Then the college days flew by with all their romance and delight. Again

there were bells ringing to morning prayers, recitations and lectures,

examinations and prizes, speeches and medals, and the glorious

friendships, pure, earnest, almost holy. Would there were more such

friendships in the outer, wider world! Commencement with its "pomp and

circumstance," its tedious ceremony and scholarly display, its friends

from home--mothers, sisters, sweethearts, all bright eyes and fond

hearts, its music and flowers, its caps, gowns, dress-coats and

"spreads," and, last and worst of all, its sorrowful "good-byes," some

of them, alas! for ever! Once more he trembled as he rose to make his

commencement speech, but slowly, as he went on, his voice grew steady

and his manner calmer, for, lad as he was, and tyro at "orations," he

was in earnest. "May my light hand forget its cunning, O my brother! may

my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, O ye oppressed! if ever there

comes to me an opportunity to help you win your way to freedom and I

fail you!" He, the aristocrat of his class, had chosen to speak "Against

Caste," and though he spoke with the enthusiasm of an untried man, it

was with devoted honesty of purpose, of which his earnestness was

witness, and of which his future was to give ample proof. Again in

vision he stood before that assembly and spoke for the lowly and

oppressed. "Let every man have place and honor as he proves himself

worthy. Make the way clear for all."

Through the bewilderment of applause that greeted him as he finished he

saw only the glad, smiling face of Alice Wentworth nodding approval of

the rest, hundreds though they were, he saw nothing. Her congratulation

was enough.

Then came tenderer scenes, and Alice Wentworth was to be his wife.

Another change, and he is in the midst of ruder scenes. There is war,

civil war, and he is a soldier, once more he seems to be in Virginia,

and there are marches and counter-marches, camps and barracks, battles

and retreats, and all the great and little miseries of long campaigns.

The silver leaflets of a major are exchanged for the golden eagles of a

colonel, and all the time, amid sterner duties, he finds time to write

to Alice Wentworth, and never a mail comes into camp but he is sure of

letters dated 'Home' and full of words that make him hopeful and brave,

"'Home!' Yes hers and mine too, if home's where the heart is!'" he

thinks, and he loves her more dearly every day.

Negro troops are raised, and, true to his principles and to himself, he

resigns his commission to take a lower rank in a colored regiment. Now

the scenes grow dim, confused sounds far off disturb him, low music,

familiar yet strange, now distant, now at his very ear, attracts him, a

weird, shadowy mist encloses him, concealing even the things which were

visible to the mind's eye, and memory and thought have almost ceased.

Yet while all else fades away, clear and beautiful before him are two

faces that cannot be forgotten--his mother's face, and that other, which

he loves, if that can be, even more. Thus, with the 'Our Father' not on

his lips, but fixed in his mind, he feels himself drifting

away--drifting away like a boat that has broken its moorings and drifts

out with the ebbing tide--whither?

But the rich, warm, lusty blood of the African quickly does its work.

The heart, which had almost ceased to beat, because there was not blood

enough for it to contract upon, reacted to the stimulus, and as it

revived and sent the new life pulsating through all the body the whole

man revived, and again:

The fever called _living_ burned in his brain.

Fournier, under one pretext or another, but really by the force of his

relentless will, kept his victim by him for years after their escape

from the South. He noted from time to time certain curious changes that

took place in his physical nature, and recorded his observations with

scientific precision in a book kept for the purpose, for the renewal of

life had entailed results of an extraordinary character, as the reader

may have already anticipated. At length he wrote 'My hypothesis is

verified, it has become a theory. My theory is proved, it is a

physiological law. _Climatic influences, acting upon man, bring about

physical changes exceedingly slowly, because they are resisted by an

inveterate habit of assimilation which pertains to the blood._'

That day Shirley was free. His rescuer had finished his experiment.

Alice Wentworth had never believed that her lover was dead. She had

heard all with a troubled heart, but while his distant kinsmen, who were

heirs-at-law, put on the deepest mourning and grew impatient of the

law's delay, she simply said, "I will wait until there is some proof

before I give him up! Proof! proof! Shall I be quicker than the law to

give up every hope?" And in her heart she said, "He is not dead." Even

when years had passed and the war was over, and her agent had searched

everywhere and found no trace of him, she did not cease to hope that he

would yet appear. So, when at length a letter came, it was welcome and

expected. Not surprise but joy made her start and tremble as the old

familiar superscription met her eyes.

Such a letter!--filled with the spirit of his love, breathing in every

word the tender, passionate devotion of an earlier day, and yet so sad.

Tears dropped down through her smiles of joy and blurred the lines she

read at first, but smiles and tears alike ceased as she read on. He had

written many, many times, but he knew she had not got his letters. He

had been a prisoner--not only prisoner of war, but afterward prisoner to

a man whose will was iron. It could hardly be explained. This man had

not only saved his life, but he had also rescued him from the horrors of

a Southern prison--would God he had let him die!--and they had been

living together in a ranch in a far off Mexican valley.

Then the letter went on:

"In my heart I am unchanged; my love for you is ever the same; yet I am

no longer the Robert Shirley whom you knew. That has come upon me which

will separate me from you for ever: I cannot ask you now to be my wife.

You are free. It is through no fault of mine. It is my burden, the price

of life, and I must bear it. God bless you and give you all happiness!

"ROBERT SHIRLEY:"

When she had read it all she bowed her head and wept again, and the face

that had grown more and more beautiful with the years of waiting was

radiant. Who can fathom the depths of a woman's love? Who can follow the

subtle workings of a woman's thought? Who can comprehend a woman's

boundless faith? Her course was clear. If misfortune had befallen him,

if he were maimed, disfigured, crazed, even if he were loathsome to her

eyes, she loved him, and she must see him: she would see him and speak

to him, and love him still, even if she could not be his wife. What

would she have done if she could have guessed the truth? As it was, she

wrote upon her card, "If you love me, come to me," and sent it to him.

And in answer to the summons he stood before her--not disfigured, not

maimed, not crazed, not loathsome in any way, yet irrevocably separated

from her for Dr. Fournier's experiment had succeeded, and Robert Shirley

was a mulatto!

CORNELIUS DEWEES.

A VISIT TO THE KING OF AURORA.

(FROM THE GERMAN OF THEODORE KIRSCHOFF.)

On the Oregon and California Railroad, twenty-eight miles south of the

city of Portland in Oregon, lies the German colony of Aurora, a

communist settlement under the direction of Doctor William Keil. In

September, 1871, I made a second journey from San Francisco to Oregon,

on which occasion I found both time and opportunity to carry out a

long-cherished desire to visit this colony, already famous throughout

all Oregon, and to make the acquaintance of the still more famous

doctor, the so-called "king of Aurora." During the years in which I had

formerly resided in Oregon, and especially on this last journey thither,

I had frequently heard this settlement and its autocrat spoken of, and

had been told the strangest stories as to the government of its

self-made potentate. All reports agreed in stating that "Dutchtown," the

generic appellation of German colonies among Americans, was an example

to all settlements, and was distinguished above any other place in

Oregon for order and prosperity. The hotel of "Dutchtown," which stands

on the old Overland stage-route, and is now a station on the Oregon and

California Railroad, has attained an enviable reputation, and is

regarded by all travelers as the best in the State; and as to the colony

itself, I heard nothing but praise. On the other hand, with regard to

Doctor Keil the strangest reports were in circulation. He had been

described to me in Portland as a most inaccessible person, showing

himself extremely reserved toward strangers, and declining to give them

the slightest satisfaction as to the interior management of the

prosperous community over which he reigned a sovereign prince. The

initiated maintained that this important personage had formerly been a

tailor in Germany. He was at once the spiritual and secular head of the

community: he solemnized marriages (much against his will, for,

according to the rules of the society, he was obliged to provide a

house for every newly-married couple); he was physician and preacher,

judge, law-giver, secretary of state, administrator, and unlimited and

irresponsible minister of finance to the colony; and held all the very

valuable landed property of the settlement, with the consent of the

colonists, in his own name; and while he certainly provided for his

voluntarily obedient subjects an excellent maintenance for life, he

reserved to himself the entire profits of the labor of all and the value

of the joint property, notwithstanding that the colony was established

on the broadest principles as a communist association.

I had a great desire to see this original man--a kindred spirit of the

renowned Mormon leader, Brigham Young--with my own eyes, and, so to

speak, to visit the lion in his den. From Portland, where I was staying,

the colony was easily accessible by rail, and before leaving I made the

acquaintance of a. German life-insurance agent of a Chicago

company--Körner by name--who, like myself, wished to visit Aurora, and

in whom I found a very agreeable traveling companion. He had procured in

Portland letters of introduction to Doctor Keil, and had conceived the

bold plan of doing a stroke of business in life insurance with him;

indeed, his main object in going to Aurora was to induce the doctor to

insure the lives of the entire colony--that is to say, of all his

voluntary subjects--in the Chicago company, pay, as irresponsible

treasurer of the association, the legal premiums, and upon the

occurrence of a death pocket the amount of the policy.

My fellow-traveler had great hopes of making the doctor see this project

in the light of an advantageous speculation, and accordingly provided

himself amply with the necessary tables of mortality and other

statistics. It had been carefully impressed upon us in Portland always

to address the _ci-devant_ tailor, now "king of Aurora," as "Doctor," of

which title he was extremely vain, and to treat him with all the

reverence which as sovereign republicans we could muster; otherwise he

would probably turn his back on us without ceremony.

On a pleasant September morning the steam ferry-boat conveyed us from

Portland across the Willamette River to the dépôt of the Oregon and

California Railroad, and soon afterward we were rushing southward in the

train along the right shore of that stream--here as broad as the

Rhine--the rival of the mighty Columbia. After a pleasant and

interesting journey through giant forests and over fertile prairies,

some large, some small, embellished here and there with farms, villages

and orchards, we reached Oregon City, which lies in a romantic region

close to the Willamette: then leaving the river, we thundered on some

miles farther through the majestic primitive forest, and soon entered

upon a broad, wood-skirted prairie, over which here and there pretty

farm-houses and groves are scattered; and presently beheld, peeping out

from swelling hills and standing in the middle of a prosperous

settlement embowered in verdure, the slender white church-tower of

Aurora, and were at the end of our journey.

Our first course after we left the cars was to the tavern, standing

close to the railroad on a little hill, whither the passengers hurried

for lunch. This so-called "hotel," the best known and most famous, as

has already been said, in all Oregon, I might compare to an

old-fashioned inn. The long table with its spotless table-cloth was

lavishly spread with genuine German dishes, excellently cooked, and we

were waited on by comely and neatly-dressed German girls; and though the

dinner would not perhaps compare with the same meal at the club-house of

the "San Francisco" I must confess that it was incomparably the best I

ever tasted in Oregon, in which region neither the cooks nor the bills

of fare are usually of the highest order.

Dinner being over, we made inquiry for Doctor Keil, to whom we were now

ready to pay our respects. Our host pointed out to us the doctor's

dwelling-house, which looked, in the distance, like the premises of a

well-to-do Low-Dutch farmer; and after passing over a long stretch of

plank-road, we turned in the direction of the royal residence. On the

way we met several laborers just coming from the field, who looked as if

life went well with them--girls in short frocks with rake in hand, and

boys comfortably smoking their clay pipes--and received from all an

honest German greeting. Everything here had a German aspect--the houses

pleasantly shaded by foliage, the barns, stables and well-cultivated

fields, the flower and kitchen-gardens, the white church-steeple rising

from a green hill: nothing but the fences which enclose the fields

reminded us that we were in America.

The doctor's residence was surrounded by a high white picket-fence:

stately, widespreading live-oaks shaded it, and the spacious courtyard

had a neat and carefully-kept aspect. Crowing cocks, and hens each with

her brood, were scratching and picking about, the geese cackled, and

several well-trained dogs gave us a noisy welcome. Upon our asking for

the doctor, a friendly German matron directed us to the orchard, whither

we immediately turned our steps. A really magnificent sight met our

eyes--thousands of trees, whose branches, covered with the finest fruit,

were so loaded that it had been necessary to place props under many of

them, lest they should break beneath the weight of their luscious

burden.

Here we soon discovered the renowned doctor, in a toilette the very

opposite of regal, zealously engaged in gathering his apples. He was

standing on a high ladder, in his shirt sleeves, a cotton apron, a straw

hat, picking the rosy-cheeked fruit in a hand-basket. Several laborers

were busy under the trees assorting the gathered apples, and carefully

packing in boxes the choicest of them--really splendid specimens of this

fruit, which attains its utmost perfection in Oregon. As soon as the

doctor perceived us he came down from the ladder, and asked somewhat

sharply what our business there might be. My companion handed him the

letters of introduction he had brought with him, which the doctor read

attentively through: he then introduced my humble self as a literary man

and assistant editor of a well-known magazine, who had come to Oregon

for the special purpose of visiting Dr. Keil, and of inspecting his

colony, of which such favorable reports had reached us. Without waiting

for the doctor's reply, I asked him whether he were not a relative of

K----, the principal editor of the magazine to which I was attached. I

could scarcely, as it appeared, have hit upon a more opportune question,

for the doctor was evidently flattered, and became at once extremely

affable toward us. The relationship to which I had alluded he was

obliged unwillingly to disclaim. I learned from him that his name was

William Keil, and that he was born at Bleicherode in Prussian Saxony. He

now left the apple-gathering to his men, and offered to show us whatever

was interesting about the colony: as to the life-insurance project, he

said he would take some more convenient opportunity to speak with Mr.

Körner about it.

The doctor, who after this showed himself somewhat loquacious, was a man

of agreeable appearance, perhaps of about sixty years of age, with white

hair, a broad high forehead and an intelligent countenance. Sound as a

nut, powerfully built, of vigorous constitution and with an air of

authority, he gave the idea of a man born to rule. He seemed to wish to

make a good impression on us, and I remarked several times in him a

searching side-glance, as though he were trying to read our thoughts. He

sustained the entire conversation himself, and it was somewhat difficult

to follow his meaning: he spoke in an unctuous, oratorical tone, with

extreme suavity, in very general terms, and evaded all direct questions.

When I had listened to him for ten minutes I was not one whit wiser than

before. His language was not remarkably choice, and he used liberally a

mixture of words half English, half German, as uneducated

German-Americans are apt to do.

While we wandered through the orchard, the beauty and practical utility

of which astonished me, the doctor, gave us a lecture on colonization,

agriculture, gardening, horticulture, etc., which he flavored here and

there with pious reflections. He pointed out with pride that all this

was his own work, and described how he had transformed the wilderness

into a garden. In the year 1856 he came with forty followers to Oregon,

as a delegate from the parent association of Bethel in Missouri, in

order to found in the far West, then so little known, a branch colony.

At present the doctor is president both of Aurora and of the original

settlement at Bethel: the latter consists of about four hundred members,

the former of four hundred and ten.

When he first came into this region he found the whole district now

owned by his flourishing colony covered with marsh and forest. Instead,

however, of establishing himself on the prairies lying farther south, in

the midst of foreign settlers, he preferred a home shared only with his

German brethren in the primitive woods; and here, having at that time

very small means, he obtained from the government, gratis, land enough

to provide homes for his colonists, and found in the timber a source of

capital, which he at once made productive. He next proceeded to build a

block-house as a defence against the Indians, who at that time were

hostile in Oregon: then he erected a saw-mill and cleared off the

timber, part of which he used to build houses for his colonists, and

with part opened an advantageous trade with his American neighbors, who,

living on the prairie, were soon entirely dependent on him for all their

timber. The land, once cleared, was soon cultivated and planted, with

orchards: the finer varieties of fruit he shipped for sale to Portland

and San Francisco, and from the sour apples he either made vinegar or

sold them to the older settlers, who very soon made themselves sick on

them. He then attended them in the character of physician, and cured

them of their ailments at a good round charge. This joke the good doctor

related with especial satisfaction.

By degrees, the doctor continued to say, the number of colonists

increased; and his means and strength being thus enlarged, he

established a tannery, a factory, looms, flouring-mills, built more

houses for his colonists, cleared more land and drained the marshes,

increased his orchards, laid out new farms, gave some attention to

adornment, erected a church and school-houses, and purchased from the

American settlers in the neighborhood their best lands for a song. He

did everything systematically. He always assigned his colonists the sort

of labor that they appeared to him best fitted for, and each one found

the place best suited to his capabilities. If any one objected to doing

his will and obeying his orders, he was driven out of the colony, for he

would endure no opposition. He made the best leather, the best hams and

gathered the best crops in all Oregon. The possessions of the colony,

which he added to as he was able, extended already over twenty sections

(a section contains six hundred and forty acres, or an English square

mile), and the most perfect order and industry existed everywhere.

Thus the doctor; and amid this and the like conversation we walked over

an orchard covering forty acres. The eight thousand trees it contained

yielded annually five thousand bushels of choice apples and eight

thousand of the finest pears, and the crop increased yearly. The doctor

pointed out repeatedly the excellence of his culture in contrast with

the American mode, which leaves the weeds to grow undisturbed among the

trees, and disregards entirely all regularity and beauty. He, on the

contrary, insisted no less on embellishment than on neatness and order;

and this was no vain boast. Carefully-kept walks led through the

grounds; verdant turf, flowerbeds and charming shady arbors met us at

every turn; there were long beds planted with flourishing currant,

raspberry and blackberry bushes, and large tracts set with rows of

bearing vines, on which luscious grapes hung invitingly. Order also

reigned among the fruit trees: here were several acres of nothing but

apples, again a plantation of pears or apricots, beneath which not a

weed was to be seen: the hoe and the rake had done their work

thoroughly. Everything was in the most perfect order: the courtgardener

of a German prince might have been proud of it.

We seated ourselves in a shady arbor, where the doctor entertained us

further with an account of his religious belief. He had, he said, no

fixed creed and no established religion: there were in the colony

Protestants, Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, indeed Christians of every

name, and even Jews. Every one was at liberty to hold what faith he

pleased: he preached only natural religion, and whoever shaped his life

according to that would be happy. After this he enlarged on the

prosperity of the colony, which was founded on the principles of natural

religion, and prosed about humility, love to our neighbor, kindness and

carrying religion into everything; and then back he came to Nature and

himself, until my head was perfectly bewildered. I had given up long

before this, in despair, any questions as to the interior organization

of the colony, for the doctor either gave me evasive answers or none at

all. His colonists, he asserted, loved him as a father, and he cared for

them accordingly: both these assertions were undoubtedly true. The deep

respect with which those whom we occasionally met lifted their hats to

"the doctor"--a form of greeting by no means universal in America--bore

witness to their unbounded esteem for him. Toward us also they demeaned

themselves with great respect, as to noble strangers whom the doctor

deigned to honor with his society. As to his care for them, no one who

witnessed it could deny the exceedingly flourishing condition of the

settlement. Whether, however, in all this the doctor had not a keen eye

to his own interest was an afterthought which involuntarily presented

itself.

As we left the orchard, the doctor pointed out to us several

wheat-fields in the neighborhood, cultivated with true German love for

neatness, which formed, with the pleasant dwellings adjoining, separate

farms. The average yield per acre, he observed, was from twenty-five to

forty bushels of wheat, and from forty to fifty of oats. He then took us

into a neighboring grove, to a place where the pic-nics and holiday

feasts of the colony are held: here we paused near a grassy knoll shaded

by a sort of awning and surrounded by a moat. This, which bears the name

of "The Temple Hill," forms the centre of a number of straight roads,

which branch out from it into the woods in the shape of a fan. Not far

from it I noticed a dancing ground covered by a circular open roof, and

a pavilion for the music.

"At our public feasts," said the doctor, "I have all these branching

roads lighted with colored lanterns, and illuminate the temple, which,

with its brilliant lamps, makes quite an imposing spectacle. When we

celebrate our May-day festival it looks, after dark, like a scene out of

the _Arabian Nights_; and when, added to this, we have beautiful music

and fine singing, and the young folks are enjoying the dance, it is

really very pleasant. But none are permitted to set foot on the Temple

Hill, nor can they do it very easily if they would. Do you know the

reason, gentlemen?" Körner opined that it might be on account of the

ditch, which would be difficult to pass, in which view I agreed.

"Exactly so," remarked the doctor. "This Temple Hill has an especial

significance: it represents the sovereign ruler of the people, on whose

head no one may tread: on that account the ditch is there."

After a walk of several hours we returned to the doctor's house, where

he invited us to take a glass of homemade wine. As we had been informed

that the sale and use of wine and spirits were strictly forbidden in the

colony, this invitation was certainly an unprecedented exception. The

wine, of which two kinds were placed before us--one made of wild grapes,

and the other of currants--was very good, and was partaken of in the

doctor's office. Here Mr. Körner again brought forward his

life-insurance project: the doctor gave him hopes that he would go into

it, but he wished to give the matter due consideration, and to subject

the advantages and disadvantages of the speculation to a strict

investigation, before giving a definite answer; and with this ended our

visit to the "king of Aurora."

Before leaving the colony we obtained considerable information from the

members as to their interior organization and government, the results of

which, as well as what I further learned respecting Doctor Keil, I will

state briefly.

Should any one wish to become a member of the colony, he must, in the

first place, put all his ready money into the hands of Doctor Keil: he

will then be taken on trial. If the candidate satisfies the doctor, he

can remain and become one of the community: should this, however, not be

the case, he receives again the capital he paid in, but without

interest. How long he must remain "on probation" in the colony, and work

there, depends entirely on the doctor's pleasure. If a member leaves the

community voluntarily--a thing almost unheard of--he receives back his

capital without interest, together with a _pro rata_ share of the

earnings of the community during his membership, as appraised by the

doctor.

All the ordinary necessaries of life are supplied gratuitously to the

members of the community. The doctor holds the common purse, out of

which all purchases are paid for, and into which go the profits from the

agricultural and industrial products of the colony. If any member needs

a coat or other article of clothing, flour, sugar or tobacco, he can get

whatever he wants, without paying for it, at the "store:" in the same

way he procures meat from the butcher and bread from the baker: spirits

are forbidden except in case of sickness. The doctor also appoints the

occupation of each member, so as to contribute to the best welfare of

the colony--whether he shall be a farmer, a mechanic, a common laborer,

or whatever he can be most usefully employed in; and the time and

talents of each are regarded as belonging to the whole community,

subject only to the doctor's judgment. If a member marries, a separate

dwelling-house and a certain amount of land are assigned him, so that

the families of the settlement are scattered about on farms. The elders

of the colony support the doctor in the duties of his office by counsel

and assistance.

The lands of the colony are collectively recorded in Doctor Keil's name,

in order, as he says, to avoid intricate and complicated law-papers. It

would, however, be for the interest of the colonists to make, a speedy

change in this respect, so that the members of the community, in case of

the doctor's death, might obtain each his share of the lands without

litigation. Should the doctor's decease occur soon, before this

alteration is made, his natural heirs could claim the whole property of

the colony, and the members would be left in the lurch. He does not

appear, however, to be in great haste to effect this change, though it

ought to have been done long ago. It is always said among the colonists,

naturally enough, that all the ground is the common property of the

community. Whether the doctor fully subscribes to this opinion in his

secret heart might be a question.

Doctor Keil is at the same time the religious head and the unlimited

secular ruler of the colony of Aurora, and can ordain, with the consent

of the elders (who very naturally uphold his authority), what he

pleases. A life free from care and responsibility, such as the members

of the community (who, for the most part, belong to the lower and

uncultivated class) lead--a life in regard to which no one but the

doctor has the trouble of thinking--is the main ground of the

undisturbed continuance of the colony. The pre-eminent talent for

organization, combined with the unlimited powers of command, which the

doctor--justly named "king of Aurora"--possesses, together with the

inborn industry peculiar to Germans, is the cause of the prosperity of

the settlement, which calls itself communistic, but is certainly nothing

more than a vast farm belonging to its talented founder. It has its

schools, its churches, newspapers and books--the selection and tendency

of which the doctor sees to--and no lack of social pleasures, music and

singing. Taken together with an easily-procured livelihood, all this

satisfies the desires of the colonists entirely, and the good doctor

takes care of everything else.

ELIZABETH SILL.

GRAY EYES.

I have always counted it among the larger blessings of Providence that

a woman can bear up year after year under a weight of dullness which

would drive a man of the same mental calibre to desperation in a month.

I had no idea what a heavy burden mine had been until one day my brother

asked me to go to sea with him on his next voyage. He and his wife were

at the farm on their wedding-tour, and only the happiness of a

bridegroom could have led him to hold out to me this way of escape.

Christian's heart when he dropped his pack was not lighter than mine.

Butter and cheese are good things in their way--the world would miss

them if all the farmers' daughters went suddenly down to the sea in

ships--but it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and such had

been my feeling for some years.

So suddenly and completely did my threadbare endurance give way that if

Frank had revoked his words the next minute, I must have gone away at

once to some crowded place and drawn a few deep breaths of excitement

before I could have joined again the broken ends of my patience.

No bride-elect poor in this world's goods ever went about the

preparations for her wedding with more delicious awe than I felt in

turning one old gown upside down, and another inside out, for seafaring

use. There was excitement enough in the departure, the inevitable

sea-changes, and finally the memory of it all, to keep my mind busy for

a few weeks, but when we settled into the grooves of a tropical voyage,

wafted along as easily by the trade winds as if some gigantic hand,

unseen and steady, had us in its grasp, my life was wholly changed, and

yet it bore an odd family resemblance to the days at the farm. It was a

pleasant dullness, because, in the nature of things, it must soon have

an end.

I went on deck to look at a passing ship about as often as I used to run

to the window at the sound of carriagewheels. One can't take a very

intimate interest in whales and the other seamonsters unless one is

scientific. Time died with me a slow but by no means a painful death. I

used to fold my hands and look at them by the hour, internally

rollicking over the idea that there was no milk to skim or dishes to

wash, or any earthly wheel in motion that required my shoulder to turn

it. I spent much time in a half-awake state in the long warm days, out

of sheer delight in wasting time after saving it all my life.

So it came about that I slept lightly o' nights. Every morning the

steward came into the cabin with the first dawn of day to scour his

floors before the captain should appear. He had a habit of talking to

himself over this early labor, and one morning, more awake than usual, I

found that he was praying. "O Lord, be good to me! I wasn't to blame. I

would have helped her if I could. O Lord, be good to me!" and other

homely entreaties were repeated again and again.

He was a meek, bowed old negro, with snowy hair, and so many wrinkles

that all expression was shrunk out of his face. He was an excellent

cook, but he waited on table with a manner so utterly despairing that

it took away one's appetite to look at him.

For many mornings after this I listened to his prayers, which grew more

and more earnest and importunate. I could not think he had done any harm

with his own will. He must have been more sinned against than sinning.

He brought me a shawl one cool evening as if it were my death-warrant,

and I said, in the sepulchral tone that wins confidence, "Pedro, do you

always say your prayers when you are alone?"

"Yes, miss, 'board _this_ ship."

"What's the matter with, this ship?"

"I s'pose you don't have no faith in ghosts?"

"Not much."

"White folks mostly don't," said Pedro with aggravating meekness, and

turned into his pantry.

I followed him to the door, and stood in it so that he had no escape:

"What has that to do with your prayers?"

"This cabin has got a ghost in it."

I looked over my shoulder into the dusk, and shivered a little, which

was not lost on Pedro. He grew more solemn if possible than before: "I

see her 'most every morning, and if my back is to the door, I see her

all the same. She don't never touch me, but I keep at the prayers for

fear she will."

"Do you never see her except in the morning?"

"Once or twice she has just put her head out of the door of the middle

state-room when I was waitin' on table."

"In broad daylight?"

"Sartin. Them as sees ghosts sees 'em any time. Every morning, just at

peep o' day, she comes out of that door and makes a dive for the stairs.

She just gives me one look, and holds up her hand, and I don't see no

more of her till next time."

"How does she look?" I almost hoped he would not tell, but he did.

"She's got hair as black as a coal, kind o' pushed back, as if she'd

been runnin' her hands through it; she has big shiny eyes, swelled up as

she'd been cryin' a great while; and she's always got on a gray dress,

silvery-like, with a tear in one sleeve. There ain't nothin' more, only

a handkerchief tied round her wrist, as if it had been hurt."

"Is she handsome?"

"Mebbe white folks'd think so."

"Why does she show herself to you and no one else, do you suppose?"

"Didn't I tell you the reason before?"

"Of course you didn't."

"Well, you see, she looked just so the last time I seen her alive. I

must go and put in the biscuit now, miss."

I submitted, knowing that white folks may be hurried, but black ones

never; and I could not but admire the natural talent which Pedro shared

with the authors of continued stories, of always dropping the thread at

the most thrilling moment.

"Who was she?" said I, lying in wait for him on his return.

"She was cap'n's wife, miss--a young woman, and the cap'n was old, with

a blazing kind of temper. He was dreffle sweet on her for about a month,

and mebbe she was happy, mebbe she wa'n't: how should I know about white

folks' feelin's? All of a suddent he said she was sick and couldn't go

out of the middle state-room. The old man took in plenty of stuff to

eat, but he never let me go near her. We was on just such a v'y'ge as

this, only hotter. The cap'n would come out of that room lookin' black

as thunder, and everybody scudded out of his sight when he put his head

out of the gangway.

"He was always bad enough, but he got wuss and wuss, and nothin'

couldn't please him. Sometimes I'd hear the poor thing a-moaning to

herself like a baby that's beat out with loud cryin' and hain't got no

noise left. She was always cryin' in them days. Once the supercargo (he

was a cool hand, any way) give me a bit of paper very private to give to

her, and I slipped it under the door, but the old man had nailed

somethin' down inside, an' he found it afore she did. Then there was a

regular knockdown fight, and the supercargo was put in irons. The old

man was in the middle room a long time that day, talkin' in a hissin'

kind of a way, and the missus got a blow. Just after that a sort of a

white squall struck the ship, and the old man give just the wrong

orders. You see, he was clean out of his head. He got so worked up at

last that he fell down in a fit, and they bundled him into his

state-room and left him, 'cause nobody cared whether he was dead or

alive. The mate took the irons off the supercargo first thing, and broke

open the middle room. The supercargo went in there and stayed a long

time, whispering to the missus, and she cried more'n ever, only it

sounded different.

"Toward night the old man come to, and begun to ask questions--as ugly

as ever, only as weak as a baby. 'Bout midnight I was comin' out of his

room, and I seen the missus in a gray dress, with her eyes shinin' like

coals of fire, dive out of her room and up the stairs, and nobody never

seen her afterward. The next morning the supercargo was gone too, and I

think they just drownded themselves, 'cause they couldn't bear to live

any more without each other. Mebbe the mate knew somethin' about it, but

he never let on, and I dunno no more about it; only the old man had

another fit when he heard it, and died without no mourners."

"It might be she was saved, after all," I said, with true Yankee

skepticism.

"Then why should I see her ghost, if she ain't dead-drownded?"

"Did you never find anything in the state-room that would explain?"

"Well, I did find some bits of paper, but I couldn't read writin'."

"Oh, what did you do with them?" I insisted, quivering with excitement.

"You won't tell the cap'n?"

"No, never."

"You'll give 'em back to me?"

"Yes, yes--of course."

"Here they be," he said, opening his shirt, and showing a little bag

hung round his neck like an amulet. He took out a little wad of brown

paper, and gave it jealously into my hand.

"I will give it back to you to-night," I said with the solemnity of an

oath, and carried it to my room.

It proved to be a short and fragmentary account of the sufferings which

the "missus" had endured in the middle room, written in pencil on coarse

wrapping-paper, and bearing marks of trembling hands and frequent tears.

I thought I might copy the papers without breaking faith with Pedro. The

outside paper bore these words:

"Whoever finds this is besought for pity's sake, by its most unhappy

writer, to send it as soon as possible to Mrs. Jane Atwood of

Davidsville, Connecticut, United States of America."

Then followed a letter to her mother:

Dearest Mother: If I never see your blessed face again, I know you will

not believe me guilty of what my husband accuses me of. I married

Captain Eliot for your sake, believing, since Herbert had proved

faithless, that no comfort was left to me except in pleasing others. I

meant to be a good wife to Captain Eliot, and I believe I should have

kept my vow all my days if the most unfortunate thing had not wakened

his jealousy. Since then he has been almost or quite crazed.

I knew we had a supercargo of whom Captain Eliot spoke highly. He kept

his room for a month from sea-sickness, and when he came out it was

Herbert. Of course I knew him, every line of his face had been so long

written on my heart. I strove to treat him as if I had never seen him

before, but the old familiar looks and tones were very hard to bear. If

Herbert could only have submitted patiently to our fate! But it was not

in him to be patient under anything, and one evening, when I was sitting

alone on deck, he must needs pour out his soul in one great burst,

trying to prove that he had never deserted me, but only circumstances

had been cruel. I longed to believe him, but I could only keep repeating

that it was too late.

When I went down, Captain Eliot dragged me into the middle state-room,

and gave vent to his jealous feelings. He must have listened to all that

Herbert had said. His last words were that I should never leave that

room alive. I had a wretched night, and the first time I fell into an

uneasy sleep I started suddenly up to find my husband flashing the light

of a lantern across my eyes. "Handsome and wicked," he muttered--"they

always go together."

I begged him to listen to the story of my engagement to Herbert, and he

did listen, but it did not soften his heart. If he ever loved me, his

jealousy has swallowed it up.

I have been in this room just a week. My husband does not starve or beat

me, but his taunts and threats are fearful, and his eyes when he looks

at me grow wild, as if he had the longing of a beast to tear me in

pieces.

* * * * *

_May_ 10. I placed a copy of the paper that is pinned to this letter in

a little bottle that had escaped my husband's search, and threw it out

of my window.

I am Waitstill Atwood Eliot, wife of Captain Eliot of the ship Sapphire.

I have been kept in solitary confinement and threatened with death for

four weeks, for no just cause. I believe him to be insane, as he

constantly threatens to burn or sink the ship. I pray that this paper

may be picked up by some one who will board this ship and bring me help.

Of course it is a most forlorn hope, but it keeps me from utter despair.

20. Herbert tried to communicate with me by slipping a paper under the

door, but I did not get it, and he has been put in irons. Captain Eliot

boasts of it. I wish he would bind us together and let us drown in one

another's arms, as they did in the Huguenot persecution.

28. A little paper tied to a string hung in front of my bull's-eye

window to-day: I took it in. The first officer had lowered it down:

"Captain Eliot says you are ill, but I don't believe it. If he tries

violence, scream, and I will break open the door. I am always on the

watch. Keep your heart up."

This is a drop of comfort in my black cup, but my little window was

screwed down within an hour after I had read the paper.

_June_ 10. My spirit is worn out: I can endure no more. I have begged my

husband to kill me and end my misery. I don't know why he hesitated. He

means to do it some time, but perhaps he cannot think of torture

exquisite enough for his purpose.

11. My husband came in about four in the afternoon, looking so

vindictive that my heart stood still. He gradually worked himself into a

frenzy, and aimed a blow at my head: instinct, rather than the love of

life, made me parry it, and I got the stroke on my wrist.

I screamed, and at the same moment there was a tumult on deck, and the

ship quivered as if she too had been violently struck. Captain Eliot

rushed on deck, and began to give hurried orders. I could hear the first

officer contradict them, and then there was a heavy fall, and two or

three men stumbled down the cabin stairs, carrying some weight between

them.

_Later_. My husband is helpless, and Herbert has been with me, urging me

passionately to trust myself to him in a little boat at midnight. He

says there are several ships in sight, and one of them will be almost

sure to pick us up. He swears that he will leave me, and never see me

again (if I say so), so soon as he has placed me in safety, but he will

save me, by force if need be, from the brute into whose hands I fell so

innocently. If the ship does not see us, it is but dying, after all.

Good-bye, mother! I pray that this paper will reach you before Captain

Eliot can send you his own account, but if it does not, you will believe

me innocent all the same.

This was the last, and I folded up the papers as they had come to me.

That night I read them all to Pedro.

"They was drownded--I knew it," said Pedro; and nothing could remove

that opinion. A ghost is more convincing than logic.

Our voyage wore on, with one day just like another: my brother looked at

the sun every day, and put down a few cabalistic figures on a slate, but

his steady business was reading novels to his wife and drinking weak

claret and water.

The sea was always the same, smiling and smooth, and the "man at the

wheel" seemed to be always holding us back by main strength from the

place where we wanted to go. I had a growing belief that we should sail

for ever on this rippling mirror and never touch the frame of it. It

struck me with a sense of intense surprise when a dark line loomed far

ahead, and they told me quietly that that line meant Bombay.

It seemed a matter of course to my brother that the desired port should

heave in sight just when he expected it, but to me the efforts that he

had made to accomplish this tremendous result were ridiculously small.

"I have done more work in a week, and had nothing to show for it at

last," said I, "than you have seemed to do in all this voyage."

"Poor sister! don't you wish you were a man?"

"Certainly, all women do who have any sense. I hold with that ancient

Father of the Church who maintained that all women are changed into men

on the judgment-day. The council said it was heresy, but that don't

alter my faith."

"I shouldn't like you half as well if you had been born a boy," said

Frank.

"But I should like myself vastly better," said I, clinging to the last

word.

Bombay is a city by itself: there is none like it on earth, whatever

there may be in the heaven above or in the waters under it. From Sir

Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy's hospital for sick animals to the Olympian conceit

of the English residents, there are infinite variations of people and

things that I am persuaded can be matched nowhere else. I felt myself

living in a series of pictures, a sort of supernumerary in a theatre,

where they changed the play every night.

One of the first who boarded our ship was Mr. Rayne, an old friend of

Frank's. He insisted on our going to his house for a few days in a

warm-hearted way that was irresistible.

"Are you quite sure you want _me_?" I said dubiously. "Young married

people make a kind of heaven for themselves, and do not want old maids

looking over the wall."

"But you _must_ go with us," said Frank, man-like, never seeing anything

but the uppermost surface of a question.

"Not at all. I'm quite strong-minded enough to stay on board ship; or,

if that would not do in this heathen place, the missionaries are always

ready to entertain strangers. A week in the missionhouse would make me

for ever a shining light in the sewing circle at home.

"A woman of so many resources would be welcome anywhere. For my part, an

old maid is a perfect Godsend. The genus is unknown here, and the loss

to society immense," said Mr. Rayne.

"But what shall I do when Mrs. Rayne and my sister-in-law are comparing

notes about the perfections of their husbands?"

"Walk on the verandah with me and convert me to woman suffrage."

Mr. Rayne had his barouche waiting on shore, and drove us first to the

bandstand, where, in the coolness of sunset, all the Bombay world meet

to see and to be seen. When the band paused, people drove slowly round

the circle, seeking acquaintance. Among them one equipage was perfect--a

small basket-phaeton, and two black ponies groomed within an inch of

their lives. My eyes fell on the ponies first, but I saw them no more

when the lady who drove them turned her face toward me.

She wore a close-fitting black velvet habit and a little round hat with

long black feather. Her hair might have been black velvet, too, as it

fell low on her forehead, and was fastened somehow behind in a heavy

coil. Black brows and lashes shaded clear gray eyes--the softest gray,

without the least tint of green in them--such eyes as Quaker maidens

ought to have under their gray bonnets. Little rose colored flushes kept

coming and going in her cheeks as she talked.

All at once I thought of Queen Guinevere,

As she fled fast thro' sun and shade,

With jingling bridle-reins.

"Mr. Rayne, do you see that lady in black, with the ponies?"

"Plainly."

"If I were a man, that woman would be my Fate."

"I thought women never admired each other's beauty."

"You are mistaken. Heretofore I have met beautiful women only in poetry.

Do you remember four lines about Queen Guinevere?--no, six lines, I

mean:

"She looked so lovely as she swayed

The rein with dainty finger-tips,

A man had given all other bliss,

And all his worldly worth for this,

To waste his whole heart in one kiss

Upon her perfect lips.

"I always thought them overstrained till now."

"I perfectly agree with you," said Mr. Rayne: "I knew we were congenial

spirits." Then he said a word or two in a diabolical language to his

groom, who ran to the carriage which I had been watching and repeated it

to the lady: she bowed and smiled to Mr. Rayne, and soon drew up her

ponies beside us.

"My wife," said Mr. Rayne with laughter in his eyes.

Mrs. Rayne talked much like other people, and her beauty ceased to

dazzle me after a few minutes; not that it grew less on near view, but,

being a woman, I could not fall in love with her in the nature of

things.

When the music stopped we drove to Mr. Rayne's house, his wife keeping

easily beside us. When she was occupied with the others Mr. Rayne

whispered, "Her praises were so sweet in my ears that I would not own

myself Sir Lancelot at once."

"If you are Sir Lancelot," I said, "where is King Arthur?"

"Forty fathoms deep, I hope," said Mr. Rayne with a sudden change in his

voice and a darkening face. I had raised a ghost for him without knowing

it, and he spoke no more till we reached the house.

It was a long, low, spreading structure with a thatched roof, and a

verandah round it. A wilderness of tropical plants hemmed it in. But all

appearance of simplicity vanished on our entrance. In the matted hall

stood a tree to receive the light coverings we had worn; not a "hat

tree," as we say at home by poetic license, but the counterfeit

presentment of a real tree, carved in branches and delicate foliage out

of black wood. The drawing-room was eight-sided, and would have held,

with some margin, the gambrel-roofed house, chimneys and all, in which I

had spent my life. Two sides were open into other rooms, with Corinthian

pillars reaching to the roof. Carved screens a little higher than our

heads filled the space between the pillars, and separated the

drawing-room from Mrs. Rayne's boudoir on the side and the dining-room

on the other.

The furniture of these rooms was like so many verses of a poem. Every

chair and table had been designed by Mrs. Rayne, and then realized in

black wood by the patient hands of natives.

Another side opened by three glass doors on a verandah, and only a few

rods below the house the sea dashed against a beach.

After dinner I sat on the verandah drinking coffee and the sea-breeze by

turns. The gentlemen walked up and down smoking the pipe of peace, while

Mrs. Rayne sat within, talking with Rhoda in the candlelight. Opposite

me, as I looked in at the open door, hung two Madonnas, the Sistine and

the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception. In front of each stood a tall

flower-stand carved to imitate the leaves and blossoms of the calla

lily. These black flowers held great bunches of the Annunciation lily,

sacred to the Virgin through all the ages. Mrs. Rayne had taken off the

close-buttoned jacket, and her dress was now open at the throat, with

some rich old lace clinging about it and fastened with a pearl daisy.

"Have you forgiven me the minute's deception I put upon you?" said Mr.

Rayne, pausing beside me. "If I had not read admiration in your face, I

would have told you the truth at once."

"How could one help admiring her?"

"I don't know, I'm sure: I never could."

"She has the serenest face, like still, shaded water. I wonder how she

would look in trouble?"

"It is not becoming to her."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite."

"Your way of life here seems so perfect! No hurry nor worry--nothing to

make wrinkles."

"You like this smooth Indian living, then?"

"_Like it_! I hope you won't think me wholly given over to love of

things that perish in the using, but if I could live this sort of life

with the one I liked best, heaven would be a superfluity."

"It is heaven indeed when I think of the purgatory from which we came

into it," said Mr. Rayne, throwing away his cigar and carrying off my

coffee-cup.

"Do you know anything of Mrs. Rayne's history before her marriage?" I

said to Frank as I joined him in his walk.

"Nothing to speak of--only she was a widow."

"Oh!" said I, feeling that a spot or two had suddenly appeared on the

face of the sun.

"That's nothing against her, is it?"

"No, but I have no patience with second marriages."

"Nor first ones, either," said Frank wickedly.

"But seriously, Frank--would you like to have a wife so beautiful as

Mrs. Rayne?"

"Yes, if she had Rhoda's soul inside of her," said Frank stoutly.

"I shouldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because all sorts of eyes gloat on her beauty and drink it in, and in

one way appropriate it to themselves. Mr. Rayne is as proud of the

admiration given to his wife as if it were a personal tribute to his own

taste in selecting her. A beautiful woman never really and truly belongs

to her husband unless he can keep a veil over her face, as the Turks

do."

"I knew you had 'views,'" said Mr. Rayne behind me, "but I had no idea

they were so heathenish. What is New England coming to under the new

rule? Are the plain women going to shut up all the handsome ones?"

"I was only supposing a case."

"Suppositions are dangerous. You first endure, then dally with them, and

finally embrace them as established facts."

"I was only saying that if I am a man when I come into the world next

time (as the Hindoos say), I shall marry a plain woman with a charming

disposition, and so, as it were, have my diamond all to myself by reason

of its dull cover."

"Jealousy, thy name is woman!" said Mr. Rayne. "When the Woman's

Republic is set up, how I shall pity the handsome ones!"

"They will all be banished to some desert island," said Frank.

"And draw all men after them, as the 'Pied Piper of Hamelin' did the

rats," said Mr. Rayne.

"What are you talking about?" said Mrs. Rayne, joining us at this point.

"The pity of it," said her husband, "that beauty is only skin deep."

"That is deep enough," said Mrs. Rayne.

"Yes, if age and sickness and trouble did not make one shed it so soon,"

said I ungratefully.

"Don't mention it," said Mrs. Rayne--"'tis bad enough when it comes. Do

you remember that Greek woman in _Lothair,_ whose father was so

fearfully rich that she seemed to be all crusted with precious stones?"

"Perfectly."

"To dance and sing was all she lived for, and Lothair must needs bring

in the skeleton, as you did, by reminding her of the dolorous time when

she would neither dance nor sing. You think she is crushed, to be sure,

only Disraeli's characters never are crushed, any more than himself. 'Oh

then,' she says, 'we will be part of the audience, and other people will

dance and sing for us.' So beauty is always with us, though one person

loses it."

She gave a little shrug of her shoulders, which made her pearls and

velvet shimmer in the moonlight. She looked so white and cool and

perfect, so apart from common clay, that all at once Queen Guinevere

ceased to be my type of her, and I thought of "Lilith, first wife of

Adam," as we see her in Rossetti's fanciful poem:

Not a drop of her blood was human,

But she was made like a soft, sweet woman.

We all went to our rooms after this, and in each of ours hung a

full-length swinging mirror; I had never seen one before, except in a

picture-shop or in a hotel.

"Truly this is 'richness'!" I said, walking up and down and sideways

from one to the other.

"I had no idea you had so much vanity," said Frank, laughing at me, as

he has done ever since he was born.

"Vanity! not a spark. I am only seeing myself as others see me, for the

first time."

"I always had a glass like that in my room at home," said my

sister-in-law, with the least morsel of disdain in her tone.

"Had you? Then you have lost a great deal by growing up to such things.

A first sensation at my age is delightful."

Next day Rhoda and I were sitting with Mrs. Rayne in her dressing-room,

with a great fan swinging overhead. We all had books in our hands, but I

found more charming reading in my hostess, whose fascinations hourly

grew upon me.

She wore a long loose wrapper, clear blue in color, with little silver

stars on it. I don't know how much of my admiration sprang from her

perfect taste in dress. Raiment has an extraordinary effect on the whole

machinery of life. Most people think too lightly of it. Somebody says if

Cleopatra's nose had been a quarter of an inch shorter, the history of

the world would have been utterly changed; but Antony might equally have

been proof against a robe with high neck and tight sleeves. Mrs. Rayne's

face always seemed to crown her costume like a rose out of green leaves,

yet I cannot but think that if I had seen her first in a calico gown and

sitting on a three-legged stool milking a cow, I should still have

thought her a queen among women.

While I sat like a lotos-eater, forgetful of home and butter-making, a

servant brought in a parcel and a note. Mrs. Rayne tossed the note to me

while she unfolded a roll of gray silk.

Dear Guinevere: I send with this a bit of silk that old Fut'ali insisted

on giving to me this morning. It is that horrid gray color which we both

detest. I know you will never wear it, and you had better give it to

Miss Blake to make a toga for her first appearance in the women's

Senate. LANCELOT.

"With all my heart!" said Mrs. Rayne as I gave back the note. "You will

please us both far more than you can please yourself by wearing the

dress with a thought of us. I wonder why Mr. Rayne calls me 'Guinevere'?

But he has a new name for me every day, because he does not like my

own."

"What is it?"

"Waitstill. Did you ever hear it?"

"Never but once," I said with a sudden tightness in my throat. I could

scarcely speak my thanks for the dress.

"I should never wear it," said Mrs. Rayne: "the color is associated with

a very painful part of my life."

"Do you suppose water would spot it?" asked Rhoda, who is of a practical

turn of mind.

"Take a bit and try it."

"Water spots some grays" said Mrs. Rayne with a strange sort of smile as

Rhoda went out, "especially salt water. I spent one night at sea in an

open boat, with a gray dress clinging wet and salt to my limbs. When I

tore it off in rags I seemed to shed all the misery I had ever known.

All my life since then has been bright as you see it now. It would be a

bad omen to put on a gray gown again."

"Then you have made a sea-voyage, Mrs. Rayne?"

"Yes, such a long voyage!--worse than the 'Ancient Mariner's.' No words

can tell how I hate the sea." She sighed deeply, with a sudden darkening

of her gray eyes till they were almost black, and grasped one wrist hard

with the other hand.

A sudden trembling seized me. I was almost as much agitated as Mrs.

Rayne. I felt that I must clinch the matter somehow, but I took refuge

in a platitude to gain time: "There is such a difference in ships,

almost as much as in houses, and the comfort of the voyage depends

greatly on that."

"It may be so," she said wearily.

"My brother's ship is old, but it has been refitted lately to something

like comfort. It's old name was the Sapphire."

This was my shot, and it hit hard.

"The Sapphire! the Sapphire!" she whispered with dilated eyes. "Did you

ever hear--did you ever find--But what nonsense! You must think me the

absurdest of women."

The color came back to her face, and she laughed quite naturally.

"The fact is, Miss Blake, I was very ill and miserable when I was on

shipboard, and to this day any sudden reminder of it gives me a

shock.--Did water spot it?" she said to Rhoda, who came in at this

point.

I thought over all the threads of the circumstance that had come into my

hand, and like Mr. Browning's lover I found "a thing to do."

The next morning I made an excuse to go down to the ship with my

brother, and there, by dint of pressure, I got those stained and dingy

papers into my possession again. I had only that day before me, for we

were going to a hotel the same evening, and the Raynes were to set out

next day for their summer place among the hills, a long way back of

Bombay. Our stay had already delayed their departure.

This was my plot: Mrs. Rayne had been reading a book that I had bought

for the home-voyage, and was to finish it before evening. I selected the

duplicate of the paper which "Waitstill Atwood Eliot" had put in a

bottle and cast adrift when her case had been desperate, and laid it in

the book a page or two beyond Mrs. Rayne's mark. It seemed impossible

that she could miss it: I watched her as a chemist watches his first

experiment.

Twice she took up the book, and was interrupted before she could open

it: the third time she sat down so close to me that the folds of her

dress touched mine. One page, two pages: in another instant she would

have turned the leaf, and I held my breath, when a servant brought in a

note. Her most intimate friend had been thrown from her carriage, and

had sent for her. It was a matter of life and death, and brooked no

delay. In ten minutes she had bidden us a cordial good-bye, and dropped

out of my life for all time.

She never finished _my_ book, nor I _hers_. I had had it in my heart, in

return for her warm hospitality, to cast a great stone out of her past

life into the still waters of her present, and her good angel had turned

it aside just before it reached her. I might have asked Mr. Rayne in so

many words if his wife's name had been Waitstill Atwood Eliot when he

married her, but that would have savored of treachery to her, and I

refrained.

Often in the long calm days of the home-voyage, and oftener still in the

night-watches, I pondered in my heart the items of Mrs. Rayne's history,

and pieced them together like bits of mosaic--the gray eyes and the gray

dress, the identity of name, the indefinite terrors of her sea-voyage,

the little touch concerning Lancelot and Guinevere, her emotion when I

mentioned the Sapphire. If circumstantial evidence can be trusted, I

feel certain that Pedro's ghost appeared to me in the flesh.

ELLA WILLIAMS THOMPSON.

REMINISCENCES OF FLORENCE.

I had six months more to stay on the Continent, and I began for the

first time to be discontented in Paris. There was no soul in that great

city whom I had ever seen before, but this alone would hot have been

sufficient to make me long for a change, except for an accident which

unluckily surrounded me with my own countrymen. These I did not go

abroad to see; and having lived almost entirely in the society of the

French for over two years, it was with dismay that I saw my sanctum

invaded daily by twos and threes of the aimless American nonentities who

presume that their presence must be agreeable to any of their

countrymen, and especially to any countrywoman, after a chance

introduction on the boulevard or an hour spent together in a café.

"Seeing these things," I determined to leave Paris, and the third day

after found me traveling through picturesque Savoy toward Mont Cenis.

All the afternoon the rugged hills had been growing higher and whiter

with snow, and now, just before sunset, we reached the railway terminus,

St. Michel, and were under the shadow of the Alps themselves.

The previous night in the cars I had found myself the only woman among

some half dozen French military officers, who paid me the most polite

attention. They were charmed that I made no objection to their

cigarettes, talked with me on various topics, criticised McClellan as a

general, and were enthusiastic on the subject of our country generally.

About midnight they prepared a grand repast from their traveling-bags,

to which they gave me a cordial invitation. I begged to contribute my

_mesquin_ supply of grapes and brioches, and the supper was a

considerable event. Their canteens were filled with red wines, and one

cup served the whole company. They drank my health and that of the

President of the United States. Afterward we had vocal music, two of the

officers being good singers. They sang Beranger's songs and the charming

serenade from _Lalla Rookh_. I finally expressed a desire to hear the

Marseillaise. This seemed to take them by surprise, but one of the

singers, declaring that he had _"rien à refuser à madame"_ boldly struck

up,

Allons, enfants de la patrie,

Le jour de gloire est arrivé;

but his companions checked him before he had finished the first stanza.

The law forbade, they said, the production of the Marseillaise in

society. We were a society: the guard would hear us and might report it.

"Vous voyez, madame," said the singer, "n'il n'est pas défendu d'être

voleur, mais c'est défendu d'être attrapé" (It is not against the law to

be a thief, but to be caught.)

My traveling--companions reached their destination early in the morning,

and, very gallantly expressing regrets that they were not going over the

Alps, so as to bear mer company, bade me farewell.

From the rear of the St. Michel hotel, called the Lion d'Or, I watched

the preparations for crossing Mont Cenis. Three diligences were being

crazily loaded with our baggage. The men who loaded them seemed

imitating the Alpine structure. They piled trunk on trunk to the height

of thirty feet, I verily believe; and if some one should nudge my elbow

and say "fifty," I should write it down so without manifesting the least

surprise.

When the preparations were finished the setting sun was shining clearly

on the white summits above, and we commenced slowly winding up the noble

zigzag road. Rude mountain children kept up with our diligences, asked

for sous and wished us _bon voyage_ in the name of the Virgin.

The grandeur, but especially the extent and number, of the Alpine peaks

impressed me with a vague, undefinable sense, which was not, I think,

the anticipated sensation; and indeed if I had been in a poetic mood, it

would have been quickly dissipated by the mock raptures of a young

Englishman with a poodly moustache and an eye-glass. He called our

attention to every chasm, gorge and waterfall, as if we had been wholly

incapable of seeing or appreciating anything without his aid. As for me,

I did not feel like disputing his susceptibility. I was suffering an

uneasy apprehension of an avalanche--not of snow, but of trunks and

boxes from the topheavy diligences ahead of us. However, we reached the

top of Mont Cenis safely by means of thirteen mules to each coach,

attached tandem, and we stopped at the queer relay-house there some

thirty minutes. Here some women in the garb of nuns served me some soup

with grated cheese, a compound which suggested a dishcloth in flavor,

yet it was very good. I will not attempt to reconcile the two

statements. After the soup I went out to see the Alps. The ecstatic

Briton was still eating and drinking, and I could enjoy the scene

unmolested. I crossed a little bridge near the inn. The night was cold

and bright. Hundreds of snowy peaks above, below and in every direction,

some of their hoary heads lost in the clouds, were glistening in the

light of a clear September moon, and the stillness was only broken by a

wild stream tumbling down the precipices which I looked up to as I

crossed the bridge. It was indeed an impressive scene--cold, desolate,

awful. I walked so near the freezing cataract that the icicles touched

my face, and thinking that Dante, when he wrote his description of hell,

might have been inspired by this very scene, I wrapped my cloak closer

about me and went back to the inn.

The diligences were ready, and we commenced a descent which I cannot

even now think of without a shudder. To each of those heavily-laden

stages were attached two horses only, and we bounded down the

mountain-side like a huge loosened boulder. Imagine the sensation as

you looked out of the windows and saw yourself whirling over yawning

chasms and along the brinks of dizzy precipices, fully convinced that

the driver was drunk and the horses goaded to madness by Alpine demons!

I have been on the ocean in a storm sufficiently severe to make Jew and

Christian pray amicably together; I have been set on fire by a fluid

lamp, and have been dragged under the water by a drowning friend, but I

think I never had such an alarming sense of coming destruction as in

that diligence. I think of those sure-footed horses even now with

gratitude.

We arrived at Susa a long time before daylight. At first, I decided to

stay and see this town, which was founded by a Roman colony in the time

of Augustus. The arch built in his honor about eight years before Christ

seemed a thing worth going to see; but a remark from my companion with

the eye-glass made me determine to go on. He said he was going to "do"

the arch, and I knew I should not be equal to witnessing any more of his

ecstasies.

My first astonishment in Italy was that hardly any of the railroad

officials spoke French. I had always been told that with that language

at your command you could travel all over the Continent. This is a grave

error: even in Florence, although "Ici on parle français" is conspicuous

in many shop-windows, I found I had to speak Italian or go unserved. I

had a mortal dread of murdering the beautiful Italian language; so I

wanted to speak it well before I commenced, like the Irishman who never

could get his boots on until he had worn them a week.

I stopped at Turin, then the capital of Italy, only a short time, and

hurried on to Florence, for that was to be my home for the winter. It

was delightful to come down from the Alpine snows and find myself face

to face with roses and orange trees bearing fruit and blossom. Here I

wandered through the olive-gardens alone, and gave way to the rapturous

sense of simply being in the land of art and romance, the land of love

and song; for there was no ecstatic person with me armed with _Murray_

and prepared to admire anything recommended therein. Besides, I could

enjoy Italy for days and months, and therefore was not obliged to "do"

(detestable tourist slang!) anything in a given time. I was free as a

bird. I knew no Americans in Florence, and determined to studiously

avoid making acquaintances except among Italians, for I wished to learn

the language as I had learned French, by constantly speaking it and no

other.

The day following my arrival in Florence I went out to look for

lodgings, which I had the good fortune to find immediately. I secured

the first I looked at. They were in the Borgo SS. Apostoli, in close

proximity to the Piazza del Granduca, now Delia Signoria. I was passing

this square, thinking of my good luck in finding my niche for the

winter, when, much to my surprise, some one accosted me in English.

Think of my dismay at seeing one of the irrepressible Paris bores I had

fled from! He was in Florence before me, having come by a different

route; and neither of us had known anything about the other's intention

to quit Paris. He asked me at once where I was stopping, and I told him

at the Hotel a la Fontana, not deeming it necessary to add that I was

then on my way there to pack up my traveling-bag and pay my bill. As he

was "doing" Florence in about three days, he never found me out. The

next I heard of him he was "doing" Rome. This American prided himself on

his knowledge of Italian; and one day in a restaurant, wishing for

cauliflower _(cavolo fiore)_, he astonished the waiter by calling for

_horse. "Cavallo"!_ he roared--"_Portéz me cavallo!_" "Cavallo!"

repeated the waiter, with the characteristic Italian shrug. "_Non

simangia in Italia, signore_" (It is not eaten in Italy, signore). Then

followed more execrable Italian, and the waiter brought him something

which elicited "_Non volo! non volo!_" (I don't fly! I don't fly!) from

the American, and "_Lo credo, signore_" from the baffled waiter, much to

the amusement of people at the adjacent tables.

I liked my new quarters very much. They consisted of two goodly-sized

rooms, carpeted with thick braided rag carpets, and decently furnished,

olive oil provided for the quaint old classic-shaped lamp, and the rooms

kept in order, for the astounding price of thirty francs a month. Wood I

had to pay extra for when I needed a fire, and that indeed was

expensive; for a bundle only sufficient to make a fire cost a franc.

There were few days, however, even in that exceptional winter, which

rendered a fire necessary. The _scaldino_ for the feet was generally

sufficient, and this, replenished three times a day, was included in the

rent.

One of my windows looked out on olive-gardens and on the old church San

Miniato, on the hill of the same name. Mr. Hart, the sculptor, told me

that those rooms were very familiar to him. Buchanan Read, I think he

said, had occupied them, and the walls in many places bore traces of

artist vagaries. There were several nice caricatures penciled among the

cheap frescoes of the walls. All the walls are frescoed in Florence.

Think of having your ceiling and walls painted in a manner that

constantly suggests Michael Angelo!

After some weeks spent in looking at the art-wonders in Florence, I

visited many of the studios of our artists. That of Mr. Hart, on the

Piazza Independenza, was one of the most interesting. He had two very

admirable busts of Henry Clay, and all his visitors, encouraged by his

frank manner, criticised his works freely. Most people boldly pass

judgment on any work of art, and "understand" Mrs. Browning when she

says the Venus de' Medici "thunders white silence." I do not. I am sure

I never can understand what a thundering silence means, whatever may be

its color. These appreciators talked of the "word-painting" of Mrs.

Browning.

They sit on their thrones in a purple sublimity,

And grind down men's bones to a pale unanimity.

I suppose this is "word-painting." I can see the picture

also--some kings, and possibly queens, seated on gorgeous thrones,

engaged in the festive occupation of grinding bones! Oh, I degrade the

subject, do I? Nonsense! The term is a stilted affectation, perhaps

never better applied than to Mrs. Browning's descriptive spasms. Still,

she was undoubtedly a poet. She wrote many beautiful subjective poems,

but she wrote much that was not poetry, and which suggests only a

deranged nervous system. I have a friend who maintains from her writings

that she never loved, that she did not know what passion meant. However

this may be, the author of the sonnet commencing--

Go from me! Yet I feel that I shall stand

Henceforward in thy shadow,

deserves immortality.

But to return to Mr. Hart's studio. One of the most remarkable things I

saw in Florence was this artist's invention to reduce certain details of

sculpture to a mechanical process. This machine at first sight struck me

as a queer kind of ancient armor. In brief, the subject is placed in

position, when the front part of this armor, set on some kind, of hinge,

swings round before him, and the sculptor makes measurements by means of

numberless long metal needles, which are so arranged as to run in and

touch the subject: A stationary mark is placed where the needle touches,

and then I think it is pulled back. So the artist goes on, until some

hundreds of measurements are made, if necessary, when the process is

finished and the subject is released. How these measurements are made to

serve the artist in modeling the statue I cannot very well describe, but

I understood that by their aid Mr. Hart had modeled a bust from life in

the incredible space of two days! I further understood that Mr. Hart's

portrait-busts are remarkable for their correct likeness, which of

course they must be if they are mathematically correct in their

proportions. Many of the artists in Florence have the bad taste to make

sport of this machine; but if Mr. Hart's portrait-busts are what they

have the reputation of being, this sport is only a mask for jealousy.

Mr. Hart was extremely sensitive to the light manner Mr. Powers and

others have of speaking of this invention. One day he was much annoyed

when a visitor, after examining the machine very attentively for some

time, exclaimed, "Mr. Hart, what if you should have a man shut in there

among those points, and he should happen to sneeze?"

The Pitti Palace was one of my favorite haunts, and I often spent whole

hours there in a single salon. There I almost always saw Mr. G----, a

German-American, copying from the masters; and he could copy too! What

an indefatigable worker he was! Slight and delicate of frame, he seemed

absolutely incapable of growing weary. He often toiled there all day

long, his hands red and swollen with the cold, for the winter, as I have

before remarked, was unusually severe. For many days I saw him working

on a Descent from the Cross by Tintoretto--a bold attempt, for

Tintoretto's colors are as baffling as those of the great Venetian

master himself. This copy had received very general praise, and one day

I took a Lucca friend, a dilettante, to see it. Mr. G---- brought the

canvas out in the hall, that we might see it outside of the ocean of

color which surrounded it in the gallery. When we reached the hall, Mr.

G---- turned the picture full to the light. The effect was astounding.

It was so brilliant that you could hardly look at it. It seemed a mass

of molten gold reflecting the sun. "Good God!" exclaimed G----, "did I

do that?" and an expression of bitter disappointment passed over his

face. I ventured to suggest that as everybody had found it good while it

was in the gallery, this brilliant effect must be from the cold gray

marble of the hall. G---- could not pardon the picture, and nothing that

the Italian or I could say had the least effect. He would hear no excuse

for it, and, evidently quite mortified at the début of his Tintoretto,

he hurried the canvas back to the easel. The sister of the czar of

Russia was greatly pleased with this copy, and proposed to buy it, but

whether she did or not I forgot to ascertain.

Alone as I was in Florence, cultivating only the acquaintance of

Italians, yet was I never troubled with _ennui_. I read much at

Vieussieux's, and when I grew tired of that and of music, I made long

sables on the Lung Arno to the Cascine, through the charming Boboli

gardens, or out to Fiesole. Fiesole is some two miles from Florence, and

once on my way there I stopped at the Protestant burying-ground and

pilfered a little wildflower from Theodore Parker's grave to send home

to one of his romantic admirers. Fiesole must be a very ancient town,

for there is a ruined amphitheatre there, and the remains of walls so

old that they are called Pelasgic in their origin; which is, I take it,

sufficiently vague. The high hill is composed of the most solid marble;

so the guidebooks say, at least. This is five hundred and seventy-five

feet above the sea, and on its summit stands the cathedral, very old

indeed, and built in the form of a basilica, like that of San Miniato.

From this hill you look down upon the plain beneath, with the Arno

winding through it, and upon Florence and the Apennine chain, above

which rise the high mountains of Carrara. Here, on the highest available

point of the rock, I used to sit reading, and looking upon the panorama

beneath, until the sinking sun warned me that I had only time to reach

the city before its setting. I used to love to look also at works of art

in this way, for by so doing I fixed them in my mind for future

reference. I never passed the Piazza della Signoria without standing

some minutes before the Loggia dei Lanzi and the old ducal palace with

its marvelous tower. Before this palace, exposed to the weather for

three hundred and fifty years, stands Michael Angelo's David; to the

left, the fountain on the spot where Savonarola was burnt alive by the

order of Alexander VI.; and immediately facing this is the post-office.

I never could pass the post-office without thinking of the poet Shelley,

who was there brutally felled to the earth by an Englishman, who accused

him of being an infidel, struck his blow and escaped.

I made many visits to the Nuova Sacrista to see the tombs of the two

Medici by Michael Angelo. The one at the right on entering is that of

Giuliano, duke of Nemours, brother of Leo X. The two allegorical

figures reclining beneath are Morning and Night. The tomb of Lorenzo de'

Medici, duke of Urfrino, stands on the other side of the chapel, facing

that of the duke de Nemours. The statue of Lorenzo, for grace of

attitude and beauty of expression, has, in my opinion, never been

equaled. The allegorical figures at the feet of this Medici are more

beautiful and more easily understood than most of Michael Angelo's

allegorical figures. Nevertheless, I used sometimes, when looking at

these four figures, to think that they had been created merely as

architectural auxiliaries, and that their expression was an accident or

a freak of the artist's fancy, rather than the expression of some

particular thought: at other times I saw as much in them as most

enthusiasts do--enough, I have no doubt, to astonish their great author

himself. I believe that very few people really experience rapturous

sensations when they look at works of art. People are generally much

more moved by the sight of the two canes preserved in Casa Buonarotti,

upon which the great master in his latter days supported his tottering

frame, than they are by the noblest achievements of his genius.

The Carnival in Florence was a meagre affair compared with the same fête

in Rome. During the afternoon, however, there was goodly procession of

masks in carriages on the Lung' Arno, and in the evening there was a

feeble _moccoletti_ display. The grand masked ball at the Casino about

this time presents an irresistible attraction to the floating population

in Florence. I was foolish enough to go. All were obliged to be dressed

in character or in full ball-costume: no dominoes allowed. The Casino, I

was told, is the largest club-house in the world; and salon after salon

of that immense building was so crowded that locomotion was nearly

impossible. The floral decorations were magnificent, the music was

excellent, and some of the ten thousand people present tried to dance,

but the sets formed were soon squeezed into a ball. Then they gave up in

despair, while the men swore under their breath, and the women repaired

to the dressing-rooms to sew on flounces or other skirt-trimmings. Masks

wriggled about, and spoke to each other in the ridiculously squeaky

voice generally adopted on such occasions. Most of their conversation

was English, and of this very exciting order: "You don't know me?" "Yes

I do." "No you don't." "I know what you did yesterday," etc., etc., _ad

nauseam._ How fine masked balls are in sensational novels! how

absolutely flat and unsatisfactory in fact! There was on this occasion a

vast display of dress and jewelry, and among the babel of languages

spoken the most prominent was the beautiful London dialect sometimes

irreverently called Cockney. I lost my cavalier at one time, and while I

waited for him to find me I retired to a corner and challenged a mask to

a game of chess. He proved to be a Russian who spoke neither French nor

Italian. We got along famously, however. He said something very polite

in Russian, I responded irrelevantly in French, and then we looked at

each other and grinned. He subsequently, thinking he had made an

impression, ventured to press my hand; I drew it away and told him he

was an idiot, at which he was greatly flattered; and then we grinned at

each other again. It was very exciting indeed. I won the game easily,

because he knew nothing of chess, and then he said something in his

mother-tongue, placing his hand upon his heart. I could have sworn that

it meant, "Of course I would not be so rude as to win when playing with

a lady." I thought so, principally because he was a man, for I never

knew a man under such circumstances who did not immediately betray his

self-conceit by making that gallant declaration. Feeling sure that the

Russian had done so, when we placed the pieces on the board again I

offered him my queen. He seemed astounded and hurt; and then for the

first time I thought that if this Russian were an exception to his sex,

and I had _not_ understood his remark, then it was a rudeness to offer

him my queen. I was fortunately relieved from my perplexing situation

by the approach of my cavalier, and as he led me away I gave my other

hand to my antagonist in the most impressive manner, by way of atonement

in case there _had_ been anything wrong in my conduct toward him.

One day during the latter part of my stay in Florence I went the second

time to the splendid studio of Mr. Powers. He talked very eloquently

upon art. He said that some of the classic statues had become famous,

and deservedly so, although they were sometimes false in proportion and

disposed in attitudes quite impossible in nature. He illustrated this by

a fine plaster cast of the Venus of Milo, before which we were standing.

He showed that the spinal cord in the neck could never, from the

position of the head, have joined that of the body, that there was a

radical fault in the termination of the spinal column, and that the

navel was located falsely with respect to height. As he proceeded he

convinced me that he was correct; and in defence of this, my most

cherished idol after the Apollo Belvedere, I only asked the iconoclast

whether these defects might not have been intentional, in order to make

the statue appear more natural when looked at in its elevated position

from below. I subsequently repeated Mr. Powers's criticism of the Venus

of Milo in the studio of another of our distinguished sculptors, and he

treated it with great levity, especially when I told him my authority.

There is a spirit of rivalry among sculptors which does not always

manifest itself in that courteous and well-bred manner which

distinguishes the medical faculty, for instance, in their dealings with

each other. This courtesy is well illustrated by an anecdote I have

recently heard. A gentleman fell down in a fit, and a physician entering

saw a man kneeling over the patient and grasping him firmly by the

throat; whereupon the physician exclaimed, "Why, sir, you are stopping

the circulation in the jugular vein!" "Sir," replied the other, "I am a

doctor of medicine." To which the first M.D. remarked, "Ah! I beg your

pardon," and stood by very composedly until the patient was comfortably

dead.

While Mr. Powers was conversing with me about the Venus of Milo, there

entered two Englishwomen dressed very richly in brocades and velvets.

They seemed very anxious to see everything in the studio, talked in loud

tones of the various objects of art, passed us, and occupied themselves

for some time before the statue called California. I heard one of them

say, "I wonder if there's anybody 'ere that talks Hinglish?" and in the

same breath she called out to Mr. Powers, "Come 'ere!" He was at work

that day, and wore his studio costume. I was somewhat surprised to see

him immediately obey the rude command, and the following conversation

occurred:

"Do you speak Hinglish?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"What is this statue?"

"It is called California, madam."

"What has she got in 'er 'and?"

"Thorns, madam, in the hand held behind the back; in the other she

presents the quartz containing the tempting metal."

"Oh!"

We next entered a room where there was another work of the sculptor in

process of formation. Mr. Powers and myself were engaged in an animated

and, to me, very agreeable conversation, which was constantly

interrupted by these ill-bred women, who kept all the time mistaking the

plaster for the marble, and asked the artist the most pestering

questions on the _modus operandi_ of sculpturing. I was astonished at

the marvelous temper of Mr. Powers, who politely and patiently answered

all their queries. By some lucky chance these women got out of the way

during our slow progress back to the outer rooms, and I enjoyed Mr.

Powers's conversation uninterruptedly. He showed me the beautiful baby

hand in marble, a copy of his daughter's hand when an infant, and had

just returned it to its shrine when the two women reappeared, and we all

proceeded together. In the outer room there were several admirable

busts, upon which these women passed comment freely. One of these busts

was that of a lady, and they attacked it spitefully. "What an ugly

face!" "What a mean expression about the mouth!" "Isn't it 'orrible?"

"Who is it?" asked one of them, addressing Mr. Powers.

"That is a portrait of my wife," said the artist modestly.

"Your wife!" repeated one of the women, and then, nothing abashed,

added, "Who are you?"

"My name is Powers, madam," he answered very politely. This discovery

evidently disconcerted the impudence even of these visitors, and they

immediately left the studio.

As the day approached for my departure I visited all my old haunts, and

dwelt fondly upon scenes which I might never see again. My dear old

music-master cried when I bade him farewell. Povero maestro! He used to

think me so good that I was always ashamed of not being a veritable

angel. I left Florence when

All the land in flowery squares,

Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind,

Smelt of the coming summer.

My last visit was with the maestro to the Cascine, where he gathered me

a bunch of wild violets--cherished souvenir of a city I love, and of a

friend whose like I "ne'er may look upon again."

MARIE HOWLAND.

THE SOUTHERN PLANTER.

While Philadelphia hibernates in the ice and snow of February, the

spring season opens in the Southern woods and pastures. The fragrant

yellow jessamine clusters in golden bugles over shrubs and trees, and

the sward is enameled with the white, yellow and blue violet. The crocus

and cowslip, low anemone and colts-foot begin to show, and the land

brightens with waxy flowers of the huckleberry, set in delicate gamboge

edging. Yards, greeneries, conservatories breathe a June like fragrance,

and aviaries are vocal with songsters, mocked outside by the American

mocking-bird, who chants all night under the full moon, as if day was

too short for his medley.

New Orleans burgeons with the season. The broad fair avenues, the wide

boulevards, famed Canal street, are luxuriant with spring life and

drapery. Dashing equipages glance down the Shell Road with merry

driving-and picnic-parties. There is boating on the lake, and delicious

French collations at pleasant resorts, spread by neat-handed mulatto

waiters speaking a patois of French, English and negro. There spring

meats and sauces and light French wines allure to enjoyments less

sensual than the coarser Northern climate affords.

The unrivaled French opera is in season, the forcing house of that

bright garden of exotics. Other and Northern cities boast of such

entertainments, but I apprehend they resemble the Simon-Pure much as an

Englishman's French resembles the native tongue. In New Orleans it is

the natural, full-flavored article, lively with French taste and talent,

and for a people instinct with a truer Gallic spirit, perhaps, than that

of Paris itself. It is antique and colonial, but age and the sea-voyage

have preserved more distinctly the native _bouquet_ of the wine after

all grosser flavors have wasted away. The spectacle within the theatre

on a fine night is brilliant, recherché and French. From side-scene to

dome, and from gallery after gallery to the gay parquette, glitters the

bright, shining audience. There are loungers, American and French, blasé

and roué, who in the intervals drink brandy and whisky, or anisette,

maraschino, curçoa or some other fiery French cordial. The French

loungers are gesticulatory, and shoulders, arms, fingers, eyes and

eyebrows help out the tongue's rapid utterance; but they are never rude

or boisterous. There are belles, pretty French belles, with just a tint

of deceitless rouge for fashion's sake, and tinkling, crisp, low French

voices modulated to chime with the music and not disharmonize it; nay,

rather add to the sweetness of its concord.

And there is the Creole dandy, the small master of the revels. There is

nothing perfumed in the latest box of bonbons from Paris so exquisite,

sparkling, racy, French and happy in its own sweet conceit as he is. He

has hands and feet a Kentucky girl might envy for their shapely delicacy

and dainty size, cased in the neatest kid and prunella. His hair is

negligent in the elegantest grace of the perruquier's art, his dress

fashioned to the very line of fastidious elegance and simplicity, yet a

simplicity his Creole taste makes unique and attractive. He has the true

French persiflage, founded on happy content, not the blank indifference

of the Englishman's disregard. It becomes graceful self-forgetfulness,

and yet his vanity is French and victorious. In the atmosphere of

breathing music and faint perfume he looks around the glancing boxes,

and knows he has but to throw his sultanic handkerchief to have the

handsomest Circassian in the glowing circle of female beauty. But he

does not throw it, for all that. His manner plainly says: "Beautiful

dames, it would do me much of pleasure if I could elope with you all on

the road of iron, but the _bête noir_, the Moral, will not permit.

Behold for which, as an opened box of Louvin's perfumeries, I dispense

my fragrant affection to you all: breathe it and be happy!" Such homage

he receives with graceful acquiescence, believing his recognition of it

a sweet fruition to the fair adorers. He accepts it as he does the ices,

wines and delicate French dishes familiar to his palate. Life is a

fountain of eau sucrée, where everything is sweet to him, and he tries

to make it so to you, for he is a kindly-natured, true-hearted, valiant

little French gentleman. His loves, his innocent dissipations, his grand

passions, his rapier duels, would fill the volumes of a Le Sage or a

Cervantes. In the gay circles of New Orleans he floats with lambent

wings and irresistible fine eyes, its serenest butterfly, admired and

spoiled alike by the French and American element.

At this early spring season a new atom of the latter enters the charmed

circle, breaking its merry round into other sparkles of foam. A

well-formed, stately, rather florid gentleman alights at the St.

Charles, and is ushered into the hospitalities of that elegant

caravansary. There is something impressive about him, or there would be

farther North. He is American, from the strong, careless Anglo-Saxon

face, through all the stalwart bones and full figure, to the strong,

firm, light step. He will crush through the lepidoptera of this

half-French society like a silver knife through _Tourtereaux soufflés à

la crême_. He brings letters to this and that citizen, or he is well

known already, and "coloneled" familiarly by stamp-expectant waiters and

the courteous master of ceremonies at the clerk's desk. He calls, on his

bankers, and is received with gracious familiarity in the pleasant

bank-parlor. Correspondence has made them acquainted with Colonel

Beverage in the way of business: they are glad to see him in person, and

will be happy to wait on him. He makes them happy in that way, for they

do wait upon him satisfactorily. There is a little pleasant interchange

of news and city gossip, and of something else. There is a crinkling of

a certain crispy, green foliage, and the colonel withdraws in the midst

of civilities.