CHAPTER XLVII.

DU SCHMERZENSREICHE!

So the long, silent, sunlit days passed, and it seemed to the three

patient watchers that the object of their care was slowly recovering

health and strength. But if they were all willing and eager to wait on

him, it was Violet who was his constant companion and friend, his

devoted attendant, his humble scholar. Sometimes when Mrs. Warrener's

heart grew sore within her to think of the wrong that had been wrought

in the past, the tender little woman tried to solace herself somewhat by

regarding these two as they now sat together--he the whimsical,

affectionate master, she the meek pupil and disciple, forgetting all the

proud dignity of her maidenhood, her fire, and audacity, and

independence, in the humility and self-surrender of her love. Surely,

she thought, this time was making up for much of the past. And if all

went well now, what had they to look forward to but a still closer

companionship in which the proud, and loyal, and fearless girl would

become the tender and obedient wife? There was no jealousy in the nature

of this woman. She would have laughed with joy if she could have heard

their marriage bells.

And Violet, too, when the sun lay warm on the daisies and cowslips, when

the sweet winds blew the scent of the lilacs about, and when her master

and teacher grew strong enough to walk with her along the quiet woodland

ways--how could she fail to pick up some measure of cheerfulness and

hope? It almost seemed as if she had dropped into a new world; and it

was a beautiful world, full of tenderness, and laughter, and sunshine.

Henceforth there was to be no more George Miller to bother her; he had

gone clean out of existence as far as she was concerned; there was no

more skirmishing with Lady North; even the poor Dowses, with their

piteous loneliness and solemn house, were almost forgotten. Here was her

whole world. And when she noticed the increasing distances that he

walked, and the brighter look of his face, and the growing courage and

carelessness of his habits--then indeed the world became a beautiful

world to her, and she was almost inclined to fall in love with those

whirling and gleaming southern seas.

It was in the black night-time, when all the household but herself were

asleep, that she paid the penalty of these transient joys. Haunted by

the one terrible fear, she could gain no rest; it was in vain that she

tried to reason with herself; her imagination was like some hideous

fiend continually whispering to her ear. Then she had no friend with

whom to share those terrible doubts; she dared not mention them to any

human soul. Why should she disturb the gentle confidence of his sister

and her daughter? She could not make them miserable merely to lift from

her own mind a portion of its anxiety. She could only lie awake, night

after night, and rack her brain with a thousand gloomy forebodings. She

recalled certain phrases he had used in moments of pathetic confidence.

She recalled the quick look of pain with which he sometimes paused in

the middle of his speech, the almost involuntary raising the hand to the

region of the heart, the passing pallor of the face. Had they seen none

of those things? Had they no wild, despairing thoughts about him? Was it

possible they could go peacefully to sleep with this dread thing hanging

over them, with a chance of awaking to a day of bitter anguish and

wild, heart-broken farewell? This cruel anxiety, kept all to herself,

was killing the girl. She grew restless and feverish; sometimes she sat

up half the night at the window listening to the moaning of the dark sea

outside; she became languid during the day, pale, and distraite. But it

was not to last long.

One evening these two were together in the small parlor, he lying down,

she sitting near him with a book in her hand. The French windows were

open; they could hear Mrs. Warrener and her daughter talking in the

garden. And, strangely enough, the sick man's thoughts were once more

turned to the far Highlands, and to their life among the hills, and the

pleasant merry-making on board the Sea Pyot.

"The air of this place does not agree with you at all, Violet," he was

saying. "You are not looking nearly so well as you did when we came

down. You are the only one who has not benefited by the change. Now that

won't do; we cannot have a succession of invalids--a Greek frieze of

patients, all carrying phials of medicine. We must get off to the

Highlands at once. What do you say--a fortnight hence?"

She knelt down beside him, and took his hand, and said in a low voice--

"Do not be angry with me--it is very unreasonable, I know--but I have a

strange dread of the Highlands. I have dreamed so often lately of being

up there--and of being swept away on a dark sea--in the middle of the

night."

She shuddered. He put his hand gently on her head.

"There is no wonder you should dream of that," he said with a smile.

"That is only part of the story which you made us all believe. But we

have got a brighter finish for it now. You have not been overwhelmed in

that dark flood yet----"

He paused.

"Violet! My love!" he suddenly cried.

He let go her hand, and made a wild grasp at his left breast; his face

grew white with pain. What made her instinctively throw her arms round

him, with terror in her eyes?

"Violet! What is this? Kiss me!"

It was but one second after that that a piercing shriek rang through the

place. The girl had sprung up like a deer shot through the heart; her

eyes dilated, her face wild and pale. Mrs. Warrener came running in; but

paused, and almost retreated in fear from the awful spectacle before

her; for the girl still held the dead man's hand, and she was laughing

merrily. The dark sea she had dreaded had overtaken her at last.

* * * * *

But one more scene--months afterward. It is the breakfast room in Lady

North's house in Euston Square; and Anatolia is sitting there alone. The

door opens, and a tall young girl, dressed in a white morning costume,

comes silently in; there is a strange and piteous look of trouble in her

dark eyes. Anatolia goes over to her, and takes her hand very tenderly,

and leads her to the easy-chair she had herself just quitted.

"There is not any letter yet?" she asks, having looked all round the

table with a sad and wearied air.

"No, dear, not yet," says Anatolia, who, unlovely though she may be, has

a sympathetic heart; and her lip trembles as she speaks. "You must be

patient, Violet."

"It is another morning gone, and there is no letter, and I cannot

understand it," says the girl, apparently to herself, and then she

begins to cry silently, while her half-sister goes to her, and puts her

arm around her neck, and tries to soothe her.

Lady North comes into the room. Some changes have happened within these

few months; it is "Mother" and "My child" now between the enemies of

yore. And as she bids Violet good morning, and gently kisses her, the

girl renews her complaint.

"Mother, why do they keep back his letter? I know he must have written

to me long ago; and I cannot go to him until I get the letter! and he

will wonder why I am not coming. Morning after morning I listen for the

postman--I can hear him in the street from house to house--and they all

get their letters, but I don't get this one that is worth all the world

to me. And I never neglected anything that he said; and I was always

very obedient to him; and he will wonder now that I don't go to him, and

perhaps he will think that I am among my other friends now and have

forgotten---- No, he will not think that. I have not forgotten."

"My child, you must not vex yourself," says Lady North with all the

tenderness of which she is capable--and Anatolia is bitterly crying all

the while. "It will be all right. And you must not look sad to-day; for

you know Mrs. Warrener and your friend Amy are coming to see you."

She does not seem to pay much heed.

"Shall we go for the flowers to-day?" she asks, with her dark wet eyes

raised for the first time.

"My darling, this is not the day we go for the flowers; that is

to-morrow."

"And what is the use of it?" she says, letting her head sink sadly

again. "Every time I go over to Nunhead I listen all by myself--and I

know he is not there at all. The flowers look pretty, because his name

is over them. But he is not there at all--he is far away--and he was to

send me a message--and every day I wait for it--and they keep the letter

back. Mother, are all my dresses ready?"

"Yes, Violet."

"You are quite sure!"

"They are all ready, Violet. Don't trouble about that."

"It is the white satin one he will like the best; and he will be pleased

that I am not in black like the others. Mother, Mrs. Warrener and Amy

surely cannot mean to come to the wedding in black."

"Surely not, Violet. But come, dear, to your breakfast."

She took her place quite calmly and humbly; but her mind was still

wandering toward that picture.

"I hope they will strew the church-yard with flowers as we pass through

it--not for me, but for him; for he will be pleased with that; and there

is more than all that is in the Prayer-book that I will promise to be to

him, when we two are kneeling together. You are quite sure everything is

ready?"

"Everything, my darling."

"And you think the message from him will come soon now?"

"I think it will come soon now, Violet," was the answer, given with

trembling lips.

THE END.

* * * * *

And now to you--you whose names are written in these blurred pages, some

portion of whose lives I have tried to trace with a wandering and

uncertain pen--I stretch out a hand of farewell. Yet not quite of

farewell, perhaps: for amid all the shapes and phantoms of this world of

mystery, where the shadows we meet can tell us neither whence they came

nor whither they go, surely you have for me a no less substantial

existence that may have its chances in the time to come. To me you are

more real than most I know: what wonder then if I were to meet you on

the threshold of the great unknown, you all shining with a new light on

your face? Trembling, I stretch out my hands to you, for your silence is

awful, and there is sadness in your eyes; but the day may come when you

will speak, and I shall hear--and understand.

JULIET ON THE BALCONY.

O lips that are so lonely

For want of his caress;

O heart that art too faithful

To ever love him less;

O eyes that find no sweetness

For hunger of his face;

O hands that long to feel him,

Always, in every place!

My spirit leans and listens,

But only hears his name,

And thought to thought leaps onward

As flame leaps unto flame;

And all kin to each other

As any brood of flowers,

Or these sweet winds of night, love,

That fan the fainting hours!

My spirit leans and listens,

My heart stands up and cries,

And only one sweet vision

Comes ever to my eyes.

So near and yet so far, love,

So dear, yet out of reach,

So like some distant star, love,

Unnamed in human speech!

My spirit leans and listens,

My heart goes out to him,

Through all the long night watches,

Until the dawning dim;

My spirit leans and listens,

What if, across the night,

His strong heart send a message

To flood me with delight?

HOWARD GLYNDON.

OUR RURAL DIVINITY.

I wonder that Wilson Flagg did not include the cow among his

"Picturesque Animals," for that is where she belongs. She has not the

classic beauty of the horse, but in picture-making qualities she is far

ahead of him. Her shaggy, loose-jointed body, her irregular, sketchy

outlines, like those of the landscape--the hollows and ridges, the

slopes and prominences--her tossing horns, her bushy tail, her swinging

gait, her tranquil, ruminating habits--all tend to make her an object

upon which the artist eye loves to dwell. The artists are for ever

putting her into pictures too. In rural landscape scenes she is an

important feature. Behold her grazing in the pastures and on the hill

sides, or along banks of streams, or ruminating under wide-spreading

trees, or standing belly deep in the creek or pond, or lying upon the

smooth places in the quiet summer afternoon, the day's grazing done, and

waiting to be summoned home to be milked; and again in the twilight

lying upon the level summit of the hill, or where the sward is thickest

and softest; or in winter a herd of them filing along toward the spring

to drink, or being "foddered" from the stack in the field upon the new

snow--surely the cow is a picturesque animal, and all her goings and

comings are pleasant to behold.

I looked into Hamerton's clever book on the domestic animals, also

expecting to find my divinity duly celebrated, but he passes her by and

contemplates the bovine qualities only as they appear in the ox and the

bull.

Neither have the poets made much of the cow, but have rather dwelt upon

the steer, or the ox yoked to the plough. I recall this touch from

Emerson:

The heifer that lows in the upland farm,

Far heard, lows not thine ear to charm.

But the ear is charmed nevertheless, especially if it be not too near,

and the air be still and dense, or hollow, as the farmer says. And

again, if it be spring time and she task that powerful bellows of hers

to its utmost capacity, how round the sound is, and how far it goes over

the hills.

The cow has at least four tones or lows. First, there is her alarmed or

distressed low, when deprived of her calf, or separated from her

mates--her low of affection. Then there is her call of hunger, a

petition for food, sometimes full of impatience, or her answer to the

farmer's call, full of eagerness. Then there is that peculiar frenzied

bawl she utters on smelling blood, which causes every member of the herd

to lift its head and hasten to the spot--the native cry of the clan.

When she is gored or in great danger she bawls also, but that is

different. And lastly, there is the long, sonorous volley she lets off

on the hills or in the yard, or along the highway, and which seems to be

expressive of a kind of unrest and vague longing--the longing of the

imprisoned Io for her lost identity. She sends her voice forth so that

every god on Mount Olympus can hear her plaint. She makes this sound in

the morning, especially in the spring, as she goes forth to graze.

One of our rural poets, Myron Benton, whose verse often has the flavor

of sweet cream, has written some lines called "Rumination," in which the

cow is the principal figure, and with which I am permitted to adorn my

theme. The poet first gives his attention to a little brook that "breaks

its shallow gossip" at his feet and "drowns the oriole's voice":

But moveth not that wise and ancient cow,

Who chews her juicy cud so languid now

Beneath her favorite elm, whose drooping bough

Lulls all but inward vision, fast asleep:

But still, her tireless tail a pendulum sweep

Mysterious clockwork guides, and some hid pulley

Her drowsy cud, each moment, raises duly.

Of this great, wondrous world she has seen more

Than you, my little brook, and cropped its store

Of succulent grass on many a mead and lawn;

And strayed to distant uplands in the dawn.

And she has had some dark experience

Of graceless man's ingratitude; and hence

Her ways have not been ways of pleasantness,

Nor all her paths of peace. But her distress

And grief she has lived past; your giddy round

Disturbs her not, for she is learned profound

In deep brahminical philosophy.

She chews the cud of sweetest revery

Above your worldly prattle, brooklet merry,

Oblivious of all things sublunary.

The cow figures in Grecian mythology, and in the Oriental literature is

treated as a sacred animal. "The clouds are cows and the rain milk." I

remember what Herodotus says of the Egyptians' worship of heifers and

steers; and in the traditions of the Celtic nations the cow is regarded

as a divinity. In Norse mythology the milk of the cow Andhumbla afforded

nourishment to the Frost giants, and it was she that licked into being

and into shape a god, the father of Odin. If anything could lick a god

into shape, certainly the cow could do it. You may see her perform this

office for young Taurus any spring. She licks him out of the fogs and

bewilderments and uncertainties in which he finds himself on first

landing upon these shores, and up on to his feet in an incredibly short

time. Indeed, that potent tongue of hers can almost make the dead alive

any day, and the creative lick of the old Scandinavian mother cow is

only a large-lettered rendering of the commonest facts.

The horse belongs to the fiery god Mars. He favors war, and is one of

its oldest, most available, and most formidable engines. The steed is

clothed with thunder, and smells the battle from afar; but the cattle

upon a thousand hills denote that peace and plenty bear sway in the

land. The neighing of the horse is a call to battle; but the lowing of

old Brockleface in the valley brings the golden age again. The savage

tribes are never without the horse; the Scythians are all mounted; but

the cow would tame and humanize them. When the Indians will cultivate

the cow, I shall think their civilization fairly begun. Recently, when

the horses were sick with the epizoötic, and the oxen came to the city

and helped to do their work, what an Arcadian air again filled the

streets. But the dear old oxen--how awkward and distressed they looked!

Juno wept in the face of every one of them. The horse is a true citizen,

and is entirely at home in the paved streets; but the ox--what a

complete embodiment of all rustic and rural things! Slow, deliberate,

thick-skinned, powerful, hulky, ruminating, fragrant-breathed, when he

came to town the spirit and suggestion of all Georgics and Bucolics came

with him. Oh, citizen, was it only a plodding, unsightly brute that went

by? Was there no chord in your bosom, long silent, that sweetly vibrated

at the sight of that patient, Herculean couple? Did you smell no hay or

cropped herbage, see no summer pastures with circles of cool shade, hear

no voice of herds among the hills? They were very likely the only horses

your grandfather ever had. Not much trouble to harness and unharness

them. Not much vanity on the road in those days. They did all the work

on the early pioneer farm. They were the gods whose rude strength first

broke the soil. They could live where the moose and the deer could. If

there was no clover or timothy to be had, then the twigs of the basswood

and birch would do. Before there were yet fields given up to grass, they

found ample pasturage in the woods. Their wide-spreading horns gleamed

in the duskiness, and their paths and the paths of the cows became the

future roads and highways, or even the streets of great cities.

All the descendants of Odin show a bovine trace, and cherish and

cultivate the cow. What were those old Vikings but thick-hided bulls

that delighted in nothing so much as goring each other? And has not the

charge of beefiness been brought much nearer home to us than that? But

about all the northern races there is something that is kindred to

cattle in the best sense--something in their art and literature that is

essentially pastoral, sweet-breathed, continent, dispassionate,

ruminating, wide-eyed, soft-voiced--a charm of kine, the virtue of

brutes.

The cow belongs more especially to the northern peoples, to the region

of the good, green grass. She is the true _grazing_ animal. That broad,

smooth, always dewy nose of hers is just the suggestion of green sward.

She caresses the grass; she sweeps off the ends of the leaves; she reaps

it with the soft sickle of her tongue. She crops close, but she does not

bruise or devour the turf like the horse. She is the sward's best

friend, and will make it thick and smooth as a carpet.

The turfy mountains where live the nibbling sheep

are not for her. Her muzzle is too blunt; then she does not _bite_ as do

the sheep; she has not upper teeth; she _crops_. But on the lower

slopes, and margins, and rich bottoms, she is at home. Where the daisy

and the buttercup and clover bloom, and where corn will grow, is her

proper domain. The agriculture of no country can long thrive without

her. Not only a large part of the real, but much of the potential wealth

of the land is wrapped up in her.

What a variety of individualities a herd of cows presents when you have

come to know them all, not only in form and color, but in manners and

disposition. Some are timid and awkward and the butt of the whole herd.

Some remind you of deer. Some have an expression in the face like

certain persons you have known. A petted and well-fed cow has a

benevolent and gracious look; an ill-used and poorly-fed one a pitiful

and forlorn look. Some cows have a masculine or ox expression; others

are extremely feminine. The latter are the ones for milk. Some cows will

kick like a horse; some jump fences like deer. Every herd has its

ringleader, its unruly spirit--one that plans all the mischief and leads

the rest through the fences into the grain or into the orchard. This one

is usually quite different from the master spirit, the "boss of the

yard." The latter is generally the most peaceful and law-abiding cow in

the lot, and the least bullying and quarrelsome. But she is not to be

trifled with; her will is law; the whole herd give way before her, those

that have crossed horns with her, and those that have not, but yielded

their allegiance without crossing. I remember such a one among my

father's milkers when I was a boy--a slender-horned, deep-shouldered,

large-uddered, dewlapped old cow that we always put first in the long

stable so she could not have a cow on each side of her to forage upon;

for the master is yielded to no less in the stancheons than in the yard.

She always had the first place anywhere. She had her choice of standing

room in the milking yard, and when she wanted to lie down there or in

the fields the best and softest spot was hers. When the herd were

foddered from the stack or barn, or fed with pumpkins in the fall, she

was always first served. Her demeanor was quiet but impressive. She

never bullied or gored her mates, but literally ruled them with the

breath of her nostrils. If any newcomer or ambitious younger cow,

however, chafed under her supremacy, she was ever ready to make good her

claims. And with what spirit she would fight when openly challenged! She

was a whirlwind of pluck and valor; and not after one defeat or two

defeats would she yield the championship. The boss cow, when overcome,

seems to brood over her disgrace, and day after day will meet her rival

in fierce combat.

A friend of mine, a pastoral philosopher, whom I have consulted in

regard to the master cow, thinks it is seldom the case that one rules

all the herd, if it number many, but that there is often one that will

rule nearly all. "Curiously enough," he says, "a case like this will

often occur: No. 1 will whip No. 2; No. 2 whips No. 3; and No. 3 whips

No. 1; so around in a circle. This is not a mistake; it is often the

case. I remember," he continued, "we once had feeding out of a large bin

in the centre of the yard six oxen who mastered right through in

succession from No. 1 to No. 6; _but No. 6 paid off the score by

whipping No. 1_. I often watched them when they were all trying to feed

out of the box, and of course trying, dog-in-the-manger fashion, each to

prevent any other he could. They would often get in the order to do it

very systematically, since they could keep rotating about the box till

the chain happened to get broken somewhere, when there would be

confusion. Their mastership, you know, like that between nations, is

constantly changing. But there are always Napoleons who hold their own

through many vicissitudes; but the ordinary cow is continually liable to

lose her foothold. Some cow she has always despised, and has often sent

tossing across the yard at her horns' ends, some pleasant morning will

return the compliment and pay off old scores."

But my own observation has been that in herds in which there have been

no important changes for several years, the question of might gets

pretty well settled, and some one cow becomes the acknowledged ruler.

The bully of the yard is never the master, but usually a second or

third-rate pusher that never loses an opportunity to hook those beneath

her, or to gore the masters if she can get them in a tight place. If

such a one can get loose in the stable, she is quite certain to do

mischief. She delights to pause in the open bars and turn and keep those

at bay behind her till she sees a pair of threatening horns pressing

toward her, when she quickly passes on. As one cow masters all, so there

is one cow that is mastered by all. These are the two extremes of the

herd, the head and the tail. Between them are all grades of authority,

with none so poor but hath some poorer to do her reverence.

The cow has evidently come down to us from a wild or semi-wild state;

perhaps is a descendant of those wild, shaggy cattle of which a small

band still exists in the forests of Scotland. Cuvier seems to have been

of this opinion. One of the ways in which her wild instincts still crop

out is the disposition she shows in spring to hide her calf--a common

practice among the wild herds. Her wild nature would be likely to come

to the surface at this crisis if ever; and I have known cows that

practised great secrecy in dropping their calves. As their time

approached they grew restless, a wild and excited look was upon them,

and if left free, they generally set out for the woods or for some other

secluded spot. After the calf is several hours old, and has got upon its

feet and had its first meal, the dam by some sign commands it to lie

down and remain quiet while she goes forth to feed. If the calf is

approached at such time, it plays "'possum," assumes to be dead or

asleep, till on finding this ruse does not succeed, it mounts to its

feet, bleats loudly and fiercely, and charges desperately upon the

intruder. But it recovers from this wild scare in a little while, and

never shows signs of it again.

The habit of the cow, also, in eating the placenta, looks to me like a

vestige of her former wild instincts--the instinct to remove everything

that would give the wild beasts a clue or a scent, and so attract them

to her helpless young.

How wise and sagacious the cows become that run upon the street, or pick

their living along the highway. The mystery of gates and bars is at last

solved to them. They ponder over them by night, they lurk about them by

day, till they acquire a new sense--till they become _en rapport_ with

them and know when they are open and unguarded. The garden gate, if it

open into the highway at any point, is never out of the mind of these

roadsters, or out of their calculations. They calculate upon the chances

of its being left open a certain number of times in the season; and if

it be but once and only for five minutes, your cabbage and sweet corn

suffer. What villager, or countryman either, has not been awakened at

night by the squeaking and crunching of those piratical jaws under the

window or in the direction of the vegetable patch? I have had the cows,

after they had eaten up my garden, break into the stable where my own

milcher was tied, and gore her and devour her meal. Yes, life presents

but one absorbing problem to the street cow, and that is how to get into

your garden. She catches glimpses of it over the fence or through the

pickets, and her imagination or epigastrium is inflamed. When the spot

is surrounded by a high board fence, I think I have seen her peeping at

the cabbages through a knot-hole. At last she learns to open the gate.

It is a great triumph of bovine wit. She does it with her horn or her

nose, or may be with her ever ready tongue. I doubt if she has ever yet

penetrated the mystery of the newer patent fastenings; but the

old-fashioned thumb-latch she can see through, give her time enough.

A large, lank, muley or polled cow used to annoy me in this way when I

was a dweller in a certain pastoral city. I more than half suspected she

was turned in by some one; so one day I watched. Presently I heard the

gate-latch rattle; the gate swung open, and in walked the old buffalo.

On seeing me she turned and ran like a horse. I then fastened the gate

on the inside and watched again. After long waiting the old cow came

quickly round the corner and approached the gate. She lifted the latch

with her nose. Then, as the gate did not move, she lifted it again and

again. Then she gently nudged it. Then, the obtuse gate not taking the

hint, she butted it gently, then harder and still harder, till it

rattled again. At this juncture I emerged from my hiding place, when

the old villain scampered off with great precipitation. She knew she was

trespassing, and she had learned that there were usually some swift

penalties attached to this pastime.

I have owned but three cows and loved but one. That was the first one,

Chloe, a bright red, curly-pated, golden-skinned Devonshire cow, that an

ocean steamer landed for me upon the banks of the Potomac one bright May

day many clover summers ago. She came from the north, from the pastoral

regions of the Catskills, to graze upon the broad commons of the

national capital. I was then the fortunate and happy lessee of an old

place with an acre of ground attached, almost within the shadow of the

dome of the capitol. Behind a high but aged and decrepit board fence I

indulged my rural and unclerical tastes. I could look up from my homely

tasks and cast a potato almost in the midst of that cataract of marble

steps that flows out of the north wing of the patriotic pile. Ah, when

that creaking and sagging back gate closed behind me in the evening, I

was happy; and when it opened for my egress thence in the morning, I was

not happy. Inside that gate was a miniature farm redolent of homely,

primitive life, a tumble-down house and stables and implements of

agriculture and horticulture, broods of chickens, and growing pumpkins,

and a thousand antidotes to the weariness of an artificial life. Outside

of it were the marble and iron palaces, the paved and blistering

streets, and the high, vacant, mahogany desk of a government clerk. In

that ancient enclosure I took an earth bath twice a day. I planted

myself as deep in the soil as I could to restore the normal tone and

freshness of my system, impaired by the above mentioned government

mahogany. I have found there is nothing like the earth to draw the

various social distempers out of one. The blue devils take flight at

once if they see you mean to bury them and make compost of them.

Emerson intimates that the scholar had better not try to have two

gardens; but I could never spend an hour hoeing up dock and red-root and

twitch grass without in some way getting rid of many weeds and fungus,

unwholesome growths that a petty, in-doors life was for ever fostering

in my own moral and intellectual nature.

But the finishing touch was not given till Chloe came. She was the jewel

for which this homely setting waited. My agriculture had some object

then. The old gate never opened with such alacrity as when she paused

before it. How we waited for her coming! Should I send Drewer, the

colored patriarch, for her? No; the master of the house himself should

receive Juno at the capital.

"One cask for you," said the clerk, referring to the steamer bill of

lading.

"Then I hope it's a cask of milk," I said. "I expected a cow."

"One cask it says here."

"Well, let's see it; I'll warrant it has horns and is tied by a rope";

which proved to be the case, for there stood the only object that bore

my name, chewing its cud, on the forward deck. How she liked the voyage

I could not find out; but she seemed to relish so much the feeling of

solid ground beneath her feet once more that she led me a lively step

all the way home. She cut capers in front of the White House, and tried

twice to wind me up in the rope as we passed the Treasury. She kicked up

her heels on the broad avenue and became very coltish as she came under

the walls of the capitol. But that night the long-vacant stall in the

old stable was filled, and the next morning the coffee had met with a

change of heart. I had to go out twice with the lantern and survey my

treasure before I went to bed. Did she not come from the delectable

mountains, and did I not have a sort of filial regard for her as toward

my foster mother?

This was during the Arcadian age at the capital, before the easy-going

southern ways had gone out and the prim new northern ways had come in,

and when the domestic animals were treated with distinguished

consideration and granted the freedom of the city. There was a charm of

cattle in the streets and upon the commons: goats cropped your rose

bushes through the pickets, and nooned upon your front porch, and pigs

dreamed Arcadian dreams under your garden fence or languidly frescoed it

with pigments from the nearest pool. It was a time of peace; it was the

poor man's golden age. Your cow, or your goat, or your pig led a

vagrant, wandering life, and picked up a subsistence wherever they

could, like the bees, which was almost everywhere. Your cow went forth

in the morning and came home fraught with milk at night, and you never

troubled yourself where she went or how far she roamed.

Chloe took very naturally to this kind of life. At first I had to go

with her a few times and pilot her to the nearest commons, and then left

her to her own wit, which never failed her. What adventures she had,

what acquaintances she made, how far she wandered, I never knew. I never

came across her in my walks or rambles. Indeed, on several occasions I

thought I would look her up and see her feeding in the national

pastures, but I never could find her. There were plenty of cows, but

they were all strangers. But punctually, between four and five o'clock

in the afternoon, her white horns would be seen tossing above the gate

and her impatient low be heard. Sometimes, when I turned her forth in

the morning, she would pause and apparently consider which way she would

go. Should she go toward Kendall Green to-day, or follow the Tiber, or

over by the Big Spring, or out around Lincoln Hospital? She seldom

reached a conclusion till she had stretched forth her neck and blown a

blast on her trumpet that awoke the echoes in the very lantern on the

dome of the capitol. Then, after one or two licks, she would disappear

around the corner. Later in the season, when the grass was parched or

poor on the commons, and the corn and cabbage tempting in the garden,

Chloe was loth to depart in the morning, and her deliberations were

longer than ever, and very often I had to aid her in coming to a

decision.

For two summers she was a well-spring of pleasure and profit in my farm

of one acre, when in an evil moment I resolved to part with her and try

another. In an evil moment I say, for from that time my luck in cattle

left me. Juno never forgave me the execution of that rash and cruel

resolve.

The day is indellibly stamped on my memory when I exposed my Chloe for

sale in the public market place. It was in November, a bright, dreamy,

Indian summer day. A sadness oppressed me, not unmixed with guilt and

remorse. An old Irish woman came to the market also with her pets to

sell, a sow and five pigs, and took up a position next me. We condoled

with each other; we bewailed the fate of our darlings together; we

berated in chorus the white-aproned but bloodstained fraternity who

prowled about us. When she went away for a moment I minded the pigs, and

when I strolled about she minded my cow. How shy the innocent beast was

of those carnal market men. How she would shrink away from them. When

they put out a hand to feel her condition she would "scrooch" down her

back, or bend this way or that, as if the hand were a branding iron. So

long as I stood by her head she felt safe--deluded creature--and chewed

the cud of sweet content; but the moment I left her side she seemed

filled with apprehension, and followed me with her eyes, lowing softly

and entreatingly till I returned.

At last the money was counted out for her, and her rope surrendered to

the hand of another. How that last look of alarm and incredulity, which

I caught as I turned for a parting glance, went to my heart!

Her stall was soon filled, or partly filled, and this time with a

native--a specimen of what may be called the cornstalk breed of

Virginia: a slender, furtive, long-geared heifer just verging on

cowhood, that in spite of my best efforts would wear a pinched and

hungry look. She evidently inherited a humped back. It was a family

trait, and evidence of the purity of her blood. For the native blooded

cow of Virginia, from shivering over half rations of corn stalks, in the

open air, during those bleak and windy winters, and roaming over those

parched fields in summer, has come to have some marked features. For one

thing, her pedal extremities seemed lengthened; for another, her udder

does not impede her travelling; for a third, her backbone inclines

strongly to the curve; then, she despiseth hay. This last is a sure

test. Offer a thorough-bred Virginia cow hay, and she will laugh in your

face; but rattle the husks or shucks, and she knows you to be her

friend.

The new comer even declined corn meal at first. She eyed it furtively,

then sniffed it suspiciously, but finally discovered that it bore some

relation to her native "shucks," when she fell to eagerly.

I cherish the memory of this cow, however, as the most affectionate

brute I ever knew. Being deprived of her calf, she transferred her

affections to her master, and would fain have made a calf of him, lowing

in the most piteous and inconsolable manner when he was out of her

sight, hardly forgetting her grief long enough to eat her meal, and

entirely neglecting her beloved husks. Often in the middle of the night

she would set up that sonorous lamentation and continue it till sleep

was chased from every eye in the household. This generally had the

effect of bringing the object of her affection before her, but in a mood

anything but filial or comforting. Still, at such times a kick seemed a

comfort to her, and she would gladly have kissed the rod that was the

instrument of my midnight wrath.

But her tender star was destined soon to a fatal eclipse. Being tied

with too long a rope on one occasion during my temporary absence, she

got her head into the meal barrel, and stopped not till she had devoured

nearly half a bushel of dry meal. The singularly placid and benevolent

look that beamed from the meal-besmeared face when I discovered her was

something to be remembered. For the first time also her spinal column

came near assuming a horizontal line.

But the grist proved too much for her frail mill, and her demise took

place on the third day, not of course without some attempt to relieve

her on my part. I gave her, as is usual in such emergencies, everything

I "could think of" and everything my neighbors could think of, besides

some fearful prescriptions which I obtained from a German veterinary

surgeon, but to no purpose. I imagined her poor maw distended and

inflamed with the baking sodden mass which no physic could penetrate or

enliven.

Thus ended my second venture in live stock. My third, which followed

sharp upon the heels of this disaster, was scarcely more of a success.

This time I led to the altar a buffalo cow, as they call the "mully"

down south--a large, spotted, creamy-skinned cow, with a fine udder,

that I persuaded a Jew drover to part with for ninety dollars. "Pag like

a dish rack (rag)," said he, pointing to her udder after she had been

milked. "You vill come pack and gif me the udder ten tollars" (for he

had demanded an even hundred), he continued, "after you have had her a

gouple of days." True I felt like returning to him after a "gouple of

days," but not to pay the other ten dollars. The cow proved to be as

blind as a bat, though capable of counterfeiting the act of seeing to

perfection. For did she not lift up her head and follow with her eyes a

dog that scaled the fence and ran through the other end of the lot, and

the next moment dash my hopes thus raised by trying to walk over a

locust tree thirty feet high? And when I set the bucket before her

containing her first mess of meal, she missed it by several inches, and

her nose brought up against the ground. Was it a kind of far-sightedness

and near blindness? That was it, I think; she had genius, but not

talent; she could see the man in the moon, but was quite oblivious to

the man immediately in her front. Her eyes were telescopic and required

a long range.

As long as I kept her in the stall, or confined to the enclosure, this

strange eclipse of her sight was of little consequence. But when spring

came, and it was time for her to go forth and seek her livelihood in the

city's waste places, I was embarrassed. Into what remote corners or into

what _terra incognita_ might she not wander! There was little doubt but

she would drift around home in the course of the summer, or perhaps as

often as every week or two; but could she be trusted to find her way

back every night? Perhaps she could be taught. Perhaps her other senses

were acute enough to in a measure compensate her for her defective

vision. So I gave her lessons in the topography of the country. I led

her forth to graze for a few hours each day and led her home again. Then

I left her to come home alone, which feat she accomplished very

encouragingly. She came feeling her way along, stepping very high, but

apparently a most diligent and interested sightseer. But she was not

sure of the right house when she got to it, though she stared at it very

hard.

Again I turned her forth, and again she came back, her telescopic eyes

apparently of some service to her. On the third day there was a fierce

thunderstorm late in the afternoon, and old buffalo did not come home.

It had evidently scattered and bewildered what little wit she had. Being

barely able to navigate those straits on a calm day, what could she be

expected to do in a tempest?

After the storm had passed, and near sundown, I set out in quest of her,

but could get no clue. I heard that two cows had been struck by

lightning about a mile out on the commons. My conscience instantly told

me that one of them was mine. It would be a fit closing of the third act

of this pastoral drama. Thitherward I bent my steps, and there upon the

smooth plain I beheld the scorched and swollen forms of two cows slain

by thunderbolts, but neither of them had ever been mine.

The next day I continued the search, and the next, and the next. Finally

I hoisted an umbrella over my head, for the weather had become hot, and

set out deliberately and systematically to explore every foot of open

common on Capitol hill. I tramped many miles, and found every man's cow

but my own--some twelve or fifteen hundred, I should think. I saw many

vagrant boys and Irish and colored women, nearly all of whom had seen a

buffalo cow that very day that answered exactly to my description, but

in such diverse and widely separate places that I knew it was no cow of

mine. And it was astonishing how many times I was myself deceived; how

many rumps or heads, or liver backs or white flanks I saw peeping over

knolls or from behind fences or other objects that could belong to no

cow but mine!

Finally I gave up the search, concluded the cow had been stolen, and

advertised her, offering a reward. But days passed, and no tidings were

obtained. Hope began to burn pretty low--was indeed on the point of

going out altogether, when one afternoon, as I was strolling over the

commons (for in my walks I still hovered about the scenes of my lost

milcher), I saw the rump of a cow, over a grassy knoll, that looked

familiar. Coming nearer, the beast lifted up her head; and, behold! it

was she! only a few squares from home, where doubtless she had been most

of the time. I had overshot the mark in my search. I had ransacked the

far-off, and had neglected the near-at-hand, as we are so apt to do. But

she was ruined as a milcher, and her history thenceforward was brief and

touching!

JOHN BURROUGHS.

LOVE'S MESSENGERS.

Who will tell him? Who will teach him?

Have you voices, merry birds?

Then be voice for me, and reach him

With a thousand pleading words.

Sing my secret, east and west,

Till his answer be confessed!

Roses, when you see him coming,

Light of heart and strong of limb,

Make your lover-bees stop humming;

Turn your blushes round to him--

Blush, dear flowers, that he may learn,

How a woman's heart can burn!

Wind--oh, wind--you happy rover!

Oh that I were half as free--

Leave your honey-bells and clover,

Go and seek my love for me.

Find, kiss, clasp him, make him know

It is _I_ who love him so!

MARY AINGE DE VERE.

THE HEAD OF HERCULES.

One of the most curious cases that ever came under my notice in a long

course of criminal practice was not brought into any court, and, as I

believe, has never been published until now. The details of the affair

came under my personal cognizance in the following manner:

In 1858 I went down into the Shenandoah valley to spend my summer

vacation among the innumerable Pages, Marshalls, and Cookes who all

hailed me as cousin, by right of traditional intermarriages generations

back. My first visit was to the house of McCormack Beardsley, a kinsman

and school-fellow whom I had not seen since we parted at the university

twenty years before.

We were both gray-haired old fellows now, but I had grown thin and sharp

in the courts of Baltimore and Washington, while he had lived quietly on

his plantation, more fat and jovial and genial with every year.

Beardsley possessed large means then, and maintained the unlimited

hospitality usual among large Virginia planters before the war. The

house was crowded during my stay with my old friends from the valley and

southern countries. His daughter, too, was not only a beauty, but a

favorite among the young people, and brought many attractive, well-bred

girls about her, and young men who were not so attractive or well bred.

Lack of occupation and a definite career had reduced the sons of too

many Virginia families at that time to cards and horses as their sole

pursuits; the war, while it left them penniless, was in one sense their

salvation.

One evening, sitting on the verandah with Beardsley, smoking, and

looking in the open windows of the parlor, I noticed a woman who sat a

little apart, and who, as I fancied, was avoided by the younger girls.

In a Virginia country party there are always two or three unmarried

women, past their first youth, with merry blue eyes, brown hair, and

delicate features--women "with a history," but who are none the less

good dancers, riders, and able to put all their cleverness into the

making of a pie or a match for their cousins. This woman was blue-eyed

and brown-haired, but she had none of the neat, wide-awake

self-possession of her class. She had a more childish expression, and

spoke with a more timid uncertainty, than even Lotty Beardsley, who was

still in the schoolroom. I called my host's attention to her and asked

who she was.

"It is the daughter of my cousin, General George Waring. You remember

him surely--of the Henrico branch of Warings?"

"Certainly. But he had only one child--Louisa; and I remember receiving

an invitation to her wedding years ago."

"Yes. This is Louisa. The wedding never took place. It's an odd story,"

he said, after a pause, "and the truth is, Floyd, I brought the girl

here while you were with us in the hope that you, with your legal

acumen, could solve the mystery that surrounds her. I'll give the facts

to you to-morrow--it's impossible to do it now. But tell me, in the mean

time, how she impresses you, looking at her as a lawyer would at a

client, or a--a prisoner on trial. Do you observe anything peculiar in

her face or manner?"

"I observed a very peculiar manner in all those about her--an effort at

cordiality in which they did not succeed; a certain constraint in look

and tone while speaking to her. I even saw it in yourself just now as

soon as you mentioned her name."

"You did? I'm sorry for that--exceedingly sorry!" anxiously. "I believe

in Louisa Waring's innocence as I do in that of my own child; and if I

thought she was hurt or neglected in this house---- But there's a cloud

on the girl, Floyd--that's a fact. It don't amount even to suspicion. If

it did, one could argue it down. But----Well, what do you make of

her--her face now?"

"It is not an especially clever face, nor one that indicates power of

any kind; not the face of a woman who of her own will would be the

heroine of any remarkable story. I should judge her to have been a few

years ago one of the sensible, light-hearted, sweet-tempered girls of

whom there are so many in Virginia; a nice housekeeper, and one who

would have made a tender wife and mother."

"Well, well? Nothing more?"

"Yes. She has not matured into womanhood as such girls do. She looks as

if her growth in every-day experiences had stopped years ago; that while

her body grew older her mind had halted, immature, incomplete. A great

grief might have had that effect, or the absorption of all her faculties

by one sudden, mastering idea."

"You are a little too metaphysical for me," said Beardsley. "Poor Lou

isn't shrewd by any means, and always gives me the feeling that she

needs care and protection more than most women, if that is what you

mean."

"There is a singular expression in her face at times," I resumed.

"Ah! Now you have it!" he muttered.

"Sitting there in your parlor, where there is certainly nothing to

dread, she has glanced behind and about her again and again, as though

she heard a sound that frightened her. I observe, too, that when any man

speaks to her she fixes on him a keen, suspicious look. She does not

have it with women. It passes quickly, but it is there. It is precisely

the expression of an insane person, or a guilty one dreading arrest."

"You are a close observer, Floyd. I told my wife that we could not do

better than submit the whole case to your judgment. We are all Lou's

friends in the neighborhood; but we cannot look at the matter with your

legal experience and unprejudiced eyes. Come, let us go into supper

now."

The next morning I was summoned to Beardsley's "study" (so called

probably from the total absence of either book or newspaper), and found

himself and his wife awaiting me, and also a Doctor Scheffer, whom I had

previously noticed among the guests--a gaunt, hectic young man,

apparently on the high road to death, the victim of an incurable

consumption.

"I asked William Scheffer to meet us here," said Mr. Beardsley, "as

Louisa Waring was an inmate of his father's house at the time of the

occurrence. She and William were children and playmates together. I

believe I am right, William. You knew all the circumstances of that

terrible night?"

The young man's heavy face changed painfully. "Yes; as much as was known

to any one but Louisa, and--the guilty man, whoever he was. But why are

you dragging out that wretched affair?" turning angrily on Mrs.

Beardsley. "Surely any friend of Miss Waring's would try to bury the

past for her!"

"No," said the lady calmly. "It has been buried quite too long, in my

opinion; for she has carried her burden for six years. It is time now

that we should try to lift it for her. You are sitting in a draught,

William. Sit on this sofa."

Scheffer, coughing frightfully, and complaining with all the testiness

of a long-humored invalid, was disposed of at last, and Beardsley began:

"The story is briefly this. Louisa, before her father's death, was

engaged to be married to Colonel Paul Merrick (Merricks of Clarke

county, you know). The wedding was postponed for a year when General

Waring died, and Louisa went to her uncle's--your father, William--to

live during that time. When the year was over, every preparation was

made for the marriage: invitations were sent to all the kinsfolk on both

sides (and that included three or four counties on a rough guess), and

we--the immediate family--were assembled at Major Scheffer's preparing

for the grand event, when----" Beardsley became now excessively hot and

flurried, and getting up, thumped heavily up and down the room.

"After all, there is nothing to tell. Why should we bring in a famous

lawyer to sit in judgment on her as if the girl were a criminal? She

only did, Floyd, what women have done since the beginning--changed her

mind without reason. Paul Merrick was as clever and lovable a young

fellow as you would find in the State, and Louisa was faithful to

him--she's faithful to him yet; but on the night before the wedding she

refused to marry him, and has persisted in the refusal ever since,

without assigning a cause."

"Is that all of the story?" I asked.

Beardsley was silent.

"No," said his wife gently; "that is not all. I thought McCormack's

courage would fail before he gave you the facts. I shall try and tell

you----"

"Only the facts, if you please, without any inferences or opinions of

others."

The old lady paused for a moment, and then began: "A couple of days

before the wedding we went over to Major Scheffer's to help prepare for

it. You know we have no restaurateurs nor confectioners to depend upon,

and such occasions are busy seasons. The gentlemen played whist, rode

about the plantation, or tried the Major's wines, while indoors we, all

of us--married ladies and girls and a dozen old aunties--were at work

with cakes, creams, and pastry. I recollect I took over our cook, Prue,

because Lou fancied nobody could make such wine jelly as hers. Then

Lou's trousseau was a very rich one, and she wanted to try on all of her

pretty dresses, that we might see how----"

"My dear!" interrupted Mr. Beardsley, "this really appears irrelevant to

the matter----"

"Not at all. I wish Mr. Floyd to gain an idea of Louisa's temper and

mood at that time. The truth is, she was passionately fond of her lover,

and very happy that her marriage was so near; and being a modest little

thing, she hid her feeling under an incessant, merry chatter about

dresses and jellies. Don't you agree with me, William?"

The sick man turned on the sofa with a laugh, which looked ghastly

enough on his haggard face. "I submit, Aunt Sophie, that it is hardly

fair to call me in as a witness in this case. I waited on Lou for two or

three years, Mr. Floyd, and she threw me over for Merrick. It is not

likely that I was an unprejudiced observer of her moods just then."

"Nonsense, William. I knew that was but the idlest flirtation between

you, or I should not have brought you here now," said his aunt. "Well,

Mr. Floyd, the preparations all were completed on the afternoon before

the wedding. Some of the young people had gathered in the library--Paul

Merrick and his sisters and--you were there, William?"

"Yes, I was there."

"And they persuaded Lou to put on her wedding dress and veil to give

them a glimpse of the bride. I think it was Paul who wished it. He was a

hot, eager young fellow, and he was impatient to taste his happiness by

anticipation. It was a dull, gusty afternoon in October. I remember the

contrast she made to the gray, cold day as she came in, shy and

blushing, and her eyes sparkling, in her haze of white, and stood in

front of the window. She was so lovely and pure that we were all silent.

It seemed as if she belonged then to her lover alone, and none of us had

a right to utter a word. He went up to her, but no one heard what he

said, and then took her by the hand and led her reverently to the door.

Presently I met her coming out of her chamber in a cloak and hat. Her

maid Abby was inside, folding the white dress and veil. 'I am going down

to Aunty Huldah's,' Lou said to me. 'I promised her to come again before

I was married and tell her the arrangements all over once more.' Huldah

was an old colored woman, Lou's nurse, who lived down on the creek bank

and had long been bedridden. I remember that I said to Louisa that the

walk would be long and lonely, and told her to call Paul to accompany

her. She hesitated a moment, and then turned to the door, saying Huldah

would probably be in one of her most funereal moods, and that she would

not have Paul troubled on the eve of his wedding day. She started,

running and looking back with a laugh, down the hill." Mrs. Beardsley

faltered and stopped.

"Go on," said Dr. Scheffer. "The incidents which follow are all that

really affect Louisa's guilt or innocence."

"Go on, mother," said Beardsley hastily. "Louisa's innocence is not

called in question. Remember that. Tell everything you know without

scruple."

The old lady began again in a lower voice: "We expected an arrival that

afternoon--Houston Simms, a distant kinsman of Major Scheffer's. He was

from Kentucky--a large owner of blooded stock--and was on his way home

from New York, where his horses had just won the prizes at the fall

races. He had promised to stop for the wedding, and the carriage had

been sent to the station to meet him. The station, as you know, is five

miles up the road. By some mistake the carriage was late, and Houston

started, with his valise in his hand, to walk to the house, making a

short cut through the woods. When the carriage came back empty, and the

driver told this to us, some of the young men started down to meet the

old gentleman. It was then about four o'clock, and growing dark rapidly.

The wind, I recollect, blew sharply, and a cold rain set in. I came out

on the long porch, and walked up and down, feeling uneasy and annoyed at

Louisa's prolonged absence. Colonel Merrick, who had been looking for

her all through the house, had just learned from me where she had gone,

and was starting with umbrellas to meet her, when she came suddenly up

to us, crossing the ploughed field, not from the direction of Huldah's

cabin, but from the road. We both hurried toward her; but when she

caught sight of Colonel Merrick she stopped short, putting out her hands

with a look of terror and misery quite indescribable. 'Take me away from

him! Oh, for God's sake!' she cried. I saw she had suffered some great

shock, and taking her in my arms, led her in, motioning him to keep

back. She was so weak as to fall, but did not faint, nor lose

consciousness for a single moment. All night she lay, her eyes wandering

from side to side as in momentary expectancy of the appearance of some

one. No anodyne had any effect upon her--every nerve seemed strained to

its utmost tension. But she did not speak a word except at the sound of

Colonel Merrick's voice or step, when she would beg piteously that he

should be kept away from her. Toward morning she fell into a kind of

stupor, and when she awoke appeared to be calmer. She beckoned to me,

and asked that her uncle Scheffer and Judge Grove, her other guardian,

should be sent for. She received them standing, apparently quite grave

and composed. She asked that several other persons should be called in,

desiring, she said, to have as many witnesses as possible to what she

was about to make known. 'You all know,' she said, 'that to-morrow was

to have been my wedding day. I wish you now to bear witness that I

refuse to-day or at any future time to marry Paul Merrick, and that no

argument or persuasion will induce me to do so. And I wish,' raising her

hand, to keep silence--'I wish to say publicly that it is no fault or

ill doing of Colonel Merrick's that has driven me to this resolve. I

say this as in the sight of Almighty God.' Nobody argued, or scarcely,

indeed, spoke to her. Every one saw that she was physically a very ill

woman; and it was commonly believed that she had received some sudden

shock which had unhinged her mind. An hour afterward the searching party

came in (for the young men, not finding Houston Simms, had gone out

again to search for him). They had found his dead body concealed in the

woods by Mill's spring. You know the place. There was a pistol shot

through the head, and a leathern pocketbook, which had apparently

contained money, was found empty a few feet away. That was the end of it

all, Mr. Floyd."

"You mean that Simms's murderer was never found?"

"Never," said Beardsley, "though detectives were brought down from

Richmond and set on the track. Their theory--a plausible one enough

too--was that Simms had been followed from New York by men who knew the

large sum he earned from the races, and that they had robbed and

murdered him, and readily escaped through the swamps."

"It never was my belief," said Dr. Scheffer, "that he was murdered at

all. It was hinted that he had stopped in a gambling house in New York,

and there lost whatever sum he had won at the races; and that rather

than meet his family in debt and penniless, he blew out his brains in

the first lonely place to which he came. That explanation was plain

enough."

"What was the end of the story so far as Miss Waring was concerned?" I

asked.

"Unfortunately, it never has had an end," said Mrs. Beardsley. "The

mystery remains. She was ill afterward; indeed, it was years before she

regained her bodily strength as before. But her mind had never been

unhinged, as Paul Merrick thought. He waited patiently, thinking that

some day her reason would return, and she would come back to him. But

Louisa Waring was perfectly sane even in the midst of her agony on that

night. From that day until now she has never by word or look given any

clue by which the reason of her refusal to marry him could be

discovered. Of course the murder and her strange conduct produced a

great excitement in this quiet neighborhood. But you can imagine all

that. I simply have given you the facts which bear on the case."

"The first suspicion, I suppose, rested on Merrick?" I said.

"Yes. The natural explanation of her conduct was that she had witnessed

an encounter in the woods between Simms and her lover, in which the old

man was killed. Fortunately, however, Paul Merrick had not left the

house once during the afternoon until he went out with me to meet her."

"And then Miss Waring was selected as the guilty party?"

No one answered for a moment. Young Scheffer lay with his arm over his

face, which had grown so worn and haggard as the story was told that I

doubted whether his affection for the girl had been the slight matter

which he chose to represent it.

"No," said Beardsley; "she never was openly accused, nor even subjected

to any public interrogation. She came to the house in the opposite

direction from the spot where the murder took place. And there was no

rational proof that she had any cognizance of it. But there were not

wanting busybodies to suggest that she had met Simms in the woods, and

at some proffered insult from him had fired the fatal shot."

His wife's fair old face flushed. "How can you repeat such absurdity,

McCormack?" she said. "Louisa Waring was as likely to go about armed

as--as I!" knitting vehemently at a woollen stocking she had held idly

until now.

"I know it was absurd, my dear. But you know as well as I that though it

was but the mere breath of suspicion, it has always clung to the girl

and set her apart as it were from other women."

"What effect did that report have on Merrick?" I asked.

"The effect it would have on any man deserving the name," said

Beardsley. "If he loved her passionately before, she has been, I

believe, doubly dear to him since. But she has never allowed him to meet

her since that night."

"You think her feeling is unchanged for him?"

"I have no doubt of it," Mrs. Beardsley said. "There is nothing in Lou's

nature out of which you could make a heroine of tragedy. After the first

shock of that night was over she was just the commonplace little body

she was before, and could not help showing how fond she was of her old

lover. But she quietly refused to ever see him again."

"Merrick went abroad three years ago," interposed her husband. "I'll let

you into a secret, Floyd. I've determined there shall be an end of this

folly. I have heard from him that he will be at home next week, and is

as firm as ever in his resolve to marry Miss Waring. I brought her here

so that she could not avoid meeting him. Now if you, Floyd, could only

manage--could look into this matter before the meeting, and set it to

rights, clear the poor child of this wretched suspicion that hangs about

her? Well, now you know why I have told you the story."

"You have certainly a sublime faith in Mr. Floyd's skill," said Scheffer

with a disagreeable laugh. "I wish him success." He rose with

difficulty, and wrapping his shawl about him, went feebly out of the

room.

"William is soured through his long illness," Beardsley hastened to say

apologetically. "And he cared more for Lou than I supposed. We were

wrong to bring him in this morning"; and he hurried out to help him up

the stairs. Mrs. Beardsley laid down her knitting, and glanced

cautiously about her. I saw that the vital point of her testimony had

been omitted until now.

"I think it but right to tell you--nobody has ever heard it

before"--coming close to me, her old face quite pale. "When I undressed

Louisa that night her shoes and stockings were stained, and a long

reddish hair clung to her sleeve. _She had trodden over the bloody

ground and handled the murdered man._"

Every professional man will understand me when I say I was glad to hear

this. Hitherto the girl's whim and the murder appeared to me two events

connected only by the accident of occurrence on the same day. Now there

was but one mystery to solve.

Whatever success I have had in my practice has been due to my habit of

boldly basing my theories upon the known character of the parties

implicated, and not upon more palpable accidental circumstances. Left to

myself now, I speedily resolved this case into a few suppositions,

positive to me as facts. The girl had been present at the murder. She

was not naturally reticent: was instead an exceptionally confiding,

credulous woman. Her motive for silence, therefore, must have been a

force brought to bear on her at the time of the murder stronger than her

love for Merrick, and which was still existing and active. Her refusal

to meet her lover I readily interpreted to be a fear of her own

weakness--dread lest she should betray this secret to him. Might not her

refusal to marry him be caused by the same fear? some crushing disgrace

or misery which threatened her through the murder, and which she feared

to bring upon her husband? The motive I had guessed to be strong as her

love: what if it were her love? Having stepped from surmise to surmise

so far, I paused to strengthen my position by the facts. There were but

two ways in which this murder could have prevented her marriage--through

Merrick's guilt or her own. His innocence was proven; hers I did not

doubt after I had again carefully studied her face. Concealed guilt

leaves its secret signature upon the mouth and eye in lines never to be

mistaken by a man who has once learned to read them.

Were there but these two ways? There was a third, more probable than

either--_fear_. At the first presentation of this key to the riddle the

whole case mapped itself out before me. The murderer had sealed her lips

by some threat. He was still living, and she was in daily expectation of

meeting him. She had never seen his face, but had reason to believe him

of her own class. (This supposition I based on her quick, terrified

inspection of every man's face who approached her.) Now what threat

could have been strong enough to keep a weak girl silent for years, and

to separate her from her lover on their wedding day? I knew women well

enough to say, none against herself; the threat I believed hung over

Merrick's head, and would be fulfilled if she betrayed the secret or

married him, which, with a weak, loving woman, was equivalent, as any

man would know, to betrayal.

I cannot attempt to make the breaks in this reasoning solid ground for

my readers; it was solid ground for me.

The next morning Beardsley met me on leaving the breakfast table. He

held a letter open in his hand, and looked annoyed and anxious.

"Here's a note from Merrick. He sailed a week sooner than he

expected--has left New York, and will be here to-night. If I had only

put the case in your hands earlier! I had a hope that you could clear

the little girl. But it's too late. She'll take flight as soon as she

hears he is coming. Scheffer says it's a miserable, bloody muddle, and

that I was wrong to stir it up."

"I do not agree with Dr. Scheffer," I said quietly. "I am going now to

the library. In half an hour send Miss Waring to me."

"You have not yet been presented to her?"

"So much the better. I wish her to regard me as a lawyer simply. State

to her as formally as you choose who I am, and that I desire to see her

on business."

I seated myself in the library; placed pen and ink, and some

legal-looking documents, selected at random, before me. Red tape and the

formal pomp of law constitute half its force with women and men of

Louisa's calibre. I had hardly arranged myself and my materials when the

door slowly opened, and she entered. She was alarmed, yet wary. To see a

naturally hearty, merry little body subjected for years to this nervous

strain, with a tragic idea forced into a brain meant to be busied only

with dress, cookery, or babies, appeared to me a pitiful thing.

"Miss Waring?" reducing the ordinary courtesies to a curt, grave nod.

"Be seated, if you please." I turned over my papers slowly, and then

looked up at her. I had, I saw, none of the common feminine shrewdness

to deal with; need expect no subtle devices of concealment; no clever

doublings; nothing but the sheer obstinacy which is an unintellectual

woman's one resource. I would ignore it and her--boldly assume full

possession of the ground at the first word.

"My errand to this house, Miss Waring, is in part the investigation of a

murder in 1854, of which you were the sole witness--that of Houston

Simms----"

I stopped. The change in her face appalled me. She had evidently not

expected so direct an attack. In fact, Beardsley told me afterward that

it was the first time the subject had been broached to her in plain

words. However, she made no reply, and I proceeded in the same formal

tone:

"I shall place before you the facts which are in my possession, and

require your assent to such as are within your knowledge. On the

afternoon of Tuesday, October 5, 1854, Houston Simms left the Pine

Valley station, carrying a valise containing a large sum of money.

You----"

She had been sitting on the other side of the table, looking steadily at

me. She rose now. She wore a blue morning dress, with lace ruffles and

other little fooleries in which women delight, and I remember being

shocked with the strange contrast between this frippery and the

speechless dread and misery of her face. She gained control of her voice

with difficulty.

"Who has said that I was a witness of the murder?" she gasped. "I always

explained that I was in another part of the wood. I went to aunty

Huldah----"

"Pray do not interrupt me, Miss Waring. I am aware that you were the

witness--the sole witness--in this matter." (She did not contradict me.

I was right in my first guess--she had been alone with the murderer.)

"On returning from your nurse's cabin you left the direct path and

followed the sound of angry voices to the gorge by Mill's spring----"

"I did not go to play the spy. He lied when he said that," she cried

feebly. "I heard the steps, and thought Colonel Merrick had come to

search for me."

"That matters nothing. You saw the deed done. The old man was killed,

and then robbed, in your sight"--I came toward her, and lowered my voice

to a stern, judicial whisper, while the poor girl shrank back as though

I were law itself uttering judgment upon her. If she had known what

stagy guesswork it all was! "When you were discovered, the murderer

would have shot you to insure your silence."

"I wish he had! It was Thad who would have done that. The white man's

way was more cruel--oh, God knows it was more cruel!"

(There were two then.) I was very sorry for the girl, but I had a keen

pleasure in the slow unfolding of the secret, just as I suppose the

physician takes delight in the study of a new disease, even if it kills

the patient.

"Yes," I said with emphasis. "I believe that it would have been less

suffering for you, Miss Waring, to have died then than to have lived,

forced as you were to renounce your lover, and to carry about with you

the dread of the threat made by those men."

"I have not said there was a threat made. I have betrayed nothing." She

had seated herself some time before by the table. There was a large

bronze inkstand before her, and as she listened she arranged a half

dozen pens evenly on the rest. The words she heard and spoke mattered

more to her than life or death; her features were livid as those of a

corpse, yet her hands went on with their mechanical work--one pen did

not project a hair's breadth beyond the other. We lawyers know how

common such puerile, commonplace actions are in the supreme moments of

life, and how seldom men wring their hands, or use tragic gesture, or

indeed words.

"No, you have betrayed nothing," I said calmly. "Your self-control has

been remarkable, even when we remember that you believed your confession

would be followed by speedy vengeance, not on your head, but Colonel

Merrick's."

She looked up not able to speak for a minute. "You--you know all?"

"Not all, but enough to assure you that your time of suffering is over.

You can speak freely, unharmed."

Her head dropped on the table. She was crying, and, I think, praying.

"You saw Houston Simms killed by two men, one of whom, the negro Thad,

you knew. The white man's face was covered. You did not recognize him.

But he knew you, and the surest way to compel you to silence. I wish you

now to state to me all the details of this man's appearance, voice, and

manner, to show me any letters which you have received from him since"

(a random guess, which I saw hit the mark)--"in short, every

circumstance which you can recall about him."

She did not reply.

"My dear Miss Waring, you need have no fear on Colonel Merrick's

account. The law has taken this matter out of your hands. Colonel

Merrick is protected by the law."

"Oh! I did not understand," meekly.

To be brief, she told me the whole story. When she reached the spring

she had found the old man bleeding and still breathing. He died in her

arms. The men, who had gone back into the laurel to open the valise,

came back upon her. The negro was a desperate character, well known in

the county. He had died two years later. The other man was masked and

thoroughly disguised. He had stopped the negro when he would have killed

her, and after a few minutes' consultation had whispered to him the

terms upon which she was allowed to escape.

"You did not hear the white man's voice?"

"Not once."

"Bring me the letters you have received from him."

She brought two miserably spelled and written scrawls on soiled bits of

paper. It was the writing of an educated man, poorly disguised. He

threatened to meet her speedily, warned her that he had spies constantly

about her.

"That is all the evidence you can give me?"

"All." She rose to go. I held the door open for her, when she hesitated.

"There was something more--a mere trifle."

"Yes. But most likely the one thing that I want."

"I returned to the spring again and again for months afterward. People

thought I was mad. I may have been; but I found there one day a bit of

reddish glass with a curious mark on it."

"You have it here?"

She brought it to me. It was a fragment of engraved sardonyx, apparently

part of a seal; the upper part of a head was cut upon it; the short

hairs curving forward on the low forehead showed that the head was that

of Hercules.

Some old recollection rose in my brain, beginning, as I may say, to

gnaw uncertainly. I went to my room for a few minutes to collect myself,

and then sought Beardsley.

He was pacing up and down the walk to the stables, agitated as though he

had been the murderer.

"Well, Floyd, well! What chance is there? What have you discovered?"

"Everything. One moment. I have a question or two to ask you. About ten

years ago you commissioned me to buy for you in New York a seal--an

intaglio of great value--a head of Hercules, as I remember. What did you

do with it?"

"Gave it to Job Scheffer, William's father. Will has it now, though I

think it is broken."

"Very well. What have Dr. Scheffer's habits been, by the way? Was he as

fond of turning the cards as the other young fellows?"

"Oh, yes, poor boy! There was a rumor some years ago that he was

frightfully involved in Baltimore--that it would ruin the old man, in

fact, to clear off his debts of honor. But it died out. I suppose

William found some way of straightening them out."

"Probably. Where is Dr. Scheffer now? I have a message for him."

"In his room. But this matter of Louisa Waring----"

"Presently. Have patience."

I went up to the young man's room. After all, the poor wretch was dying,

and to compel him to blast his own honorable name seemed but brutal

cruelty. I had to remember the poor girl's wasted face and hopeless eyes

before I could summon courage to open the door after I had knocked. I

think he expected me, and knew all that I had to say. A man in health

would soon have known that I was acting on surmise, and defied me to the

proof. Scheffer, I fancied, had been creeping through life for years

with death in two shapes pursuing him, step by step. He yielded, cowed

submissive at the first touch, and only pleaded feebly for mercy.

The negro had been his body servant--knew his desperate straits, and

dragged him into the crime. Then, he had loved Louisa: he was maddened

by her approaching marriage. The scheme of ensuring her silence and

driving Merrick away was the inspiration of a moment, and had succeeded.

He only asked for mercy. His time was short. He could not live beyond a

few weeks. I would not bring him to the gallows.

I was merciful, and I think was right to be so. His deposition was taken

before his uncle, Mr. Beardsley, who was a magistrate, and two other men

of position and weight in the community. It was to be kept secret until

after his death, and then made public. He was removed at once to his

father's house.

On Colonel Merrick's arrival that evening, this deposition was formally

read to him. I do not think it impressed him very much. He was resolved

to marry Miss Waring in spite of every obstacle.

"But I never would have married you unless the truth had been

discovered--never," she said to him that evening as they stood near me

in the drawing-room. Her cheeks were warm, and her dark eyes full of

tender light. I thought her a very lovely woman.

"Then I owe you to Mr. Floyd after all?" he said, looking down at her

fondly.

"Oh, I suppose so," with a shrug. "But he is a very disagreeable person!

Cast-iron, you know. I am so thankful _you_ are not a lawyer, Paul."

JAMES M. FLOYD.

ROMANCE.

I would I were mighty, victorious,

A monarch of steel and of gold--

I would I were one of the glorious

Divinities hallowed of old--

A god of the ancient sweet fashion

Who mingled with women and men,

A deity human in passion,

Transhuman in strength and in ken.

For then I could render the pleasure

I win from the sight of your face;

For then I could utter my treasure

Of homage and thanks for your grace;

I could dower, illumine, and gladden,

Could rescue from perils and tears,

And my speech could vibrate and madden

With eloquence worthy your ears.

You meet me: you smile and speak kindly;

One minute I marvel and gaze,

Idolatrous, worshipping blindly,

Yet mindful of decorous ways.

You pass; and the glory is ended,

Though lustres and sconces may glow:

The goddess who made the scene splendid

Has vanished; and darkly I go.

You know not how swiftly you mounted

The throne in the depths of my eyes;

You care not how meekly I counted

Those moments for pearls of the skies;

Or, knowing it, all is forgotten

The moment I pass from your sight--

Consigned to the fancies begotten

Of chaos and slumber and night.

But I--I remember your glances,

Your carelessest gesture and word,

And out of them fashion romances

Man never yet uttered nor heard;

Romances too splendid for mortals,

Too sweet for a planet of dole;

Romances which open the portals

Of Eden, and welcome my soul.

J. W. DEFOREST.

BEER.

Poets, in every age since the time of Anacreon, have sung odes in praise

of wine. The greatest bards of every clime have sought inspiration in

its sparkling depths. But the poet, even German, is yet unborn, who,

moved by sweet memories of the nectar of his fatherland, shall chant in

rhyme the virtues of his national drink. Yet though its merit has

inspired neither of the sister graces, poetry and song, to strike the

lyre in its honor, it has had, none the less, an important mission to

perform. To its plebeian sister beer, as a healthful beverage, wine must

yield the palm. As a common drink, suited to human nature's daily need,

it has never been surpassed. If it has nerved no hand to deeds of

daring, or struck the scintillating sparks of genius from the human

brain, it has added immensely to the health, long life, and happiness of

many nations, and is destined to still greater triumphs, as life becomes

studied more from a hygienic standpoint.

Beer is believed to have been invented by the Egyptians, and is of

almost universal use; the zone of the cereals being more extended than

that of the grape. Greek writers before Christ mention a drink composed

of barley, under the name of _zythos_. This beverage was not unknown to

the Romans, and we find it first mentioned by the historian Tacitus. By

the nations of the West it was regarded as a nourishing drink for poor

people. They prepared it from honey and wheat. Among the ancient Germans

and Scandinavians, however, beer was in former times the national

beverage, and was prepared from barley, wheat, or oats, with the

addition of oak bark, and later of hops.

The ancients put bitter herbs in beer, and the present use of hops is in

imitation. Modern beer was born at the time of Charlemagne, an epoch at

which hops were first cultivated. The earliest writing in which one

finds mention of hops as an aroma to beer is in a parchment of St.

Hildegarde, abbess of the convent of St. Rupert, at Bingen on the Rhine.

The art of fabricating beer remained for a long time a privilege of

convents. The priests drank Pater's beer, while the lighter or convent

beer was used by the laity. Although beer has been manufactured of all

the cereals, barley only can be called its true and legitimate father.

Bavaria and Franconia were already in the fourteenth century celebrated

for their excellent beer, and the German cities, of which each one soon

had its own brewery, vied with their predecessors. In the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries the Upper and Lower Saxony breweries became well

known. The Braunschweiger, Einbeker, Göttinger, Bremer, and Hamburger

beer, as well as the breweries of the cities of Würzen, Zwickau, Torgau,

Merseburg, and Goslar, were far and wide celebrated. Bavarian beer has

long made the tour of the world. Bock beer from Bavaria and from the

Erzgebirge is exported to Java and China.

German lager beer, as a healthy and lightly stimulating beverage, is

welcome in both hot and cold countries. It is liked as well by the

Russians and Scandinavians as by the inhabitants of the tropics. It is

brewed by Germans in all parts of the globe--in Valenciennes, Antwerp,

Madrid, Constantinople, and even in Australia, Chili, and Brazil.

The English commenced later than the Germans to make beer. In 1524,

however, they not only brewed beer, but used hops in its fabrication.

The Greek and Latin races, which drank wine, had but little taste for

beer, which divided them from the Germanic races as a sharp boundary.

Beer and wine seem to have had an influence in forming the temperament

of these widely differing races. While wine excites the nervous system,

beer tranquillizes and calms it. The action of a particular kind of

daily drink, used for centuries, must in this respect have been more or

less potent. Hence, perhaps, the Teuton's phlegm and the Gaul's

excitability.

There may be said to be three principal types of beer--the Bavarian,

Belgian, and English. The Bavarian is obtained by the infusion or

decoction of sprouted barley; then by the fermentation of deposit, in

tubs painted internally with resin. The varieties most appreciated are

the Bock and Salvator beers. The beers of Belgium have the special

character of being prepared by spontaneous fermentation, and the process

is therefore slow. The principal varieties are the Lambick, the Faro,

the March beer, and the Uytzd. In the English beer the must is prepared

by simple infusion and the fermentation is superficial. On account of

its great alcoholic richness it is easily conserved. The ale, the

porter, and the stout are the chief varieties of English beer, which

differ among themselves only by the diverse proportion of their

ingredients and the different degrees of torrefaction of the barley,

rendering it more or less brown. In France only the superficial method

of fermentation is employed. In a litre of Strasburg beer one finds 5

1-4 grammes of albumen, 45 grammes of alcohol, and .091 of salts. The

ordinary Bavarian beer contains three per cent. of alcohol and six and a

half per cent. of nourishing extracts. The beers the most sticky to the

touch are the heaviest in volume and the most nutritious. It is

historical that in very olden days the Munich city fathers tried the

goodness of the beer by pouring it out on a bench and then sitting down

in their leather inexpressibles, and approved of it only when they

remained glued to the seat.

In Nuremberg there is a school of brewers, where one may learn all the

mysteries of beer brewing. Certain breweries, however, pretend to

possess secrets pertaining to the art known exclusively to them. For

example, one family near Leipsic is said to have possessed for a century

the secret which chemistry has tried in vain to discover, of making the

famous Gose beer.

"Good beer," says Dr. Paolo Mantegazza, a celebrated Italian writer on

medicine, "is certainly one of the most healthy of alcoholic drinks. The

bitter tonic, the richness of the alimentary principle which it

contains, and its digestibility make it a real liquid food, which, for

many temperaments, is medicine. The English beer, which is stronger in

spirit than some wines, never produces on the stomach that union of

irritating phenomena vulgarly called heat, and for this reason beer is

often tolerated by the most weak and irritable persons, and can be drunk

with advantage in grave diseases."[A] Laveran, a French physician,

counsels it for consumptives, and for nervous thin people in the most

diverse climates.

In the intoxication by beer there is always more or less stupidity. Beer

is by no means favorable to _l'esprit_. It is doubtful if it has ever

inspired the great poets or the profound thinkers who make Germany, in

science, the leading country in Europe. Reich, Voigt, and many great

writers have launched their anathemas against it. As a stimulant beer is

less potent than wine or tea and coffee. The forces of soldiers have

never been sustained on a fatiguing march, nor can they be incited to a

battle, by plentiful libations of beer. During the late French-Prussian

war nearly every provision train which left Bavaria carried supplies of

beer to the Bavarian troops. It was found very favorable for the

convalescent soldiers in the hospitals, but inferior to coffee or wine

as a stimulant on the eve of battle.

The old chroniclers of Bavaria relate this curious tale of the origin of

the celebrated bock beer. There was one day in olden times at the table

of the Duke of Bavaria, as guest, a Brunswick nobleman. Now there had

long prevailed at the court the custom of presenting to noble guests,

after the meal, a beaker of the Bavarian barley juice, not without a

warning as to its strength. The Brunswicker received the usual cup,

emptied it at a draught, and pronounced it excellent. "But," he

continued, "such barley juice as we brew at home in Brunswick is

equalled by no other. Our Mumme is the king of beers, so that the

bravest drinker cannot take two beakers of it without sinking under the

table." The duke listened with displeasure to the haughty words of the

knight, for he was not a little proud of the brewings of his country,

and commanded his cup-bearer, with a meaning look, to challenge him.

"By your leave, Sir Knight," replied the page, "what you say is not

quite true. If it pleases you and my lord Duke, I should like to lay a

wager with you."

The duke nodded assent, and the knight, smiling scornfully, challenged

the cup-bearer to pledge him.

"Your Brunswick Mumme," continued the page, "may pass as a refreshing

drink; but with our beer you cannot compare it, for the best of our

brewings is unknown to you. In case, however, you please again to make

your appearance at the hospitable court of my gracious lord, I will

promise you a beaker of beer which cannot be equalled in any other

country of united Christendom. I will drink the greatest bumper that can

be found in our court of your Mumme at one draught, if you can take of

our beer, even slowly, three beakers. He who a half hour afterward can

stand on one leg and thread a needle shall win the wager, and receive

from the other a mighty cask of Tokayer Rebensafte."

This speech received loud applause, and the Brunswicker laughingly

accepted the challenge.

After the knight had departed the duke tapped the page on the shoulder

and said, "Take care that thou dost not repent thy word, and that the

Brunswicker does not win the wager."

The first morning in May the Brunswicker rode into the castle and was

welcomed by the duke. All eyes were turned on the cup-bearer, who

shortly afterward appeared with a suite of pages carrying on a bier two

little casks, one bearing the Bavarian arms and the other those of

Brunswick. The right to give to the contents of the former a particular

name was reserved to the duke. The page produced likewise a monstrous

silver bumper and three beakers of the ordinary size. It was long before

the bumper was filled to the rim, and then it required two men to raise

it to the table. In the mean time another page placed the three beakers

before the knight, who could not suppress a sarcastic laugh at the huge

bumper which the page, taking in his strong arms, placed to his lips. As

the knight emptied the last beaker the cup-bearer turned down the

bumper. Two needles and a bundle of silk lay on the table. It wanted a

few moments of the half hour, and the Brunswicker ran toward the garden

for fresh air. Hardly arrived in the court, a peculiar swimming of the

head seized him, so that he fell to the ground. A servant saw him from

the window, and hastened out, followed by the court, with the duke in

advance. There lay the Brunswicker, and tried in vain to rise.

"By all the saints, Herr Ritter, what has thrown you in the sand?"

inquired the duke sympathetically.

"The bock, the bock" (the goat, the goat), murmured the knight with a

heavy tongue.

A burst of sarcastic laughter echoed in the courtyard. In the mean time

the page stood on one foot, and without swaying threaded the needle.

"The bock, the bock," repeated the duke smiling. "Our beer is no longer

without a name. It shall be called bock, that one may take care."

The bock season lasts about six weeks, from May into June. Just before

it commences a transparency of a goat, drinking from a tall, slender

glass, is placed as a sign before certain beer locals, called in Munich

dialect bock stalls, not because goats are kept there, but because

wonderful beer, called bock, is dispensed.

He who has not lived in Bavaria can have no idea of what importance beer

is in Bavarian life. There are in Munich Germans who exist only for

beer, and there have been pointed out to me old gentlemen who have

frequented daily the same local for twenty-five or thirty years, and

even occupied the same seat, and pounded the same table, by way of

enforcing their views, in discussing the politics of the day. They are

called _Stammgäste_ (literally stock guests), and are much honored in

their respective locals.

The greatest personages do not disdain the meanest locals, provided the

beer is good and to their taste. Naked pine tables do not disgust them,

nor the hardest benches. Often on the table skins of radishes, crusts of

bread, cigar stumps, tobacco ashes, herring heads, and cheese rinds form

a fragrant _mélange_. The inheritors of this precious legacy push it

away without undue irritability. Radishes are carried about by old women

called _radi-weibers_, who do a thriving business besides in nuts and

herrings. One cannot find in any other country of the world radishes of

such size, tenderness, and flavor--a brown variety inherited by the

happy Müncheners with their breweries. Nowhere else does cutting and

salting them rank as an art. To prepare one scientifically they pare it

carefully, slit it in three slices nearly to the end, place salt on the

top, and draw the finger over it, as if it were a pack of cards. The

salt falls between the slices, and when they are pressed together

becomes absorbed.

In a German _Bier Local_ are represented all classes of society. Beer is

the great leveller of social distinctions. The foaming glass of King

Gambrinus unites all Germans of all states, climates, and professions

in a closer brotherhood than the sceptre of the Hohenzollerns, and links

that portion of the Teutonic race over which the stars and stripes

throws its protecting folds to the dear fatherland.

Fine wines are a perquisite of money. The fortunate aristocrat and the

house of Israel, which everywhere waxes fat on the needs of travellers,

may sip their champagne, their Lachrymæ Christi, and their Hockheimer,

while less favored humanity contents itself with sour _vin ordinaire_;

but beer is the same for all, and in some breweries each one must search

for a glass, rinse it, and present himself in his turn at the shank

window, to which there is no royal road. "La bière," which a great

writer calls "ce vin de la réforme," is essentially a democratic drink.

It became popular at a time when a fatal blow had been struck at class

privileges and priestly exclusiveness.

Manfully does a true-hearted Bavarian stand by his brewery, in ill as

well as good report. If the beer turns out badly, he does not find it a

sufficient reason to desert his local for some other, but rather remains

with touching devotion, and anticipates the approaching end of the old

beer and the advent of new, with implicit trust and confidence in the

future. Some years ago the Bavarian post and railway conductors

distinguished themselves by the mournful zeal with which they notified

to the passengers the nearing of the frontier. At each station they were

sorrowfully communicative.

"The last Bairischer[B] but four, gentlemen! Gentlemen, there are only

two more real Bairischers! Gentlemen," with tears in the voice, "the

last Bairischer."

The passengers rushed to the buffet and drank.

Even now, with that curious affection with which every Bavarian's heart

turns to his Mecca of beer, the salutation to a stranger is, "Are you

going to Munich? _Da werden sie gutes Bier trinken._"[C]

"You came from Munich! _Ach!_ _da haben sie gutes Bier getrunken._"[D]

Even in Beerland there are different kinds of beer, like the federal

union, one in many and many in one. Between them are sometimes

irreconcilable differences, as for example, between the white and

Actiens beer of Berlin. The former is made of wheat, and is exclusively

a summer beverage, and a glass of it is fondly termed a "kleine Weisse"

(a little white one), perhaps in irony, for it is served in excentric

mammoth tumblers, which require both hands to lift.

Then there is the Vienna beer, the antipodes of the Bavarian. The latter

must be drunk soon after it is made, while the former must lie many

months in the cellar before it is ready for use. In Austria, that

forcible union of States of clashing interests and nationalities, which

is not a nation, but only a government reposing on bayonets, the

population is divided between the partisans of King Gambrinus and those

of Bacchus.

As little as an artist could maintain that he was familiar with the

works of the great masters when he had not visited Italy, so little

could a beer drinker assert that he had seen beer rightly drunk when he

had not been in Munich. All over the world beer is regarded as a

refreshment, but in Munich it is the elixir of life, the fabled fountain

of youth and happiness. It is looked upon as nourishment by the lower

classes, who drink for dinner two _masses_[E] of it, with soup and black

bread. For the price of the beer they could procure a good portion of

meat, but they universally maintain that they are best nourished with

beer and bread.

The Bavarian drinks to satisfy his "thirst, that beautiful German gift

of God." If he is healthy, he drinks because it keeps his life juices in

their normal state; if he is sick and in pain, because it is a soothing

and harmless narcotic; if he is hungry, because beer is nourishment; if

he has already eaten, because beer promotes digestion; if he is warm,

because it is cooling and refreshing; if he is cold, because it warms

him; if he is fatigued, because it is a tonic and sovereign strength

renewer; if he is angry, because beer soothes him and gives him time to

consider; if he needs courage, because beer is precisely the right

stimulant. Where the Americans fly to their bitters "to tone up the

system and enliven the secretions," the Germans resort to beer; and many

are of opinion that frequent trips to the bock stalls in the spring are

more healing than a visit to Carlsbad or Baden Baden, where one drinks

disgusting water. In all circumstances and all moods they drink and are

comforted.

The Jews believed that the sacred waves of the Jordan were powerful to

wash away all human suffering, either of the soul or body. Faith was

necessary to this pious healing. To the Münchener beer is the river of

health. His faith in it dates from his earliest infancy, and he resorts

to its beneficent influence at least seven times a day, and drinks his

last _Krügl_ with apparently the same relish as the first. The quantity

which Germans drink is something incredible. Bavarian students usually

take from five to seven masses per day. (At the German Jesuit seminary

in Prague the novices are allowed daily seven, the clericos ten, and the

priests twelve pints of beer.)

Beer is considered good not only for men, but for women, for girls and

boys, and even unweaned infants.

"Mein Krügl" the Münchener speaks of as of his natural and human rights.

He was born with a right to his beer, and his _Krügl_, as "man is born

with a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and

equally with these the State must look after this right. The krügls, or

beer mugs, of each brewery are inspected by the police, to see if the

measure is correct, and if the ware has no poisonous lead in its

composition. The royal K is stamped on them by the King's authority. The

police also examine the contents of the beer with the same zeal as the

water or the condition of the sewers.

The Germans as a nation are patient of wrong and peace-loving, but the

rumor of a tax on beer raises a frightful commotion, and a riot is often

the consequence. As well tax air, water, and fire as beer, the fifth

element.

In an ancient neighborhood of Munich, behind the post, and best entered

from Maximilian street, is a little square remarkable for its ugliness.

All the houses are old, and one feels upon entering it as if one had

suddenly walked back into the middle ages. On the east side stands a

time-gray, low, irregular building, resembling in architecture, or by

its want of it, nothing of the present age. This is the royal Hof

Brauerei. After 10 A. M. a constant stream of thirsty souls flows along

the streets and narrow alleys leading toward its dismal-looking portals.

Its beer is celebrated as being the finest in the world, and is the

standard by which all other beers are judged. It is the poetry of beer;

it is to all other brewings what Shakespeare is to the drama; what the

Coliseum is to other antiquities. None of the beer is exported or sold;

it is all drunk on the spot, and when it gives out no other brewery can

supply a drop comparable with it. The Parisians, who have heaped every

luxury, from the poles to the tropics, in their capital of the world,

have not enough money in the Bank of France to purchase a cask of it. It

is said that Maximilian II. resolved that the best beer in the world

should be made at the royal brewery in Munich. It has never been

expected that it would yield any revenue, but merely pay its expenses.

It is now under the protection of the present King, and the ingredients

are inspected by an officer of the royal household.

For its dirt, its darkness, and its utter want of service, the Hof

Brauerei is unequalled in the world, and nowhere else can be found such

a mixed society. Entering the low-vaulted room, each one looks anxiously

about for an empty mug. These are of gray stone, containing a mass, the

price of which is seven and a half kreutzers. Spying one, he hastens to

secure it from other competitors. The first who reaches it carries it

off in triumph to the spring in the anteroom, rinses it, and presents

himself behind a queue of predecessors at the shank window, where

several pairs of hands are occupied all day long in filling mugs from

the great casks within. This accomplished, he returns to the guest room

and searches for a seat. If found, it is certainly not luxurious--a

wooden bench of pine, stained by time and continual use to a dark dirt

color, behind an ancient table. The walls and ceiling are grim with age,

and the atmosphere hazy with smoke. The scene baffles description. All

classes of society are represented. Side by side with the noble or

learned professor, one sees the poorest artisan and the common soldier.

Here and there the picturesque face of an artist is in close proximity

to a peasant, and through the smoky atmosphere one catches the gleam of

the scarlet or sky-blue cap of a German student, or the glitter of an

epaulette. The Catholic of the most ultramontane stamp is there, as well

as the Jew, the Protestant, and the freethinker. Here stands a pilgrim

from far America, armed with a Bädeker, and there an Englishman with the

inevitable Murray under his arm, too amazed or disdainful to search for

a mass. Remarkable also are the steady habitués of the place, with

Albert Dürer-like features which look as if hastily hewn out of ancient

wood with two or three blows of a hatchet, or with smoke-dried

physiognomies having a tint like that of a meerschaum pipe, acquired by

years of exposure to the thick atmosphere of smoky breweries. They are

there morning, noon, and night, year in and year out. Some talk over

the news of the day, but most sit in silence. Not a few make a meal with

bread and radishes, or a sausage brought from the nearest pork shop.