, but crushed it not.

"This is the vision of a delirious and distempered dream, which

passes away at the cold clear light of morning. Its surpassing

excellence and exquisite perfections have no more reality than

the color of an autumnal sunset."

Then it did not refer to his wife. That is plain; otherwise he would

have said so. It is well that he explained that it has no meaning, for

if he had not done that, the previous soft references to Cornelia and the

way he has come to feel about her now would make us think she was the

person who had inspired it while teaching him how to read the warm and

ruddy Italian poets during a month.

The biography observes that portions of this letter "read like the tired

moaning of a wounded creature." Guesses at the nature of the wound are

permissible; we will hazard one.

Read by the light of Shelley's previous history, his letter seems to be

the cry of a tortured conscience. Until this time it was a conscience

that had never felt a pang or known a smirch. It was the conscience of

one who, until this time, had never done a dishonorable thing, or an

ungenerous, or cruel, or treacherous thing, but was now doing all of

these, and was keenly aware of it. Up to this time Shelley had been

master of his nature, and it was a nature which was as beautiful and as

nearly perfect as any merely human nature may be. But he was drunk now,

with a debasing passion, and was not himself. There is nothing in his

previous history that is in character with the Shelley of this letter.

He had done boyish things, foolish things, even crazy things, but never

a thing to be ashamed of. He had done things which one might laugh at,

but the privilege of laughing was limited always to the thing itself;

you could not laugh at the motive back of it--that was high, that was

noble. His most fantastic and quixotic acts had a purpose back of them

which made them fine, often great, and made the rising laugh seem

profanation and quenched it; quenched it, and changed the impulse to

homage.

Up to this time he had been loyalty itself, where his obligations lay--

treachery was new to him; he had never done an ignoble thing--baseness

was new to him; he had never done an unkind thing that also was new to

him.

This was the author of that letter, this was the man who had deserted his

young wife and was lamenting, because he must leave another woman's house

which had become a "home" to him, and go away. Is he lamenting mainly

because he must go back to his wife and child? No, the lament is mainly

for what he is to leave behind him. The physical comforts of the house?

No, in his life he had never attached importance to such things. Then

the thing which he grieves to leave is narrowed down to a person--to the

person whose "dewy looks" had sunk into his breast, and whose seducing

words had "stirred poison there."

He was ashamed of himself, his conscience was upbraiding him. He was the

slave of a degrading love; he was drunk with his passion, the real

Shelley was in temporary eclipse. This is the verdict which his previous

history must certainly deliver upon this episode, I think.

One must be allowed to assist himself with conjectures like these when

trying to find his way through a literary swamp which has so many

misleading finger-boards up as this book is furnished with.

We have now arrived at a part of the swamp where the difficulties and

perplexities are going to be greater than any we have yet met with--

where, indeed, the finger-boards are multitudinous, and the most of them

pointing diligently in the wrong direction. We are to be told by the

biography why Shelley deserted his wife and child and took up with

Cornelia Turner and Italian. It was not on account of Cornelia's sighs

and sentimentalities and tea and manna and late hours and soft and sweet

and industrious enticements; no, it was because "his happiness in his

home had been wounded and bruised almost to death."

It had been wounded and bruised almost to death in this way:

1st. Harriet persuaded him to set up a carriage.

2d. After the intrusion of the baby, Harriet stopped reading aloud and

studying.

3d. Harriet's walks with Hogg "commonly conducted us to some fashionable

bonnet-shop."

4th. Harriet hired a wet-nurse.

5th. When an operation was being performed upon the baby, "Harriet stood

by, narrowly observing all that was done, but, to the astonishment of the

operator, betraying not the smallest sign of emotion."

6th. Eliza Westbrook, sister-in-law, was still of the household.

The evidence against Harriet Shelley is all in; there is no more. Upon

these six counts she stands indicted of the crime of driving her husband

into that sty at Bracknell; and this crime, by these helps, the

biographical prosecuting attorney has set himself the task of proving

upon her.

Does the biographer call himself the attorney for the prosecution?

No, only to himself, privately; publicly he is the passionless,

disinterested, impartial judge on the bench. He holds up his judicial

scales before the world, that all may see; and it all tries to look so

fair that a blind person would sometimes fail to see him slip the false

weights in.

Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to

death, first, because Harriet had persuaded him to set up a carriage.

I cannot discover that any evidence is offered that she asked him to set

up a carriage. Still, if she did, was it a heavy offence? Was it

unique? Other young wives had committed it before, others have committed

it since. Shelley had dearly loved her in those London days; possibly he

set up the carriage gladly to please her; affectionate young husbands do

such things. When Shelley ran away with another girl, by-and-by, this

girl persuaded him to pour the price of many carriages and many horses

down the bottomless well of her father's debts, but this impartial judge

finds no fault with that. Once she appeals to Shelley to raise money--

necessarily by borrowing, there was no other way--to pay her father's

debts with at a time when Shelley was in danger of being arrested and

imprisoned for his own debts; yet the good judge finds no fault with her

even for this.

First and last, Shelley emptied into that rapacious mendicant's lap a sum

which cost him--for he borrowed it at ruinous rates--from eighty to one

hundred thousand dollars. But it was Mary Godwin's papa, the

supplications were often sent through Mary, the good judge is Mary's

strenuous friend, so Mary gets no censures. On the Continent Mary rode

in her private carriage, built, as Shelley boasts, "by one of the best

makers in Bond Street," yet the good judge makes not even a passing

comment on this iniquity. Let us throw out Count No. 1 against Harriet

Shelley as being far-fetched, and frivolous.

Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to

death, secondly, because Harriet's studies "had dwindled away to nothing,

Bysshe had ceased to express any interest in them." At what time was

this? It was when Harriet "had fully recovered from the fatigue of her

first effort of maternity . . . and was now in full force, vigor, and

effect." Very well, the baby was born two days before the close of June.

It took the mother a month to get back her full force, vigor, and effect;

this brings us to July 27th and the deadly Cornelia. If a wife of

eighteen is studying with her husband and he gets smitten with another

woman, isn't he likely to lose interest in his wife's studies for that

reason, and is not his wife's interest in her studies likely to languish

for the same reason? Would not the mere sight of those books of hers

sharpen the pain that is in her heart? This sudden breaking down of a

mutual intellectual interest of two years' standing is coincident with

Shelley's re-encounter with Cornelia; and we are allowed to gather from

that time forth for nearly two months he did all his studying in that

person's society. We feel at liberty to rule out Count No. 2 from the

indictment against Harriet.

Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to

death, thirdly, because Harriet's walks with Hogg commonly led to some

fashionable bonnet-shop. I offer no palliation; I only ask why the

dispassionate, impartial judge did not offer one himself--merely, I mean,

to offset his leniency in a similar case or two where the girl who ran

away with Harriet's husband was the shopper. There are several occasions

where she interested herself with shopping--among them being walks which

ended at the bonnet-shop--yet in none of these cases does she get a word

of blame from the good judge, while in one of them he covers the deed

with a justifying remark, she doing the shopping that time to find

easement for her mind, her child having died.

Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to

death, fourthly, by the introduction there of a wet-nurse. The wet-nurse

was introduced at the time of the Edinburgh sojourn, immediately after

Shelley had been enjoying the two months of study with Cornelia which

broke up his wife's studies and destroyed his personal interest in them.

Why, by this time, nothing that Shelley's wife could do would have been

satisfactory to him, for he was in love with another woman, and was never

going to be contented again until he got back to her. If he had been

still in love with his wife it is not easily conceivable that he would

care much who nursed the baby, provided the baby was well nursed.

Harriet's jealousy was assuredly voicing itself now, Shelley's conscience

was assuredly nagging him, pestering him, persecuting him. Shelley

needed excuses for his altered attitude towards his wife; Providence

pitied him and sent the wet-nurse. If Providence had sent him a cotton

doughnut it would have answered just as well; all he wanted was something

to find fault with.

Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to

death, fifthly, because Harriet narrowly watched a surgical operation

which was being performed upon her child, and, "to the astonishment of

the operator," who was watching Harriet instead of attending to his

operation, she betrayed "not the smallest sign of emotion." The author

of this biography was not ashamed to set down that exultant slander.

He was apparently not aware that it was a small business to bring into

his court a witness whose name he does not know, and whose character and

veracity there is none to vouch for, and allow him to strike this blow at

the mother-heart of this friendless girl. The biographer says, "We may

not infer from this that Harriet did not feel"--why put it in, then?--

"but we learn that those about her could believe her to be hard and

insensible." Who were those who were about her? Her husband? He hated

her now, because he was in love elsewhere. Her sister? Of course that

is not charged. Peacock? Peacock does not testify. The wet-nurse? She

does not testify. If any others were there we have no mention of them.

"Those about her" are reduced to one person--her husband. Who reports

the circumstance? It is Hogg. Perhaps he was there--we do not know.

But if he was, he still got his information at second-hand, as it was the

operator who noticed Harriet's lack of emotion, not himself. Hogg is not

given to saying kind things when Harriet is his subject. He may have

said them the time that he tried to tempt her to soil her honor, but

after that he mentions her usually with a sneer. "Among those who were

about her" was one witness well equipped to silence all tongues, abolish

all doubts, set our minds at rest; one witness, not called, and not

callable, whose evidence, if we could but get it, would outweigh the

oaths of whole battalions of hostile Hoggs and nameless surgeons--the

baby. I wish we had the baby's testimony; and yet if we had it it would

not do us any good--a furtive conjecture, a sly insinuation, a pious

"if" or two, would be smuggled in, here and there, with a solemn air of

judicial investigation, and its positiveness would wilt into dubiety.

The biographer says of Harriet, "If words of tender affection and

motherly pride proved the reality of love, then undoubtedly she loved her

firstborn child." That is, if mere empty words can prove it, it stands

proved--and in this way, without committing himself, he gives the reader

a chance to infer that there isn't any extant evidence but words, and

that he doesn't take much stock in them. How seldom he shows his hand!

He is always lurking behind a non-committal "if" or something of that

kind; always gliding and dodging around, distributing colorless poison

here and there and everywhere, but always leaving himself in a position

to say that his language will be found innocuous if taken to pieces and

examined. He clearly exhibits a steady and never-relaxing purpose to

make Harriet the scapegoat for her husband's first great sin--but it is

in the general view that this is revealed, not in the details. His

insidious literature is like blue water; you know what it is that makes

it blue, but you cannot produce and verify any detail of the cloud of

microscopic dust in it that does it. Your adversary can dip up a

glassful and show you that it is pure white and you cannot deny it; and

he can dip the lake dry, glass by glass, and show that every glassful is

white, and prove it to any one's eye--and yet that lake was blue and you

can swear it. This book is blue--with slander in solution.

Let the reader examine, for example, the paragraph of comment which

immediately follows the letter containing Shelley's self-exposure which

we have been considering. This is it. One should inspect the individual

sentences as they go by, then pass them in procession and review the

cake-walk as a whole:

"Shelley's happiness in his home, as is evident from this

pathetic letter, had been fatally stricken; it is evident,

also, that he knew where duty lay; he felt that his part was to

take up his burden, silently and sorrowfully, and to bear it

henceforth with the quietness of despair. But we can perceive

that he scarcely possessed the strength and fortitude needful

for success in such an attempt. And clearly Shelley himself

was aware how perilous it was to accept that respite of

blissful ease which he enjoyed in the Boinville household; for

gentle voices and dewy looks and words of sympathy could not

fail to remind him of an ideal of tranquillity or of joy which

could never be his, and which he must henceforth sternly

exclude from his imagination."

That paragraph commits the author in no way. Taken sentence by sentence

it asserts nothing against anybody or in favor of anybody, pleads for

nobody, accuses nobody. Taken detail by detail, it is as innocent as

moonshine. And yet, taken as a whole, it is a design against the reader;

its intent is to remove the feeling which the letter must leave with him

if let alone, and put a different one in its place--to remove a feeling

justified by the letter and substitute one not justified by it. The

letter itself gives you no uncertain picture--no lecturer is needed to

stand by with a stick and point out its details and let on to explain

what they mean. The picture is the very clear and remorsefully faithful

picture of a fallen and fettered angel who is ashamed of himself; an

angel who beats his soiled wings and cries, who complains to the woman

who enticed him that he could have borne his wayward lot, he could have

stood by his duty if it had not been for her beguilements; an angel who

rails at the "boundless ocean of abhorred society," and rages at his poor

judicious sister-in-law. If there is any dignity about this spectacle it

will escape most people.

Yet when the paragraph of comment is taken as a whole, the picture is

full of dignity and pathos; we have before us a blameless and noble

spirit stricken to the earth by malign powers, but not conquered;

tempted, but grandly putting the temptation away; enmeshed by subtle

coils, but sternly resolved to rend them and march forth victorious, at

any peril of life or limb. Curtain--slow music.

Was it the purpose of the paragraph to take the bad taste of Shelley's

letter out of the reader's mouth? If that was not it, good ink was

wasted; without that, it has no relevancy--the multiplication table would

have padded the space as rationally.

We have inspected the six reasons which we are asked to believe drove a

man of conspicuous patience, honor, justice, fairness, kindliness, and

iron firmness, resolution, and steadfastness, from the wife whom he loved

and who loved him, to a refuge in the mephitic paradise of Bracknell.

These are six infinitely little reasons; but there were six colossal

ones, and these the counsel for the destruction of Harriet Shelley

persists in not considering very important.

Moreover, the colossal six preceded the little six and had done the

mischief before they were born. Let us double-column the twelve; then we

shall see at a glance that each little reason is in turn answered by a

retorting reason of a size to overshadow it and make it insignificant:

1. Harriet sets up carriage. 1. CORNELIA TURNER.

2. Harriet stops studying. 2. CORNELIA TURNER.

3. Harriet goes to bonnet-shop. 3. CORNELIA TURNER.

4. Harriet takes a wet-nurse. 4. CORNELIA TURNER.

5. Harriet has too much nerve. 5. CORNELIA TURNER.

6. Detested sister-in-law 6. CORNELIA TURNER.

As soon as we comprehend that Cornelia Turner and the Italian lessons

happened before the little six had been discovered to be grievances,

we understand why Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and

bruised almost to death, and no one can persuade us into laying it on

Harriet. Shelley and Cornelia are the responsible persons, and we cannot

in honor and decency allow the cruelties which they practised upon the

unoffending wife to be pushed aside in order to give us a chance to waste

time and tears over six sentimental justifications of an offence which

the six can't justify, nor even respectably assist in justifying.

Six? There were seven; but in charity to the biographer the seventh

ought not to be exposed. Still, he hung it out himself, and not only

hung it out, but thought it was a good point in Shelley's favor. For two

years Shelley found sympathy and intellectual food and all that at home;

there was enough for spiritual and mental support, but not enough for

luxury; and so, at the end of the contented two years, this latter detail

justifies him in going bag and baggage over to Cornelia Turner and

supplying the rest of his need in the way of surplus sympathy and

intellectual pie unlawfully. By the same reasoning a man in merely

comfortable circumstances may rob a bank without sin.

III

It is 1814, it is the 16th of March, Shelley has, written his letter, he

has been in the Boinville paradise a month, his deserted wife is in her

husbandless home. Mischief had been wrought. It is the biographer who

concedes this. We greatly need some light on Harriet's side of the case

now; we need to know how she enjoyed the month, but there is no way to

inform ourselves; there seems to be a strange absence of documents and

letters and diaries on that side. Shelley kept a diary, the approaching

Mary Godwin kept a diary, her father kept one, her half-sister by

marriage, adoption, and the dispensation of God kept one, and the entire

tribe and all its friends wrote and received letters, and the letters

were kept and are producible when this biography needs them; but there

are only three or four scraps of Harriet's writing, and no diary.

Harriet wrote plenty of letters to her husband--nobody knows where they

are, I suppose; she wrote plenty of letters to other people--apparently

they have disappeared, too. Peacock says she wrote good letters, but

apparently interested people had sagacity enough to mislay them in time.

After all her industry she went down into her grave and lies silent

there--silent, when she has so much need to speak. We can only wonder at

this mystery, not account for it.

No, there is no way of finding out what Harriet's state of feeling was

during the month that Shelley was disporting himself in the Bracknell

paradise. We have to fall back upon conjecture, as our fabulist does

when he has nothing more substantial to work with. Then we easily

conjecture that as the days dragged by Harriet's heart grew heavier and

heavier under its two burdens--shame and resentment: the shame of being

pointed at and gossiped about as a deserted wife, and resentment against

the woman who had beguiled her husband from her and now kept him in a

disreputable captivity. Deserted wives--deserted whether for cause or

without cause--find small charity among the virtuous and the discreet.

We conjecture that one after another the neighbors ceased to call; that

one after another they got to being "engaged" when Harriet called; that

finally they one after the other cut her dead on the street; that after

that she stayed in the house daytimes, and brooded over her sorrows, and

nighttimes did the same, there being nothing else to do with the heavy

hours and the silence and solitude and the dreary intervals which sleep

should have charitably bridged, but didn't.

Yes, mischief had been wrought. The biographer arrives at this

conclusion, and it is a most just one. Then, just as you begin to half

hope he is going to discover the cause of it and launch hot bolts of

wrath at the guilty manufacturers of it, you have to turn away

disappointed. You are disappointed, and you sigh. This is what he says

--the italics [''] are mine:

"However the mischief may have been wrought--'and at this day

no one can wish to heap blame an any buried head'--"

So it is poor Harriet, after all. Stern justice must take its course--

justice tempered with delicacy, justice tempered with compassion, justice

that pities a forlorn dead girl and refuses to strike her. Except in the

back. Will not be ignoble and say the harsh thing, but only insinuate

it. Stern justice knows about the carriage and the wet-nurse and the

bonnet-shop and the other dark things that caused this sad mischief, and

may not, must not blink them; so it delivers judgment where judgment

belongs, but softens the blow by not seeming to deliver judgment at all.

To resume--the italics are mine:

"However the mischief may have been wrought--and at this day no

one can wish to heap blame on any buried head--'it is certain

that some cause or causes of deep division between Shelley and

his wife were in operation during the early part of the year

1814'."

This shows penetration. No deduction could be more accurate than this.

There were indeed some causes of deep division. But next comes another

disappointing sentence:

"To guess at the precise nature of these cafes, in the absence

of definite statement, were useless."

Why, he has already been guessing at them for several pages, and we have

been trying to outguess him, and now all of a sudden he is tired of it

and won't play any more. It is not quite fair to us. However, he will

get over this by-and-by, when Shelley commits his next indiscretion and

has to be guessed out of it at Harriet's expense.

"We may rest content with Shelley's own words"--in a Chancery paper drawn

up by him three years later. They were these: "Delicacy forbids me to

say more than that we were disunited by incurable dissensions."

As for me, I do not quite see why we should rest content with anything of

the sort. It is not a very definite statement. It does not necessarily

mean anything more than that he did not wish to go into the tedious

details of those family quarrels. Delicacy could quite properly excuse

him from saying, "I was in love with Cornelia all that time; my wife kept

crying and worrying about it and upbraiding me and begging me to cut

myself free from a connection which was wronging her and disgracing us

both; and I being stung by these reproaches retorted with fierce and

bitter speeches--for it is my nature to do that when I am stirred,

especially if the target of them is a person whom I had greatly loved and

respected before, as witness my various attitudes towards Miss Hitchener,

the Gisbornes, Harriet's sister, and others--and finally I did not

improve this state of things when I deserted my wife and spent a whole

month with the woman who had infatuated me."

No, he could not go into those details, and we excuse him; but,

nevertheless, we do not rest content with this bland proposition to puff

away that whole long disreputable episode with a single mean, meaningless

remark of Shelley's.

We do admit that "it is certain that some cause or causes of deep

division were in operation." We would admit it just the same if the

grammar of the statement were as straight as a string, for we drift into

pretty indifferent grammar ourselves when we are absorbed in historical

work; but we have to decline to admit that we cannot guess those cause or

causes.

But guessing is not really necessary. There is evidence attainable--

evidence from the batch discredited by the biographer and set out at the

back door in his appendix-basket; and yet a court of law would think

twice before throwing it out, whereas it would be a hardy person who

would venture to offer in such a place a good part of the material which

is placed before the readers of this book as "evidence," and so treated

by this daring biographer. Among some letters (in the appendix-basket)

from Mrs. Godwin, detailing the Godwinian share in the Shelleyan events

of 1814, she tells how Harriet Shelley came to her and her husband,

agitated and weeping, to implore them to forbid Shelley the house, and

prevent his seeing Mary Godwin.

"She related that last November he had fallen in love with Mrs.

Turner and paid her such marked attentions Mr. Turner, the

husband, had carried off his wife to Devonshire."

The biographer finds a technical fault in this; "the Shelleys were in

Edinburgh in November." What of that? The woman is recalling a

conversation which is more than two months old; besides, she was probably

more intent upon the central and important fact of it than upon its

unimportant date. Harriet's quoted statement has some sense in it; for

that reason, if for no other, it ought to have been put in the body of

the book. Still, that would not have answered; even the biographer's

enemy could not be cruel enough to ask him to let this real grievance,

this compact and substantial and picturesque figure, this rawhead-and-

bloody-bones, come striding in there among those pale shams, those

rickety spectres labeled WET-NURSE, BONNET-SHOP, and so on--no, the

father of all malice could not ask the biographer to expose his pathetic

goblins to a competition like that.

The fabulist finds fault with the statement because it has a technical

error in it; and he does this at the moment that he is furnishing us an

error himself, and of a graver sort. He says:

"If Turner carried off his wife to Devonshire he brought her

back and Shelley was staying with her and her mother on terms

of cordial intimacy in March, 1814."

We accept the "cordial intimacy"--it was the very thing Harriet was

complaining of--but there is nothing to show that it was Turner who

brought his wife back. The statement is thrown in as if it were not only

true, but was proof that Turner was not uneasy. Turner's movements are

proof of nothing. Nothing but a statement from Turner's mouth would have

any value here, and he made none.

Six days after writing his letter Shelley and his wife were together

again for a moment--to get remarried according to the rites of the

English Church.

Within three weeks the new husband and wife were apart again, and the

former was back in his odorous paradise. This time it is the wife who

does the deserting. She finds Cornelia too strong for her, probably.

At any rate, she goes away with her baby and sister, and we have a

playful fling at her from good Mrs. Boinville, the "mysterious spinner

Maimuna"; she whose "face was as a damsel's face, and yet her hair was

gray"; she of whom the biographer has said, "Shelley was indeed caught in

an almost invisible thread spun around him, but unconsciously, by this

subtle and benignant enchantress." The subtle and benignant enchantress

writes to Hogg, April 18: "Shelley is again a widower; his beauteous half

went to town on Thursday."