But I find that again I am using superfluous if not wholly irrelevant

speech. Let me say, however, that had I possessed more curiosity--or,

rather, if I had expressed more curiosity--friend Afton would have told

me, as she afterward did, that the woman was not so entirely alone as she

imagined herself to be, for that weekly letters reached friend Afton

wherein were goodly wages for the care of the stricken one.

That my affairs prospered I am glad to relate--that in the six months I

should be here I should accumulate an agreeable sum might have pleased me.

But what was that sum to me now, when I realized to what purpose I had

expected to put it? Yet my greed received a check. I had a letter from

friend Hicks. It was a most grievous letter: my money, all that he held in

trust for me (and it was my all), had been stolen from his keeping. The

theft had occurred more than a month ago, but as he had sedulously hoped

to detect the culprit, he had kept the fact from me for shame at what

might be termed his negligence of reposed trust. He had instigated

diligent search, but nothing had come of it: there was no one to accuse.

He had determined, however, to pay back to my account from his own moneys

the full amount, and had only informed me of the loss that there might be

no secrecy between us, and that I should never hear from outside parties

that this thing had occurred, and that he had used most reprehensive tact

to disguise the fact from me. I wrote a letter to him. I reminded him that

the money was of no account--that as it had been intended for the

well-known purpose, and as my marriage was to be at no set time, let it

rest to my loss, and not his, for that I would never accept of his money

to cover what was truthfully a theft from me.

I heard long afterward that he let his daughter read this letter, as he

knew that she was often with Richard Jordan, and he desired to acquaint

her that I meant to be well in all my principles. This was as I understood

it.

The loss of this money gave me little concern, I assure thee; and now that

it would never be put to its originally-intended use, I perhaps cared less

than I ordinarily might have cared; for friend Barbara's long silence

could help me but to one conclusion, and that was that she would never be

my wife. For had she consented to be guided by her former promise, her

confession of much care for another man would have most effectively

debarred me from calling into requisition that promise so exactingly

obtained from her. My wife must have no fondness for another man than me.

And yet when, a few days after the receipt and reply of her father's

letter, another in friend Barbara's writing was placed in my hand, I can

but say that more joy than I had ever before experienced was mine, and I

thought of Miriam's song so full of triumph and gladness. And then the

wonderful words of the psalm came to me. "'Yea, though I walk through the

valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me,

Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me,'" I said aloud, and thought of poor

friend Jordan as she had understood those words so short a time ago.

Suppose Barbara had written in answer to my letter to her--had owned that

her thought of the man was a delusion, and that she cared for me, and me

only, above all others in the world! I carried the letter by me for many

an hour, for it was business-time when I had it, and I let nothing

interfere with needful duties of the day. It lay within my pocket

pulseless, as a letter always is: its envelope had my name upon it

carefully and neatly inscribed. Then when I had an hour to myself I

walked, not more briskly than usual, to a sunny hollow surrounded by new

boards smelling most pleasantly of the rich forests they had helped to

form, and there, surrounded by deal that had held many a singing bird's

voice in its time, I broke the seal of Barbara's second letter to me. I

think I was vastly stricken as I read it--more stricken perhaps than life

can ever experience twice. Did she write as I had most hoped and desired?

It was a long letter, and I read it through twice to fully comprehend it.

She was a thief! she herself had stolen the money! She knew that her

father must have written me that the money was gone, and she did not wish

to see the blame rest on an innocent person. Her father had been harsher

than usual with her, and, when she would have asserted herself in many

ways, had always referred her to me, telling her that I was the rightful

one to say what might and what might not be: her father had refused to

hear her make mention of the man she had mentioned to me, and had not

recognized her being with him at all. (I could see in this that friend

Hicks had tried more than arbitrary means to reduce his daughter's mind to

the level of his wishes. But to the letter.) How could she, then, she

wrote, tell her father of the taking of the money? She trusted that I

might not think her overly bold, but if I did, it made no difference to

her, for she was rendered desperate on all sides. (Ah, friend Barbara! thy

father had ever such a cold reserve, that was not meant unkindly, but

nevertheless was overly severe.) She could trust me, for it was my own

money she had taken. (I bethink me it was but an odd trust at best.) She

had taken the money to send to the man she cared so much for: he was a

very poor man, and the congregation of which he was the hired preacher was

poor; and as they had built a church which they could not afford to pay

for, it was but in reason that they could not pay the minister of the

church. The church was what the world's people call "a split" from another

church--split because the people quarrelled about the Thirty-nine

Articles, whatever they be, one party wanting thirty-eight or forty, and

the other perhaps the original number. She knew that the minister was

woefully in debt; that no one would trust him any further; that he had

met and told her nothing at all of it; that he was duly polite to her,

and mentioned none of his affairs at all. (O Barbara! how thee shielded

him!) But she had questioned a woman who knew much of him, and the woman

had said that he must have money for a certain secret purpose, the nature

of which purpose the woman refused to tell, and that he was crazed for

money. Barbara had asked the woman if the purpose were a sinful or

shameful purpose, but the answer had been that it was the most holy one a

man could have. Then Barbara had looked upon his white face and knew of

his straits, and had pitied him. It was borne in upon her that she should

help him. "Thee would have felt so, I am assured," she wrote. Then looking

around her, confused by many and conflicting feelings, sad and grieving

for herself, having no one to go to in the greatest trial a woman can

have, she had seen but one thing to do: she called to mind Samuel Biddle,

and how generously he had acted toward her--more generously than she had

reason to suppose another man could ever do. Friend Biddle's letter to her

was couched in such kindly terms that she knew it had been no great

overthrow of feeling on his part to give her the liberty which she had

long debated with herself whether to accept or not; and had finally

concluded to do so. Then she had taken the money from her father's iron

safe. She had sent it anonymously to the man, though she feared that he

suspected from whom it came; and that was the saddest stroke of all, "for,

friend Biddle," she wrote, "I know not if I am anything unto him, but I do

assure thee he is much to me." (Poor friend Barbara! how I pitied thee for

that!)

This was all of the letter, and I read it through twice.

I had gotten over my foolish emotion of disappointment, as I have told

thee before this, and I went back to my office and indited a reply to the

epistle immediately. "Let it be as thee has done, and thee may think that

I fully sympathize with thee." That was my only reply.

And when I thought over the letter--her letter--from beginning to end, all

day long, I did not see that I could have indited a different reply.

Still, when I went home to friend Afton's house, and friend Afton came to

me and told me that friend Jordan had had a more miserable day than ever,

although my sympathy was fully aroused, yet it was with a sense of relief

that I entered my room and closed the door, for I bethought me that I had

much to ponder on. But my thought was interrupted: the poor demented woman

was weeping in her room. She was stormy in her grief, and I heard friend

Afton scolding. I opened my door. "Friend Jordan, is thee grieved?" I

asked.

"Oh, Quaker," she cried, running to me, "they are all in the sky calling

to me, and this woman will not let me reach them."

"She would have jumped out," whispered friend Afton, "and I had to nail

down the sash."

I nodded, and motioned for her to keep quiet. "Does thee think thee would

like to talk to me a while?" I asked.

"Not now, for I only want to talk with them. But tell me, Quaker--tell me

if you want one thing more than any other in this world, and I will ask

them to give it to you. Is there any one that you want to love you? For

they can easily help you, as they have made me love you, and made you be

good to me."

"Nay, friend," I said, "even the light from the stars cannot make one care

for me who would not."

Then she cried out that I was sorrowful, and that I made her heart

heavy--I who had always been a comfort and a guidance before.

"I will be so to thee now," I said.

"Then give me rest," she cried.

"The Lord knows I would give thee rest, O soul! if I could."

She looked at me most suddenly--I may say as a flash--and quickly glanced

in at my room.

"Then I think I can rest in your room," she said.

"Thee shall do so."

Then I put on my hat and prepared to go out, and friend Afton said it was

a relief to have one so obliging in the house.

"Farewell to thee," I said to friend Jordan.

She stood inside my doorway and looked at me. "'Come unto Me, all ye that

labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest,'" she said, and moved

like a spirit toward me, placed her lips upon my cheek, and went in and

closed the door. It was the first time any woman save my mother had ever

kissed me.

Those words made me feel that they applied to me, youth is so vain and

exacting even of the Lord's words. Nevertheless, as I went along the dark

streets I heard them ringing in my ears with such a benign meaning as I

never had understood in them before.

Long I walked the streets, lost in much thought and contemplation, and I

felt what was weakness leaving me, and I deemed how heavy were some yokes

compared to mine--friend Barbara's, for instance, she who must be

surrounded and held in by unsympathizing moods. I fain would have helped

her more than I did, but any further succor only meant a further offering

of my feeling for her, and _that_ she was as powerless to accept as I was

to make her accept it. Long I walked the streets, and had the hopeful,

helping words around and within me. And late in the night I turned my

wearied steps toward friend Afton's, and once more was entering the house,

when, as though an angel--as though the Lord above--had spoken to me from

high overhead, in grave, solemn, holy voice came the words, "Come unto Me,

all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." And I

turned my eyes above as I hope to turn them on the last Vast Day, when

methinks those words may again be spoken and call forth a mighty response.

But what was that white form so far above, even upon the sill of my

window, three stories from the ground? With a great terror grown upon me I

rushed into the street, and saw far up there, far in the night, friend

Jordan standing out in the darkness with hands supplicating the stars,

saying those words. This was why she had desired to rest in my room: with

the cunning of insanity, she had known that the windows of her own room

were nailed down, and so on the instant had thought of mine as a possible

means of reaching to her stars. With every limb frozen, it seemed, by

sudden petrification, I had no power to unclose my lips, but I made a

sound like a groan, I know, and then I saw her reach up high, high toward

the sky and give a leap into the air. There came a crash of breaking

glass, and I saw a whirl of white garments far above me that came

fluttering down in a spiral motion. I rushed toward it ere it fell: there

came a sickening thud on the ground beside me, and a lifeless mass lay

there.

I can scarcely narrate this calmly or well, but thee sees I have tried my

best.

Then when friend Afton came to me, and in pardonable and much agitation

asked me to write to the friends of the dead woman, I complied, and

directed the letter to the Reverend Richard Jordan; and his address was

the place where friend Hicks sojourned, as likely thee has guessed.

"What was this man to the deceased? does thee know?" I asked friend Afton.

"No, sir. He placed her with me a year ago, and asked me to take the best

of care of her, and has always sent me money for her wants, and paid me

well besides. And, strange to say, I never could get her to mention him.

He seemed to be a good man, but poor in his dress--too young in the

profession to get a wealthy 'call.'"

So the Reverend Richard Jordan, who had cared for this woman, was the man

whom friend Barbara thought well of! This was what the money had been

wanted for--this was the secret which was "neither sinful nor shameful,

but the most holy that a man can have"!

When he came in at friend Afton's I went to him. "Who was the deceased?" I

asked--most bluntly, I fear me.

"She was my wife," he said sadly, and so altogether frankly that I knew he

was no guilty man, whatever else he might be.

"I grieve with thee," I said. "And before thee goes up to thy solemn

office of praying by thy dead wife's side, I would tell thee something. I

met thee--look at me!--months ago, when I almost stumbled against thee

outside of Benjamin Hicks's garden-gate. Thee was new to the place, thee

told me."

"I remember you," he said, and flushed painfully.

"Nay, do not redden," I said almost with anger. "I know all things about

thee, and nothing that is harmful."

"Nor ever has been harm," he said firmly.

"I know thee has had much money sent to thee, and thee does not know from

whom."

"I do," he said, "and am ashamed to say I accepted it. It came from your

friend Hicks's daughter, but it was for my poor wife--for her alone. I

could not help myself--I--"

"Thee has no need of shame for that. The Lord must have made it patent to

thee that we are placed here to help one another. And so much as friend

Hicks's daughter did for thee she did well, and she has my consent; for it

was my money that she sent thee."

"God bless you, man!" he said, holding his hand to his face, "for I am

nothing to you."

"And what is Benjamin Hicks's daughter to thee if thee is nothing to me?"

He looked at me in wonder: "She is to me a good woman who did her benefits

in secret. I never had much conversation with her, for we seldom met; but

she was ever kind, and I heard that she would marry soon. I never talked

much to any one, for my cares have been great to me, and that sorrow up

stairs has been a goodly portion."

"Go to thy sorrow," I said, "and let it comfort thee, as sorrow should,

that thee did the best thee could."

Was I cruel in having spoken to him as I had, and at this time?

Then I wrote all--everything of the past months, of to-day, of the

deceased woman's suffering, of her death, her husband's arrival, and all

that he had said to me. It was a considerably lengthy letter, but what of

that? It was for friend Barbara. I sent it at once. Then I must not

neglect my duties here, so I stayed the allotted time, receiving

occasional word from friend Hicks, but none from his daughter.

I think my mind was much inclined toward the hireling minister, for I

clearly saw, as thee no doubt does, that he never knew what Barbara

thought of him, and that he never could know, for he was a pure man and

the sad husband of a sad wife. And when he would have said words of thanks

to me when he left me I checked him: "Thee knows a Friend is not well

pleased with many words: let the many good deeds which thee will do act as

the many kind words thee would give me."

"With God's help I will," said he.

"Verily," I said; "and I bid peace be unto thee!"

"And unto you, friend!" he said. And the words that had been our first

parting at friend Barbara's father's gate were the words that were our

last as I left him at his wife's grave, from whence he was to go to a

church in a distant city.

And when the six months were over and I was at liberty to go, I wrote

another letter of a single line to Barbara, and this was it: "I am coming

to thy father's house." That was all, for I thought that maybe she might

not care overly much to greet me, all things considered, and might

peradventure choose to make a trifling visit to her cousin Ann Jones, to

whose house she as often as not went for those changes which most women

much incline toward. Yet when I entered upon the porch of friend Hicks's

house, and Barbara was there, and said, "I am pleased to see thee, friend

Biddle," and her father said, "How does thee do?" altogether as though I

had seen them but a day before, it was most agreeable to my mind and

soothing to my spirit. And when, after the dinner was over, before which

there was little chance at conversation, although I thought I detected a

slight pallor in friend Barbara's face where before the dints had been,

and when she had betaken herself to some place out of sight, and friend

Hicks was beginning to talk upon my loss in his suffering a theft on his

premises, I merely said, "Yea, friend Barbara took the money." Thee should

have seen his face: it must have afforded thee considerable amusement.

"Barbara?" he said with much difficulty.

"Yea," I answered. "I know all about it; and she gave it to Richard

Jordan, whom thee thought to frighten me with. He was poor, in need, and

had a wife whom he must care for. I was in the house where his wife was

ever since thee parted with me."

"Samuel Biddle!"

"Verily, friend Hicks. And she was a demented woman, whom her husband had

to take good care of, and she relied upon me for such poor comfort as I

could afford her. She is deceased, and it was myself who sent for her

husband. Maybe there was much secrecy which thy daughter and I kept

without thee, but mayhap we did it for the best. And thee must never

inquire anything more about it; and I regret thee had so much concern, and

thank thee for a most kind and generous friend."

"Samuel Biddle, I deemed that Barbara was not unto thee, nor thee unto

her, as both had been to one another."

"Thee must be at odds with reason, friend Hicks, for I never have cared

less for Barbara than I did at the first."

So I told the narrative to him; and although I strictly adhered to the

facts, I bethink me that had I made them a trifle straighter he might not

have comprehended them as he did. But he came to me as I sat there on the

porch, and he laid his hand on my arm: "I have been overly strict with

Barbara, friend Samuel, and thee must pardon me, for I only kept her for

thee. Thee is a good man; and although some of Barbara's and thy doings in

this matter, as thee has related it, are scarcely in accordance with an

understanding of the world such as I have, and such as thee may hope to

have in time, and most of what thee has done is rather removed from

orthodox, yet I hold myself in thy debt."

Then as I glanced up I saw a face looking narrowly from far off in the

hall: I fear me that Barbara must inevitably have heard every word.

However, it was rather warmish weather, and as she came out to the porch

with her knitting in her hands, she looked as though she were grateful to

me; and there were wet rings about her eyes which made me sad to see, and

I remembered the time in the lane, a long while ago, when I had seen just

such rings and stains about her eyes. We spake not a word, and she sat

down on one side of me and her father on the other. As in another time,

friend Hicks put his handkerchief over his face to protect him from the

air--the flies not being come yet--and I scarcely hesitate to say that he

covered his left eye as well as his right. Then I am positive that the

silence grew irksome to me, for I knew not what to think of Barbara's

manner, nor what to say. So I arose and stood on the edge of the porch,

and looked far over the large unbroken landscape, as all early spring

landscapes are. I could not have been there many minutes before a soft

touch made me turn about, and Barbara was beside me, and the rings about

her eyes were wetter than ever.

"Barbara!" I said softly.

"Hush!" she whispered most gently, glancing toward her father, now balmily

sleeping. "Samuel Biddle, I must thank thee: thee knows what for, so I

need not repeat it. I thank thee, not as I would have thanked thee six

months ago, but as--"

"As what, Barbara?"

"As thy wife soon to be, Samuel Biddle."

I placed her hand in mine. "And thee is not mistaken?" I said.

"Nay, not mistaken now. I never knew thee till I understood that all men

are not like thee. I never knew thee till I most foolishly thought that a

few words from another man on even trivial subjects meant more than thy

silence of devotion. I learned my own mind in many ways, Samuel, and then

I learned thee; for I had thought thee was in a measure thrust upon me,

and only because I had not seen thee before father's approval of thee.

That other man's care of his wife--a care that kept her affliction from

any and all eyes--showed me what thee was even, and what thee was for me.

I cannot rightly say all that I would, but I can only say this--that I

never cared overly much for thee at first, Samuel Biddle; but Richard

Jordan has taught me one thing, which perhaps no other man in the world

could have done."

"And that is--?"

"What love is."

"Barbara!"

"Yea, Samuel Biddle, what love is; for I love thee, I love thee, and but

only thee; and might never have told thee so, but I heard what thee said a

spell ago to father, and I knew that thee was not disgusted with me, but

cared for me as much as ever. Yea, a stranger man has taught me what love

is."

And while I could but pat her head as it rested upon my shoulder, I said

gladly, "Barbara, more than man has taught me what love is, and to love

thee; but maybe a man can teach to woman what the Lord alone has taught to

me."

"Let me think so, Samuel--that the Lord taught thee, and thee taught me

the knowledge fresh from the Lord."

Then I placed my lips upon Barbara's lips.

ROBERT C. MEYERS.

LADY MORGAN.

With her wit and vanity, poor French and fine clothes, good common sense

and warm Irish heart, Lady Morgan was a most entertaining and original

character--a spirited, versatile, spunky little woman, whose whole life

was a grand social success. She was also one of the most popular and

voluminous writers of her day; but, with all her sparkle and dash,

ambition and industry, destined in a few generations more to be almost

unknown, vanishing down that doleful "back entry" where Time sends so many

bright men and women. As the founder of Irish fiction--for the national

tales of Ireland begin with her--and the patron of Irish song (she

stimulated Lover to write "Rory O'More," and "Kate Kearney" is her own),

always laboring for liberty and the interests of her oppressed countrymen,

and preserving her name absolutely untouched by scandal through a long and

brilliant career, she deserves a place among distinguished women. She

evidently had no idea of being forgotten, and completed twenty chapters of

autobiography--its florid egotism at once its fault and its charm--besides

keeping a diary in later years, and preserving nearly all the letters

written to her, and even cards left at her door. But on those cards were

the names of Humboldt, Cuvier, Talma and the most celebrated men of that

epoch, down to Macaulay, Douglas Jerrold and Edward Everett, while she

could count among her intimates the noted men and women of three

countries. La Fayette declared he was proud to be her friend; Byron

praised her writings, and always expressed regret that he had not made her

acquaintance in Italy; Sydney Smith coupled her name with his own as "the

two Sydneys;" Leigh Hunt celebrated her in verse; Sir Thomas Lawrence, Ary

Scheffer and other famous artists begged for the honor of painting her

portrait. Was it strange after all this, and being told for half a century

that she was an extraordinarily gifted and fascinating woman, that (being

a woman) she should believe it?

She was extremely sensitive in regard to her age, and if forced to state

it on the witness-stand would doubtless have whispered it to the judge in

a bewitching way, as did a pretty but slightly _passé_ French actress

under similar embarrassing circumstances. She pleads: "What has a woman to

do with dates--cold, false, erroneous, chronological dates--new style, old

style, precession of the equinox, ill-timed calculation of comets long

since due at their station and never come? Her poetical idiosyncrasy,

calculated by epochs, would make the most natural points of reference in

woman's autobiography. Plutarch sets the example of dropping dates in

favor of incidents; and an authority more appropriate, Madame de Genlis,

who began her own memoirs at eighty, swept through nearly an age of

incident and revolution without any reference to vulgar eras signifying

nothing (the times themselves out of joint), testifying to the pleasant

incidents she recounts and the changes she witnessed. _I_ mean to have

none of them!"

Sydney Owenson was born in "ancient ould Dublin" at Christmas: the year is

a little uncertain. The encyclopædias say about 1780: 1776 has been

suggested as more correct, but we will not pry into so delicate a matter.

A charming woman never loses her youth. Doctor Holmes tells us that in

travelling over the isthmus of life we do not ride in a private carriage,

but in an omnibus--meaning that our ancestors or their traits take the

trip with us; and in studying a character it is interesting to note the

combinations that from generations back make up the individual. Sydney's

father was the child of an ill-assorted marriage. "At a hurling-match long

ago the Queen of Beauty, Sydney, granddaughter of Sir Maltby Crofton, lost

her heart, like Rosalind, to the victor of the day, Walter McOwen

(anglicized Owenson), a young farmer, tall and handsome, graceful and

daring, and allowed him to discover that he had 'wrestled well and

overthrown more than his enemies.' Result, an elopement and mésalliance

never to be forgiven--the husband a jolly, racketing Irish lad, unable to

appreciate his high-toned, accomplished wife, a skilful performer on the

Irish harp, a poetess and a genius, called by the admiring neighbors 'the

Harp of the Valley.'" Their only child, the father of Lady Morgan, was a

tolerable actor, of loose morals and tight purse, who could sing a good

song or tell a good story, and who was always in debt.

Sydney was a winsome little rogue, quite too much for her precise and

stately mother, who was ever holding up as a model a child, in her grave

fifty years agone, who had read the Bible through twice before she was

five years old, and knitted all the stockings worn by the coachmen! All in

vain: Sydney was not fated to die early or figure as a young saint in a

Sunday-school memoir. She took a deep interest in chimney-sweeps from

observing a den of little imps who swarmed in a cellar near her home, and

on one occasion actually scrambled up a burning chimney, followed by this

sooty troop. Her pets were numerous, the prime favorite being a cat named

Ginger, from her yellow coat. Her mother, who was shocked by Sydney adding

to her nightly petition, "God bless Ginger the cat!" did not share this

partiality, as is seen in the young lady's first attempt at authorship,

which has been preserved:

My dear pussy-cat,

Were I a mouse or a rat,

Sure I never would run off from you,

You're _so_ funny and gay

With your tail when you play,

And no song is so sweet as your mew.

But pray keep in your press,

And don't make a mess,

When you share with your kittens our posset,

For mamma can't abide you,

And I cannot hide you

Unless you keep close in your closet.

Her voice was remarkable, but her father, knowing too well the

temptations that beset a public singer, refused to cultivate her talent

for music, saying, "If I were to do this, it might induce her some day to

go on the stage, and I would prefer to buy her a sieve of black cockles

from Ring's End to cry about the streets of Dublin to seeing her the first

prima donna of Europe." A genuine talent for music will assert itself in

spite of neglect, and one evening at the house of Moore, where with her

sister Olivia she listened in tearful enthusiasm to some of his melodies,

sung as only the poet could sing them, was an important event in her life.

She tells us that after this treat they went home in almost delirious

ecstasy, actually forgetting to undress themselves before going to bed.

This experience developed a longing to know more of the early Irish

ballads, and roused a literary ambition. If the grocer's son could so

distinguish himself, she could surely relieve her dear father from his

embarrassments; and she began at once to write with this noble object. Her

unselfish and unwavering devotion to her rather worthless father is the

most attractive and touching point in her character. After her mother's

death she was sent to boarding-school, where she studied well, scribbled

verses, accomplished herself in dancing, and furnished bright home-letters

for her less brilliant mates.

She next figures as a governess in the family of a Mrs. Featherstone of

Bracklin Castle. There was a merry dance for adieu the night she was to

leave, but, like Cinderella, she danced too long: the hour sounded, and

Sydney was hurried into the coach in a white muslin dress, pink silk

stockings and slippers of the same hue, while Molly, the faithful old

servant, insisted on wrapping her darling in her own warm cloak and

ungainly headgear. Being ushered in this plight into a handsome

drawing-room, there was a general titter at her grotesque appearance, but

she told her story in her own captivating way until they screamed with

laughter--not at her now, but with her--and she was "carried off to an

exquisite suite of rooms--a study, bedroom and bath-room, with a roaring

turf fire, open piano and lots of books;" and after dinner, where she was

toasted, she sang several songs, which had an immense effect, and the

evening ended with a jig, her hosts regretting that they had no spectators

besides the servants. This, her first jig out of the school-room, she

contrasts with her last one in public, when invited by the duchess of

Northumberland to dance with Lord George Hill. She accepted the challenge

from the two best jig-dancers in the country, Lord George and Sir Philip

Crampton, and had the triumph of flooring them both.

Her first novel, _St. Clair_, was now completed. She had kept the writing

of it a profound secret, and one morning the young author, full of

ambitious dreams, borrowed the cook's market-bonnet and cloak and sallied

out to seek her fortune. Before going far she saw over a shop-door "T.

Smith, Printer and Bookseller," and ventured in. It was some minutes

before T. Smith made his appearance, and when he did so he had a razor in

one hand, a towel in the other, and only one side of his face shaved.

After hearing her errand he told her, good-naturedly, that he did not

publish novels, and sent her to Brown. Brown wanted his breakfast, and was

not anxious for a girl's manuscript; but his wife persuaded him to promise

to look it over; and, elated with success, Sydney ran back, forgetting to

leave any address, and never heard of her first venture till, taking up a

book in a friend's parlor, it proved to be her own. It had a good sale,

and was translated into German, with a biographical notice which stated

that the young author had strangled herself with an embroidered

handkerchief in an agony of despair and unrequited love. _The Sorrows of

Werther_ was her model, but with a deal of stuff and sentimentality there

was the promise of better things. "In all her early works her characters

indulge in wonderful digressions, historical, astronomical and

metaphysical, in the midst of terrible emergencies where danger, despair

and unspeakable catastrophes are imminent and impending. No matter what

laceration of their finest feelings they may be suffering, they always

have their learning at command, and never fail to make quotations from

favorite authors appropriate to the occasion."

_The Novice of St. Dominick_ was Miss Owenson's second novel, and she went

alone to London to make arrangements for its publication. In those days a

journey from Ireland to that great city was no small undertaking, and when

the coach drove into the yard of the Swan with Two Necks the enterprising

young lady was utterly exhausted, and, seating herself on her little trunk

in the inn-yard, fell fast asleep. But, as usual, she found friends, and

good luck was on her side. The novel was cut down from six volumes to

four, and with her first literary earnings, after assisting her father,

she bought an Irish harp and a black mode cloak, being always devoted to

music and dress. At this time her strongest ambition was to be every inch

a woman. She gave up serious studies, to which she had applied herself,

and cultivated even music as a mere accomplishment, fearful lest she

should be considered a pedant or an artiste.

Next came _The Wild Irish Girl_, her first national story, which gave her

more than a national fame, and three hundred pounds from her fascinated

publisher. It contains much curious information about the antiquities and

social condition of Ireland, and a passionate pleading against the wrongs

of its people. It made the piquant little governess all the rage in

fashionable society, and until her marriage she was known by the name of

her heroine, Glorvina. As a story the book is not worth reading at the

present day.

In _The Book of the Boudoir_, a sort of literary ragbag, she gives, under

the heading "My First Rout in London," a graphic picture of an evening at

Lady Cork's: "A few days after my arrival in London, and while my little

book, _The Wild Irish Girl_, was running rapidly through successive

editions, I was presented to the countess-dowager of Cork, and invited to

a rout at her fantastic and pretty mansion in New Burlington street. Oh,

how her Irish historical name tingled in my ears and seized on my

imagination, reminding me of her great ancestor, 'the father of chemistry

and uncle to the earl of Cork'! I stepped into my job carriage at the hour

of ten, and, all alone by myself, as the song says, 'to Eden took my

solitary way.' What added to my fears and doubts and hopes and

embarrassments was a note from my noble hostess received at the moment of

departure: 'Everybody has been invited expressly to meet the Wild Irish

Girl; so she must bring her Irish harp. M.C.O.' I arrived at New

Burlington street without my harp and with a beating heart, and I heard

the high-sounding titles of princes and ambassadors and dukes and

duchesses announced long before my poor plebeian name puzzled the porter

and was bandied from footman to footman. As I ascended the marble stairs

with their gilt balustrade, I was agitated by emotions similar to those

which drew from a frightened countryman his frank exclamation in the heat

of the battle of Vittoria: 'Oh, jabbers! I wish some of my greatest

enemies was kicking me down Dame street.' Lady Cork met me at the door:

'What! no harp, Glorvina?'--'Oh, Lady Cork!'--'Oh, Lady Fiddlestick! You

are a fool, child: you don't know your own interests.--Here, James,

William, Thomas! send one of the chairmen to Stanhope street for Miss

Owenson's harp.'"

After a stand and a stare of some seconds at a strikingly sullen-looking,

handsome creature who stood alone, and whom she heard addressed by a

pretty sprite of fashion with a "How-do, Lord Byron?" she says: "I was

pushed on, and on reaching the centre of the conservatory I found myself

suddenly pounced upon a sort of rustic seat, a very uneasy pre-eminence,

and there I sat, the lioness of the night, shown off like the hyena of

Exeter 'Change, looking almost as wild and feeling quite as savage.

Presenting me to each and all of the splendid crowd which an idle

curiosity, easily excited and as soon satisfied, had gathered round us,

she prefaced every introduction with a little exordium which seemed to

amuse every one but its object: 'Lord Erskine, this is the Wild Irish Girl

whom you are so anxious to know. I assure you she talks quite as well as

she writes.--Now, my dear, do tell my Lord Erskine some of those Irish

stories you told us the other evening. Fancy yourself among your own set,

and take off the brogue. Mrs. Abingdon says you would make a famous

actress: she does indeed. You must play the short-armed orator with her:

she will be here by and by. This is the duchess of St. Albans: she has

your novel by heart. Where is Sheridan?--Do, my dear Mr. T---- (This is

Mr. T----, my dear: geniuses should know each other)--do, my _dear_ Mr.

T----, find me Mr. Sheridan. Oh! here he is!--What! you know each other

already? So much the better.--This is Lord Carysford.--Mr. Lewis, do come

forward.--That is Monk Lewis, my dear, of whom you have heard so much, but

you must not read his works: they are very naughty.' Lewis, who stood

staring at me through his eye-glasses, backed out after this remark, and

disappeared. 'You know Mr. Gell,' her ladyship continued, 'so I need not

introduce you: he calls you the Irish Corinne. Your friend Mr. Moore will

be here by and by: I have collected all the talent for you.--Do see,

somebody, if Mr. Kemble and Mrs. Siddons are come yet, and find me Lady

Hamilton.--_Now_, pray tell us the scene at the Irish baronet's in the

rebellion.'

"Lord L---- volunteered his services. The circle now began to widen--wits,

warriors, peers and ministers of state. The harp was brought forward, and

I tried to sing, but my howl was funereal. I was ready to cry, but

endeavored to laugh, and to cover my real timidity by an affected ease

which was both awkward and impolitic. At last Mr. Kemble was announced.

Lady Cork reproached him as the _late_ Mr. Kemble, and then, looking

significantly at me, told him who I was. Kemble acknowledged me by a

kindly nod, but the stare which succeeded was not one of mere recognition:

it was the glazed, fixed look so common to those who have been making

libations to altars which rarely qualify them for ladies' society. Mr.

Kemble was evidently much preoccupied and a little exalted. He was seated

my _vis-à-vis_ at supper, and repeatedly raised his arm and stretched it

across the table for the purpose, as I supposed, of helping himself to

some boar's head in jelly. Alas! no! The _bore_ was that _my_ head

happened to be the object which fixed his tenacious attention, which,

dark, cropped and curly, struck him as a particularly well-organized

_brutus_, and better than any in his repertoire of theatrical perukes.

Succeeding at last in his feline and fixed purpose, he actually stuck his

claws in my locks, and, addressing me in the deepest sepulchral tones,

asked, 'Little girl, where did you get your wig?' Lord Erskine came to the

rescue and liberated my head, and all tried to retrieve the awkwardness of

the scene. Meanwhile, Kemble, peevish, as half-tipsy people generally are,

drew back muttering and fumbling in his pocket, evidently with some dire

intent lowering in his eyes. To the amusement of all, and to my increased

consternation, he drew forth a volume of the _Wild Irish Girl_, and

reading with his deep, emphatic voice one of the most high-flown of its

passages, he paused, and patting the page with his fore finger, with the

look of Hamlet addressing Polonius, he said, 'Little girl, why did you

write such nonsense? and where did you get all those damned hard words?'

Thus taken by surprise, and smarting with my wounds of mortified

authorship, I answered unwittingly and witlessly the truth: 'Sir, I wrote

as well as I could, and I got the hard words from--Johnson's Dictionary.'

He was soon carried off to prevent any more attacks on my head, inside or

out."

Glorvina was now very much the fashion, visiting in the best Dublin

society and making many friends, whom she had the tact to retain through

life. When articles of dress or ornament are named for one, it is an

unfailing sign that they have attained notoriety, if not fame, and the

bodkin used for fastening the "back hair" was called "Glorvina" in her

honor. Like many attractive women of decided character, she had her full

share of faults and foibles. Superficial, conceited, sadly lacking in

spirituality and refinement, a cruel enemy, a toady to titles, a blind

partisan of the Liberal party,--that is her picture in shadow. Her style

was open to severe criticism, and Richard Lovell Edgeworth suggests mildly

that Maria, in reading her novel aloud in the family circle, was obliged

to omit some superfluous epithets.

In this first flush of celebrity she never gave up work, holding fast to

industry as her sheet-anchor. Soon appeared two volumes of patriotic

tales. _Ida of Athens_ was Novel No. 3, but written in confident haste,

and not well received. The names of her books would make a list rivalling

that of the loves of Don Giovanni (nearly seventy volumes), and any

extended analysis or criticism would be impossible in this rapid sketch.

"Every day in my life is a leaf in my book" was a motto literally carried

out, and she tried almost every department of literature, succeeding best

in describing the broad characteristics of her own nation. "Her lovers,

like her books, were too numerous to mention," yet her own heart seemed

untouched. She coquetted gayly, but her adorers were always the sufferers.

Sir Jonah Barrington wrote her at this time a complimentary and witty

letter, in which he says of her heroine Glorvina, "I believe you stole a

spark from heaven to give animation to your idol." He thought the

inferiority of _Ida_ was owing to its author's luxurious surroundings. "I

cannot conceive why the brain should not get fat and unwieldy, as well as

any other part of the human frame. Some of our best poets have written in

paroxysms of hunger, and I really believe that Addison would have had more

point if he had had less victuals; and if you do not restrict yourself to

a sheep's trotter and spruce beer, your style will betray your luxury."

But soon came an increase of the very thing feared for her fame, in the

form of an invitation from Lady Abercorn and the marquis to pass the

chief part of every year with them. This was accepted, and thus she met

her fate. Lord Abercorn kept a physician in his house, Doctor Morgan, a

handsome, accomplished widower, whom the marchioness was anxious to

provide with a second wife. She had fixed upon Sydney as a suitable

person, but the retiring and reticent doctor had heard so much of her wit,

talents and general fascination that he disliked the idea of meeting her.

He was sitting one morning with the marchioness when a servant threw open

the door, announcing "Miss Owenson," who had just arrived. Doctor Morgan

sprang to his feet, and, there being no other way of escape, leaped

through the open window into the garden below. This was too fair a

challenge for a girl of spirit to refuse, and she set to work to captivate

him, succeeding more effectually than she desired, for she had dreamed of

making a brilliant match. Soon a letter was written to her father asking

his leave to marry the conquered doctor, yet she does not seem to have

been one bit in love. He was too grave and good, though as devoted a lover

as could be asked for. It was a queer match and a dangerous experiment,

but after a while their mutual qualities adjusted themselves. He kept her

steady, and she roused him from indolent repose. As a critic of that time

says: "She was as bustling, restless, energetic and pushing as he was

modest, retiring and unaffected." Lover gives this picture of them: "There

was Lady Morgan, with her irrepressible vivacity, her humor that indulged

in the most audacious illustrations, and her candor which had small

respect for time or place in its expression, and who, by the side of her

tranquil, steady, contemplative husband, suggested the notion of a Barbary

colt harnessed to a patient English draught-horse."

She had a certain light, jaunty air peculiarly Irish, celebrated by Leigh

Hunt in verses which embody a faithful portrait:

And dear Lady Morgan, see, see where she comes,

With her pulses all beating for freedom like drums,

So Irish, so modish, so mixtish, so wild,

So committing herself, as she talks, like a child;

So trim, yet so easy, polite, yet high-hearted,

That Truth and she, try all she can, won't be parted.

She'll put on your fashions, your latest new air,

And then talk so frankly, she'll make you all stare.

Mrs. Hall may say "Oh!" and Miss Edgeworth say "Fie!"

But my lady will know the what and the why.

Her books, a like mixture, are so very clever

That Jove himself swore he could read them for ever,

Plot, character, freakishness, all are so good,

And the heroine herself playing tricks in a hood.

After a happy year with her patrons Glorvina married and moved to a home

of her own in Kildare street, Dublin, whence she writes to Lady Stanley:

"With respect to authorship, I fear it is over. I have been making

chair-covers instead of periods, hanging curtains instead of raising

systems, and cheapening pots and pans instead of selling sentiment and

philosophy." But even during this first busy year of housekeeping she was

working upon _O'Donnel_, another national tale, for which she was paid

five hundred and fifty pounds. It was highly praised by Sir Walter Scott,

and sold with rapidity, but her Liberal politics made her unpopular with

the leading Tory journalism of England. In point of pitiless invective the

criticism of the _Quarterly_ and _Blackwood_ has perhaps never been

exceeded. Her books were denounced as pestilent, and the public advised

against maintaining her acquaintance. Miss Martineau, an impartial critic,

if impartiality consists in punching almost every one she passed, did not

fail to give our heroine a black eye, speaking of her as "in that set to

which Mrs. Jameson belonged, who make women blush and men grow insolent."

Sir Charles and his wife next visited Paris with the intention of writing

a book. Their letters carried them into every circle of Parisian society,

and in each the popularity of Lady Morgan was unbounded. Madame Jerome

Bonaparte wrote to her: "The French admire you more than any one who has

appeared here since the battle of Waterloo in the form of an

Englishwoman." When _France_ appeared the clamor of abuse in England was

enough to appall a very stout heart. John Wilson Croker was one of her

most bitter assailants, and attempted to annihilate her in the

_Quarterly_. She balanced matters by caricaturing him as "Counsellor

Crawley" in her next novel, in a way that hit and hurt, and by a witticism

which lives, while his envenomed sentences are forgotten. Some one was

telling her that Croker was among the crowd who thought they could have

managed the battle of Waterloo much better than Wellington, whose success,

in their estimation, was only a fortunate mistake. She exclaimed, "Oh, I

can believe it. He had his secret for winning the battle: he had only to

put his _Notes on Boswell's Johnson_ in front of the British lines, and

all the Bonapartes that ever existed _could never have got through them_!"

Maginn, in _Blackwood_, gave unmerciful cuts at her superficial opinions,

ultra sentiments and chambermaid French. _Fraser's Magazine_ complimented

her sardonically on her simple style, being happy to observe that she had

reduced the number of languages used, as the Sibyl did her books, to

three, wisely discarding German, Spanish, the dead and Oriental languages.

But she received the cannonade, which would have crushed some women, with

perfect equanimity. As a compensation, she was the toast of the day, and

at some grand reception had a raised dais only a little lower than that

provided for the duchess de Berri. At a dinner at Baron Rothschild's,

Carême, the Delmonico of those times, surprised her with a column of

ingenious confectionery architecture on which was inscribed her name spun

in sugar. It was a more equivocal compliment when Walter Scott christened

two pet donkeys Hannah More and Lady Morgan.

_Florence Macarthy_, another novel, attacking the social and political

abuses in Irish government, was her next work. Colburn, her publisher, who

had just presented her with a beautiful parure of amethysts, now proposed

that she and her husband should go to Italy. "Do it, and get up another

book--the lively lady to sketch men and manners, the metaphysical

balance-wheel contributing the solid chapters on laws, politics, science

and education." They accepted the offer, and received the same

extraordinary attentions as in their former tour. This may be accounted

for by the fact that it was well known that they were to prepare a book on

Italy. It was equally well known that Lady Morgan had a sharp tongue and

still sharper pen; so that people who lived in glass houses, as did many

of the magnates, were remarkably civil to "Miladi," even those who

regarded her tour among them as an unjustifiable invasion. Byron

pronounced this book an excellent and fearless work. During her sojourn in

Italy Lady Morgan became enthusiastic about Salvator Rosa, and began to

collect material for writing the history of his life and times, which was

her own favorite of all her writings.

In 1825 the _Diary_ is started, chatty, full of gossip and incident. She

writes, October 30th: "A ballad-singer was this morning singing beneath my

window in a strain most unmusical and melancholy. My own name caught my

ear, and I sent Thomas out to buy the song. Here is a stanza:

Och, Dublin City, there's no doubting,

Bates every city upon the say:

'Tis there you'll hear O'Connell spouting,

And Lady Morgan making tay;

For 'tis the capital of the foinest nation,

Wid charming pisantry on a fruitful sod,

Fighting like divils for conciliation,

An' hating one another for the love o' God."

_The O'Briens and O'Flahertys_ was published in 1827, and proved more

popular than any of her previous novels. There is an allusion to it in the

interesting account which Lord Albemarle gives us of his acquaintance with

Lady Morgan: "A number of pleasant people used to assemble of an evening

in Lady Morgan's 'nut-shell' in Kildare street. When I first met her she

was in the height of her popularity. In her new novel she tells me I am to

figure as a certain count, a great traveller who made a trip to Jerusalem

for the sole object of eating artichokes in their native country. The

chief attraction in the Kildare street 'at homes' was her sister Olivia

(Lady Clark), who used to compose and sing charming Irish songs, for the

most part squibs on the Dublin society of the day. One of the verses ran

thus:

We're swarming alive,

Like bees in a hive,

With talent and janius and beautiful ladies:

We've a duke in Kildare,

And a Donnybrook Fair;

And if that wouldn't plaze, why nothing would plaze yez.

We've poets in plenty,

But not one in twenty

Will stay in ould Ireland to keep her from sinking:

They say they can't live

Where there's nothing to give.

Och, what business have poets with ating or dhrinking?"

Justly proud of her sister, Lady Morgan was in the habit of addressing

every new-comer with, "I must make you acquainted with my Livy." She once

used this form of words to a gentleman who had just been worsted in a

fierce encounter of wit with the fascinating lady. "Yes, madam," he

replied, "I happen to know your Livy, and I only wish 'your Livy' was

_Tacitus_."

Few of Lady Morgan's bon-mots have been preserved, but one is given which

shows that she occasionally indulged in a pun. Some one, speaking of a

certain bishop who was rather lax in his observance of Lent, said he

believed he would eat a horse on Ash-Wednesday. "Very suitable diet,"

remarked her ladyship, "if it were a _fast_ horse."

The _Diary_ progresses slowly by fitful jerks. Here is a characteristic

entry: "_April 3, 1834._ My journal is gone to the dogs. I am so fussed

and fidgeted by my dear, charming world that I cannot write: I forget days

and dates. Ouf! Last night, at Lady Stepney's, met the Milmans, Mrs.

Norton, Rogers, Sydney Smith and others--among them poor, dear Jane

Porter. She told me she was taken for me the other night, and talked to as

such by a party of Americans! _She_ is tall, lank and lean and

lackadaisical, dressed in the deepest black, with rather a battered black

gauze hat and the air of a regular Melpomene. _I_ am the reverse of all

this, and without vanity the best-dressed woman wherever I go. Last night

I wore a blue satin trimmed fully with magnificent point lace--light-blue

velvet hat and feather, with an aigrette of sapphires and diamonds. Voilà!

Lord Jeffrey came up to me, and we had _such_ a flirtation! When he comes

to Ireland we are to go to Donnybrook Fair together: in short, having cut

me down with his tomahawk as a reviewer, he smothers me with roses as a

man. I always say of my enemies before we meet, 'Let me at them!'" Of the

same soirée she writes again: "There was Miss Jane Porter, looking like a

shabby canoness. There was Mrs. Somerville in an astronomical cap. I

dashed in in my blue satin and point lace, and showed them how an

authoress should dress."

Her conceit was fairly colossal. The reforms in legislation for Ireland

were, in her estimation, owing to her novel of _Florence Macarthy_. She

professed to have taught Taglioni the Irish jig: of her toilette, made

largely by her own hands, she was comically vain. In _The Fraserians_, a

charming off-hand description of the contributors to that magazine, Lady

Morgan is depicted trying on a big, showy bonnet before a mirror with a

funny mixture of satisfaction and anxiety as to the effect.

Chorley, the feared and fearless critic of the _Athenæum_, speaks of Lady

Morgan as one of the most peculiar and original literary characters he

ever met. After a long and searching analysis he adds: "However free in

speech, she never shocked decorum--never had to be appealed or apologized

for as a forlorn woman of genius under difficulties."

An American paper, the _Boston Literary Gazette_, gave a personal

description which was not sufficiently flattering, and roused the lady's

indignant comments. It dared to state that she was "short, with a broad

face, blue, inexpressive eyes, and seemed, if such a thing may be named,

about forty years of age." Imagine the sensations this paragraph produced!

She at once retorted, exclaiming in mock earnest, "I appeal! I appeal to

the Titian of his age and country--I appeal to you, Sir Thomas Lawrence.

Would you have painted a short, squat, broad-faced, inexpressive,

affected, Frenchified, Greenland-seal-like lady of any age? Would any

money have tempted you to profane your immortal pencil, consecrated by

Nature to the Graces, by devoting its magic to such a model as this

described by the Yankee artist of the _Boston Literary_? And yet you did

paint the picture of this Lapland Venus--this impersonation of a Dublin

Bay codfish!... Alas! no one could have said that I was forty then; and

this is the cruelest cut of all! Had it been thirty-nine or fifty!

Thirty-nine is still under the mark, and fifty so far beyond it, so

hopeless; but forty--the critical age, the Rubicon--I cannot, will not,

dwell on it. But, O America! land of my devotion and my idolatry! is it

from _you_ the blow has come? Let _Quarterlys_ and _Blackwoods_ libel, but

the _Boston Literary_! Et tu Brute!"

In 1837 she received a pension of three hundred pounds a year in

recognition of her literary merits. In 1839 she published a book entitled

_Woman and her Master_, as solid and solemn and dull as if our vivacious

friend had put herself into a strait-jacket and swallowed a dose of starch

and valerian.

The closing chapter of any life must of necessity be sad, friends falling

to the grave like autumn leaves. First her beloved husband died, then her

darling sister Olivia; and her journal she now calls her "Doomsday Book."

Yet in 1850 she thoroughly enjoyed a sharp pen-encounter with Cardinal

Wiseman on a statement about St. Peter's chair made in her work on Italy.

She writes: "Lots of notes and notices of my letter to Cardinal Wiseman.

It has had the run of all the newspapers. The little old woman lives

still." December 25, 1858, was her last birthday. She assembled a few old

friends at dinner, and did the honors with all the brilliancy of her

brightest days. She told a variety of anecdotes with infinite drollery,

and after dinner sang a broadly comic song of Father Prout's--

The night before Larry was stretched,

The boys they all paid him a visit.

It was a custom in Ireland to "wake" a man who was to be hung, the night

before the execution, so that the poor fellow might enjoy the whiskey

drunk in his honor. There was one book more, "positively the last," but

she never gave up her pen, "her worn-out stump of a goosequill," until her

physician literally took it from her feeble fingers. She had grown old

gracefully, showing great kindness to young authors, enduring partial

blindness and comparative neglect with true dignity and cheerfulness, her

heart always young. She met death patiently and with unfailing courage on

the evening of the 16th of April, 1859.

KATE A. SANBORN.

A COMPARISON.

I think, ofttimes, that lives of men may be

Likened to wandering winds that come and go,

Not knowing whence they rise, whither they blow

O'er the vast globe, voiceful of grief or glee.

Some lives are buoyant zephyrs sporting free

In tropic sunshine; some long winds of woe

That shun the day, wailing with murmurs low,

Through haunted twilights, by the unresting sea;

Others are ruthless, stormful, drunk with might,

Born of deep passion or malign desire:

They rave 'mid thunder-peals and clouds of fire.

Wild, reckless all, save that some power unknown

Guides each blind force till life be overblown,

Lost in vague hollows of the fathomless Night.

PAUL H. HAYNE.

THROUGH WINDING WAYS.

CHAPTER XI.

No boy with the ordinary sources of pleasurable activity open to him can

realize the gloom and despondency I felt at times when cut off from the

healthful energies of other men. I was no longer morbid; I would not allow

myself to feel that my infirmity was a bar to the enjoyment of life; yet,

all the same, I dreaded society and shrank from the fresh conviction of

inferiority I was certain to experience in going out with Harry, who was

strongest where I was so weak. He was the most delightful fellow in

society that I have ever seen. He comprehended everybody and everything

with the grasp of an ardent and sympathetic spirit. He was happy in

possessing a natural facility for pleasing women of all ages and all

degrees. The professors' wives and daughters were all in love with him:

his rooms were full of the work of white hands. He had as many

smoking-caps as there are days in the week, and might have fitted out the

entire class with slippers. But nobody wondered: he was so handsome and

tall and godlike that every woman believed in him, and felt the charm of

his grand manner, which put romance and chivalry into the act of helping

her over a puddle.

I probably felt more reverence for the meanest woman we met in the street

than he did for his grandest friend in society; but, nevertheless, his

splendid courtesy illuminated the slightest social duty, whereas I stood

rayless beside him. He had been unlucky where his mother was concerned:

she was a weak woman to begin with, had never loved her husband, and had

left him for another man, whom she married after the disgrace and sorrow

she caused had killed her boy's father. Harry never spoke of this, but,

perhaps unconsciously to himself, it had changed the feeling he might have

had toward women into something defiant and cynical; and the attraction

they possessed for him was in danger of becoming debased, since he admired

them, old and young, with too scanty a respect, and believed too little in

the worth of any emotion they awoke in his heart or mind.

It had been a matter of discussion between Harry and myself whether we

should attend Mrs. Dwight's party. But Jack had peremptory orders to bring

us both, and of course when the evening came we went. I had not seen

Georgy Lenox since the visit she had paid me a few months after my

accident, and I had often told myself that I wished never to see her any

more. Yet now that I was again near her I was eager to meet and talk with

her. I had often felt myself superior to other fellows of my age on

account of this very experience of living down a passion; but since I had

received her note I might have known that my experience had done little

for me--that I had merely been removed from temptation; for, school myself

as I might, my blood was leaping in my veins at the thought of looking

into her eyes again. One cannot be twenty and be wise at the same time.

But then in some matters a man is never wise, let his age be what it may.

Mrs. Dwight's parlors were long and spacious and splendidly furnished.

They were well filled too before we entered, for we were so anxious to do

the most truly elegant thing to-night that we had put off making our

appearance until long past ten o'clock. Whatever expectations we may have

had of making a sensation in the rooms were considerably damped by the

awkwardness of our début. Jack knew the house, and at once skirted the

crowd to find what he wanted, but Harry and I were obliged to stand still

in a corner, ignorant of everything save the name of our hostess, waiting

for something to turn up. The ordeal was not so disagreeable as it might

seem. The band played in the alcove, the women were well dressed and, to

our eyes, radiantly beautiful, while the men appealed to our critical

curiosity. Plenty of our college dons were there, and many of the leading

men of the day, but more interesting to us were the perfectly-dressed,

graceful society-men a little beyond our own age: these we watched

carefully, with the superior air of contempt with which every man of every

age views the social success of others; yet we envied them nevertheless.

In one of these we simultaneously recognized an old friend, and exclaimed

together, "If there isn't Thorpe!"

And Thorpe indeed it was, better dressed, handsomer, more consummately the

finished man of the world, than ever. He was conversing with a stout,

elderly lady with gray puffs stiffly fixed on her temples and white

feathers in her braids, who was discoursing fluently to him on some

subject in which he seemed profoundly interested. Suddenly, however, his

eyes dilated and his face gained expression: he had met my eyes and nodded

with a half smile, and within five minutes he had adroitly bestowed the

old lady in an easy-chair and planted three professors before her, and was

shaking hands with us. We were rather proud of the exhibition of pleasure

he made at the encounter. True, it was languid and there was an air of

amused condescension in the way he accepted our cordial greetings; but we

were still boyish enough to like to feel him above and beyond us, although

not unattainable.

"Well, old fellow," he remarked presently to Harry, "why are you penned up

here? Is it as sheep or wolves that you are kept out of the fold? Why

aren't you dancing?"

"We only just came in," returned Harry, "and we don't know the hostess by

sight, and have nobody to speak to."

"Why, that was Mrs. Dwight I was talking with just now.--A terrible old

woman, Floyd: I will introduce you presently, as soon as that crowd clears

away. I understand you came by invitation from Miss Lenox. Seen her?"

We had seen nobody, we were obliged to confess.

"Miss Georgy is having a good time. I put in my claim as an old Belfield

friend for a couple of waltzes. She has the best pace of any woman here.

Handsome girl, but dangerous: devilish amusing, though. Wonder where she

got her ideas in that cramped, puritanical little place? Pity she's going

to marry such a slow coach as Jack Holt! Beg your pardon--nothing

derogatory intended. You must yourself admit that he is rather slow.--By

the by, Floyd, how's the heiress?"

I knew whom he meant, but did not like his tone, and asked him squarely to

whom he referred.

He laughed, and looked at me with close scrutiny. "I alluded to Miss

Floyd," said he, twisting his long moustache with his gloved fingers. "I

don't know many heiresses myself, unlucky dog that I am! and she is such a

tremendous one--she is _the_ heiress _par éminence_. She must be fifteen

by this time. Remember me to her when you see her, Floyd; or perhaps you

write to her?"

"Not at all," I answered.

"Is she as pretty as ever?" he pursued.

"Pretty? She never seemed to me pretty."

"Oh, you are too young to recognize beauty when you see it. She was the

loveliest child I ever knew, with her pale complexion, her brilliant eyes

and aristocratic profile. Georgy Lenox is a gaudy transparency beside her.

But I forgot: I must come out and see you at your rooms. Only don't bore

me: it is the fashion at universities to talk of subjects never discussed

anywhere else by civilized beings, and I can't abide such rubbish. I hear

you're quite the pride of your class, Floyd?"

"Oh, what wretched nonsense!"

"Your modesty pleases me.--Come on, boys: Mrs. Dwight is looking at us."

And we were introduced to our hostess at last, who received us in a manner

expressive of our social insignificance. "Dear me!" said she placidly,

"have you just come in? You're very late. I supposed everybody was here

long ago. Georgy asked my permission to invite some students: I never do

that sort of thing myself. There is really no end to it, you know.

Besides, I suppose your time is quite taken up with your studies and your

boating and your flirtations. Do you dance?--There's Georgy Lenox

beckoning to you, Mr. Dart." Harry darted off, and was lost in the crowd

before I had a chance to follow him with my eyes, for Mrs. Dwight, feeling

the need of support or wishing to be guided into another room, had put her

arm within mine, thus compelling my attention. Her conversation still

continued in a steady stream. It had occurred to her that I was in some

way connected with Mr. Floyd, whose reputation was national, and she went

on reviving reminiscences of him while we strolled about. She addressed me

with such unhesitating talkativeness that I succumbed at once, and became

an easy prey. What she said was quite uninteresting, besides being

rambling in a degree which hindered my getting the smallest idea of her

meaning; but her own enjoyment of her loquaciousness never once faltered,

and she discoursed as fluently as an eighteenth-century poet, and without

any more idea of the grace of finishing within a reasonable time. How I

envied Thorpe's easy method of withdrawing from her attack! how I longed

for some flank movement to draw off her attention! I was weaving futile

plans of escape, when suddenly a radiant creature in blue and white gauze,

the swirl of whose long skirts I had watched as I listened to Mrs. Dwight,

paused in the waltz close beside me, turned, looked me in the face and

patted my arm with her fan. "Floyd!" she cried, "Floyd Randolph! don't you

know me?"

Mrs. Dwight vanished, I do not remember how or where. Everybody vanished:

I seemed to be alone in the world staring into Georgy Lenox's face.

"Cousin Maria had fastened upon you like the Ancient Mariner," prattled

Georgy, laughing. "That is her way. If she fancies a young man, she bears

down upon him, and with one fell swoop carries him off. How melancholy you

looked! But you are as grave as ever now. Aren't you glad to see me?"

"Oh yes, I am glad," I told her, but felt a weight upon my tongue, and

could not find expression for any thoughts which moved me. For, let it be

understood, I was powerfully impressed by her, and in a moment had changed

from what I was before I met her. She talked on rapidly, looking at me

kindly, and doubtless by this time sufficiently understood her power over

our sex to realize that under certain conditions words mean little on a

man's tongue, while silence confesses much. But, counting time by minutes,

I was with her but a very little while before half a dozen partners came

toward her claiming her for a new waltz.

"Ask me to dance, Floyd," she whispered.

"I do not dance, Georgy," I returned gravely, and drew back; and presently

she was whirling about again, her flower-crowned head gyrating against

first one black-coated shoulder and then another.

I saw Jack Holt leaning against a pillar, and went up to him. "How do you

get on, Floyd?" he asked in his slow, easy way. "Rather heavy work, eh?"

"Not at all," said I, feeling all the keen joy of youth: "I think it

delightful. Miss Lenox spoke to me, Jack. Of course you have seen her."

"Oh yes," Jack laughed good-naturedly. "She at once told me I looked

countrified and old-fashioned--that my hair was too long and my gloves

were outrageous. In fact, she was ashamed to own me, and declared that

nothing should induce her to confess she was engaged to me until I looked

less seedy."

We both laughed at this. Jack had a handsome allowance, which he spent

almost entirely upon the girl he loved. She was quite used to his

generosity toward her and self-denial toward himself, and gave him no more

credit for it than the rest of us award to the blessings we count on

assuredly.

"You don't mind her nonsense, Jack?"

"Not at all. She has such spirits she must chatter. You haven't seen her

for ages, Floyd: do you think her improved? Has she grown handsomer?"

I was conscious of a dulness and thickness in my voice as I replied, "She

is much handsomer."

"She is more womanly," pursued Jack: "I think her manner has softened a

little. There is more tenderness about it: as a girl she was sometimes a

trifle--hard. Now--But you see how she is, Floyd: there is nobody like

her. Good God! I ask myself sometimes what that perfect creature can see

in me."

"A good deal apparently, since she is to be your wife." I said it without

faltering, and felt better after it. Something seemed to clear away from

my brain, and I could look at Georgy now with less emotion. She was all

that was bright and beautiful and winning, but--she was engaged to Jack

Holt. She showed slight consciousness of any restraint on her perfect

freedom, however, and gave away Jack's roses, purchased that day at a high

figure, before his eyes. Once or twice, when she passed us, she smiled and

nodded in the gayest good spirits; and at last, when she was tired of

dancing and wanted an ice, she beckoned to Jack, put her hand inside his

arm and led him into the conservatory.

"How well she does it!" said Harry Dart, coming up to me. "Quite the

brilliant belle! By Jove! how she dances! I despise the girl with her

greedy maw, and deuced airs of high gentility when she is a perfect

beggar, but it is a second heaven to dance with her. She has the _go_ of a

wild animal in her. She is a little like a panther--so round, so sleek, so

agile in her spring. I told her just now I should like to paint

her--yellow eyes, hair like an aureole, supple form and satin coat--lying

on a panther-skin."

"Her eyes are not yellow."

"By Jove! they are. When she's dancing her whole face changes: she looks

dangerous."

"I don't like your tone when you speak of her, Harry."

"Oh! don't you? One of these days both you and Jack will be wiser where

that girl is concerned."

But Jack came back to us presently, quite contented to look at her

successes and not to speak to her again that evening. At supper-time we

watched her from a distance, and a more brilliant young coquette than Miss

Georgy showed herself to be I have never seen. She looked more and more

beautiful as the night wore on, the flush deepening in her cheeks, her

eyes dilating, her hair loosening. Men full fledged though we considered

ourselves now in our senior year, we felt like boys before her. Every man

in the room seemed proud of her slightest mark of attention. Tall dandies

with ineffable composure and a consummate air of worldly knowledge;

tranquil, dreamy-eyed literary men; solid citizens with stiff white

side-whiskers and red faces,--all were in her train. Harry withdrew from

her at last, becoming, as I was, quite oppressed with a sense of his youth

and worthlessness.

Thorpe good-naturedly came up to us as we three stood leaning against the

wall, tired and depressed, yet feeling no wish to get away until everybody

else had gone, and asked us how we liked it, if we had been introduced,

and all that. It came out then that Jack and I had not once thought of any

woman in the rooms except Georgy; and until Thorpe questioned me it had

not occurred to my mind that there was anything to do at the party but to

speak to Georgy if possible, or, failing that bliss, to watch her from a

distance. Harry laughed at me, and discussed the beauties of the ball with

Thorpe, who was fastidious and considered few girls handsome--in fact, was

so minute in his criticisms that Jack, always more than chivalrous in his

thoughts of women, left us, and with his hands crossed behind him looked

at the pictures on the walls of an inner room quite deserted now. The

conversation turned on Miss Lenox at once, and Thorpe said he was amazed

to find the girl so capable of achieving an easy success and bearing it so

well. "Where," he pursued with his graceful air, "did she learn those

enchanting prettinesses, those wonderful little caprices of manner? Could

they have been acquired in the genteel dreariness of Belfield?"

"I should like to know," rejoined Harry with disdain, "if she has not

been practising them for twenty years? She flirted with Jack and Floyd

here when they used to buy her a penny's worth of peppermint, before they

were out of petticoats themselves. I dare say she made eyes at old Lenox

when he rocked her in the cradle."

"And she is going to marry Holt? I suppose she makes the sacrifice on

account of his money. He takes it quietly and doesn't mind her flirting.

Is he cold, insensible, or has he such complete belief in her regard for

him?"

Harry laughed: "Jack is too good himself not to believe in the goodness of

others. It is just as well. Nobody sees the Devil but those who have faith

in the Devil. I dare say she'll make him as good a wife as he wants: her

aspirations are all for wealth, and her extravagance will be her chief

fault."

Thorpe shrugged his shoulders. "She will have several faults," said he

with a cynical air. "But I can forgive them all in so pretty a woman, and

admire her immensely as another man's wife."

Harry declared he saw nothing particular about the girl except her beauty,

and a more unscrupulous resolve to make the most of it and its effect upon

men than other young women had the nerve to adhere to. "But look there!"

he cried: "see old Applegate" (one of our professors) "simpering over her

bouquet and smiling into her eyes. Wretched old mummy! what does he want

to go to parties for?" For we all held the ingenuous opinion that anybody,

man or woman, ten years or more older than ourselves, ought to stay at

home, eschew pleasure and devote their highest powers to keeping out of

the way of the young people to whom the world rightfully belonged.

But the sight of old Applegate emboldened me. If she would talk so kindly

to him, why might she not give me one more word? I had no awe of the

professor, and had taken an æsthetic tea at his dismal house, and seen a

weak-eyed, sallow Mrs. Applegate and five lank little Applegates.

Accordingly, I limped across the room to the spot where Miss Lenox stood,

and was rewarded by a bright smile and an immediate air of attention. "I

want to talk to Mr. Randolph," said she, claiming her bouquet from the

professor, who regarded me with a bland smile. "He and I are the oldest

friends, but we have not seen each other for years. You won't mind,

professor?"

He heaved a sigh. "Randolph gets all the prizes," said he good-naturedly:

"it is never of any use competing with him;" and he left us alone.

I had but five minutes to speak to Georgina, but when I left her she had

made me promise to call on her next day at twelve o'clock.

CHAPTER XII.

"You need not tell Jack," Georgy had said to me when we made the

appointment, with a sudden smile and half blush; but I resisted the

suggestion, and told Jack at breakfast that I should call upon Miss Lenox

at noon.

"I am so glad!" said he, "for, on my word, I am too busy to go near her in

the daytime. Tell her I should like to have gone with you, but must dig,

dig, dig, or I shall never pass those examinations."

I have always been glad I was true to Jack in the letter of my actions. As

for the spirit, it is hard for any young fellow of twenty, with ardent

impulses just awakening, to keep it cribbed within prudent limitations.

Georgy's smiles had thrown a sudden illumination into my soul, and I

understood myself better than I had done yesterday. I had hitherto thought

myself a quiet fellow, but nothing to-day could cheat me out of the

knowledge of my youth.

I found Georgy in a little back parlor, the third room of Mrs. Dwight's

gorgeous suite, curled up on a blue sofa in a white morning dress of the

simplest make, and her hair on her shoulders in the old fashion, quite

transforming her from the brilliant young lady she had seemed the night

before. She did not move as I came in, but lay still, pale and heavy-eyed,

and stretched out a little lifeless hand. "I am too tired to lift my

head," she said plaintively; and I, feeling myself an intruder, proposed

to go away at once.

"Oh, nonsense, you foolish boy!" she cried, laughing. "That is the very

reason I wanted you to come. I am always dreary after excitement, and I

knew you would put me in good spirits. Sit down."

I took a chair at the other side of the fireplace.

"Why do you go away so far?" she asked pettishly. "Are you afraid I shall

eat you? Come here;" and she indicated a chair close by her sofa at which

I had looked longingly while fearing to venture so near.

"There!" she said with an air of comfort, and looked into my face with the

open-eyed simplicity of a child. "Oh, Floyd," she exclaimed, but under her

breath, "I am so glad to see you again! Are you glad to be here with me?"

"Very glad: it is not worth while saying how glad."

"Why not? I never enjoyed anything half so much as I enjoyed last evening,

and half of it was because you were looking on. Tell me honestly now, was

I a success?"

"So great a success that I wondered so superb a belle cared to speak to a

boy like me. I often used to think of your future, Georgy, and had many

brilliant dreams for you: I have no doubt that you will fulfil them all."

She had quite lost her air of weariness, and flashed into life and

brilliance, and, starting up, was so close to me that I could feel the

warmth and fragrance of her cheek and hair. I should have drawn away my

chair, but that she had herself placed it; and now she fastened her little

slippered feet on the rounds and looked into my eyes thus closely with the

enchanting freedom of a child.

"It is so nice to hear you say such things!" she ran on, cooing into my

ear. "I am so glad you meet me kindly! I have cried sometimes to think

that my naughtiness at The Headlands had quite estranged you."

"Oh no. Why should you blame yourself?"

"Because I was to blame. But, Floyd, if you only knew what I have suffered

you would forgive me. Say that you forgive me."

She slid a slim satin hand into mine. I was not at all certain to what she

was alluding, but I took pleasure in assuring her that if I had anything

to forgive, I forgave it from my heart.

She withdrew her hand after a time with a sudden hauteur and caprice of

prudery, which was perhaps one of those delightful little ways to which

Thorpe had alluded.

"I missed you so after you left Belfield," she went on, her color

deepening as she spoke. "Everything seemed dull. No matter what we tried

to do, it seemed duller than what had gone before."

We were all of us strong in quotations in those days; accordingly I

quoted--

"Peter was dull: he was at first

Dull--oh, so dull! so very dull!

Whether he talked, wrote or rehearsed,

Still with the dulness was he cursed--

Dull--beyond all conception dull."

"Oh, how clever!" she exclaimed. "Did you write it?"

"Well, no: I think not."

"But you can do such things. You are so clever, everything is easy to you.

That is why I always liked you better than any one else. You have

sympathy, wit, imagination. You understand things up to the heights and

down to the depths. Harry Dart is a little like you: he has wit and

imagination, but he is flippant, he has no sympathy. Poor old Jack has

plenty of sympathy, but neither wit nor imagination."

"Nevertheless," said I, trying to control my voice, "it is Jack who has

won you: the rest of us are nowhere. He is the lucky one of us three."

"Do you think him lucky?" she asked with a trembling, uncertain little

laugh. "I am very grateful to him for trying to win me: not many would

have done it, knowing all the circumstances of my family--all our faults

and humiliations. I am not like other girls, Floyd. They may fall in love,

and strive and hope and wait, with poetic dreams and trembling desires, to

end in rapturous fulfilment. Not so with me. I must marry early, and

marry a man who has wealth, to help those who expect everything from me.

My destiny came to me ready-made: I accepted it. The poetry and the

romance and the wild wish to love and be loved, as I might be if I could

afford to wait, were all put by for hard, practical common sense."

I could see only the sweet pathetic droop of the lips, for her face was

turned away and downward. There was a moment's silence between us, but she

broke it with another of those uncertain little laughs and a glance at me.

"I don't know why I have told you this," she said softly. "Don't think I

under-value Jack. He has all the best qualities a man can possess for

success in life, but none of those essential for winning a woman's heart.

Why, Floyd--But tell me, could you do your stupid old lessons with me

looking over you?"

Our eyes met, and we both laughed: I shook my head.

"Oh, but Jack can," she cried triumphantly. "He amuses me that way

sometimes, and my fascinations never disturb the even tenor of his

thoughts: he will plod on with his foolish old mathematics with my head on

his shoulder. There! I oughtn't to have said that," she added with a

little grimace. "Don't tell Jack."

I certainly had no thought of telling Jack.

"As for you, Floyd," she went on more softly, "you will never grow so

hard-hearted. To the end of your life all the beautiful faces in the world

will set you dreaming. Do you think I have forgotten the old days when you

told me about Mignon and Rosalind, Mary Queen of Scots, Helen, Cleopatra,

and Gretchen in that tiresome German poem you used to be so fond of

reading. Even the thought of those fair women--some of them mere poetic

creations, others mortal women long since gone to dust--used to cause you

more heart-throbs than Jack will ever feel for all the rosy cheeks and

bright eyes that are close beside him."

"Upon my word," said I abruptly, "you don't begin to know Jack's feeling

for you."

"Pshaw! That is what he is always telling me. I know he wants to marry me:

he has a talent for the domestic. His most romantic dream is of a

fireside, an easy-chair and me." She looked up at me and laughed. "I

suppose," she went on with a resigned air, "that I shall have to wear

aprons and make puddings. But enough of our prosaic ménage: I shall not be

married for a year yet. Talk to me about something else--about your

mother, Mr. Floyd and Helen--about everybody except that odious Mr.

Raymond."

"My mother is in New York with my aunt, Mrs. Woolsey," I returned. "We

were all--my mother, Helen and Mr. Raymond, and I--at Mr. Floyd's house in

Washington through the holidays. I have seen none of them since."

Georgy looked at me with peculiar intentness. "Tell me about that," she

said eagerly.

"About our visit? Oh, it was pleasant. Mr. Floyd had planned it several

times, but something had always happened hitherto to prevent it. Of course

we saw constantly all the foremost people. Mr. Floyd had a dinner-party

every night, and my mother and Helen were no end of belles."

"Helen! little Helen a belle?"

"You would have thought so. She presided at the table, and the old men

were in ecstasies over her beauty, grace and grand manners. Mr. Floyd was

so happy and proud he could not keep his eyes from her."

"She is only fifteen," observed Georgy, a little dissatisfaction clouding

her lovely face. "She is too young to be in society. But she has

everything, can do everything: it has always been so. Oh, if I were that

girl!--I suppose you are in love with her, Floyd."

"I in love with Helen?" I did not say any more. Helen was a tall, slim

girl now, but with a frigid air about her which indisposed me to

admiration. How different from Georgy, whose smile and glance thawed

reserve and drew me close to her! I did not define the meaning of the

warm lovelight in her eyes, nor ask whether it was a perpetual fire, a

lure to all men, or merely a sign for me. Sitting beside her, I was

conscious of an atmosphere emanating as it were from the warmth and

kindness of her smile and glance--an atmosphere which in itself was

delicious and complete, predisposing me to dreamy, happy silence. To be

near her was to feel in a high degree the beauty and power of woman: full

of loveliness as were the arch, mobile face, the glorious hair, the eyes

with their life and tenderness, the perfect lips, they were but a small

part of her charm, which seemed to breathe from the statuesque pose of

bust and neck and head, and the supple grace of her every movement.

She questioned me minutely concerning Mr. Floyd. He was no longer in

office now, but was spending his time at The Headlands with Mr. Raymond

and Helen until I should be ready in July to sail with him for Europe. It

was quite easy to perceive that the moment we touched upon this new

subject Georgy's composure and gayety were alike banished, and as I knew

that reasons existed which made The Headlands and Helen's society

forbidden ground for her, I would have changed to other topics; but she

kept on pertinaciously in her questionings until, with all my wish to

please her, I grew weary.

It was quite as well, however, that my first enchantment should be a

little abated before I left her, and I went away thinking for a time more

about her curiosity concerning Helen and Mr. Floyd than about the rose on

her cheeks and the light in her eyes. I had no intention of bidding her a

final good-bye when I shook hands with her, but it fell out that more than

two years were to pass before I looked upon her face again.

I think my mental equilibrium was perhaps a little disturbed by this

interview with her. She had--perhaps carelessly, perhaps with some faint

suggestion of truth--said some things which I could not forget. Had she

not told me she liked me better than anybody else? What did she mean? how

much did she mean? I knew that she spoke heedlessly at times--that she

possessed no intellectual discipline, no mental accuracy to measure the

force of her words. I knew, too, that coquetry and feminine instinct

impelled her to use her strongest weapons against any masculine adversary.

Yet, subtracting all these influences from her speech, it was still left

fraught with delicious meaning. I had no wish to wrong Jack, but my vanity

was tickled by the suggestion that I had something which was my own hidden

treasure. I found a line which suited the sentimental nature of my

thoughts. "The children of Alice call Bertram father." I used to repeat it

to myself with exquisite pain, and think of the time when I should see

Jack with his wife beside him, their children at their feet. "The children

of Alice call Bertram father." I was impressed with the deep romance of

common life, and wrote more bad verses at that period than I would have

confessed to my dearest friend.

Harry Dart, who was the closest observer of our coterie, was not long in

making the discovery that I was despondent about something, and presently

taxed me with being in love with Georgy Lenox. I found myself terribly

vexed with him, and also with myself, but not on my own account. I could

not reply to his raillery. It seemed to me horribly unfair for him to

steal my shadow of a secret and then proclaim it aloud; but I was not so

badly off but that I could stand what he said about myself. In fact, I was

glad to be held up to ridicule, and, thus disillusionized, see my fault in

its true colors. It seemed to me unworthy of Harry to attack a defenceless

girl in this way, engaged, too, as she was to his cousin. Had I not known

him all my life as well as I knew myself, I should have suspected that

something underlay his malice--that she had injured him in some way, and

that he was ungenerous enough thus to gratify an unreasonable spite.

Jack and I were out one evening, and returning entered our sitting-room

together, and found Harry there with two or three men not belonging to the

college, and among them Thorpe. It was evident to me that they changed

their subject as we entered, but the talk at once flowed again, and Harry

excelled as usual in quaint fancies, happy repartees and sharp flings at

all of us while he lay stretched out in my reclining-chair smoking before

the fire. Jack had evidently been to see Georgy, and looked dreamy and

content, and joined the circle instead of going at once to his books.

Thorpe made allusion once or twice to his pleasant abstraction, but Jack

was indifferent, and even after the visitors were gone he sat looking at

the fire with a sort of smile on his face.

"Well, old fellow," said I after a time, "don't waste all that pleasant

material for dreams on yourself."

He rose, stretched himself, and laughed in his soft, pleasant way. "I've

got three hours' hard work before me," he remarked, "and I had better go

at it at once."

"Where have you been?" asked Harry dryly.

"With Georgy," Jack answered unsuspiciously.--"Boys, I warn you against

being engaged while you have a demand for brains. I should like to dawdle

here before the fire until morning thinking of her."

"Spare me!" exclaimed Harry cynically. "I have heard enough praise of Miss

Georgy for one evening. Ted Hutchinson was talking about her." And with a

burst of wrath he went on, retailing the gossip of the night: Ted knew

nothing of her engagement, and was wild about her--had sent her a bracelet

anonymously, and been thrilled with delight when she showed it to him on

her white arm, wondering who could have been so kind. Thorpe too had

collected various items of news about her. There was old Blake, a

widower--who ought to have known better, for he had three grown-up

children--sending her bouquets, driving her about the country and getting

boxes at the theatre. There was Bob Anderson, who had laid a wager that he

would--

"Stop, Harry," said Jack, his kind face very sober. "I do not think you

remember that you are talking to the man who has the honor to be engaged

to Miss Lenox."

"I think the man who does her that honor ought to know the talk prevalent

among the fellows who meet her night after night and visit her day after

day."

"It is a woman's misfortune that the men who are most at leisure to seek

her society are apt to be those who are least worthy to meet her on

intimate terms. The men who will use a woman's name freely in public are

men who will not hesitate to slander her."

"I am not slandering her," cried Harry, starting up and facing Jack with a

white face and blazing eyes. "She has accepted a bracelet from Ted

Hutchinson. I know the very price he paid for it. Thorpe helped him to

choose it, and told Miss Lenox so next day."

Jack's face puckered. "The bracelet will go back," he said in a low voice.

Harry burst out laughing: "You will find that if she is to return her

_gages d'amour_, a good many fellows will be richer than they are to-day.

She will accept anything a man offers her; and a wise man does not give

jewels for nothing, Jack."

I went out quietly. I had feared it would come to this, and since Harry

was determined to ease his mind to his cousin, it was better that none but

Holt's ears should burn with what he had to hear. I was not ignorant of

the talk that was going on; and perhaps it was better that Jack should

know a little of the weakness that lessened his darling in the eyes of

men. But I had not left them ten minutes before Jack opened the door of my

room and called me back. The sound of his voice startled me, and the sight

of his stern, cold face awed me somewhat, as it had awed Harry, who looked

at me uneasily as I came in. We all three stood regarding each other a

moment in silence, then Dart withdrew to the window and leaned against it,

his arms folded and his eyes downcast.

"You heard the first of Harry's allegations against Miss Lenox," said

Holt, breaking the pause: "he has followed them up with accusations more

definite.--Harry, repeat what you just told me."

Harry seemed quite crestfallen, "D----the business!" he muttered doggedly:

"it's none of my affair."

"But you seem to have made it your affair," pursued Holt with calmness. "I

request you to repeat to Floyd what you said to me concerning him."

"I said," exclaimed Harry recklessly, "that I knew Miss Lenox to be very

generous with certain favors which as a rule are reserved by

discriminating young ladies for their engaged lovers."

"Go on: I do not call that a definite accusation."

"I said," pursued Harry with a peculiar glance at me, "that I knew fellows

who had kissed her. Jack is bent on knowing the name of one of these

fellows, and I mentioned yours."

I felt my face flame, and in spite of myself my eyes fell.

"Tell me the truth, Floyd," said Jack gently. "Have you come between

Georgy and me as a lover of hers, winning away her regard for me?"

"Good Heavens!" I exclaimed, "no, no, no! I never kissed Georgy but once,

and then I lay an almost hopeless cripple in my chair at Belfield, and she

kissed me as she would have kissed any other sick, miserable boy."

Jack laughed, and his face cleared. "Oh, Harry," said he, "you foolish

fellow! to talk such nonsense!--I beg your pardon, Floyd, for seeming to

believe for a moment that you were not an honest friend of mine." We shook

hands.--"Come here, Harry," he went on with perfect good-nature: "I

promise to forgive and forget this talk of yours on condition that you do

not meddle in future between Georgy and me. You never liked her--you never

did her justice. Come, now, are you prepared to hold your tongue in

future?"

Harry shrugged his broad shoulders. "Done!" said he, holding out his hand.

"I had no business to listen to Thorpe--less still to gossip to you--less

still to tell lies about Floyd here. I'm awfully ashamed of myself. Don't

lay it up against me."

"I am a quiet fellow," said Jack, eying us both keenly--"I don't parade my

feelings--but there is no child's play in the regard I have for the girl

I love. I know her faults--I pity them: I hope, please God, to root them

out, for they are the fruit of an imperfect education and a false example.

She does not yet have the protection of my name, yet I should have hoped

that my friends would have respected me enough not to listen to any light

mention of the woman sacred to me above all others. I have no jealousy in

me, but if a man, friend or no friend, dared to come between me and the

girl I loved--" He broke off abruptly, and his clenched right hand opened

and shut. "Mark me," he added, controlling himself, "I have perfect faith

in Georgina. The one who tries to make me distrust her wastes his

breath.--Remember this, Harry. I have heard you once, and forgive you and

love you all the same, but my forbearance has its limits." He went into

his room and shut the door.

The moment we were alone I turned on Harry. "What on earth did you mean?"

I demanded, half in anger, half in a stupefaction of surprise, at his

daring to calumniate me.

"Lay on," said he, sinking into the nearest chair: "I richly deserve it.

But the truth was, I had already said too much. I knew that you were

behaving respectably, and could deny what I alleged; whereas in some other

cases we might have got shipwrecked upon grim facts."

I stared at him: "Do you mean to say that you knew what you were talking

about?"

He bowed his head. There was a dejected look about him: he glanced at his

watch, yawned and went to bed.

Throughout the remainder of the term Georgy's name was not once spoken

among us, and Harry's affection and devotion to his cousin were touchingly

displayed. Men as they were, I have seen Harry on the arm of Jack's chair

talking to him with his hand over his shoulder. Dart was to sail for

Europe before commencement, and the cloud of separation seemed to lie upon

him heavily.

ELLEN W. OLNEY.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

COMMUNISTS AND CAPITALISTS.

A SKETCH FROM LIFE.

The Countess von Arno was Mr. Seleigman's confidential clerk. Not that

M---- smiled over any such paradox: the countess called herself simply

Mrs. von Arno.

M---- is a picturesque town on the Mississippi, devoted in general to the

manufacture of agricultural implements. The largest plough-factory is

Seleigman's: he does business all over the world. A clerk who wrote

French, German and Italian fluently was a godsend. This clerk, moreover,

had an eminently concise and effective style, and displayed a business

capacity which the old German admired immensely. As much because of her

usefulness as the modest sum she was able to invest in the business, he

offered her a small share in it four years after she first came to M----.

She had come to M---- because Mrs. Greymer lived there. Therese Greymer

had known the countess from her school-days. When her husband died she

came back to her father's house, but spent her summers in Germany. Then

old Mr. Dare died suddenly, leaving Therese with her little brother to

care for, and only a few thousand dollars in the world. About this time

the countess separated from her husband. "So I am poor," said she, "but it

will go hard if I can't take care of you, Therese." Thus she became Mr.

Seleigman's clerk. M---- forgave her the clerkship, forgave her even her

undoubted success in making money, on account of Mrs. Greymer. It had

watched Therese grow from a slim girl, with black braids hanging down her

white neck as she sat in the "minister's pew" of the old brick church,

into a beautiful pale woman in a widow's bonnet. Therese went now every

Sunday to the same church where her father used to preach. The countess

accompanied her most decorously. She was a pagan at heart, but it pleased

Therese. In church she spent her time looking at her friend's profile and

calculating the week's sales.

The countess had a day-dream: the dreams which most women have had long

ago been rudely broken for her, and the hopes which she cherished now had

little romance about them. She knew her own powers and how necessary she

was to Seleigman: some day she saw the firm becoming Seleigman & Von Arno,

the business widening, and the ploughs, with the yellow eagle on them, in

every great city of Europe. "Then," said the countess to herself, standing

one March morning, four years after she had first come to M----, by the

little dining-room window--"then we can perhaps persuade the workmen to

buy stock in the concern and have a few gleams of sense about profits and

wages."

She lifted one arm above her head and rested her cheek against it. Otto

von Arno during his brief period of fondness had been used to call his

wife "his Scandinavian goddess." She was of the goddess type, tall,

fair-faced and stately, with thick, pale gold hair, and brown lashes

lifted in level lines from steady, deep gray eyes. "Pretty" seemed too

small a word for such a woman, yet "beautiful" conveys a hint of

tenderness; and Mrs. von Arno's face--it might be because of those steady

eyes--was rather a hard face, notwithstanding the soft pink and white of

her skin, and even the dimples that dented her cheek when she smiled.

Now she was not smiling. The air was heavy with the damp chill of early

spring; and as the countess absently surveyed a gravel-walk bordered by

limp brown grasses and a line of trees dripping last night's frost through

the fog, she saw a woman's figure emerge from the shadows and come slowly

up the walk. She was poorly dressed, and walked to the kitchen-door, where

the countess could see her carefully wipe her feet before rapping.

"That must be Bailey's wife," she thought: "I saw her waiting for him

yesterday when he came round to the shops for work.--William, my friend,

you are a nuisance."

With this comment she went to the kitchen. Lettice, the maid-of-all-work,

was frying cakes in solitude. "Mrs. Greymer had taken Mrs. Bailey into the

library," she told the countess with significant inflections.

The latter went to the library. It was a tiny, red-frescoed room fitted up

in black walnut. There were plants in the bay-window: Mrs. Greymer stood

among them, her soft gray wrapper falling in straight and ample folds

about her slender figure. Her face was turned toward the countess; a

loosened lock of black hair brushed the blue vein on her cheek; she held

some lilies-of-the-valley in her hand, and the gold of her wedding-ring

shone against the dark green leaves.

"She looks like one of Fra Angelico's saints," thought the countess: "the

crimson lights are good too."

She stood unnoticed in the doorway, leisurely admiring the picture. Mrs.

Bailey sat in the writing-chair on her right. Once, probably, she had been

a pretty woman, and she still had abundant wavy brown hair and large

dark-blue eyes with curling lashes; but she was too thin and faded and

narrow-chested for any prettiness now. Her calico gown was unstarched,

though scrupulously clean: she wore a thin blue-and-white summer shawl,

and her old straw bonnet was trimmed with a narrow blue ribbon pieced in

two places. Her voice was slightly monotonous, but low-keyed: as she spoke

her hands clasped and unclasped each other. The veins stood out and the

knuckles were enlarged, but they were rather white than otherwise.

She went on with her story: "The children are so good, Mrs. Greymer; but

six of them, and me not over strong--it makes it hard. We hain't had

anything but corn meal in the house all this week, and the second-hand

woman says our things ain't worth the carting. The children have got so

shabby they hate to go to school, and the boys laugh at Willie 'cause his

hat's his pa's old one and ain't got no brim, though I bound it with the

best of the old braid, for I thought maybe they'd think it was a cap. And

the worst was this morning, when there was nothin' but just mush: we

hadn't even 'lasses, and the children cried. Oh, I didn't go to tell you

all this: you know I ain't a beggar. I've tried to live decent. Oh dear!

oh dear!" She tried to wipe away the tears which were running down her

thin cheeks with the tips of her fingers, but they came too fast.

Mechanically, she put her hand in her pocket, only to take it out empty.

Mrs. Greymer slipped her own dainty handkerchief, which the countess had

embroidered, into the other's hand. "You ought to have come to me before,

Martha," she said reproachfully--"such an old friend as I am!"

"'Tain't easy to have them as has known you when you were like folks see

you without even a handkerchief to cry on," said Mrs. Bailey. "If I'd

known where to turn for a loaf of bread, I'd not ha' come now; but I can't

see my children starve. And I ain't come to beg now. All we want is honest

work. William has been everywhere since they sent him away from Dorsey's

just because the men talked about striking, though they didn't strike.

He's been to all the machine-shops, but they won't take him: they say he

has too long a tongue for them, though he's as sober and steady a man as

lives, and there ain't a better workman in M----, or D---- either. William

is willing to do anything: he tried to get work on the streets, but the

street commissioner said he'd more men he'd employed for years asking work

than he knew what to do with. And I thought--I thought, Mrs. Greymer, if

you would only speak to Mrs. von Arno--"

"Good-morning, Mrs. Bailey," said the countess, advancing. She had a

musical voice, clear and full, with a vibrating quality like the notes of

a violin--a very pleasant voice to hear, yet it hardly seemed reassuring

to the visitor. Unconsciously, she sat up straighter in her chair, her

nervous fingers plaiting the fringe of her shawl.

"I heard you mention my name," the countess continued: "is there anything

you wish of me?"

Therese came to Mrs. Bailey's assistance: "Her husband is out of work:

can't you do something with Mr. Seleigman, Helen? Bailey is a good

workman."

"He is indeed, ma'am," added Bailey's wife eagerly, "and as sober and

faithful to his work: he never slights one bit."

"I don't doubt it," said the countess gravely; "but, Mrs. Bailey, if we

were to take your husband on, and the union were to order a strike, even

though he were perfectly satisfied with his own wages, wouldn't he strike

himself, and do all he could to make the others strike?" Mrs. Bailey was

silent.

"A strike might cost us thousands of dollars. Naturally, we don't want to

risk one; so we have no union-men. If Bailey will leave the union he may

go to hammering ploughshares for us to-morrow, and earn, with his skill,

twenty dollars a week."

Mrs. Bailey's face worked. "'Tain't no use ma'am," she said desperately:

"he won't go back on his principles. He says it's the cause of Labor, and

he'll stick to it till he dies. You can't blame him, ma'am, for doing what

he thinks is right."

"Perhaps not. But you see that it is impossible for us to employ your

husband. Isn't there something I can do for you yourself, though? Mrs.

Greymer tells me you sew very neatly."

"Yes, I sew," said Mrs. Bailey in a dull tone, "but I'd be obliged to you,

ma'am, if you'd give me the work soon: I've a machine now, and I'll likely

not have it next week. There's ten dollars due on it, and the agent says

he'll have to take it back. I've paid fifty dollars on it, but this month

and lost times was so hard I couldn't pay."

The countess put a ten-dollar bill in her hand. "Let me lend you this,

then," she said, unheeding the half shrinking of Mrs. Bailey's face and

attitude; and then she avoided all thanks by answering Lettice's summons

at the door.

"Poor little woman!" she said to Mrs. Greymer at breakfast--"she didn't

half like to take it. She looked nearly starved too, though she ate so

little breakfast. How did you manage to persuade her to take that huge

bundle?"

"She is a very brave little woman, Helen. I should like to tell you about

her," said Mrs. Greymer.

"Until a quarter of eight my time is yours, and my sympathy, as usual, is

boundless."

Mrs. Greymer smiled slightly. "I have known her for a great many years,"

she said, disregarding the countess's last speech: "she went to school

with me, in fact. She was such a pretty girl then! Somehow, she took a

fancy to me, and used to help me with my Practical Arithmetic--"

"So called because it is written in the most unpractical and

incomprehensible style: yes, I know it," interrupted the countess.

"Martha was much brighter than I at it, anyhow, and used to do my

examples. She used to bring me the loveliest violets: she would walk all

the way over to the island for them. I remember I cried when her people

moved to Chicago and she left school. I didn't see her for almost ten

years: then I met her accidentally on Randolph street in Chicago. She knew

me, and insisted on my going out with her to see her home. It was in the

suburbs, and was a very pretty, tidy little place, with a garden in front,

where Martha raised vegetables, and a little plot for flowers. She was so

proud of it all and of her two pretty babies, and showed me her chickens

and her furniture and a picture of her husband. They had bought the house,

and were to pay for it in six years, but William was getting high wages,

and she had no fears. Poor Martha!"

"Their Arcadia didn't last?"

"No. William got interested in trades-unions: there was a strike, and he

was very prominent. He was out of work a long time, and Martha supported

the family by taking in sewing and selling the vegetables. Then her third

child was born, and she was sick for a long time afterward: she had been

working too hard, poor thing! His old employers took William on with the

rest of the men when the strike ended, but very soon found a pretext for

discharging him; and, in short, they used up all their little savings, and

the house went. William thought he had been ill-used, and became more

violent in his opinions."

"A Communist, isn't he?"

"I believe so. Martha with her three children couldn't go out to work, but

she is a model housekeeper, and she opened a little laundry with the money

she got from the sale of some of their furniture. William got work, but

lost it again, but Martha managed in a humble way to support the family

until William had an offer to come here; so they sold out the laundry to

get money to move."

"Very idiotic of them."

"After they came here they at first lived on Front street, which is near

the river, and Martha caught the chills and fever. William soon lost his

place, and they moved across the river to D----. He became known as a

speaker, and things have been going from bad to worse; the children have

come fast, and Martha has never really recovered from her fever; and they

have had simply an awfully hard time. I haven't seen Martha for three

months, and have tried in vain to find out where she lived. Poor Martha!

she has never complained, but it has been a hard life for her."

"Yes, a hard life," repeated the countess, rising and putting on her

jacket; "but it seems to me she has chiefly her own husband to thank for

it. And six children! I have my opinion of Mr. William Bailey."

"You are hardly just to Bailey, Helen: he has sacrificed his own interests

to his principles. He is as honest--as honest as the Christian martyrs,

though he _is_ an infidel."

"The Christian martyrs always struck me as a singularly unpractical set of

people," said the countess.

"Maybe: nevertheless, they founded a religion and changed the world. And,

Helen, you and the people like you laugh at Communism and the complaints

of the laboring classes, but it's like Samson and the Philistines; and

this Samson, blind though he is, will one day, unless we do something

besides laugh, pull the pillars down on his head--and on ours."

"He will _try_" said the countess: "if we are wise, we shall be ready and

shoot him dead." She kissed Mrs. Greymer smilingly, and went away. Her

friend, watching her from the window, saw her stop to pat a great dog on

the head and give a little boy a nickel piece.

One Sunday afternoon, two weeks later, the two friends crossed the bridge

to D---- to visit the Baileys. When they reached the end of the bridge

they paused a moment to rest. The day was one of those warm, bright spring

days which deceitfully presage an immediate summer. On the river-shore

crawfishes were lazily creeping over the gravel. The air rang with the

blue jay's chatter, a robin showed his tawny breast among the withered

grasses, and a flicker on a dead stump bobbed his little red-barred head

and fluttered his yellow wings. Beneath the bridge the swift current

sparkled in the sun. Over the river, on each side, rose the hills. The

gray stone of the government works was visible to the right through the

leafless trees: nearer, square, yellow and ugly, stood the old arsenal. A

soldier, musket on shoulder, marched along the river-edge: the cape of his

coat fluttered in the breeze and his slanting bayonet shone like silver.

Before them lay D----, the smoke from its mills and houses curling into

the pale blue air.

The countess drew a long breath: she had a keen feeling for beauty. "Yes,

it is a lovely place," she said. "The hills are not high enough, but the

river makes amends for everything. But what are those hideous shanties,

Therese?"

"Are they not hideous?" said Mrs. Greymer. "They are all pine, and it gets

such an ugly dirt-black when it isn't painted. The glass is broken out of

the windows and the shingles have peeled off the roofs. When it rains the

water drips through. In spring, when the river rises, it comes up to their

very doors: one spring it came in. It is not a nice place to live in."

"Not exactly: still, I suppose people do live there."

"Yes, the Baileys live there. You see, the rent is low."

The countess lifted her eyebrows and followed Mrs. Greymer without

answering. Some sulky-looking men were smoking pipes on the doorsteps, and

a few women, whose only Sunday adorning seemed to have been plastering

their hair down over their cheeks with a great deal of water, gossiped at

the corner. Half a dozen children were playing on the river-bank.

"They fall in every little while," Therese explained, "they are so small,

and most of the mothers here go out washing. This is the Baileys'."

William Bailey answered the knock. He was a tall man, who carried his

large frame with a kind of muscular ease. He had a square, gray-whiskered

face with firm jaws and mild light-blue eyes. The hair being worn away

from his forehead made it seem higher than it really was. He wore his

working clothes and a pair of very old boots cut down into slippers. The

only stocking he had was in his hand, and he appeared to have been darning

it. Close behind him came his wife, holding the baby. The bright look of

recognition on her face at the sight of Mrs. Greymer faded when she

perceived the countess. Rather stiffly she invited them to enter.

The room was small and most meanly furnished, but it was clean. The walls

were dingy beyond the power of soap and water to change, but the floor had

been scrubbed, and what glass there was in the windows had been washed.

There were occasional holes in the ceiling and walls where the plaster had

given way: out of one of these peered the pointed nose and gleaming eyes

of a great rat. Judging from sundry noises she heard, the countess

concluded there were many of these animals under the house, though what

they found to live on was a puzzle; but they ate a little of the children

now and then, and perhaps the hope of more sustained them. A pale little

boy was lying on a mattress in the corner covered with a faded

blue-and-white shawl.

Therese had mysteriously managed to dispose of the basket she had brought

before she went up to him and kissed him, saying, "I am sorry to see

Willie is still sick."

"Yes," said Bailey, smiling bitterly. "The doctor says he needs dry air

and exercise: it's damp here."

"Tommy More has promised to lend us his cart, and Susie will take him on

the island," Mrs. Bailey said hastily; "it's real country there."

"But you have to have a pass," answered Bailey in a low tone.

"Any one can get a pass," said the countess; "but if you prefer I will ask

the colonel to-day, and he will send you one to-morrow."

For the first time Bailey fairly looked the countess in the face: his

brows contracted, he opened his lips to speak.

"Oh, papa," cried the boy in a weak voice trembling with eagerness, "the

island is _splendid_! Tommy's father works there, and they's cannon and a

foundry and a _live eagle_!"

"Yes, Willie dear," said his father as he laid his brown hand gently on

the boy's curls. He inclined his head toward the countess. "I'll thank

you," he said gravely.

The countess picked up a pamphlet from the table, more to break the

uncomfortable pause which followed than for any other reason. "Do you like

this?" she said, hardly reading the title.

"I believe it," said Bailey: "I am a Communist myself." He drew himself up

to his full height as he spoke: there was a certain suppressed defiance in

his attitude and expression.

"Are you?" said the countess. "Why?"

"Why?" cried Bailey. "Look at me! I'm a strong man, and willing to do any

kind of work. I've worked hard for sixteen year: I've been sober and

steady and saving. Look what all that work and saving has brought me! This

is a nice place for a decent man and his family to live in, ain't it?

Them walls ain't clean? No, because scrubbing can't make 'em. The grime's

in the plaster: yes, and worse than grime--vermin and disease sech as

'tain't right for me to mention even to ladies like you, but it's right

enough for sech as us to live in. Yes, by G---! to _die_ in!" He was a man

who spoke habitually in a low voice, and it had not grown louder, but the

veins on his forehead swelled and his eyes began to glow.

"It is hard, truly," said the countess. "Whose fault is it?"

"Whose fault?" Bailey repeated her words vehemently, yet with something of

bewilderment. "Society's fault, which grinds a poor man to powder, so as

to make a rich man richer. But the people won't stand this sort of thing

for ever."

"You would have a general division of property, then?"

"Indirectly, yes. Power must be taken from bloated corporations and given

to the people; the railroads must be taken by government; accumulation of

capital over a limited amount must be forbidden; men must work for

Humanity, and not for their selfish interests."

"Do you know any men who are working so?"

"I know a few."

"Mostly workingmen?"

"All workingmen."

"Don't you think a general division of property would be for _their_

selfish interests?"

"I don't call it selfish to ask for just a decent living."