Henrietta's face took on a sullen look; she rose slowly, dropping the

slate with a clatter on her desk, whence it slid with a bang to the

floor, without any effort on her part to arrest it. Miss Tucker did not

observe--she was nearsighted--that in its fall, and in Henrietta's

picking it up, it was reversed, so that the side presented to the

schoolmistress was not the side on which the girl had last been at

work. All Miss Tucker saw was that the side which faced her when she

took the slate from Henrietta's hand contained a picture of a little

child. It was a chubby little face, with a funny-serious expression.

The execution was by no means correct, the foreshortening of the little

bare legs was not well done, the hands were out of drawing, and the

whole picture had the stillness that comes from inexperience. But Miss

Tucker did not see that. All she saw was that it was to her eye a

miraculously good picture.

"That's the way you get your arithmetic lesson! You haven't done a sum

this morning. You spend your time drawing little brats like that."

"She isn't a brat."

"Who isn't a brat?"

"Periwinkle isn't. That's Periwinkle."

"Who's Periwinkle?"

"She's my niece. She's Jane's little girl. You sha'n't call her a brat,

neither."

"Don't you talk to me that way, you impudent thing! That's the way you

spend your time, drawing pictures."

Miss Tucker here held the slate up in front of her and stared at the

picture of Periwinkle. Whereupon the scholars who were spectators of

Miss Tucker's indignation smiled. Some of them grew red in the face and

looked at their companions. Little Charity Jones rattled out a good,

hearty, irrepressible giggle, which she succeeded in arresting only by

stuffing her apron into her mouth.

"Charity Jones, what are you laughing at?"

But Charity only stuck her head down on the desk and went into another

snicker.

"Come here!"

Charity was sober enough now. Miss Tucker got a little switch out of

her desk and threatened little Charity with "a good sound whipping" if

she didn't tell what she was laughing at.

"At the picture," whimpered the child.

"I don't see anything to laugh at," said the mistress, holding the

slate up before her.

Whereupon the school again showed signs of a sensation.

"What are you laughing at?" and Miss Tucker instinctively felt of her

back hair.

"It's on the other side of the slate," burst out Charity's brother, who

was determined to deliver his sister out of the den of lions.

Miss Tucker turned the slate over, and there was Henrietta's

masterpiece. It was a stunning caricature of the schoolmistress in the

act of yawning. Of course, when that high and mighty authority had, in

her indignation held up the slate so as to get a good view of the

picture of Periwinkle, she was unconsciously exhibiting to the school

the character study on the reverse of the slate. And now, as she looked

with unutterable wrath and consternation at the dreadful drawing, the

scholars were full of suppressed emotion--half of it terror, and the

other half a served-her-right feeling.

"The school is dismissed. Henriettar Newton will stay," said the

schoolmistress. The children arose, glad to escape, while Henrietta

felt that her friends were all deserting her, and she was left alone

with a wild beast.

"Chaw her all up," said one of the boys to another. "I wouldn't be in

there with her for a good deal."

Rob Riley left the room the last of all, and he lingered under the

window. But what could he do? After a while he hurried away to

Henrietta's father, on the adjoining farm, and made a statement of the

case to him.

"I sha'n't interfere," said the old man sternly. "That girl's give me

trouble enough, I'm sure. Spends her time makin' fool pictures on a

slate. I hope the schoolmistress'll cure her."

Rob did not know what to say to this. He went back across the field to

the schoolhouse door and sat down and listened. He could hear an angry

collocation. He thought best not to interfere unless the matter came to

blows.

The old man Newton entered his house soon after Rob Riley left him, and

repeated to his wife what Rob had said from his own standpoint. The

little grandchild, Periwinkle, sat on the floor with that funny-serious

air that belonged to her chubby face.

"I'll go down and see about that, I will," she said with an air of

great importance.

"What?" said the old man, looking tenderly and fondly at Periwinkle.

"I'll see about that, I will," said the barefoot cherub, as she pulled

on her sunbonnet and set out for the schoolhouse, pushing resolutely

forward on her sturdy little legs.

"I vum!" said the old man, as he saw her disappear round the fence

corner.

The quaint little thing had not yet been in the house a week. She was

sent on to the grandparents after her mother's death, and, as the child

of the daughter who had left them years ago never to return, she had

found immediate entrance into the hearts of the old folks. The

reprobate Henrietta, who wasted her time drawing pictures, and who was

generally in a state of siege at home and at school, had found in

little Periwinkle, as they called her, a fountain of affection. And now

that Henrietta was in trouble, the little Illinois Periwinkle had gone

off in her self-reliant fashion to see about it.

When she reached the schoolhouse she found Rob Riley, whom she had come

to know as Henrietta's friend, standing listening.

"I've come down to see about that, I have," said Periwinkle, nodding

her head toward the schoolhouse. Then she listened a while to the angry

voice of Miss Tucker, and the surly, sobbing, and defiant replies of

Henrietta, who was saying, "Stand back, or I'll hit you!"

"Open that door this minute, Wob Wiley! I'm a goin' to see about that."

Rob hesitated. The latch was clearly out of Periwinkle's reach. Rob had

a faint hope that the little thing might divert the wrathful teacher

from her prey. He raised the latch and set the door slightly ajar.

"Now push," he said to Periwinkle.

She pushed the door open a little way and entered the schoolroom

without being seen by the angry mistress, who was facing the other way,

having driven Henrietta into a corner. Here stood the defiant girl at

bay, waving a ruler, which she had snatched from the irate teacher, and

warning the latter to let her alone. Periwinkle walked up to the

teacher, pulled her dress, and said:

"I've come down to see about that, I have."

"Who are you?" said the frightened Miss Tucker, to whom it seemed that

the little chub had dropped down out of the sky, or come to life off

Henrietta's slate.

"I'm Periwinkle, and you mustn't touch my Henrietta. I've come down to

see about it, I have."

Miss Tucker, in a sudden reaction, sank down on a chair exhausted and

bewildered. Then she sobbed a little in despair.

"What shall I do with that girl?" she muttered. "I'm beat out."

"Come home, Henrietta," said Periwinkle, and she marched Henrietta out

the door under the very eyes of the schoolmistress.

"Come back this minute!" cried Miss Tucker, rallying when it was too

late. But the weeping Henrietta, the solemn Periwinkle, and the

rejoicing Rob Riley went away and answered the poor woman never a word.

Miss Tucker, who was not without some good sense and good intentions,

found out that evening that she did not like teaching. She forthwith

resigned the school in East Weston. In a week or two a new teacher was

engaged, "a young thing from town," as the people put it, "who never

could manage that Henrietta Newton."

But sometimes even a "young thing" is gifted with that undefined

something that we call tact. Sarah Reade soon found out, from the

gratuitous advice lavished upon her, that her chief trouble would be

from Henrietta; so she took pains to get acquainted with the unruly

girl the first day. Finding that the center of Henrietta's heart was

Periwinkle, she took great interest in getting the girl to tell her all

about Periwinkle. Henrietta was so much softened by this treatment that

for three whole days after the advent of Miss Reade she did not draw a

picture on the slate. But the self-denial was too great. On the fourth

day, while Miss Reade was hearing recitation, and the girls at the desk

behind Henrietta were looking over at her, she drew a cow very

elaborately.

She was just trying to make the horns look right, rubbing them out and

retouching them, while the other girls rose up in their seats and

brought their heads together in a cluster to see, declaring in a

whisper that "it was the wonderfullest thing how Henrietta could draw,"

when who should look down among them but Miss Reade herself. As soon as

Henrietta became conscious of Miss Reade's attention she dropped her

pencil, not with the old defiant feeling, but with a melancholy sense

of having lost standing with one whose good opinion she would fain have

retained.

The teacher took the slate in her hand, not in Miss Tucker's energetic

fashion, but with a polite "Excuse me," which made Henrietta's heart

sink down within her. For half a minute Miss Reade scrutinized the

drawing without saying a word.

"Did anybody ever give you any drawing lessons?" she said to the

detected criminal.

"No, ma'am."

"You draw well; you ought to have a chance. You'll make an artist some

day. Your cow is not quite right. If you'll bring the picture to me

after school I'll show you some things about it. I think you'd better

put it away now till you get your geography lesson."

Henrietta, full of wonder at finding her art no longer regarded as a

sin, put the slate into the desk, and cheerfully resumed the study of

the boundaries and chief products of North Carolina, while Miss Reade

returned to the hearing of the third-reader class.

"I say, Henrietta, she's j-u-s-t s-p-l-e-n-d-i-d!" whispered Maria

Thomas. And Rob Riley thought Miss Reade was almost as fine as

Henrietta herself.

"You see," said Miss Reade to Henrietta after school, "that the hind

legs of your cow look longer than the fore legs."

"There's something wrong." said the girl, "but that isn't it. I've

measured, and the cow's just as high before as behind, though she

doesn't look so."

"Yes, but you've put her head a little toward you. The hind legs ought

to seem shorter at a little distance off. Now try it. Make her not so

high from the ground behind," and Miss Reade proceeded to explain one

or two principles of perspective. When Henrietta had experimented on

her cow and saw the result, she was delighted.

"I don't know much about drawing," said Miss Reade, "but I've a set of

drawing books and some drawing cards. Now, if you'll let drawing alone

till you get your lessons each day, I'll lend you my drawing books and

give you all the help I can."

When the old man Newton heard that the "new school ma'am" was

permitting Henrietta to draw "fool picters on her slate," he was sure

that it never would work. He believed in breaking a child's will, for

his part, "though the one that broke Henriettar's will would hev to git

up purty airly in the mornin' now, certain," he added with a grim

smile. But when the old man found Henrietta unexpectedly industrious,

toiling over her studies at night, he was surprised beyond measure; and

when he understood the compact by which studies were to come first and

drawing afterward, he winked his eye knowingly at his wife.

"Who'd a thought that little red-headed school ma'am would a ben so

cute? She knows the very bait for Henriettar now. That woman would do

to trade hosses."

But when the little schoolmistress seriously proposed that he should

send Henrietta down to New York to take lessons in drawing, he quickly

changed his mind. Of what kind of use was drawing? And then, it would

cost, according to Miss Reade's own account, about two or three hundred

dollars a year for board; all to learn a lot of nonsense. It is true,

when the teacher craftily told him stories of the prices that some

lucky artists received for their work, he felt as though she were

pointing down into a gold mine. But the money in his hand was good

money, and he never sent good money after bad. And so Henrietta's newly

raised hope of being an artist was dashed, and Rob Riley was grievously

disappointed; for he was sure that Henrietta would astonish the

metropolis if once she could take her transcendent ability out of East

Weston into New York. Besides, Rob Riley himself was going off to New

York to develop his own talent by learning the granite cutter's trade.

He confided to Henrietta that he expected to come to something better

than granite cutting, for he had heard that there had been granite

cutters who, being, like himself, good at figures, in time had come to

be great contractors and builders and bosses. He was going to be

something, and when he was settled at work in New York Henrietta had a

letter from him telling that he was learning mechanical drawing in the

Cooper Union night school, and that he got books out of the

Apprentices' Library. He also attended free lectures, and was looking

out for a chance to be something some day. Henrietta carried the letter

about with her, and wished heartily that she also might go to New York,

where she could improve herself and see Rob Riley occasionally.

Now it happened that Mrs. Newton had a cousin, a rich man, in New

York--at least, he seemed rich to those not used to the measure applied

to wealth in a great city. She had not seen him since he left the

little town in western Massachusetts, where they were both brought up.

But she often talked about Cousin John. Whenever she saw his business

advertisements in the papers she started out afresh in her talk about

Cousin John. It is something quite worth the having--a cousin in New

York whose name is in the papers, and who is rich. Whenever Mrs. Jones,

Mrs. Newton's neighbor, talked too ostentatiously about her uncle, who

was both a deacon and a justice of the peace up in New Hampshire, then

Mrs. Newton said something about Cousin John. To save her life she

couldn't imagine how Cousin John lived, except that he kept a carriage

or two, or in what precisely his greatness consisted, since he held no

office either in church or State, but the old lady evidently believed

in her heart that a cousin who was a big man down in New York was

nearly as good as an uncle who was a deacon up in New Hampshire.

Now it happened that John Willard, the Cousin John of Mrs. Newton's

gossip, was spending the summer at Lebanon Springs, and at the close of

his vacation he started to drive home through the beautiful region once

the scene of the anti-renters' conflict with the old patroons. He

stopped to see the Shaker villages, and then drove on among the rich

farms, taking great pleasure in explaining to his town-bred wife the

difference between wheat and rye as it stood in the shock, feeling for

once the superiority of one whose early life has been passed in the

country. He happened to remember that he had a cousin over in Weston,

and though he had not seen her for many years, he proposed to turn

aside and eat one dinner with old Farmer Newton and his wife.

And thus it happened that Cousin John Willard, and especially that Mrs.

Cousin John Willard, saw Henrietta's drawings, and heard of her

aspiration to learn to draw and paint; and thus it happened that Cousin

John, and, what is of more consequence, Mrs. Cousin John, invited the

girl to come down to New York and spend the winter with them and

develop her talent for drawing; though Mrs. Willard did not think so

much of Henrietta's developing her gift for art as that she had a fine

face, and would undoubtedly develop into a beauty under city

influences. And as Mrs. Willard had no children, and her house was

lonesome, she thought it might add to her own consequence and to the

cheerfulness of her house to have a handsome cousin under her care.

Henrietta's father was rather unwilling to let her go; he didn't see

how she could be spared from the housework; but the mother was resolved

that she should go, and go she did.

The first things that excited the country girl's wonder were not the

streets and buildings and the works of art, but the unwonted luxury of

city life. Velvet carpets, large panes of plate glass, hot and cold

water that came for the turning of a stopcock, illumination that burst

forth as by magic, mirrors that showed the whole person and

reduplicated the room--even doorbells and sliding doors, and dumb

waiters and speaking-tubes, were things that filled her with

astonishment. For weeks she felt that she had moved out of the world

into a fairy book. But, being a high-spirited girl, she carefully

concealed her wonder, moving about with apparent nonchalance, as though

she had lived in the enchanted ground all her life. Secretly she

carried on experiments upon water works, gas fixtures, and plate-glass

mirrors, using the inductive method of reasoning, as all intelligent

people have from the beginning, without any of the cumbrous and

pedantic machinery provided for them by Lord Chancellor Bacon.

She was soon at work, but drawing from uninteresting plaster casts of

scroll-work in the lower classes of the School of Design for Women was

not so pleasant as spontaneous picture-making on her slate had been. In

Weston, too, she had been a prodigy; her gift for drawing was little

less than miraculous in the eyes of her companions. But in Cooper

Institute she was one of many, and there were those whom much practice

had rendered more skillful. She would slip away from her work and go

through the alcoves sometimes, on one pretext or another, to envy the

girls who were in their second year, and were drawing from a bust of

Psyche or The Young Augustus, and especially did she wish that she were

one of the favored circle in the Venus Room. She thought it would be

fine to try the statue of the Venus de Milo. But day in and day out she

had to stand before a cast of a meaningless scroll, endeavoring to

represent it on drawing paper. This was no longer play, but work as

tedious as the geography lessons in Weston. There is a great difference

between work and play, though they both may consist in doing the same

thing. Nevertheless Henrietta had positive ability, and the almost

mechanical training of the first months did her good.

But somehow she was not so glad to see Rob Riley, the granite cutter,

as she had expected to be. When Rob called at first to see her, the

maid, who had received many warnings against allowing sneak thieves and

tramps to stand in the hall, did not dare leave him by the hatrack. She

eyed him suspiciously, cross-questioned him sharply, and finally called

the cook upstairs to stand guard over him and the overcoats while she

went to call Henrietta. Poor Rob, already frightened at having to ring

the door-bell of a brown-stone house, stood in the hall fumbling his

hat, while the stalwart cook never once took her eyes off him, but

stood ready to throttle him if he made a motion to seize a coat or to

open the door behind him. Somehow the greeting between the two under

these circumstances was as different as possible from their parting in

the country. Henrietta felt that by receiving Rob Riley in his Sunday

clothes she had forever compromised herself with Hibernia downstairs;

and poor Rob, half chilled by Henrietta's reception, and wholly

dampened by the rosewood furniture and the lace curtains, and the

necessity for sitting down on damask upholstery, was very ill at ease.

Henrietta longed to speak freely, as she had done in the old days when

they strolled through the hill pasture together, but then she trembled

lest the door-bell should ring and some of Mrs. Cousin John's fine

visitors enter the reception room. So the meeting was a failure. Rob

even forgot that he had meant to ask Henrietta to go with him to the

free lecture the next evening. And he was glad when he got out, and

Henrietta was relieved, though she cried with vexation and

disappointment when he was gone. As for Rob, he went home in great

doubt whether it was worth while trying to be something. Of what use

was it to seek to get to be a boss, a builder, or the owner of a

quarry? Things were all wrong anyhow.

After this he only met Henrietta now and then as she came in or went

out, though this was not easy, for he had to work with the hammer all

day, and his evenings were spent in mechanical drawing. On second

thought, he _would_ be something, if only just to show folks that

looked down on him. Though, if he had only known it, Henrietta did not

look down on him at all; all her contempt was expended on herself.

But this feeling wore away as she became naturalized in Mrs. Cousin

John's world. There were little dance parties, and though Henrietta was

obliged to dress plainly, she grew more to be a beautiful woman. The

simplicity of her dress set off this fine loveliness, and Henrietta

Newton was artist enough to understand this, so that her clothes did

not make her abashed in company. She had no party dresses, but with

Mrs. Willard's assistance she always looked the beautiful country

cousin. Other girls remarked upon the monotony of her dress, but then

the gentlemen did not care that one woolen gown did duty on many

occasions. Some women can stand the ordeal of a uniform for church and

theater, party and _tête-à-tête_.

Mrs. Willard meant well by Henrietta. If Henrietta's art got on slowly,

and her chance for a prize decreased steadily under the dissipating

influences about her, it was not that Mrs. Willard intended to do her

harm by parading her pretty cousin on Sundays and week days. It was

only a second growth of vanity in Cousin John's wife. When one is no

longer sought after for one's own sake, the next best thing is to be

sought after for somebody else's sake. Mrs. Willard shone now in a

reflected glory, as the keeper of the pretty Miss Newton. Young

gentlemen stood squarely in front of Mrs. Willard and made full bows to

her, and were delighted when she asked them to call. Mrs. Willard also

carried it up to her own credit, in her confidential talks with ladies

of her own age, that she was doing so much for John's cousin, whom she

had found buried in an old farmhouse. For Mrs. Willard was a Christian

and a philanthropist, besides being a reformer.

She was endeavoring with all her heart to reform a younger brother of

her own, who was enough to have filled the hands of three or four red,

white, and blue ribbon associations. He was a fine subject to work on,

this young Harrison Lowder. Few young men have been so much reformed.

He had a bright wit and genial manners, but moral endowments had been

accidentally omitted in his makeup. Nothing that was pleasant could

seem wrong to him. He was a magnificent sinner, with an artistic

lightness of touch in wrongdoing, and he took his evil courses with

such unfailing good nature that people forgave him.

It was a happy thought of Mrs. Willard's, when she saw him becoming

fascinated with Henrietta, to reform him and render Henrietta a service

at the same time. For Lowder had money, and to a poor country girl such

a marriage ought to be a heaven-send, while it would serve to reform

Harry, no doubt. It isn't always that a matchmaker can be sure of being

a benefactor to both sides. One of the most remarkable things in

nature, however, is the willingness of women to lay a girl's life on

the altar for the chance of saving the morals of a scapegrace man. If a

pious mother can only marry her son Beelzebub to some "good, religious

girl," the chance of his reformation is greatly increased. The girl is

neither here nor there when one considers the necessity for saving the

dear Beelzebub.

Harry Lowder had the advantage of all other comers with Henrietta. The

keeper was on his side, in the first place; and he was half

domesticated at the house, coming and going when he pleased. The city

dazzled the country girl, and it was a great pleasure to him to take

her to theaters and operas. His winning manners, his apparent

frankness, and the round of amusements he kept her in, could not but

have their effect on a strong-willed creature such as she was. Her

pent-up intensity of life burst out now into the keenest enjoyment of

all that she saw and heard and felt for the first time.

There were times when the memory of her country home and little

Periwinkle came into her mind like a fresh breeze from the hills. At

such times she recoiled from the round of unhealthful excitement in

which she found herself; she hated the high-wrought plays and burlesque

operas that she had seen; she despised the exciting novels that Harry

Lowder had lent her. Then the old farm, with its stern and quiet ways,

seemed a sort of paradise; she longed for her mother's voice, and even

for her father's rebuke, for Rob Riley's homely love-making, and

Periwinkle's quaint ways. At such times she had a sense of standing in

some imminent peril, a dark foreboding shadowed her, and she wished

that she had never come to New York, for the drawing did not get on

well. Harry Lowder said it didn't matter about the drawing; she was

meant for something better. There was always an easy way out of such

depressions. Harry told her that she had the blues, and that if she

would go to see this or that the blues would disappear. There is an

easy way of getting rid of the blues by pawning to-morrow to pay

to-day's debts.

It would hardly be right to say that Lowder was in love with Henrietta

Newton, for in our good English tongue there is usually a moral element

to the word love. But Harry certainly was fascinated with

Henrietta--more fascinated than he had ever been with any one else. And

as he had become convinced that it was best for him to marry and to

reform--just a little--he thought that Henrietta Newton would be the

girl to marry.

So it happened that Periwinkle, who had waited for Christmas to come

that she might see Henrietta again, was bitterly disappointed. At

Christmas Henrietta had been promised two great treats--Fox in Humpty

Dumpty and the sight of St. Dives's Church in its decorations, with the

best music in the city. And then there were to be other things quite as

wonderful to the country girl. In truth, Henrietta was afraid to go

home. Somewhere in the associations of home there lay in wait for her a

revengeful conscience which she feared to meet. Then, too, Rob Riley

would be at home, and a meeting with him must produce shame in her, and

bring on a decision that she would rather postpone. Mrs. Willard begged

her to stay, and it was hard to resist her benefactress. But in her

girl's heart at times she was tired and homesick, and the staying in

the city cost her two or three good crying spells. And when the

holidays were past she bitterly repented that she had not gone home.

In this mood she sat down and wrote a long letter to her mother, full

of regrets and homesickness, and longing and contradictoriness. She

liked the city and she didn't. She hadn't done very well in her

drawing, as she confessed, but she meant to do better. It was a letter

that gave the good old mother much uneasiness. This city world was

something that she could not understand--a great sea for the navigation

of which she had no chart. She got from Henrietta's letter a vague

sense of danger, a danger terrible because entirely incomprehensible to

her.

And, indeed, she had already become uneasy, for when Rob Riley came

home at Christmas time he did not come to see them, nor did he bring

any messages from Henrietta. When she asked him about the girl, at

meeting time on Sunday, Rob hung his head and looked at the toe of his

boot a minute, and then said that he "hadn't laid eyes on her for six

weeks." What did it all mean? Had Henrietta got into some disgrace? The

father was alarmed also. He thought it about time that she should be

getting a thousand dollars for a picture; though, for his part, he

couldn't see why anybody should pay for a picture enough money to build

two or three barns.

The little Periwinkle heard all of these discussions, though nobody

thought of her understanding them.

"I'm going down there," she said. "I'm going to see about that, I am."

"What?" said the grandfather, looking at the little thing fondly.

"About Henrietta. I'm a-goin' down with Wob Wiley."

"Hello! you air, air you?"

Now it happened that in her fit of repentance and homesickness

Henrietta had written: "I wish you would send dear little Periwinkle

down here some time. I do want to see her, and she would be such a good

model to draw from." Henrietta had not thought of the practical

difficulties of getting the chubby little thing down, nor of how she

would keep her if she came, nor, indeed, of the possibility of her

words being understood in their literal sense. It was only a cry of

longing.

But now the mother, full of apprehension and at her wits' end what to

do, looked with a sort of superstitions respect at the self-confident

little creature who proposed to go down to the city and see about

things.

The old lady at first proposed to go down herself and take little

Periwinkle with her; but she felt timid about the great city, and about

Cousin John's fine ways of living. She wouldn't be able to find her way

around, and she felt "scarr't" when she thought about it. Besides,

who'd get father's breakfast for him if she went away?

So she decided to send Periwinkle down. Rob Riley could take her, and

Cousin John's wife had always liked her and she'd be glad to see her.

She hadn't any children of her own, and might be real glad to have the

merry little thing about; and as for sending her back, there was always

somebody coming up from the city. Of course Grandma Newton didn't think

how large the village of New York had grown to be, and how unlikely it

was that Henrietta should find any one going to Weston.

The greatest difficulty was to persuade Rob Riley to take her. His

pride was wounded, and he didn't want to have anything to do with

Henrietta and her fine folks. But the old lady persisted, and, above

all, little Periwinkle informed Rob that she was going down to see

about Henrietta. This touched Rob; he remembered when she had snatched

Henrietta out of the jaws of Miss Tucker. He consented to take her to

Mr. Willard's house and ring the door-bell.

Henrietta had recovered from her attack of penitence, and was again

floating on the eddying current of excitement. One evening she went

with Lowder to see La Dame aux Camelias. She had never before seen "an

emotional play" of the French school, and it affected her deeply. Harry

took advantage of her softened feelings to envelop her in a cloud of

flattery, and to make love to her. Something of the better sense of the

girl had heretofore held her back from any committal of her trust to

him; but when they reached Mrs. Willard's parlor, Harry laid direct

siege to Henrietta's affection, telling her what moral miracles her

influence had wrought in him, and how nothing but her love was needed

to keep him steadfast in the future; and, in truth, he more than half

believed what he said. The whole scene was quite in the key of the

play, and her overwrought feelings drifted toward the man pleading thus

earnestly for affection. Harry saw the advantage of the situation, and

urged on her an immediate decision. Henrietta, still shaken by

passionate excitement, and without rest in herself, was on the point of

promising eternal affection, in the manner of the heroine of the play,

when there came a loud ringing of the door-bell. So highly strained

were the girl's nerves, that she uttered a sharp cry at this unexpected

midnight alarm. The servants had gone to bed when Henrietta came in.

There was nothing for it but to open the door herself. With Harry

Lowder behind her for a reserve, she timidly opened the front door, to

find a child, muffled in an old-fashioned cloak and hood, standing upon

the stoop, while a man was descending the steps. Looking around just

enough to see who came to the door, he said, "Your mother said you

wanted her, and she would have me bring her to you."

Then, without a word of good-night, Rob Riley walked away, Henrietta

recognizing the voice with a pang.

"I come down to see about you," spoke the solemn and quizzical figure

on the stoop.

"Where on earth did that droll creature come from?" broke out Lowder.

"What is the matter, Miss Newton?"

For the suddenness of the apparition, the rude air with which Rob Riley

had turned his back upon her, had started a new set of emotions in the

mind of Henrietta. A wind from the old farm had blown suddenly over her

and swept away the fog. She felt now, with that intuitive quickness

that belongs to the artistic temperament, that she had recoiled but

just in time from a brink. For a moment she seemed likely to faint,

though she was not the kind of woman to faint when startled.

She reached out her hand to Periwinkle, and then, with a reaction of

feeling, folded her in her arms and wept. Harry was puzzled. She

suddenly became stiff and almost repellent toward him. She seemed

impatient for him to be gone. It was a curious effect of surprise upon

her nerves, he thought. He mentally confounded his luck, and said good

night.

Henrietta bore Periwinkle off to her own room and removed her cloak,

crying a little all the time. She was quite too full of emotion to take

into account as yet all the perplexities in which she would be involved

by the presence of Periwinkle in the house of Cousin John Willard.

"What brought you down here?" she said at last, when the sturdy little

girl, divested of her shawl and cloak and mittens and hood, sat upon a

chair in front of Henrietta, who sat upon the floor looking at her.

"I come down to see about you. Gran'ma said some things, and gran'pa

said some things, and Wob Wiley he looked bad, and I thought maybe I'd

just come down and see about you; and gran'ma said you wanted to make a

picture of me. You don't want to make a picture to-night, do you?

'cause I'm awful sleepy. You see, Wob had to come on the seven o'clock

twain, and that gits in at 'leven; and it took us till midnight to git

here, and Wob he's got to go ever so fur yet. What made 'em build such

a big town?" Here Periwinkle yawned and seemed about to fall off the

chair. In a few minutes she was lying fast asleep on Henrietta's

pillow.

But Henrietta slept not. It was a night of stormy trial. By turns one

mood and then another dominated. At times she resolved to be a lady,

admired and courted in the luxury of the city. As for possible

consequences, she had never been in the habit of counting the cost of

her actions carefully. There is a delicious excitement to a nature like

hers in defying consequences.

But then a sight of Periwinkle's sleeping innocence sent back the tide

with a rush. How much better were the simple old home ways and the love

of this little heart, and the faithful devotion of that most kindly Rob

Riley! She remembered her walks with him, her teasing him, his

interference against Miss Tucker, and the deliverance wrought by the

little creature lying there. She would go back to her old self, how

painful soever it might be.

But she couldn't stay in the city and turn away Harrison Lowder; and to

go home was to confess that she had failed in her art. And how could

she humble herself to seem to wish to regain Rob Riley's love? And

then, what kind of an outlook did the life of a granite-cutter's wife

afford her? Here she looked at herself in the glass. All her pride

rebelled against going home. But all her pride sank down when she

stooped to kiss the cheek of the sleeping child.

In this alternation of feeling she passed the night. When breakfast

time came she took Periwinkle down, making such explanations as she

could with much embarrassment.

"You're sick, Henrietta," said Cousin John. "You don't eat anything.

You've been working too steadily."

After breakfast the family doctor called, and said that Henrietta was

suffering from too close application to her art, and from steam heat in

the alcoves. She must have rest.

The poor, tired, perplexed girl, badgered with conflicting emotions,

but resolved at last to escape from temptations that she could not

resist effectually, received this verdict eagerly. She would go home;

and the doctor agreed that change of scene was what she wanted. Her

life in town was too dull.

Harry Lowder called that evening, but Henrietta had taken the

precaution to be sick abed. At eight o'clock the next morning she was

on the Harlem train.

"You see, I brought her home," said Periwinkle to her grandmother, in

confidence. "I didn't like Cousin John's folks. They wasn't glad to see

me; and I didn't like to leave Henrietta there."

But Henrietta, who had blossomed out into something quite different

from the Henrietta of other times, made no explanation except that she

was sick. For a week she took little interest in anything, ate but

little, and went about in a dazed way, resuming her old cares as though

she had never given them up. Somehow she seemed a fine lady in the

dignity of manner and the self-possession that she had taken on with

characteristic quickness of apprehension and imitation, and Mrs. Newton

felt as if the housework were unsuited to her. Even her father looked

at her with a sort of respect, and forbore to chide her as had been his

wont.

But when a week had passed she suddenly got out her material and began

to draw. Periwinkle was set up first for a model, then her father and

her mother, and then the dog, as he lay sleeping before the fire, had

his portrait taken, to Periwinkle's delight. So persistent was her

ambitious industry that every living thing on the place came in for a

sketch. But Periwinkle was the favorite.

Rob Riley came home for July and August, the work in the yard being

dull. He kept aloof from Henrietta, and she nodded to him with a severe

and almost disdainful air that made him wretched. After three or four

weeks of this coolness, during which Henrietta got a reputation for

pride in the whole country, Rob grew desperate. What did he care for

the "stuck-up" girl? He would have it out, anyhow, the next time he had

a chance.

They met one day on the little bridge that crossed the brook near the

schoolhouse. Henrietta nodded a bare recognition.

"You didn't treat me that way once, Henrietta. What's the matter? Have

I done anything wrong? Can't you be friendly?"

"Why don't _you_ be friendly?" said the girl, looking down.

"I--I?" said Rob.

"You haven't spoken to me since you came home."

"Well, that isn't my fault; you wouldn't look at me. I'm not going to

run after a person that lives in a fine house and that only nods her

head at me."

"I don't live in a fine house, but in that old frame."

"Well, why don't you be friendly?"

"It isn't a girl's place to be friendly first, is it?"

Rob stared at her.

"But you had other young men come to see you in town, and--you know I

couldn't."

"I don't live in town now."

"What made you come home?"

"If I'd wanted to I might have stayed there and had 'other young men,'

as you call them, coming to see me yet."

Rob gasped, but said nothing.

"Are you going over to Mr. Brown's?" asked Henrietta, to break the

awkward silence that followed, at the same time moving toward home.

"Well--no," said Rob; "I think I'm going to your house, if you've no

objection," and he laughed, a foolish little laugh.

"Periwinkle was asking about you this morning," said Henrietta

evasively as they walked on toward Mr. Newton's.

Having once fallen into the old habit of going to Mr. Newton's, Rob

could never get out of the way of walking down that lane. Just to see

how Henrietta got on with her drawing, as he said, he went there every

evening. He confided to Henrietta that he had shown such proficiency in

"figures" in the night school that he was to have a place in a civil

engineer's office when he returned to the city in the fall. It wasn't

much of a place; the salary was small, but it gave him an opportunity

to study and a chance of being something some day.

And Henrietta went on with her drawing, but without ever saying

anything about a return to Cousin John's. And, indeed, she never did go

back to Cousin John's from that day to this. She spent three years in

Weston. If they were tedious years, she said nothing about them. Rob

came home on Christmas and for a week in summer. Once in a long time he

would run up the Harlem road on Saturday evening. These were white

Sundays when Rob was at home, for then he and Henrietta went to meeting

together, and sat on the porch in the afternoons while Rob told her how

he expected to be somebody some day.

But being somebody is hard work and slow for most of us, as Rob Riley

found out. His salary was not increased very fast, but he made up for

that by steadily increasing his knowledge and his value in the office.

For Rob had discovered that being somebody means being something. You

can't hide any man under a bushel if he has a real light in him.

It was not till last year that Henrietta returned to the city. She is a

student now in oil painting. But she does not live at Cousin John's.

Nor, indeed, does she live in a very fashionable street, if I must

confess it. There are many old houses in New York that have been

abandoned by their owners because of the uptown movement and the

west-side movement of fashion. These houses are as quaint in their

antique interiors as a bric-a-brac cabinet. In an upper story of one of

these subdivided houses Rob Riley and his wife, Henrietta, have two

old-fashioned rooms; the front room is large and airy, with a carved

mantelpiece, the back room small and cosy. The furniture is rather

plain and scant, for Rob has not yet got to be a great engineer working

on his own account. At present he is one of those little fish that the

big fish are made to eat--an obscure man whose brains are carried up to

the credit of his chief. But he is already something, and is sure to be

somebody. And, for that matter, the rooms in the old mansion in De Witt

Place are quite good enough for two stout-hearted young people who are

happy. The walls are well ornamented with pictures from Henrietta's own

brush and pencil. These are not framed, but tacked up wherever the

light is good. The best of them is a chubby little girl with a

droll-serious air, clad in an old-fashioned hood and muffled in cloaks

and shawls. It is a portrait of Periwinkle as she stood that night on

Cousin John's steps when she had come down to see about Henrietta.

Henrietta is just finishing a picture called The Culprit, which she

hopes will be successful. It represents a girl in a country school

arraigned for drawing pictures on a slate. Rob, at least, thinks it

very fine, but he is not a harsh critic of anything Henrietta makes.

Rob was talking one evening, as usual, about the time when he should

come to be somebody. But Henrietta said: "O Rob, things are nice enough

as they are; I don't believe we'd be any happier in a house as fine as

Cousin John's. Let's have a good time as we go along, and not mind

about being somebody. But, Rob, I wish somebody'd buy this picture, and

then we could have something to set off this room a little. Don't you

think a sofa would be nice?" And then she looked at him, and said, "You

dear, good old Rob, you!" though why she should call him old, or what

connection this remark had with the previous conversation, I do not

know.

THE CHRISTMAS CLUB.

A GHOST STORY.

"The Dickens!"

That was just what Charley Vanderhuyn said that Christmas Eve, and as a

faithful historian I give the exact words. It sounded like swearing,

though why we should regard it profane to make free with the devil's

name, or even his nickname, I never could see. Can you? Besides, there

was some ambiguity about Charley's use of the word under the

circumstances, and he himself couldn't tell whether his exclamation had

reference to the Author of Evils or only to the Author of Novels. The

circumstances were calculated to suggest equally thoughts of the Great

Teller of Stories and of the Great Story-teller, and I have a mind to

amuse you at this Christmas season by telling you the circumstances,

and letting you decide, if you can, which Dickens it was that Charles

Vanderhuyn intended.

Charley Vanderhuyn was one of those young men that could grow nowhere

on this continent except in New York. He had none of the severe dignity

that belongs to a young man of wealth who has passed his life in sight

of long rows of red brick houses with clean doorsteps and white wooden

shutters. Something of the venerableness of Independence Hall, the

dignity of Girard College, and the air of financial importance that

belongs to the Mint gets into the blood of a Philadelphian. Charley had

none of that. Neither did he have that air of profound thought, that

Adams-Hancock-Quincy-Webster-Emerson-Sumner look that is the inevitable

mark of Beacon Street. When you see such a young man you know that he

has grown part of Faneuil Hall, and the Common, and the Pond, and the

historic elm. He has lived where the very trees are learned and carry

their Latin names about with them. Charley had none of the "vim" and

dash that belongs to a Westerner. He was of the metropolis--metropolitan.

He had good blood in him, else he could never have founded the

Christmas Club, for you can not get more out of a man than there is in

his blood. Charley Vanderhuyn bore a good old Dutch name--I have heard

that the Van der Huyns were a famous and noble family; his Dutch blood

was mingled with other good strains, and the whole was mellowed into

generousness and geniality in generations of prosperous ancestors; for

the richest and choicest fruit (and the rankest weeds as well!) can be

produced only in the sunlight. And a very choice fruit of a very choice

stock was and is our Charley Vanderhuyn. That everybody knows who knows

him now, and that we all felt who knew him earlier in the days of the

Hasheesh Club.

You remember the Hasheesh Club, doubtless. In its day it numbered the

choicest spirits in New York, and the very center of all of them was

this same Charley Vanderhuyn, whose face, the boys used to say, was

like the British Empire--for on it the sun never set. His unflagging

spirits, his keen love for society, his quick sympathy with everybody,

his fine appreciation of every man's good points, whatever they might

be, made Charley a prince wherever he went. I said he was the center of

the circle of young men about the Hasheesh Club ten years ago; and so

he was, though, to tell the truth, he was then but about twenty-one

years of age. They had a great time at the club, I remember, when he

came of age and came into possession of his patrimony--a trifle of half

a million, I believe. He gave a dinner, and there was such a time as

the Hasheesh Club never saw before nor since. I fear there was overmuch

wine-drinking, and I am sure there was a fearful amount of punch drunk.

Charley never drank to excess, never lost his self-control for a moment

under any temptation. But there was many another young man, of

different temperament, to whom the rooms of the club were what candles

are to moths. One poor fellow, who always burned his wings, was a

blue-eyed, golden-haired young magazine writer of that day. We all

thought of his ability and promise--his name was John Perdue, but you

will doubtless remember him by his _nom de plume_ of "Baron Bertram."

Poor fellow! he loved Charley passionately, and always drank himself

drunk at the club. He wasted all he had and all he made; his clothes

grew shabby, he borrowed of Charley, who was always open-handed, until

his pride would allow him to borrow no more. He had just married, too,

and he was so ashamed of his own wreck that he completed his ruin by

drinking to forget it.

I am not writing a story with a temperance moral; temperance tales are

always stupid and always useless. The world is brimful of walking

morals on that subject, and if one will not read the lesson of the life

of his next-door neighbor, what use of bringing Lazarus from the dead

to warn him of a perdition that glares at him out of the eyes of so

many men?

I mentioned John Perdue--poor golden-haired "Baron Bertram"--only

because he had something to do with the circumstances which led Charley

Vanderhuyn to use that ambiguous interjection about "the Dickens!"

Perdue, as I said, dropped away from the Hasheesh Club, lost his

employment as literary editor of the Luminary, fell out of good

society, and at last earned barely enough to keep him and his wife and

his child in bread, and to supply himself with whisky, by writing

sensation stories for the "penny dreadfuls." We all suspected that he

would not have received half so much for his articles had they been

paid for on their merits or at the standard price for hack writing. But

Charley Vanderhuyn had something to do with it. He sent Henry Vail--he

always sent Henry Vail on his missions of mercy--to find out where

Perdue sold his articles, and I have no doubt the price of each article

was doubled, at Vanderhuyn's expense.

And that mention of Henry Vail reminds me that I can not tell this

story rightly unless I let you know who he was. A distant relation of

Charley's, I believe. He was a studious fellow from the country, and

quite awkward in company. The contrast between him and Charley was

marked. Vanderhuyn was absolutely _au fait_ in all the usages of

society; he knew by instinct how a thing ought to be done, and his

example was law. He had a genius for it, everybody said. Vail was

afraid of his shadow; did not know just what was proper to do in any

new circumstances. His manners hung about him loosely; Vanderhuyn's

were part of himself. When Vail came to the Hasheesh Club for the first

time it was on the occasion of Charley's majority dinner. Vail

consulted Vanderhuyn about his costume, and was told that he must wear

evening dress; and, never having seen anything but provincial society,

he went with perfect assurance to a tailor's and ordered a new frock

coat and a white vest. When he saw that the other gentlemen present

wore dress coats, and that most of them had black vests, he was in some

consternation. He even debated whether he should not go out and hire a

dress coat for the evening. He drew Charley aside, and asked him why he

did not tell him that those sparrow-tail things had come into fashion

again!

But he never took kindly to the club life; he soon saw that however

harmless it might be to some men, it was destruction to others. After

attending a few times, Henry Vail, who was something of a Puritan and

much of a philanthropist, declared his opposition to what he called an

English dissipation.

Henry Vail was a scholarly fellow, of real genius, and had studied for

the ministry; but he had original notions, and about the time he was to

have taken deacon's orders in the Episcopal Church he drew back. He

said that orders would do for some men, but he did not intend to build

a wall between himself and his fellows. He could do more by remaining a

man of like passions with other men than he could by casing himself in

a clerical "strait-jacket," as he called it. Having a little income of

his own, he set up on his own account in the dingiest part of that

dingy street called Huckleberry Street--the name, with all its

suggestions of fresh fields and pure air and liberty, is a dreary

mockery. Just where Greenfield Court--the dirtiest of New York

alleys--runs out of Huckleberry Street, he set up shop, to use his own

expression, He was a kind of independent lay clergyman, ministering to

the physical and spiritual wants of his neighbors, climbing to garrets

and penetrating to cellars, now talking to a woman who owned a candy

and gingerbread stall, and now helping to bury a drunken sailor. Such a

life for a scholar! But he always declared that digging out Greek and

Hebrew roots was not half so fascinating a work as digging out human

souls from the filth of Huckleberry Street.

Of course he did not want for money to carry on his operations. Charley

Vanderhuyn's investments brought large returns, and Charley knew how to

give. When Vail would begin a pathetic story, Vanderhuyn would draw out

his check book, and say: "How much shall it be, Harry?--never mind the

story. It's handy to have you to give away my money for me. I should

never take the trouble to see that it went to the people that need. One

dollar given by you is worth ten that I bestow on Tom, Dick, and Harry;

so I prefer to let Tom and Dick go without, and give it all to Harry."

In fact Vanderhuyn had been the prey of so many impostors that he

adopted the plan of sending all of his applicants to Vail, with a note

to him, which generally ran thus, "Please investigate." The tramps soon

ceased to trouble him, and then he took to intrusting to Vail each

month a sum equal to what he had been in the habit of giving away

loosely.

It was about the first of December, four years ago, that Harry Vail,

grown younger and fresher in two years of toil among the

poor--glorified he seemed by the tenderness of his sympathies and the

nobleness of his aims--it was four years ago that Harry came into

Charley Vanderhuyn's rooms for his regular monthly allotment. Vail

generally came in the evening, and Charley generally managed to be

disengaged for that evening. The two old friends whose paths diverged

so widely were fond of each other's company, and Vail declared that he

needed one evening in the month with Vanderhuyn; he liked to carry away

some of Charley's sunshine to the darkness of Huckleberry Street and

Greenfield Court. And Charley said that Harry brought more sunlight

than he took. I believe he was right. Charley, like all men who live

without a purpose, was growing less refined and charming than he had

been, his cheeks were just a trifle graver than those of the young

Charley had been. But he talked magnificently as ever. Vail said that

he himself was an explorer in a barbarous desert, and that Charles

Vanderhuyn was the one civilized man he could meet.

It is a curious thing that Vail had never urged Charley to a different

life from the self-indulgent one that he led, but it was a peculiarity

of Henry's that he was slow to attack a man directly. I have heard that

it was one great secret of his success among the poor, that he would

meet an intemperate man twenty times, perhaps, before he attacked his

vice. Then, when the man had ceased to stand guard, Vail would suddenly

find an entrance to him by an unwatched gate. It was remarkable, too,

that when he did seize on a man he never for an instant relaxed his

grasp. I have often looked at his aquiline nose, and wondered if it

were not an index to this eagle-like swoop at the right moment, and

this unwavering firmness of hold.

On this evening, about the first of December, four years ago, he sat in

Charley's cozy bedroom and listened to Vanderhuyn's stories of a life

antipodal to the life he was accustomed to see--for the antipodes do

not live round the world, but round the first street corner; he

listened and laughed at the graphic and eloquent and grotesque pictures

that Charley drew for him till nearly midnight, and then got ready to

go back to his home, among the noisy saloons of Huckleberry Street.

Charley drew out his check book and wrote and tore off the check, and

handed it to Vail.

"I want more, Charley, this time," said Vail in his quiet, earnest way,

with gray eyes fixed on his friend's blue ones.

"Got more widows without coal than usual, eh, old fellow? How much

shall it be? Double? Ask anything. I can't refuse the half of my

fortune to such a good angel as you are, Vail. I don't spend any money

that pays so well as what I give you. I go to the clubs and to parties.

I sit at the opera and listen to Signora Scracchioli, and say to

myself, 'Well, there's Vail using my money to help some poor devil in

trouble.' I tell you I get a comfortable conscience by an easy system

of commutation. Here, exchange with me; this is for double the amount,

and I am glad you mentioned it."

"But I want more than that this time," and Vail fixed his eyes on

Charley in a way that made the latter feel just a little ill at ease, a

sensation very new to him.

"Well, how much, Harry? Don't be afraid to ask. I told you you should

have half my kingdom, old fellow!" And Vanderhuyn took his pen and

began to date another check.

"But, Charley, I am almost afraid to ask. I want more than half you

have--I want something worth more than all you have."

"Why, you make me curious. Never saw you in that vein before, Vail,"

and Charley twisted a piece of paper, lighted it in the gas jet, and

held it gracefully in his fingers while he set his cigar going, hoping

to hide his restlessness under the wistful gaze of his friend by this

occupation of his attention.

But however nervous Henry Vail might be in the performance of little

acts that were mere matters of convention, there was no lack of quiet

self-possession in matters that called out his earnestness of spirit.

And now he sat gazing steadily at Charley until the cigar had been

gracefully lighted, the bit of paper tossed on the grate, and until

Charley had watched his cigar a moment. When the latter reluctantly

brought his eyes back into range with the dead-earnest ones that had

never ceased to look on him with that strange wistful expression, then

Henry Vail proceeded:

"I want _you_, Charley."

Charley laughed heartily now. "Me? What a missionary _I_ would make!

Kid-glove gospeller I'd be called in the first three days. What a

superb Sunday-school teacher I'd make! Why, Henry Vail, you know

better. There's just one thing in this world I have a talent for, and

that's society. I'm a man of the world in my very fiber. But as for

following in your illustrious footsteps--I wish I could be so good a

man, but you see I'm not built in that way. I'm a man of the world."

"That's just what I want," said Henry Vail, looking with the same

tender wistfulness into his friend's eyes. "If I'd wanted a missionary

I shouldn't have come to you. If I'd wanted a Sunday-school teacher I

could have found twenty better; and as for tract distributing and Bible

reading, you couldn't do either if you'd try. What I want for

Huckleberry Street more than I want anything else is a man of the

world. You are a man of the world--of the whole world. I have seen a

restaurant waiter stop and gape and listen to your talk. I have seen a

coal-heaver delighted with your manners when you paid him. Charley,

you're the most magnificent man of the world I ever saw. Must a man of

the world be useless? I tell you I want you for God and Huckleberry

Street, and I mean to have you some day, old fellow." And the perfect

assurance with which he said this, and the settled conviction of final

success that was visible in his quiet gray eyes, fascinated Charley

Vanderhuyn, and he felt spellbound, like the wedding guest held by the

"Ancient Mariner."

"I tell you what, Henry," he said presently, "I've got no call. I'm an

Epicurean. I say to you, in the words of an American poet:

'Take the current of your nature, make it stagnant if you will:

Dam it up to drudge forever at the service of your will.

Mine the rapture and the freedom of the torrent on the hill!

I shall wander o'er the meadows where the fairest blossoms call:

Though the ledges seize and fling me headlong from the rocky wall,

I shall leave a rainbow hanging o'er the ruins of my fall.'"

"Charley, I don't want to preach," said Vail; "but you know that this

doctrine of mere selfish floating on the current of impulse which your

traveler poet teaches is devilish laziness, and devilish laziness

always tends to something worse. You may live such a life, and quote

such poetry, but you don't believe that a man should flow on like a

purposeless river. The lines you quoted bear the mark of a restless

desire to apologize to conscience for a fearful waste of power and

possibility. No," he said, rising, "I don't want that check. This one

will do; but you won't forget that God and Huckleberry Street want you,

and they will have you, too, noble-hearted fellow! Good night! God

bless you!" and he shook Charley's hand and went out into the night to

seek his home in Huckleberry Street. And the genial Charley never saw

his brave friend again. Yes, he did, too. Or did he?

II.

The month of December, four years ago, was a month of much festivity in

the metropolis. Charley was wanted nearly every night to grace some

gathering or other, and Charley was too obliging to refuse to go where

he was wanted--that is, when he was wanted in Fifth Avenue or

Thirty-fourth Street[3]. As for Huckleberry Street and Greenfield

Court, they were fast fading out of Charley's mind. He knew that Henry

Vail would introduce the subject when he came for his January check,

and he expected some annoyance from the discussion of the

question--annoyance, because there was something in his own breast that

answered to Vail's appeal. Charley was more than an Epicurean. To eat

and drink, to laugh and talk, and die, was not enough for such a soul.

He mentally compared himself to Felix, and said that Vail wouldn't let

him forget his duty, anyhow. But for the present it was too delightful

to him to honor the entertainment given by the Honorable Mr. So-and-so

and Mrs. So-and-so; it was pleasant to be assured by Mrs.

Forty-Millions that her party would fail but for his presence. And then

he had just achieved the end of his ambition. He was president of the

Hasheesh Club. He took his seat at the head of the table on Christmas

Eve.

[3] The reader will remember that this was written in 1872. I do

not know how far the uptown centers of fashion will be in twenty

years more.

Now, patient reader, we draw near to the time when Charley uttered the

exclamation set down at the head of this story. Bear a little longer

with my roundabout way of telling. It is Christmastide anyway; why

should we hurry ourselves through this happy season?

Just as Charley went into the door of the clubhouse--you remember the

Hasheesh clubhouse was in Madison Avenue then--just as Charley entered

he met the burly form and genial face of the eminent Dr. Van Doser, who

said, "Well, Vanderhuyn, how's your cousin Vail?"

"Is he sick?" asked Charley, struck with a foreboding that made him

tremble.

"Sick? Didn't you know? Well, that's just like Vail. He was taken with

smallpox two weeks ago, and I wanted to take the risk of penalties and

not report his case, but he said if I didn't he would do it himself;

that sanitary regulations requiring smallpox patients to go to a

hospital were necessary, and that it became one in his position to set

a good example to Huckleberry Street. So I was compelled to report him

and let him go to the island. And he hasn't let you know?--for fear you

would try to communicate with him probably, and thus expose yourself to

infection. Extraordinary man, that Vail. I never saw his like," and

with that the doctor turned to speak to some gentlemen who had just

come in.

And so Charley's Christmas Eve dinner at the Hasheesh Club was spoiled.

There are two inconvenient things in this world, a conscience and a

tender heart, and Charley Vanderhuyn was plagued with both. While going

through with the toasts, his mind was busy with poor Henry Vail

suffering in a smallpox hospital. In his graceful response to the

sentiment, "The President of the Hasheesh Club," he alluded to the

retiring president, and made some witty remark--I forget what--about

his being a denizen of Lexington Avenue; but in saying Lexington Avenue

he came near slipping into Huckleberry Street, and in fact he did get

the first syllable out before he checked himself. He was horrified

afterward to think how near he had come, later in the evening, to

addressing the company as "Gentlemen of the Smallpox Hospital."

Charley drank more wine and punch than usual. Those who sat near him

looked at one another significantly, in a way that implied their belief

that Vanderhuyn was too much elated over his election. Little did they

know that at that moment the presidency of the famous Hasheesh Club

appeared to Charley the veriest bawble in the world. If he had not

known how futile would be any attempt to gain an entrance to the

smallpox hospital, he would have excused himself and started for the

island on the instant.

But it was one o'clock before Charley got away. Out of the brilliantly

lighted rooms he walked, stunned with grief, and a little heavy with

the wine and punch he had drunk, for in his preoccupation of mind he

had forgotten to be as cautious as usual. Following an impulse, he took

a car and went directly downtown, and then made his way to Huckleberry

Street. He stopped at a saloon door and asked if they could tell him

where Mr. Vail's rooms were.

"The blissed man as wint about like a saint? Shore and I can," said the

boozy Irishman. "It's right ferninst where yer afther stan'in, up the

stairs on the corner of Granefield Coort--over there, bedad."

Seeing a light in the rooms indicated by the man, Charley crossed over,

passed through a sorrowful-looking crowd at the door, and went up the

stairs. He found the negro woman who kept the rooms for Vail standing

talking to an Irish woman. Both the women were deeply pitted with

smallpox.

He inquired if they could tell him how Mr. Vail was.

"O honey, he's done dead sence three o'clock," said the black woman,

sitting down in a chair and beginning to wipe her eyes on her apron.

"This Misses Mcgroarty's jist done tole me this minute."

The Irish woman came round in front of Mr. Vanderhuyn and looked

inquisitively at him a moment, and then said, "Faix, mister, and is yer

name Charley?"

"Why do you ask?" said Vanderhuyn.

"Because I thought, mebbe, you might be after him, the gentleman. It's

me husband, Pat Mcgroarty, as is a nurruss in the horsepital, and a

good one as iver ye seed, and it's Pat as has been a-tellin' me about

that blissed saint of a man, as how in his delairyum he kept a-talkin'

to Charley all the time, and Pat said as he seemed to have something on

his mind he wanted to say to Charley. An' whin I see yer face, sich a

gintleman's face as ye've got, too, I says shure that must be Charley."

"What did he say?" asked Vanderhuyn.

"Shure, and Pat said it wasn't much he could gether, for he was in a

awful delairyum, ye know, but he would keep a-sayin', 'Charley,

Charley, God and Huckleberry Street want you.' Pat says he'd say it so

awful as would make him shiver, that God and Huckleberry Street wanted

Charley. Shure it must a bin the delairyum, you know, that made him mix

up things loike, and put God and Huckleberry Street together, when its

more loike the divil would seem more proper to go with Huckleberry

Street, ye know. But if yer name's Charley, and yer loike the loikes of

him as is dead, shure Huckleberry Street is after wantin' of you, bad

enough."

"My name's Charley, but I'm not a bit like him, though, I'm sorry to

say, my good woman. Tell your husband to come and see me--there's my

number."

Charley went out, and the men at the door whispered, "That must be the

rich man as give him all the money." He took the last car uptown, and

he who had been two hours before in that brilliant company at the

Hasheesh was now one of ten people riding in a street car. Of his

fellow-passengers six were drunken men and two were low women of the

town; one of them had no bonnet, and lacked a penny of enough to pay

her fare, but the conductor mercifully let her ride, remarking to

Vanderhuyn, who stood on the platform, that "the poor devil has a hard

life any how." Said I not a minute ago, that the antipodes live not

around the world, but around the street corner? Antipodes ride in the

same street car.

As the car was passing Mott Street, a passenger, half drunk, came out,

turned his haggard face a moment toward the face of Charley Vanderhuyn,

and then, with an exclamation of startled recognition, leaped from the

car and hurried away in the darkness. It was not till the car had gone

three blocks farther that Vanderhuyn guessed, from the golden hair,

that this was Perdue, the brilliant "Baron Bertram" of the early days

of the Hasheesh Club.

When Charley got back to his luxurious apartment he was possessed with

a superstitious feeling. He took up the paper weight that Henry Vail

had held in his hand the very last night he was in this parlor, and he

thought the whole conversation over as he smoked his cigar, fearing to

put out his light.

"Confound the man that invented ghost stories for a Christmas

amusement!" he said, as he remembered Old Scrooge and Tiny Tim. "Well,

I'm not Old Scrooge, anyhow, if I'm not as good as poor Henry Vail."

I do not know whether it was the reaction from the punch he had drunk,

or the sudden shock of Vail's death, or the troubled conscience, or

from all three, but when he got into bed he found himself shaking with

nervousness.

He had been asleep an hour, perhaps, when he heard a genuine Irish

voice say, "Faix, mister, and is yer name Charley?"

He started up--looked around the room. He had made so much concession

to his nervous feeling that he had not turned the gas quite out, as was

his custom. The dim duskiness made him shudder; he expected to see the

Huckleberry Street Irish woman looking at him. But he shook off his

terror a little, uttered another malediction on the man that invented

Christmas ghost stories, concluded that his illusion must have come

from his lying on his left side, turned over, and reflected that by so

doing he would relieve his heart and stomach from the weight of his

liver, repeated this physiological reflection in a soothing way two or

three times, dropped off into a quiet snooze, and almost immediately

found himself sitting bolt upright in bed, shaking with a chill terror,

sure that the Irish voice had again asked the question, "Faix, mister,

and is yer name Charley?" He had a feeling, though his back was toward

the table, that some one sat at the table. Charley was no coward, but

it took him a minute or two to shake off his terror and regain enough

self-control to look around.

For a moment he saw, or thought he saw, a form sitting at the table,

then it disappeared, and then, after a good while, Charley got himself

composed to sleep again, this time with his head well bolstered, to

reduce the circulation in the brain, as he reflected.

He did not get to sleep, however, for before he became unconscious the

Irish voice from just above the carved headboard spoke out so clear now

that there could be no mistake, "Faix, mister, and is yer name

Charley?" It was then that he rose in bed and uttered the exclamation

which I set down in the first line of this story. Charley Vanderhuyn

could not tell whether he meant Charles Dickens or Nick. Perhaps you

can. Indeed, it doesn't seem to matter much, after all.

III.

A narrative of this sort, like a French sermon, divides itself into

three parts. I have now got through the preliminary tanglements of the

history of the founding of the Christmas Club, and I hope to be able to

tell the remainder of the story with as few digressions as possible,

for at Christmastide a body doesn't want his stories to stretch out to

eternity, even if they are ghostly.

Charley Vanderhuyn said "The Dickens!" and though his meaning was

indefinite, he really meant it, whatever it might be. He looked up at

the ornamental figure carved on the rich headboard of his bed as if he

suspected that the headboard of English walnut had spoken in Irish. He

looked at the headboard intently a long time, partly because the Irish

voice had come from that direction, and partly because he was afraid to

look round toward the table. He _knew_, just as well before he looked

around as he did afterward, what he should see. He saw it before he

looked round by some other vision than that of his eyes, and that was

what made him shiver so. He knew that the persistent gray eyes were

upon him, that they would never move until he looked round. _He could

feel the look before he saw it._

At last he turned slowly. Sure enough, in that very chair by the table

sat the Presence, the Ghost--the--it was Henry Vail; or was it? There,

in the dim light, was the aquiline nose like an eagle's beak, there

were the steady, unwavering gray eyes, with that same earnest, wistful

look fastened on Vanderhuyn; the features were Vail's, but the face was

plowed and pitted fearfully as with the smallpox. All this Charley saw,

while seeing through the ghost and beyond--the carving on the rosewood

dressing case was quite as visible through the unsubstantial apparition

as before. Charley was not ordinarily superstitious, and he quickly

reasoned that his excited imagination had confounded the features of

Harry Vail's face with the pock-marked visage of the Huckleberry Street

Irish woman. So he shook himself, rubbed his eyes and looked again.

The apparition this time was much more distinct, and it lifted the

paper weight, as Henry had three weeks before. Charley was so sure that

it was Henry Vail himself that he began to get up to shake hands with

his friend, but the perfect transparency of the apparition checked him,

and he hid his face in his hands a moment, in a terror that he could no

longer conceal from himself.

"What do you want?" he said at last, lifting his eyes.

"I want you, Charley!" said the ghost.

Now I hardly know how to describe to you the manner in which the ghost

replied. It was not speech, nor any attempt at speech. You have seen a

mesmerist or biologist, or whatever-you-call-him-ist, communicate with

a man under his spell without speech. He looks at him, _wills_ that a

distinct impression shall be made on his victim, and the poor fellow

does or says as the master spirit wishes him. By some such subtle

influence the ghost, without the intervention of sound or the sense of

hearing, conveyed this reply to Charley. There was no doubt about the

reply. It was far more distinct than speech--an impression made

directly upon the consciousness.

Charley arose and dressed himself under some sort of fascination. His

own will had abdicated; the tender, eager, wistful eyes of Vail held

him fast, and he did not feel either inclination or power to resist.

The eyes directed him to one article of clothing, and then to another,

until he found himself muffled to the ears for a night walk.

"Where are we going?" asked Charley huskily.

"To Huckleberry Street," answered the eyes, without a sound, and in a

minute more the two were passing down the silent streets. They met

several policemen and private watchmen, but Vanderhuyn observed that no

one took notice either of him or the ghost. The feet of the watchmen

made a grinding noise in the crisp snow, but Charley was horrified to

find that his own tread and that of his companion made no sound

whatever as their feet fell upon the icy sidewalks. Was he, then, out

of the body also? This silence and this loss of the power of choice

made him doubtful, indeed, whether he were dead or alive.

In Huckleberry Street they went first to a large saloon, where a set of

roysterers were having a Christmas-Eve spree preparatory to a

Christmas-morning headache. Charley could not imagine why the ghost had

brought him here, to be smothered with the smell of this villainous

tobacco, for to nothing was Charley more sensitive than to the smell of

a poor cigar or a cheap pipe. He thought if he should have to stay here

long he would like to distribute a box of his best brand among these

smokers, so as to give the room the odor of the Hasheesh Club. At first

it seemed a Babel of voices; there were men of several different

nationalities talking in three or four languages. Six men were standing

at the long counter drinking--one German, two Irishmen, a Portuguese

sailor, a white American, and a black one. The spirit of Vail seemed to

be looking for somebody; it peered round from table to table, where men

slammed down the cards so as to make as much noise as possible. Nobody

paid the least attention to the two strangers, and at last it flashed

upon Vanderhuyn that he and Vail were both invisible to the throng

around them.

The Presence stopped in front of a table where two young men sat. They

were playing euchre, and they were drinking. It is an old adage that

truth is told in wine, and with some men sense comes with whisky.

"I say, Joe," said one, "blamed ef it 'taint too bad; you and me

spendin' our time this way! The ole woman's mos' broke 'r heart over me

t'day. Sh' said I ought be the s'port 'f her ole dage, 'stid 'f boozin'

roun' thish yer way. 'S so! Tell you, Joe, 's so! Blam'd 'f 'taint.

Hey? W'at y' say? Hey?"

"Of course 'tis, Ben," growled the other; "we all know that. But what's

a feller goin' to do for company? Go on; it's your deal."

"Who kyeers fer th' deal? I d--on't. Now, Joe, I says, t--to th' ole

lady, y' see, I says, a young man can't live up a dingy stairs on th'

top floor al'ays, and never git no comp'ny. Can't do it. I don't want

t' 'rink much, but I c--ome here to git comp'ny. Comp'ny drinks, and I

git drunk 'f--fore I know 'fore you--pshaw! deal yerself 'f you want t'

play."

After a while he put the cards down again, and began:

"What think I done wunst? He, he! Went to th' Young Men's Chrissen

Soshiashen. Ole lady, you know, coaxed. He! he! You bet! Prayer

meetin', Bible class, or somethin'. All slick young fellers 'th side

whiskers. Talked pious, an' so genteel, you know. I went there fer

comp'ny! Didn' go no more. Druther git drunk at the 'free-and-easy'

ever' night, by George, 'n to be a slick kind 'f feller 'th side

whiskers a lis'nin' t' myself make purty speeches 'n a prayer Bible

class meetin' or such, you know. Hey? w'at ye say? Hey? 'S comp'ny a

feller wants, and 's comp'ny a feller's got t' have, by cracky! Hey?

W'at ye say? Hey, Joe?"

"Blam'd 'f 'tain't," said Joe.

"That's w'at them rich fellers goes to the club fer? Hey? w'at ye say,

Joe? Hey?"

"Yes, of course."

"Wish I had a club! Better'n this place to go to. Vail, he used to do a

fellow good. If he'd 'a' lived he'd 'a' pulled me out this yer, would,

you, know. He got 's eyes onto me, and they say when he got 's eyes

onto feller never let go, you know. Done me good. Made me 'shamed. Does

feller good t' be 'shamed, Joe. Don't it? Hey? W'at you say?"

"Yes," said Joe.

"But w'en a feller's lonesome, a young feller, I mean, he's got to have

company if he has to go down to Davy Jones's, and play seven-up with

Ole Nick. Hey, Joe? W'at you say? Hey?"

"I s'pose so," said Joe; "but come, deal, old fellow; don't go to

preachin'."

I have heard Charley say that he never heard anything half so

distinctly in his life as he felt what the apparition said to him when

their eyes met at that moment.

"God and Huckleberry Street want you, Charley."

Charley looked away restively, and then caught the eyes of the ghost

again, and this time the ghost said:

"And they're going to have you, too."

I have heard Charley tell of several other visits they made that night;

but, as I said before, even a Christmas yarn and a ghost story must not

spin itself out, like Banquo's line, to the crack of doom. However true

or authentic a story may be--and you can easily verify this by asking

any member of the Christmas Club in Huckleberry Street--however true a

yarn may be, it must not be so long that it can never be wound up.

The very last of the wretched places they looked in upon was a bare

room in a third story. There was a woman sitting on a box in one

corner, holding a sick child. A man with golden hair was pacing the

floor.

"There's that devil again!" he said, pointing to the blank wall. "Now

he's gone. You see, Carrie, I could quit if I had anybody to help me.

Oh! I heard to night that Charley Vanderhuyn had been elected president

of the Hasheesh. And I saw him an hour ago on a Second Avenue car. I

wish Charley would come and talk to me. He'd give me money, but 'tain't

money. I could make money if I could let whisky alone. I used to love

to hear Charley talk better than to live. I believe it was the ruin of

me. But he don't seem to care for a fellow when his clothes get shabby.

See there!" and he picked up a piece of wood and threw it at the wall,

startling his wife and making the child cry. "I hit him that time! I

wish I could hear Charley Vanderhuyn talk once more. His talk is enough

to drive devils away any time. Great God, what an awful Christmas this

is!"

Charley wanted to begin to talk on the spot, but when he found that

poor "Baron Bertram" could neither see him nor hear a word he spoke, he

had a fearful sense of being a disembodied spirit. The ghost looked

wistfully at him, and said, "God and Huckleberry Street want _you_,

Charley."

Charley was very loath to leave Perdue and his wife in this condition;

he would have loved dearly to while away the dreary night for them, but

he could not speak to them, and the eyes of the ghost bade him follow,

and the two went swiftly back to Charley's rooms again.

Then the apparition sat down by the table and fastened its sad and

wistful eyes upon the soul of Charley Vanderhuyn. Not a word did it

speak. But the look, the old tender, earnest look of Henry Vail, drew

Charley's heart into his eyes and made him weep. There Vail sat, still

and wistful, until Charley, roused by all that he had seen, resolved to

do what he could for Huckleberry Street. He made no communication of

his purpose to the ghost. He meant to keep it close in his own breast.

But no sooner had he formed the purpose than a smile--the old familiar

smile--came across the face of Vail, the hideous scars of his loathsome

disease disappeared, and the face began to shine, while a faint aureole

appeared about his head. And Vanderhuyn became conscious that the room

was full of other mysterious beings. And to his regret Vail ceased now

to regard his friend any more, but looked about him at the Huckleberry

Street angels, who seemed to be pulling him away. He and they vanished

slowly, and on the wall there shone some faint luminous letters, which

Vanderhuyn tried to read, but the light of the Christmas dawn disturbed

his vision, and he was able to see only the latter part, and even that

was not clear to his eyes, but he partly read and partly remembered the

words, "When ye fail on earth they may receive you into everlasting

habitations."

He rang for his servant, had the fire replenished, opened his desk and

began to write letters. First he resigned the presidency of the

Hasheesh Club. Next he begged that Mrs. Rear-Admiral Albatross would

excuse him from her Christmas dinner. Unforeseen circumstances, and the

death of an intimate friend, were his apologies. Then he sent his

regrets, and declined all the invitations to holiday parties. He

canceled his engagements to make New-Year's calls[4] in company with

Bird, the painter. Then he had breakfast, ordered his carriage, and

drove to Huckleberry Street. On the way down he debated what he should

do. He couldn't follow in Vail's footsteps. He was not a missionary. He

went first and found Perdue, who had been fighting off a threatened

attack of tremens all night, relieved the necessities of his family,

and took the golden-haired fellow into his carriage. He ordered the

coachman to drive the whole length of Huckleberry Street slowly.

[4] The New-Year's call is one of several things alluded to in

the text that were in vogue when the story was written, but seem

anachronisms in 1893.

"Perdue, what can I do down here? Vail always said that I could do

something, if I would try."

"Why, Charley, start a club. That's what these fellows need. How I

should like to hear you talk again!"

IV.

How provoking this is! I thought I should get through with three parts.

But Christmas is a time when a man can not avoid a tendency to long

stories. One can not quite control one's self in a time of mirth, and

here my history has grown until I shall have to put on a mansard roof

to accommodate it. For in all these three parts I have told you about

everything but what my title promised. If you have ever gone through

Huckleberry Street--of course you never have gone through such a street

except by accident, since you are neither poor, vicious, nor

benevolent, and only the poor, the vicious, and the benevolent ever go

there intentionally--but if you have ever happened to go there of late

years, you have seen the Christmas Club building. For on that very

morning, with poor "Baron Bertram" in the carriage, Charley resolved to

found a club in Huckleberry Street. And what house so good as the one

in which Henry Vail had lived?

So he drove up to the house on the corner of Greenfield Court and began

to examine it. It was an old-fashioned house; and in its time, when the

old families inhabited the downtown streets, it had been an

aristocratic mansion. The lower floor was occupied by a butcher's shop,

and in the front room, where an old family had once entertained its

guests, cheap roasts were being dispensed to the keepers of low

boarding houses. The antique fireplace and the ancient mantelpiece were

forced to keep company with meat blocks and butchers' cleavers. Above

this were Henry Vail's rooms, where the old chambers had been carefully

restored; and above these the third story and attic were crowded with

tenants. But everywhere the house had traces of its former gentility.

"Good!" said Charley; "Vail preserved his taste for the antique to the

last."

"Perdue, what do you think of this for a club-house?"

"Just the thing if you can get it. Ten chances to one it belongs to

some saloonkeeper who wouldn't rent it for purposes of civilization."

"Oh, I'll get it! Such men are always susceptible to the influence of

money, and I'm sure this is the spot, or Vail wouldn't have chosen it."

And with that Charley and the delighted Perdue drove to the house of

Charley's business agent, the same who had been his father's manager.

"Mr. Johnston," said Charley, "I don't like to ask you to work on

Christmas, but I want you to find out to-day, if you can, who owns No.

164 Huckleberry Street."

"Do you mean the house Mr. Vail lived in?"

"Yes, that's it. Look it up for me, if you can."

"Oh, that's not hard. The house belongs to you."

"To me! I didn't know I had anything there."

"Yes, that house was your grandfather's, and your mother lived there in

her childhood, and your father wouldn't sell it. It brought good rent,

and I have never bothered you about it."

"And you let Harry pay me rent?"

"Well, sir, he asked me not to mention to you that he was in your

house. He liked to pay his own way. Strange man, that Mr. Vail! I heard

from another tenant last night that he is dead."

"Perdue," said Charley, "I wish you would go down there to-day and find

out what each tenant in that house will sell his lease for and give

possession immediately. Give them a note to Johnston stating the

amount, and I want Johnston to give them something over the amount

agreed on. I must be on good terms with Huckleberry Street."

Johnston wondered what whim Charley had in his head. "Baron Bertram"

completed his negotiations for the leases of the tenants, and then went

off and drank Charley's health in so many saloons that he went home

entirely drunk, and the next morning was ashamed to see Vanderhuyn. But

Charley never even looked a disapproval at him. He had learned from

Vail how easy it is for reformers to throw their influence on the wrong

side in such a life-and-death struggle as that of Perdue's. In the year

that followed he had to forgive him many more than seven times. But

Perdue grew stronger in the sunlight of Vanderhuyn's steady friendship.

They had a great time opening the club on New-Year's Eve. There was a

banquet, not quite in Delmonico's style, nor quite so fine as those at

the Hasheesh; but still it was a grand affair to the dilapidated wrecks

that Charley gathered about him. Charley was president, and Vail's

portrait hung over the mantelpiece, with this inscription beneath, "The

Founder of the Club." Most of Charley's fine paintings were here, and

the rooms were indeed brilliant. And if lemonade and root beer and good

strong coffee could have made people drunk, there would not have been

one sober man there. But Ben delighted "the old lady" by going home

sober, owning it was better than the free-and-easy, and his friends all

agreed with him. To Charley, as he looked round on them, this was a far

grander moment than when, one week before, he had presided over the gay

company at the Hasheesh. Here were good cheer, laughter, funny stories,

and a New-Year's Eve worth the having. The gray eyes of the portrait

over the antique mantel-piece seemed happy and satisfied.

"Gentlemen," said Charley, "I rise to propose the memory of our

founder," and he proceeded to set forth the virtues of Henry Vail. If

there had been a reporter present he could have inserted in

parenthesis, at several places in Charley's speech, the words, "great

applause"; and if he had reported its effect exactly, he would, at

several other places, have inserted the words "great sensation," which,

in reporter's phrase, expresses any great emotion, especially one which

makes an audience weep. In conclusion, Charley lifted his glass of

lemonade, and said, "To the memory of Henry Vail, the Founder of the

Christmas Club."

"Christmas!" said Baron Bertram, "a good name! For this man," pointing

to Charley, "receiveth sinners and eateth with them" (applause).

I have done. Dear friends, a Merry Christmas to you all!

THE END.

D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.

* * * * *

_THE FAITH DOCTOR._ By EDWARD EGGLESTON, author of "The Hoosier

Schoolmaster," "The Circuit Rider," etc. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

"One of _the_ novels of the decade."--_Rochester Union and Advertiser._

"The author of 'The Hoosier Schoolmaster' has enhanced his reputation

by this beautiful and touching study of the character of a girl to love

whom proved a liberal education to both of her admirers."--_London

Athenæum._

"'The Faith Doctor' is worth reading for its style, its wit, and its

humor, and not less, we may add, for its pathos."--_London Spectator._

"Much skill is shown by the author in making these 'fads' the basis of

a novel of great interest.... One who tries to keep in the current of

good novel-reading must certainly find time to read 'The Faith

Doctor.'"--_Buffalo Commercial._

An excellent piece of work.... With each new novel the author of 'The

Hoosier Schoolmaster' enlarges his audience and surprises old friends

by reserve forces unsuspected. Sterling integrity of character and high

moral motives illuminate Dr. Eggleston's fiction, and assure its place

in the literature of America which is to stand as a worthy reflex of

the best thoughts of this age."--_New York World._

"It is extremely fortunate that the fine subject indicated in the title

should have fallen into such competent hands."--_Pittsburg

Chronicle-Telegraph._

"This delightful story would alone be sufficient to place Dr. Eggleston

in the front rank of American writers of fiction."--_Chicago Tribune._

"The subject is treated with perfect fidelity and artistic

truthfulness."--_The Critic._

_"LA BELLA" AND OTHERS._ By EGERTON CASTLE, author of "Consequences."

Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.

"The stories will be welcomed with a sense of refreshing pungency by

readers who have been cloyed by a too long succession of insipid

sweetness and familiar incident."--_London Athenæum._

"The author is gifted with a lively fancy, and the clever plots he has

devised gain greatly in interest, thanks to the unfamiliar surroundings

in which the action for the most part takes place."--_London Literary

World._

"Eight stories, all exhibiting notable originality in conception and

mastery of art, the first two illustrating them best. They add a

dramatic power that makes them masterpieces. Both belong to the period

when fencing was most skillful, and illustrate its practice."--_Boston

Globe._

_ELINE VERE._ By LOUIS COUPERUS. Translated from the Dutch by J. T.

GREIN. With an Introduction by EDMUND GOSSE. Holland Fiction Series.

12mo. Cloth, $1.00.

"Most careful in its details of description, most picturesque in its

coloring."--_Boston Post._

"A vivacious and skillful performance, giving an evidently

faithful picture of society, and evincing the art of a true

story-teller."--_Philadelphia Telegraph._

"The _dénoûment_ is tragical, thrilling, and picturesque."--_New York

World._

* * * * *

New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.

D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.

* * * * *

"This work marks an epoch in the history-writing of this

country."--_St. Louis Post-Dispatch._

[Illustration: COLONIAL COURT-HOUSE. PHILADELPHIA, 1707]

_THE HOUSEHOLD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES AND ITS PEOPLE._ For YOUNG

AMERICANS. By EDWARD EGGLESTON. Richly illustrated with 350 Drawings,

75 Maps, etc. Square 8vo. Cloth, $2.50.

_FROM THE PREFACE._

The present work is meant, in the first instance, for the young--not

alone for boys and girls, but for young men and women who have yet to

make themselves familiar with the more important features of their

country's history. By a book for the young is meant one in which the

author studies to make his statements clear and explicit, in which

curious and picturesque details are inserted, and in which the writer

does not neglect such anecdotes as lend the charm of a human and

personal interest to the broader facts of the nation's story. That

history is often tiresome to the young is not so much the fault of

history as of a false method of writing by which one contrives to

relate events without sympathy or imagination, without narrative

connection or animation. The attempt to master vague and general

records of kiln-dried facts is certain to beget in the ordinary reader

a repulsion from the study of history--one of the very most important

of all studies for its widening influence on general culture.

* * * * *

[Illustration: INDIAN'S TRAP.]

"Fills a decided gap which has existed for the past twenty years in

American historical literature. The work is admirably planned and

executed, and will at once take its place as a standard record of the

life, growth, and development of the nation. It is profusely and

beautifully illustrated."--_Boston Transcript._

"The book in its new dress makes a much finer appearance than before,

and will be welcomed by older readers as gladly as its predecessor was

greeted by girls and boys. The lavish use the publishers have made of

colored plates, woodcuts and photographic reproductions, gives an

unwonted piquancy to the printed page, catching the eye as surely as

the text engages the mind."--_New York Critic._

[Illustration: GENERAL PUTNAM.]

"The author writes history as a story. It can never be less than that.

The book will enlist the interest of young people, enlighten their

understanding, and by the glow of its statements fix the great events

of the country firmly in the mind."--_San Francisco Bulletin._

* * * * *

New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.