It was striking nine as I gathered up my bundle of papers and thrust

them into a bag. I was rid of them for three days at least. "Bill, you

may lock up now," I said, tapping the sleepy porter on the shoulder.

"Oh, Mr. Munro, shure here's a card for yees," handing me a lady's

card.

"Who left it, Bill?" I hurriedly asked, taking it to the flaring

gaslight on the stairway.

"Two ladies in a carriage--an old 'un and a pretty young lady, shure.

They charged me giv' it yees, and druv' off."

"And why didn't you bring it in, you blockhead?" I shouted, for it

was Bessie Stewart's card. On it was written in pencil: "Westminster

Hotel. On our way through New York. Leave on the 8 train for the South

to-night. Come up to dinner."

The eight-o'clock train, and it was now striking nine!

"Shure, Mr. Charles, you had said you was not to be disturbed on no

account, and that I was to bring in no messages."

"Did you tell those ladies that? What time were they here?"

"About five o'clock--just after you had shut the dure, and the clerks

was gone. Indeed, and they didn't wait for no reply, but hearin' you

were in there, they druv' off the minute they give me the card. The

pretty young lady didn't like the looks of our office, I reckon."

It was of no use to storm at Bill. He had simply obeyed orders like

a faithful machine. So, after a hot five minutes, I rushed up to the

Westminster. Perhaps they had not gone. Bessie would know there was a

mistake, and would wait for me.

But they were gone. On the books of the hotel were registered in a

clear hand, Bessie's hand, "Mrs. M. Antoinette Sloman and maid; Miss

Bessie Stewart." They had arrived that afternoon, must have driven

directly from the train to the office, and had dined, after waiting a

little time for some one who did not come.

"And where were they going?" I asked of the sympathetic clerk, who

seemed interested.

"Going South--I don't know where. The elder lady seemed delicate, and

the young lady quite anxious that she should stay here to-night and go

on in the morning. But no, she would go on to-night."

I took the midnight train for Philadelphia. They would surely not go

farther to-night if Mrs. Sloman seemed such an invalid.

I scanned every hotel-book in vain. I walked the streets of the city,

and all the long Sunday I haunted one or two churches that my memory

suggested to me were among the probabilities for that day. They were

either not in the city or most securely hid.

And all this time there was a letter in the New York post-office

waiting for me. I found it at my room when I went back to it on Monday

noon.

It ran as follows:

"WESTMINSTER HOTEL.

"Very sorry not to see you--Aunt

Sloman especially sorry; but she has

set her heart on going to Philadelphia

to-night. We shall stay at a private

house, a quiet boarding-house; for aunt

goes to consult Dr. R---- there, and

wishes to be very retired. I shall not

give you our address: as you sail so

soon, it would not be worth while to

come over. I will write you on the

other side.

B.S."

Where's a Philadelphia directory? Where is this Dr. R----? I find him,

sure enough--such a number Walnut street. Time is precious--Monday

noon!

"I'll transfer my berth to the Saturday steamer: that will do as well.

Can't help it if they do scold at the office."

To drive to the Cunard company's office and make the transfer took

some little time, but was not this my wedding holiday? I sighed as I

again took my seat in the car at Jersey City. On this golden Monday

afternoon I should have been slowly coming down the Housatonic Valley,

with my dear little wife beside me. Instead, the unfamiliar train, and

the fat man at my side reading a campaign newspaper, and shaking his

huge sides over some broad burlesque.

The celebrated surgeon, Dr. R----, was not at home in answer to my

ring on Monday evening.

"How soon will he be in? I will wait."

"He can see no patients to-night sir," said the man; "and he may not

be home until midnight."

"But I am an _im_patient," I might have urged, when a carriage dashed

up to the door. A slight little man descended, and came slowly up the

steps.

"Dr. R----?" I said inquiringly.

"Yes, sir."

"Just one minute, doctor, if you please. I only want to get an address

from you."

He scanned me from head to foot: "Walk into my office, young man."

I might have wondered at the brusqueness of his manner had I not

caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the mantelshelf.

Dusty and worn, and with a keen look of anxiety showing out of every

feature, I should scarcely have recognized myself.

I explained as collectedly as possible that I wanted the address of

one of his patients, a dear old friend of mine, whom I had missed

as she passed through New York, and that, as I was about to sail for

Europe in a few days, I had rushed over to bid her good-bye. "Mrs.

Antoinette Sloman, it is, doctor."

The doctor eyed me keenly: he put out his hand to the little silver

bell that stood on the table and tapped it sharply. The servant

appeared at the door: "Let the carriage wait, James."

Again the watchful, keen expression. Did he think me an escaped

lunatic, or that I had an intent to rob the old lady? Apparently the

scrutiny was satisfactory, for he took out a little black book from

his pocket, and turning over the leaves, said, "Certainly, here it

is--No. 30 Elm street, West Philadelphia."

Over the river, then, again: no wonder I had not seen them in the

Sunday's search.

"I will take you over," said Dr. R----, replacing the book in his

pocket again. "Mrs. Sloman is on my list. Wait till I eat a biscuit,

and I'll drive you over in my carriage."

Shrewd little man! thought I: if I am a convict or a lunatic with

designs on Mrs. Sloman, he is going to be there to see.

"Till he ate a biscuit?" I should think so. To his invitation, most

courteously urged, that I should come and share his supper--"You've

just come from the train, and you won't get back to your hotel for two

hours, at least"--I yielded a ready acceptance, for I was really very

hungry: I forget whether I had eaten anything all day.

But the biscuit proved to be an elegant little supper served in

glittering plate, and the doctor lounged over the tempting bivalves

until I could scarce conceal my impatience.

"Do you chance to know," he said carelessly, as at last we rose from

the table and he flung his napkin down, "Mrs. Sloman's niece, Miss

Stewart?"

"Excellently well," I said smiling: "in fact, I believe I am engaged

to be married to her."

"My dear fellow," said the doctor, bursting out laughing, "I am

delighted to hear it! Take my carriage and go. I saw you were a

lawyer, and you looked anxious and hurried; and I made up my mind

that you had come over to badger the old lady into making her will. I

congratulate you with all my soul--and myself, too," he added, shaking

my hand. "Only think! Had it not been for your frankness, I should

have taken a five-mile ride to watch you and keep you from doing my

patient an injury."

The good doctor quite hurried me into the carriage in the effusion of

his discovery; and I was soon rolling away in that luxurious vehicle

over the bridge, and toward Bessie at last.

I cannot record that interview in words, nor can I now set down any

but the mere outline of our talk. My darling came down to meet me with

a quick flush of joy that she did not try to conceal. She was natural,

was herself, and only too glad, after the _contretemps_ in New York,

to see me again. She pitied me as though I had been a tired child

when I told her pathetically of my two journeys to Philadelphia, and

laughed outright at my interview with Dr. R----.

I was so sure of my ground. When I came to speak of the journey--_our_

journey--I knew I should prevail. It was a deep wound, and she shrank

from any talk about it. I had to be very gentle and tender before she

would listen to me at all.

But there was something else at work against me--what was

it?--something that I could neither see nor divine. And it was not

altogether made up of Aunt Sloman, I was sure.

"I cannot leave her now, Charlie. Dr. R---- wishes her to remain in

Philadelphia, so that he can watch her case. That settles it, Charlie:

I must stay with her."

What was there to be said? "Is there no one else, no one to take your

place?"

"Nobody; and I would not leave her even if there were."

Still, I was unsatisfied. A feeling of uneasiness took possession of

me. I seemed to read in Bessie's eyes that there was a thought between

us hidden out of sight. There is no clairvoyant like a lover. I could

see the shadow clearly enough, but whence, in her outer life, had the

shadow come? _Between_ us, surely, it could not be. Even her anxiety

for her aunt could not explain it: it was something concealed.

When at last I had to leave her, "So to-morrow is your last day?" she

said.

"No, not the last. I have changed my passage to the Saturday steamer."

The strange look came into her face again. Never before did blue eyes

wear such a look of scrutiny.

"Well, what is it?" I asked laughingly as I looked straight into her

eyes.

"The Saturday steamer," she said musingly--"the Algeria, isn't it? I

thought you were in a hurry?"

"It was my only chance to have you," I explained, and apparently the

argument was satisfactory enough.

With the saucy little upward toss with which she always dismissed a

subject, "Then it isn't good-bye to-night?" she said.

"Yes, for two days. I shall run over again on Thursday."

CHAPTER VII.

The two days passed, and the Thursday, and the Friday's parting,

harder for Bessie, as it seemed, than she had thought for. It was hard

to raise her dear little head from my shoulder when the last moment

came, and to rush down stairs to the cab, whose shivering horse and

implacable driver seemed no bad emblem of destiny on that raw October

morning.

I was glad of the lowering sky as I stepped up the gangway to the

ship's deck. "What might have been" went down the cabin stairs with

me; and as I threw my wraps and knapsack into the double state-room I

had chosen I felt like a widower.

It was wonderful to me then, as I sat down on the side of the berth

and looked around me, how the last two weeks had filled all the future

with dreams. "I must have a genius for castle-building," I laughed.

"Well, the reality is cold and empty enough. I'll go up on deck."

On deck, among the piles of luggage, were various metal-covered trunks

marked M----. I remember now watching them as they were stowed away.

But it was with a curious shock, an hour after we had left the dock,

that a turn in my solitary walk on deck brought me face to face with

Fanny Meyrick.

"You here?" she said. "I thought you had sailed in the Russia! Bessie

told me you were to go then."

"Did she know," I asked, "that _you_ were going by this steamer?"

On my life, never was gallantry farther from my thoughts: my question

concerned Bessie alone, but Fanny apparently took it as a compliment,

and looked up gayly: "Oh yes: that was fixed months ago. I told her

about it at Lenox."

"And did she tell you something else?" I asked sharply.

"Oh yes. I was very glad to hear of your good prospect. Do be

congratulated, won't you?"

Rather an odd way to put it, thought I, but it is Fanny Meyrick's way.

"Good prospect!" Heavens! was that the term to apply to my engagement

with Bessie?

I should have insisted on a distincter utterance and a more flattering

expression of the situation had it been any other woman. But a

lingering suspicion that perhaps the subject was a distasteful one to

Fanny Meyrick made me pause, and a few moments after, as some one else

joined her, I left her and went to the smokestack for my cigar.

It was impossible, in the daily monotony of ship-life, to avoid

altogether the young lady whom Fate had thrown in my way. She was a

most provokingly good sailor, too. Other women stayed below or were

carried in limp bundles to the deck at noon; but Fanny, perfectly

poised, with the steady glow in her cheek, was always ready to amuse

or be amused.

I tried, at first, keeping out of her way, with the _Trois

Mousquetaires_ for company. But it seemed to me, as she knew of my

engagement, such avoidance was anything but complimentary to her.

Loyalty to her sex would forbid me to show that I had read her secret.

Why not meet her on the frank, breezy ground of friendship?

Perhaps, after all, there was no secret. Perhaps her feeling was only

one of girlish gratitude, however needless, for pulling her out of the

Hudson River. I did not know.

Nor was I particularly pleased with the companion to whom she

introduced me on our third day out--Father Shamrock, an Irish priest,

long resident in America, and bound now for Maynooth. How he had

obtained an introduction to her I do not know, except in the easy,

fatherly way he seemed to have with every one on board.

"Pshaw!" thought I, "what a nuisance!" for I shared the common

antipathy to his country and his creed. Nor was his appearance

prepossessing--one of Froude's "tonsured peasants," as I looked

down at the square shoulders, the stout, short figure and the broad

beardlessness of the face of the padre. But his voice, rich and

mellow, attracted me in spite of myself. His eyes were sparkling with

kindly humor, and his laugh was irresistible.

A perfect man of the world, with no priestly austerity about him, he

seemed a perpetual anxiety to the two young priests at his heels.

They were on their dignity always, and, though bound to hold him in

reverence as their superior in age and rank, his songs and his gay

jests were evidently as thorns in their new cassocks.

Father Shamrock was soon the star of the ship's company. Perfectly

suave, his gayety had rather the French sparkle about it than the

distinguishing Italian trait, and his easy manner had a dash of

manliness which I had not thought to find. Accomplished in various

tongues, rattling off a gay little _chanson_ or an Irish song, it was

a sight to see the young priests looking in from time to time at

the cabin door in despair as the clock pointed to nine, and Father

Shamrock still sat the centre of a gay and laughing circle.

He had rare tact, too, in talking to women. Of all the ladies on the

Algeria, I question if there were any but the staunchest Protestants.

Some few held themselves aloof at first and declined an introduction.

"Father Shamrock! An Irish priest! How _can_ Miss Meyrick walk with

him and present him as she does?" But the party of recalcitrants grew

less and less, and Fanny Meyrick was very frank in her admiration.

"Convert you?" she laughed over her shoulder to me. "He wouldn't take

the trouble to try."

And I believe, indeed, he would not. His strong social nature was

evidently superior to any ambition of his cloth. He would have made a

famous diplomat but for the one quality of devotion that was lacking.

I use the word in its essential, not in its religious sense--devotion

to an idea, the faith in a high purpose.

We had one anxious day of it, and only one. A gale had driven most

of the passengers to the seclusion of their state-rooms, and left

the dinner-table a desert. Alone in the cabin, Father Shamrock, Fanny

Meyrick, a young Russian and myself: I forget a vigilant duenna, the

only woman on board unreconciled to Father Shamrock. She lay prone

on one of the seats, her face rigid and hands clasped in an agony of

terror. She was afraid, she afterward confessed to me, to go to her

state-room: nearness and voices seemed a necessity to her.

When I joined the party, Father Shamrock, as usual, was the narrator.

But he had dropped out of his voice all the gay humor, and was talking

very soberly. Some story he was telling, of which I gathered, as he

went on, that it was of a young lady, a rich and brilliant society

woman. "Shot right through the heart at Chancellorsville, and he

the only brother. They two, orphans, were all that were left of the

family. He was her darling, just two years younger than she.

"I went to see her, and found her in an agony. She had not kissed him

when he left her: some little laughing tiff between them, and she

had expected to see him again before his regiment marched. She threw

herself on her knees and made confession; and then she took a holy

vow: if the saints would grant her once more to behold his body, she

would devote herself hereafter to God's holy Church.

"She gathered all her jewels together in a heap and cast them at my

feet. 'Take them, Father, for the Church: if I find him I shall not

wear them again--or if I do not find him.'

"I went with her to the front of battle, and we found him after a

time. It was a search, but we found his grave, and we brought him home

with us. Poor boy! beyond recognition, except for the ring he wore;

but she gave him the last kiss, and then she was ready to leave the

world. She took the vows as Sister Clara, the holy vows of poverty and

charity."

"But, Father," said Fanny, with a new depth in her eyes, "did she not

die behind the bars? To be shut up in a convent with that grief at her

heart!"

"Bars there were none," said the Father gently. "She left her vocation

to me, and I decided for her to become a Sister of Mercy. I

have little sympathy," with a shrug half argumentative, half

deprecatory--"but little sympathy with the conventual system for

spirits like hers. She would have wasted and worn away in the offices

of prayer. She needed _action_. And she had the full of it in her

calling. She went from bedside to bedside of the sick and dying--here

a child in a fever; there a widow-woman in the last stages of

consumption--night after night, and day after day, with no rest, no

thought of herself."

"Oh, I have seen her," I could not help interposing, "in a city car. A

shrouded figure that was conspicuous even in her serge dress. She read

a book of _Hours_ all the time, but I caught one glimpse of her eyes:

they were very brilliant."

"Yes," sighed the Father, "it was an unnatural brightness. I was

called away to Montreal, or I should never have permitted the

sacrifice. She went where-ever the worst cases were of contagion and

poverty, and she would have none to relieve her at her post. So, when

I returned after three months' absence, I was shocked at the change:

she was dying of their family disease. 'It is better, so,' she said,

'dear Father. It was only the bullet that saved Harry from it, and it

would have been sure to come to me at last, after some opera or

ball.' She died last winter--so patient and pure, and such a saintly

sufferer!"

The Father wiped his eyes. Why should I think of Bessie? Why should

the Sister's veiled figure and pale ardent face rise before me as if

in warning?

Of just such overwhelming sacrifice was my darling capable were her

life's purpose wrecked. Something there was in the portrait of the

sweet singleness, the noble scorn of self, the devotion unthinking,

uncalculating, which I knew lay hidden in her soul.

The Father warmed into other themes, all in the same key of mother

Church. I listened dreamily, and to my own thoughts as well.

He pictured the priest's life of poverty, renunciation, leaving the

world of men, the polish and refinement of scholars, to take the

confidences and bear the burdens of grimy poverty and ignorance.

Surely, I thought, we do wrong to shut such men out of our sympathies,

to label them "Dangerous." Why should we turn the cold shoulder? are

we so true to our ideals? But one glance at the young priests as they

sat crouching in the outer cabin, telling their beads and crossing

themselves with the vehemence of a frightened faith, was enough.

Father Shamrock was no type. Very possibly his own life would show but

coarse and poor against the chaste, heroic portraits he had drawn. He

had the dramatic faculty: for the moment he was what he related--that

was all.

Our vigilant duenna had gradually risen to a sitting posture, and

drawn nearer and nearer, and as the narrator's voice sank into silence

she said with effusion, "Well, _you_ are a good man, I guess."

But Fanny Meyrick sat as if entranced. The gale had died away, and, to

break the spell, I asked her if she wanted to take one peep on deck,

to see if there was a star in the heavens.

There was no star, but a light rising and falling with the ship's

motion, which was pronounced by a sailor to be Queenstown light, shone

in the distance.

The Father was to leave us there. "We shall not make it to-night,"

said the sailor. "It is too rough. Early in the morning the passengers

will land."

"I wish," said Fanny with a deep sigh, as if wakening from a dream,

"that the Church of Rome was at the bottom of the sea!"

CHAPTER VIII.

Arrived at our dock, I hurried off to catch the train for London. The

Meyricks lingered for a few weeks in Wales before coming to

settle down for the winter. I was glad of it, for I could make my

arrangements unhampered. So I carefully eliminated Clarges street from

my list of lodging-houses, and finally "ranged" myself with a neat

landlady in Sackville street.

How anxiously I awaited the first letter from Bessie! As the banker's

clerk handed it over the counter to me, instead of the heavy envelope

I had hoped for, it was a thin slip of an affair that fluttered away

from my hand. It was so very slim and light that I feared to open it

there, lest it should be but a mocking envelope, nothing more.

So I hastened back to my cab, and, ordering the man to drive to the

law-offices, tore it open as I jumped in. It enclosed simply a

printed slip, cut from some New York paper--a list of the Algeria's

passengers.

"What joke is this?" I said as I scanned it more closely.

By some spite of fortune my name was printed directly after the

Meyrick party. Was it for this, this paltry thing, that Bessie

has denied me a word? I turned over the envelope, turned it inside

out--not a penciled word even!

The shadow that I had seen on that good-bye visit to Philadelphia was

clear to me now. I had said at Lenox, repeating the words after Bessie

with fatal emphasis, "I am glad, very glad, that Fanny Meyrick is to

sail in October. I would not have her stay on this side for worlds!"

Then the next day, twenty-four hours after, I told her that I too was

going abroad. Coward that I was, not to tell her at first! She might

have been sorry, vexed, but not _suspicious_.

Yes, that was the ugly word I had to admit, and to admit that I had

given it room to grow.

My first hesitancy about taking her with me, my transfer from the

Russia to the later steamer, and, to crown all, that leaf from Fanny's

pocket-book: "I shall love him for ever and ever"!

And yet she _had_ faith in me. She had told Fanny Meyrick we were

engaged. _Had she not_?

My work in London was more tedious and engrossing than I had expected.

Even a New York lawyer has much to learn of the law's delay in those

pompous old offices amid the fog. Had I been working for myself, I

should have thrown up the case in despair, but advices from our office

said "Stick to it," and I stayed.

Eating out my own heart with anxiety whenever I thought of my home

affair, perhaps it was well for me that I had the monotonous, musty

work that required little thought, but only a persistent plodding and

a patient holding of my end of the clue.

In all these weeks I had nothing from Bessie save that first cruel

envelope. Letter after letter went to her, but no response came. I

wrote to Mrs. Sloman too, but no answer. Then I bethought me of Judge

Hubbard, but received in reply a note from one of his sons, stating

that his father was in Florida--that he had communicated with him,

but regretted that he was unable to give me Miss Stewart's present

address.

Why did I not seek Fanny Meyrick? She must have come to London long

since, and surely the girls were in correspondence. I was too proud.

She knew of our relations: Bessie had told her. I could not bring

myself to reveal to her how tangled and gloomy a mystery was between

us. I could explain nothing without letting her see that she was the

unconscious cause.

At last, when one wretched week after another had gone by, and we were

in the new year, I could bear it no longer. "Come what will, I must

know if Bessie writes to her."

I went to Clarges street. My card was carried into the Meyricks'

parlor, and I followed close upon it. Fanny was sitting alone, reading

by a table. She looked up in surprise as I stood in the doorway. A

little coldly, I thought, she came forward to meet me, but her manner

changed as she took my hand.

"I was going to scold you, Charlie, for avoiding us, for staying away

so long, but that is accounted for now. Why didn't you send us word

that you were ill? Papa is a capital nurse."

"But I have not been ill," I said, bewildered, "only very busy and

very anxious."

"I should think so," still holding my hand, and looking into my face

with an expression of deep concern. "Poor fellow! You do look worn.

Come right here to this chair by the fire, and let me take care of

you. You need rest."

And she rang the bell. I suffered myself to be installed in the soft

crimson chair by the fire. It was such a comfort to hear a friendly

voice after all those lonely weeks! When the servant entered with a

tray, I watched her movements over the tea-cups with a delicious sense

of the womanly presence and the home-feeling stealing over me.

"I can't imagine what keeps papa," she said, chatting away with

woman's tact: "he always smokes after dinner, and comes up to me for

his cup of tea afterward."

Then, as she handed me a tiny porcelain cup, steaming and fragrant, "I

should never have congratulated you, Charlie, on board the steamer if

I had known it was going to end in this way."

_This way_! Then Bessie must have told her.

"End?" I said stammering: "what--what end?"

"In wearing you out. Bessie told me at Lenox, the day we took that

long walk, that you had this important case, and it was a great thing

for a young lawyer to have such responsibility."

Poor little porcelain cup! It fell in fragments on the floor as I

jumped to my feet: "Was that _all_ she told you? Didn't she tell you

that we were engaged?"

For a moment Fanny did not speak. The scarlet glow on her cheek, the

steady glow that was always there, died away suddenly and left her

pale as ashes. Mechanically she opened and shut the silver sugar-tongs

that lay on the table under her hand, and her eyes were fixed on me

with a wild, beseeching expression.

"Did you not know," I said in softer tones, still standing by the

table and looking down on her, "that day at Lenox that we were

engaged? Was it not for _that_ you congratulated me on board the

steamer?"

A deep-drawn sigh as she whispered, "Indeed, no! Oh dear! what have I

done?"

"You?--nothing!" I said with a sickly smile; "but there is some

mistake, some mystery. I have never had one line from Bessie since I

reached London, and when I left her she was my own darling little wife

that was to be."

Still Fanny sat pale as ashes, looking into the fire and muttering to

herself. "Heavens! To think--Oh, Charlie," with a sudden burst, "it's

all my doing! How can I ever tell you?"

"You hear from Bessie, then? Is she--is she well? Where is she? What

is all this?" And I seated myself again and tried to speak calmly, for

I saw that something very painful was to be said--something that she

could hardly say; and I wanted to help her, though how I knew not.

At this moment the door opened and "papa" came in. He evidently

saw that he had entered upon a scene as his quick eye took in the

situation, but whether I was accepted or rejected as the future

son-in-law even his penetration was at fault to discover.

"Oh, papa," said Fanny, rising with evident relief, "just come and

talk to Mr. Munro while I get him a package he wants to take with

him."

It took a long time to prepare that package. Mr. Meyrick, a cool,

shrewd man of the world, was taking a mental inventory of me, I felt

all the time. I was conscious that I talked incoherently and like a

school-boy of the treaty. Every American in London was bound to

have his special opinion thereupon, and Meyrick, I found, was of

the English party. Then we discussed the special business which had

brought me to England.

"A very unpresentable son-in-law," I read in his eye, while he was

evidently astonished at his daughter's prolonged absence.

Our talk flagged and the fire grew gray in its flaky ashes before

Fanny again appeared.

"I know, papa, you think me very rude to keep Mr. Munro so long

waiting, but there were some special directions to go with the packet,

and it took me a long time to get them right. It is for Bessie,

papa--Bessie Stewart, Mr. Munro's dear little _fiancée_"

Escaping as quickly as possible from Mr. Meyrick's neatly turned

felicitations--and that the satisfaction he expressed was genuine I

was prepared to believe--hurried home to Sackville street.

My bedroom was always smothering in its effect on me--close draperies

to the windows, heavy curtains around the bed--and I closed the door

and lighted my candle with a sinking heart.

The packet was simply a long letter, folded thickly in several

wrappers and tied with a string. The letter opened abruptly:

"What I am going to do I am sure no woman on earth ever did before me,

nor would I save to undo the trouble I have most innocently made. What

must you have thought of me that day at Lenox, staying close all day

to two engaged people, who must have wished me away a thousand times?

But I did not dream you were engaged.

"Remember, I had just come over from Saratoga, and knew nothing of

Lenox gossip, then or afterward. Something in your manner once or

twice made me look at you and think that perhaps you were _interested_

in Bessie, but hers to you was so cold, so distant, that I thought it

was only a notion of my jealous self.

"Was I foolish to lay so much stress on that anniversary time? Do you

know that the year before we had spent it together, too?--September

28th. True, that year it was at Bertie Cox's funeral, but we had

walked together, and I was happy in being near you.

"For, you see, it was from something more than the Hudson River that

you had brought me out. You had rescued me from the stupid gayety of

my first winter--from the flats of fashionable life. You had given me

an ideal--something to live up to and grow worthy of.

"Let that pass. For myself, it is nothing, but for the deeper harm I

have done, I fear, to Bessie and to you.

"Again, on that day at Lenox, when Bessie and I drove together in the

afternoon, I tried to make her talk about you, to find out what you

were to her. But she was so distant, so repellant, that I fancied

there was nothing at all between you; or, rather, if you had cared for

her at all, that she had been indifferent to you.

"Indeed, she quite forbade the subject by her manner; and when she

told me you were going abroad, I could not help being very happy, for

I thought then that I should have you all to myself.

"When I saw you on shipboard, I fancied, somehow, that you had changed

your passage to be with us. It was very foolish; and I write it,

thankful that you are not here to see me. So I scribbled a little note

to Bessie, and sent it off by the pilot: I don't know where you were

when the pilot went. This is, as nearly as I remember it, what I

wrote:

"'DEAR BESSIE: Charlie Munro is on board. He must have changed his

passage to be with us. I know from something that he has just told

_me_ that this is so, and that he consoles himself already for your

coldness. You remember what I told you when we talked about him. I

shall _try_ now. F.M.'

"Bessie would know what that meant. Oh, must I tell you what a weak,

weak girl I was? When I found out at Lenox, as I thought, that Bessie

did not care for you, I said to her that once I thought you _had_

cared for me, but that papa had offended you by his manner--you

weren't of an old Knickerbocker family, you know--and had given you to

understand that your visits were not acceptable.

"I am sure now that it was because I wanted to think so that I put

that explanation upon your ceasing to visit me, and because papa

always looked so decidedly _queer_ whenever your name was mentioned.

"I had always had everything in life that I wanted, and I believed

that in due time you would come back to me.

"Bessie knew well enough what that pilot-letter meant, for here is her

answer."

Pinned fast to the end of Fanny's letter, so that by no chance should

I read it first, were these words in my darling's hand:

"Got your pilot-letter. Aunt is much better. We shall be traveling

about so much that you need not write me the progress of your romance,

but believe me I shall be most interested in its conclusion. BESSIE

S."

It was all explained now. My darling, so sensitive and spirited, had

given her leave "to try."

CHAPTER IX.

But was that all? Was she wearing away the slow months in passionate

unbelief of me? I could not tell. But before I slept that night I had

taken my resolve. I would sail for home by the next steamer. The case

would suffer, perhaps, by the delay and the change of hands: D----

must come out to attend to it himself, then, but I would suffer no

longer.

No use to write to Bessie. I had exhausted every means to reach her

save that of the detectives. "I'll go to the office, file my papers

till the next man comes over, see Fanny Meyrick, and be off."

But what to say to Fanny? Good, generous girl! She had indeed done

what few women in the world would have had the courage to do--shown

her whole heart to a man who loved another. It would be an

embarrassing interview; and I was not sorry when I started out that

morning that it was too early yet to call.

To the office first, then, I directed my steps. But here Fate lay

_perdu_ and in wait for me.

"A letter, Mr. Munro, from D---- & Co.," said the brisk young clerk.

They had treated me with great respect of late, for, indeed, our claim

was steadily growing in weight, and was sure to come right before

long. I opened and read:

"The missing paper is found on this side of the Atlantic--what you

have been rummaging for all winter on the other. A trusty messenger

sails at once, and will report himself to you."

"At once!" Well, there's only a few days' delay, at most. Perhaps it's

young Bunker. He can take the case and end it: anybody can end it now.

And my heart was light. "A few days," I said to myself as I ran up the

steps in Clarges street.

"Miss Fanny at home?" to the man, or rather to the member of

Parliament, who opened the door--"Miss Meyrick, I mean."

"Yes, sir--in the drawing-room, sir;" and he announced me with a

flourish.

Fanny sat in the window. She might have been looking out for me, for

on my entrance she parted the crimson curtains and came forward.

Again the clear glow in her cheek, the self-possessed Fanny of old.

"Charlie," she began impetuously, "I have been thinking over shipboard

and Father Shamrock, and all. You didn't think then--did you?--that I

cared so very much for you? I am so glad that the Father bewitched

me as he did, for I can remember no foolishness on my part to you,

sir--none at all. Can you?"

Stammering, confused, I seemed to have lost my tongue and my head

together. I had expected tears, pale cheeks, a burst of self-reproach,

and that I should have to comfort and be very gentle and sympathetic.

I had dreaded the _rôle_; but here was a new turn of affairs; and,

I own it, my self-love was not a little wounded. The play was played

out, that was evident. The curtain had fallen, and here was I, a

late-arrived hero of romance, the chivalric elder brother, with all

my little stock of property-phrases--friendship of a life, esteem,

etc.--of no more account than a week-old playbill.

For, I must confess it, I had rehearsed some little forgiveness scene,

in which I should magnanimously kiss her hand, and tell her that I

should honor her above all women for her courage and her truth; and

in which she would cry until her poor little heart was soothed and

calmed; and that I should have the sweet consciousness of being

beloved, however hopelessly, by such a brilliant, ardent soul.

But Mistress Fanny had quietly turned the tables on me, and I believe

I was angry enough for the moment to wish it had not been so.

But only for a moment. It began to dawn upon me soon, the rare tact

which had made easy the most embarrassing situation in, the world--the

_bravura_ style, if I may call it so, that had carried us over such a

difficult bar.

It _was_ delicacy, this careless reminder of the fascinating Father,

and perhaps there was a modicum of truth in that acknowledgment too.

I took my leave of Fanny Meyrick, and walked home a wiser man.

But the trusty messenger, who arrived three days later, was not, as

I had hoped, young Bunker or young Anybody. It was simply Mrs. D----,

with a large traveling party. They came straight to London, and

summoned me at once to the Langham Hotel.

I suppose I looked somewhat amazed at sight of the portly lady, whom

I had last seen driving round Central Park. But the twin Skye terriers

who tumbled in after her assured me of her identity soon enough.

"Mr. D---- charged me, Mr. Munro," she began after our first

ceremonious greeting, "to give this into no hands but yours. I have

kept it securely with my diamonds, and those I always carry about me."

From what well-stitched diamond receptacle she had extracted the paper

I did not suffer myself to conjecture, but the document was strongly

perfumed with violet powder.

"You see, I was coming over," she proceeded to explain, "in any

event, and when Mr. D---- talked of sending Bunker--I think it was

Bunker--with us, I persuaded him to let me be messenger instead.

It wasn't worth while, you know, to have any more people leave the

office, you being away, and--Oh, Ada, my dear, here is Mr. Munro!"

As Ada, a slim, willowy creature, with the _surprised_ look in her

eyes that has become the fashion of late, came gliding up to me, I

thought that the reason for young Bunker's omission from the party was

possibly before me.

Bother on her matrimonial, or rather anti-matrimonial, devices! Her

maternal solicitude lest Ada should be charmed with the poor young

clerk on the passage over had cost me weeks of longer stay. For

at this stage a request for any further transfer would have been

ridiculous and wrong. As easy to settle it now as to arrange for any

one else; so the first of April found me still in London, but leaving

it on the morrow for home.

"Bessie is in Lenox, I think," Fanny Meyrick had said to me as I bade

her good-bye.

"What! You have heard from her?"

"No, but I heard incidentally from one of my Boston friends this

morning that he had seen her there, standing on the church steps."

I winced, and a deeper glow came into Fanny's cheek.

"You will give her my letter? I would have written to her also, but it

was indeed only this morning that I heard. You will give her that?"

"I have kept it for her," I said quietly; and the adieus were over.

SARAH C. HALLOWELL.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

HOW THEY "KEEP A HOTEL" IN TURKEY.

The charity of Islam is an article of practice as well as of faith,

and manifests itself in ways astonishing to visitors from Christian

lands. Thus, the impunity--nay, the protection and sympathy--afforded

to the street-beggar, and the way in which the very poor divide their

crust with those still more poverty-stricken than themselves, surprise

the stranger who observes the scene in the open streets. Then, too,

the public fountains, which are charitable offerings from pious

persons, are more numerous in Constantinople than in any other city in

the world. Nor does the law of kindness restrict itself to man. Islam

has anticipated Mr. Bergh, and "The Society for the Prevention

of Cruelty to Animals" had as its founder in the Orient no less a

personage than Mohammed, whom "the faithful" revere as the Messenger

(Résoul) of God, and whom we improperly term Prophet. The Koran

specially inculcates kindness to the brute creation, and so thoroughly

does the Mussulman obey the mandate that the streets are filled with

homeless, masterless dogs, whose melancholy lives Moslem piety will

not abridge by water-cure, as in Western lands. This is the more

curious because the dog is an unclean animal, whose touch defiles the

true believer. Therefore no one keeps a dog, or harbors him, or does

more than throw him a bone or scraps of food.

Should a camel fall sick in the desert, or break a limb, his master

does not mercifully put him out of his pain, but leaves him there to

die "when it pleases Allah." The same sentiment runs through the

whole of Eastern life, and it is notably manifested in religious

foundations, which also serve as schools, and in khans or

caravansaries, which are the Eastern substitutes for hotels. The

khans had their origin in charity in the good old times of primitive

Mohammedanism, before its simplicity was lost by contact with other

creeds. They were wayside buildings intended for the use of commercial

travelers or pilgrims, affording shelter from storms and protection

from wild beasts, but no further accommodation. The hospitable doors

were ever open, but the apparition of "mine host," ready to offer you

board and lodging for a reasonable compensation, was undreamt of in

the early Turkish philosophy. Every traveler literally "took up his

bed and walked "--or rode--away in the morning, leaving the room he

had tenanted as bare as he found it. Everybody had to bring his own

cooking utensils, provender and materials for making a fire.

What in other countries is left for commercial enterprise to effect

for the sake of profit is accomplished here by pious people, who leave

legacies for the purpose, and never figure in newspapers, before or

after death, as the reward of their munificence or charity. Many a

wayworn traveler has blessed the memory of those truly religious men

or women on reaching the rugged walls of a khan after a long

day's ride under a Syrian sun or the pitiless down-pours of rain

characteristic of the same region.

Some of these khans on the road to Damascus or other large Eastern

cities are spacious buildings, and the scene presented within them

when some caravan stops overnight, or several parties of travelers

meet there, is picturesque in the extreme. Everybody wears

bright-colored garments and everybody is armed, and the grunt of the

camel and bray of the donkey make night, if not musical, certainly

most melancholy to the untrained ear.

But innovation has crept in, and the city khan is now a kind of

bastard hotel, with a rude host, who makes you pay for your own

lodging and the provender of your animal; and as part and parcel of

the establishment you also find a coffee-shop, coffee being the primal

necessity of Oriental well--being, taking precedence even of tobacco,

which, however, always accompanies it. There is always a bazaar close

by, at which you can purchase savory _kibabs_ of mutton and other

cooked food. Men are no more ashamed to eat in the street than they

are to pray there; so you may see multitudes taking their meals _al

fresco_ at the hours of morning, midday or sunset, after prayers.

Neither does the Mussulman need elaborate bed and bedding for his

repose. He does not undress as we do, but only loosens his garments,

without taking them off, and stretches himself on top of his bed or

rug, as the case may be. When the weather is cold, he takes off his

shoes, but wraps his head and the upper part of his person tightly

in his blanket or shawl, at apparent risk of suffocation. Keeping

the feet warm and the head cool, which is our great sanitary law,

is reversed by the Turk, for he keeps his head covered and his feet

uncovered as much as he possibly can. In the morning he gets up,

shakes himself, tightens his garments, performs his matutinal

ablutions, and his toilet is made for the day. Under these

circumstances it will be seen that many things which we should regard

as essential necessaries in our hostelry, would be pure superfluities

to our Turkish or Arab brother.

Of course, in these places you meet a great mixture of nationalities

and all classes and conditions, for the rich, in the absence of other

hotel accommodations, must use them as well as the poor; only, as

every man brings his own things with him, you find more luxury and

comfort in some of the arrangements than in others. You may see rich

merchants from Bagdad or Damascus sitting on piles of costly cushions,

attended by obsequious slaves, and smoking perfumed Shiraz out

of silver narghiles, whose long, snake-like tubes are tipped with

precious amber and encircled by rows of precious stones worth a

prince's ransom. Huddled together, in striking contrast to this

picture, you may see, crouched on their old rugs and smoking the

common clay chibouque, a bevy of street-beggars, also enjoying

themselves after their fashion.

These khans serve also as shops or bazaars for the traveling merchant,

Persian or Turk, who is ever ready to show you his wares, without

seeming to care much whether you buy or not.

The city khans are very simply built in a quadrangle, with small

rooms, like convent cells, running all round it. These are used both

as sleeping-rooms and shops. The stables for the animals and the

store-rooms are in a covered corridor beneath. As there are permanent

residents here, and valuable merchandise and other articles stored

away, there is a gate strongly bolted and barred, and often sheathed

in iron, and a gate-keeper, generally to be seen sleeping or smoking,

whose sole business is to prevent the entrance of improper or

suspicious persons.

The evenings at the khan used to be, and sometimes still are,

enlivened by the presence of the almés or dancing-girls, whose

ancestors may have danced the same wild and wanton dances before

Cleopatra. The singing-girls, monotonously chanting the same dolorous

and drowsy tunes, with imitation guitar accompaniment on the _sââb_

were also wont to wound the drowsy ear of night for the diversion

of the guests. Drowsier and more sleep-compelling still were the

interminable tales spun out by the professional story-teller, giving

ragged versions of the _Arabian Nights' Entertainments_ for the

delectation of the tireless native listeners.

In those old days, too, the khans used to be the resort of the

slave-merchants, who kept stowed safely away, for inspection and

purchase, Circassian, Georgian or more dingy beauties, to suit

all tastes. But civilization, in its encroachments on Turkey, has

compelled the cessation of open sales of either white or black slaves

in public places, though so long as the social and domestic system of

the East remains unchanged, the sale of women for the house or harem

will continue. It is conducted, however, with more privacy, and

Christians are not permitted the privilege of viewing the proceedings.

This restriction has taken away from the khans one of their former

great attractions.

To European or American travelers accustomed to the ease, luxury and

profusion of our modern hotels, where the guests enjoy more comforts

than most of them get at home, this kind of entertainment for man and

beast certainly does not seem attractive. Yet there is enjoyment in it

when the khan is tolerably free from fleas and "such small deer," and

one is accustomed "to roughing it," and blessed with a good appetite

and digestion.

Yet, truth to tell, it is more picturesque than pleasant at the

best--more gratifying to the eye than to the other senses, especially

to those of smell and hearing. For the odors arising from Turkish

or Arab cooking are not those of Araby the Blest; and the close

contiguity of the beasts of burden assails both the senses named more

pungently than pleasantly. Besides, the Oriental, generally making

it a rule to wrap up his head carefully in the covering, snores

stertorously throughout the night; so that silence, which we regard as

necessary for repose, does not rule over the khan; and when daybreak

comes, the startled traveler may imagine Babel has broken loose

again, since both men and animals rise with the dawn, and make most

diabolical noises to indicate that they have risen.

Enterprising Europeans have set up many hotels in Eastern cities,

but they are almost exclusively resorted to by strangers or Europeans

resident in the country. Even the high Turks, lapped in luxury and

sybaritic in their habits of personal ease, prefer their own hotel

system to ours, carrying all their comforts along with them, and a

retinue of servants to take charge of them. You will very rarely see

a Turkish gentleman, even if educated in Europe, stopping at Messeir's

or any of the great Eastern hotels on the European plan.

At Messeir's in Constantinople, or at Shepheard's hotel in

Cairo--places of historic interest almost, through the vivid

descriptions of travelers like the authors of _Eothen_ and _The

Crescent and the Cross_--a most motley medley of Western nationalities

may be encountered, the adventurers, tourists and wanderers of the

world congregated there during the winter months, and presenting a

panoramic view of all the peculiar phases and contrasts of European

civilization, more antagonistic there than elsewhere. There you see

the German savant with his round spectacles, round face and round

figure; the lean and restless Frenchman; the imperturbable Englishman,

drinking his bottled beer under the shadow of the Pyramids; and the

angular American, more curious, but more cosmopolite, than any of

them. The returning Englishman or Englishwoman who has spent twenty

years in India also presents an anomalous type, proving how climate

and mode of life may alter the original; for it is curious to contrast

the round, rosy faces of the fresh English girls outward bound with

the sharp, sallow faces and flashing, restless eyes which

characterize those who are returning. The babel of tongues at these

_tables-d'hôte_, where conversations are being carried on in every

European language, is most perplexing at first, though French and

English predominate. Altogether, for the student of character there

is no better field than one of these European hotels in the East--none

where the lines of difference can be found more sharply defined;

for travel and contact with strangers appear only to bring out the

contrasts more clearly, and produce a more direct antagonism, instead

of softening down or assimilating them, as one might expect.

Very few travelers see the city khans--fewer still ever venture to

pass a night within their walls. Even on the routes of desert-travel

the pilgrims for pleasure avoid them, substituting their own tents

for the stone walls, and confiding in the arrangements made by their

dragomen or guides, who contract to make the necessary provision for

all their wants for a stipulated sum--one-half usually in advance,

the balance payable at the expiration of the trip. To do these men

justice, as a rule they provide liberally and well in all respects,

their reputation and recommendations being their capital and stock in

trade for securing subsequent tourists. Yet it cannot be doubted that

this system has robbed the Eastern tour of some of its most salient

and striking peculiarities, and has deprived the traveler of much

opportunity for insight into the real life of the Oriental, only to be

seen while he is journeying from place to place, since his own house

is generally closed against the stranger, and it is only in the khan

that a glimpse of his mode of life can be obtained.

The khan, like the harem, is one of the peculiar institutions of the

East, and will probably so continue, in spite of the advancing tide of

European civilization; which, however it may affect the outer aspects

of that life, has as yet made little impression on its more essential

features. The men may wear the Frank dress (all but the hat, which

they will not accept), may smoke cigars instead of chibouques, and

drink "gaseous lemonade" (champagne), in defiance of the Prophet's

prohibition; the women may send from the high harems for French

fashions, and "fearfully and wonderfully" array themselves therein;

but in other respects the people will stubbornly adhere to their own

social system and habits of life.

It follows that the traveler who goes to the East to study the manners

and customs of its people will get only an imperfect and outside view

if he makes himself comfortable in one of the hybrid European hotels

we have described, instead of braving the picturesque discomforts of

the Oriental hotel or khan, which he will find endurable by taking a

few preliminary precautions easily suggested to him on the spot.

EDWIN DE LEON.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE CALIFORNIAN AT VIENNA.

I am in bonds and fetters through not understanding the German tongue.

It is a weary torture to be a stupid, uncomprehended foreigner. I am

lost in a linguistic swamp. It is necessary to employ one man to talk

to another. The _commisionnaire_ does not understand more than half I

say. What might he not be interpreting to the other fellow? The most

trivial want costs me a world of anxiety and trouble. I desired some

blotting-paper. I went to a little stationery shop. I said, "Paper!

paper! für die blot, you know. Ich bin Englisher--er: ink no dry;

what you call um? Vas? vas? Hang it!" They took down all sorts of

paper--letter-paper, wrapping-paper, foolscap, foreign post. I tried

to make my want known by signs. I made myself simply ridiculous. The

shopkeeper stared at me in perplexity, disgust and despair. Then he

discussed the matter with his wife. I fretted, perspiring vigorously.

I went away. I went to a commissionnaire at my hotel. It required five

minutes to explain the matter to him. He discussed the matter with

the _portier_. The portier is quite buried under gold lace and brass

buttons. The commissionnaire returns to me. He thinks he knows what

I require, but is not quite certain. All this trouble for a bit of

blotting-paper! It is so with everything. Every little matter of

every-day life, which at home to think of and do are almost identical,

here costs so much time, labor and anxiety! My strength is all gone

when I have purchased a paper of pins and a bottle of ink. Breakfast

and dinner task me to the utmost. The slightest deviation from

established custom seems to act on the people at the restaurant like

a wrong figure in a table of logarithms. It required three days to

convince a stunted boy in a long-tailed coat that I did not wish beer

for dinner. He would bring beer. I would say, "I don't want beer!

I want my--some dinner." He would depart and take counsel with the

head-waiter, and I would feel as if I had been doing something for

which I ought to be corrected. The latter functionary approaches

and exclaims with domineering voice, "Vat you vants?" I reply with

meekness, "Dinner, sir, if you please." He brings me an elegantly

bound book containing the bill of fare. But it is in German: I look at

it knowingly: Sanscrit would be quite as intelligible. I put my

finger on a word which I suppose means soup. I look up meekly at the

functionary. He glowers contemptuously upon me. He recommends me to an

underling, and bustles off to guests more important. There are in the

dining-hall French, German, Italian, English and Japanese. Tongues,

plates, knives and forks clatter inside--wheels roll, rumble and

clatter over the stony pavement outside. I wait for my soup. Hours

seem to lag by. I appeal in vain to other waiters. Life is too busy

and important a matter with them to pay any attention to me.

The aristocratic German waiter is cool and indifferent. It is beneath

his dignity to approach you within half an hour after you sit down. He

knows you are hungry, and enjoys your pangs. He is sensible of every

signal, every expression of the eye with which you regard him. To

appear not to know is the chief business of his life. He will with

the minutest care arrange a napkin while a half dozen hungry men at

different tables are trying to arrest his attention. Before I met this

man my temper was mild and amiable: I believed in doing by my fellows

as I would be done by. Now I am changed. I never visit the Vienna

restaurant but I dwell in thought on battle, murder, pistols,

bowie-knives, blood, bullets and sudden death. After eating a meal it

requires another hour to pay for it. A nobleman, dressed _de rigueur_,

condescends to take my money after he has made me wait long enough.

There are two of these officials at the hotel. One in general manner

resembles a heavy dealer in bonds and government securities--the

other a modest, charming young clergyman of the Church of England.

One morning, when the atmosphere was very sultry, I ventured to open

a window. The dealer in government securities shut it immediately, and

gave me a look which humiliated me for the day. I said I wanted, if

possible, air enough to support life while eating my breakfast. He

said that was against the rules of the house: the windows must not be

opened. There was too much dust blowing in the street. What were a few

common lives compared to the advent of dust in that dining-room?

You must live here by rule. Novelty is treason. It is the unalterable

rule of life that because things have been done in a certain manner,

so must they ever be done. It requires almost a revolution to have an

egg boiled hard in Vienna. I said at my first meal, "Ein caffee und

egg mit hard." It may be seen that I speak German with the English

accent. The eggs came soft-boiled. I suppose that the nobleman who

attended on my table went to the prince in disguise who governed the

culinary department, and informed him of this new demand in the matter

of eggs. It is presumable that the prince pronounced against me, for

next morning my eggs were still soft-boiled. Then I braced myself up

and said, "See here! I want mine zwei eggs, you know, hard, hard! You

understand?" The nobleman looked at me with contempt. The eggs came

about one-tenth of a degree harder than the previous morning. I

resolved to gain my point. I saw how necessary it was to put more

force, vigor, spirit and savagery into my culinary instructions to the

nobleman. This despotism should not prevail against me. When the

free, easy and enlightened American among the effete and crumbling

monarchies of Europe shrieks for hard-boiled eggs, they must be

produced, though the House of Hapsburg should reel, stumble and

totter.

I said on the third morning, "Haben Sie ein hot Feuer in your

kitchen?" Ja. "And hot Wasser?" Ja. "And will you put this hot Feuer

under the said hot Wasser, and in that hot Wasser put the eggs and

keep them there zehn Minuten, zwanzig Minuten, or a day or a week--any

length of time, so that they are only boiled hard, just like stones,

brickbats, rocks, boulders or the gray granite crest of Yosemite? I

want mine eggs hard." Then I ground my teeth and looked wicked and

savage, and squirmed viciously in my chair. There was some improvement

in the eggs that morning, but they were not hard boiled.

The Viennese spend most of their time in the open air, drinking beer

and coffee, reading light newspapers, eating and smoking. In the

English and American sense they have neither politics nor religion.

The government and the Church provide these articles, leaving the

people little to do save enjoy themselves, float lazily down life's

stream, and die when their souls become too spiritualized to remain

longer in their bodies.

I am fast becoming German. I have my coffee at nine: it requires two

hours to drink it. Then I dream a little, smoke a cigar and drink a

glass of beer. At twelve comes dinner. This I eat at a café table on

the sidewalk, with more beer. At two I take a nap. At five I awake,

drink another glass of beer, and dream. From that time until nine is

occupied in getting hungry for supper. This occupies two hours. Then

more beer and tobacco. Some time in the night I retire. Sometimes I am

aware of the operation of disrobing, sometimes not. This is Viennese

life. One day merges into another in a vague, misty sort of way. Time

is not checked off into short, sharp divisions as in busy, bustling

America. From the windows opposite mine, on the other side of the

street, protrude Germans with long pipes. They sit there hour

after hour, those pipes hanging down a foot below the window-sill.

Occasionally they emit a puff of smoke. This is the only sign of life

about them.

The window-sills are furnished with cushions to lean on when you gaze

forth. The one in mine is continually dropping down into the

street below, and a man in a brass-mounted cap, who calls himself a

"Dienstmann," does a good business in picking it up and bringing it

up stairs at ten kreutzers a trip. The kreutzer is a copper coin

equivalent to an English farthing. Every day here seems a sort of

holiday, and in this respect Sunday stands pre-eminent.

The ladies, as a rule, are fine-looking, shapely, well-dressed and

particular as to the fit of their gaiters and hose--a most refreshing

sight to one for a year accustomed to the general dowdiness which in

this respect prevails in England. Most of the English girls seem to

have no idea that their feet should be dressed. The Viennese lady is

very tasteful. She is neither slipshod nor gaudy. I never beheld more

dainty toilettes. Everything about them, as a sailor would say, is cut

"by the lifts and braces."

Vienna abounds in great bath-houses. I have tested one. I wandered

about the establishment asking every one I met for a warm bath. Some

pointed in one direction, some in another, and after blundering

back and forth for a while, I found myself before a woman. For fifty

kreutzers she gave me a ticket. Then she called for Marie. Marie, a

black-eyed, bright German girl, came. She went to a shelf and burdened

herself with a quantity of linen. Then she signed for me to follow.

I did so in an expectant, wondering and rather anxious frame of mind.

Marie showed me into a neatly-furnished bath-room. She spread a linen

sheet in the tub, and turned on the water. I waited for the tub to

fill and Marie to depart. Marie seemed in no hurry. I pondered over

the possibilities involved in a German "Warm-bad." Perhaps Marie will

attempt to scrub me! Never! At last she goes. I remove my collar.

Suddenly Marie returns: it is to bring another towel. There is no

lock on the door--nothing with which to defend one's self. I bathe

in peace, however. On emerging I examine the pile of linen Marie has

left. There is a small towel, and two large aprons without strings,

long enough to reach from the shoulders to the knees. I study over

their possible use. I conclude they are to dry the anatomy with. On

subsequent inquiry I ascertained that they were to be worn while I

rang the bell and Marie came in to substitute hot water for cold.

The American commission to the exhibition occupies a bare,

disconsolate, shabby suite of rooms. They resemble much the editorial

offices of those ephemeral daily papers which, commencing with

very small capital, after a spasmodic career of a few months fall

despairingly into the arms of the sheriff. I had once occasion to

visit the commission on a little matter of business. What that was I

have forgotten: I recollect only the multiplicity of doors in those

apartments. When I turned to depart, I opened every door but the

proper one. I went into closets, private apartments and intricate

passages, and after making the entire round without discovering

egress, I made another tour of them, but still could not find where

I had entered. A solitary American was seated in the reading-room

looking weary and homesick, and I asked him if he could tell me the

right road out of the American commission. He said he hardly knew:

this was his first visit, but he'd try. So both of us went prospecting

around and opening all the doors we met, while a deaconish old

gentleman behind a desk looked on apparently interested, yet offering

nothing in the way of information or suggestion. I presume, however,

this is the only amusement the man has in this forlorn place. I

was beginning to think of descending by way of the windows when the

strange American at last found a door which led into the main entry,

and we both left at the same time, glad to escape.

I will do one side of the American department in the exhibition stern

justice. It commences with a long picture placed there by the Pork

Packers' Association of Cincinnati, descriptive of the processes which

millions of American hogs are subjected to while being converted into

pork. There are hogs going in long procession to be killed, and

going, too, in a determined sort of way, as if they knew it was their

business to be killed. Then come hogs killed, hogs scalded, hogs

scraped, hogs cut up into shoulders, hams, sides, jowls; hogs salted,

hogs smoked. Underneath this sketch are a number of unpainted buggy

and carriage wheels; next, a pile of pick-handles; not far off, a

little mound of grindstones; after the grindstones, a platoon of

clothes-wringers; next, a solitary iron wheel-barrow communing with a

patent fire-extinguisher; following these a crowd of green iron pumps,

with sewing-machines in full force. Such is a bit of the American

department.

It is the fashion here that every one should have a growl at the

general slimness and slovenliness of our department. Every one gives

our drooping eagle a kick. This is all wrong. We can't send our

greatest wonders and triumphs to Europe. There is neither room nor

opportunity in the building for showing off one of our political

torchlight processions, or a vigilance-committee hanging, or a Chicago

or Boston fire, or a steamboat blow-up, or a railway smash-up. Were

the present chief of the commission a man of originality and talent,

he might even now save the national reputation by bundling all the

pumps, churns, patent clothes-washers, wheel-barrows and pick-handles

out of doors, and converting one of the United States rooms into a

reservation for the Modocs, and the other into a corral for buffaloes

and grizzly bears. These, with a mustang poet or two from Oregon, a

few Hard-Shell Democrats, a live American daily paper, with a corps

of reporters trained to squeeze themselves through door-cracks

and key-holes, might retrieve the national honor, if shown up

realistically and artistically.

PRENTICE MULFORD.

GHOSTLY WARRIORS.

So strong a resemblance exists between a battle-scene of a mediaeval

Spanish poet and the culminating incidents of Lord Macaulay's _Battle

of the Lake Regillus_, as to justify somewhat extended citations. Of

the Spanish writer, Professor Longfellow says, in his note upon the

extract from the _Vida de San Millan_ given in the _Poets and Poetry

of Europe_, "Gonzalo de Berceo, the oldest of the Castilian poets

whose name has reached us, was born in 1198. He was a monk in the

monastery of Saint Millan, in Calahorra, and wrote poems on sacred

subjects in Castilian Alexandrines." According to the poem, the

Spaniards, while combating the Moors, were overcome by "a terror

of their foes," since "these were a numerous army, a little handful

those."

And whilst the Christian people stood in this uncertainty,

Upward toward heaven they turned their eyes and fixed their thoughts on high;

And there two persons they beheld, all beautiful and bright,--

Even than the pure new-fallen snow their garments were more white.

They rode upon two horses more white than crystal sheen,

And arms they bore such as before no mortal man had seen.

* * * * *

Their faces were angelical, celestial forms had they,--

And downward through the fields of air they urged their rapid way;

They looked upon the Moorish host with fierce and angry look,

And in their hands, with dire portent, their naked sabres shook.

The Christian host, beholding this, straightway take heart again;

They fall upon their bended knees, all resting on the plain,

And each one with his clenched fist to smite his breast begins,

And promises to God on high he will forsake his sins.

And when the heavenly knights drew near unto the battle-ground,

They dashed among the Moors and dealt unerring blows around;

Such deadly havoc there they made the foremost ranks among,

A panic terror spread unto the hindmost of the throng.

Together with these two good knights, the champions of the sky,

The Christians rallied and began to smite full sore and high.

* * * * *

Down went the misbelievers; fast sped the bloody fight;

Some ghastly and dismembered lay, and some half-dead with fright:

Full sorely they repented that to the field they came,

For they saw that from the battle they should retreat with shame.

* * * * *

Now he that bore the crosier, and the papal crown had on,

Was the glorified Apostle, the brother of Saint John;

And he that held the crucifix, and wore the monkish hood,

Was the holy San Millan of Cogolla's neighborhood.

Turn now to the _Battle of the Lake Regillus_. In a series of

desperate hand-to-hand conflicts the Romans have on the whole been

worsted by the allied Thirty Cities, armed to reinstate the Tarquins

upon their lost throne. Their most vaunted champion, Herminius--"who

kept the bridge so well"--has been slain, and his war-horse, black

Auster, has barely been rescued by the dictator Aulus from the hands

of Titus, the youngest of the Tarquins.

And Aulus the Dictator

Stroked Auster's raven mane;

With heed he looked unto the girths,

With heed unto the rein.

"Now bear me well, black Auster,

Into yon thick array;

And thou and I will have revenge

For thy good lord this day."

So spake he; and was buckling

Tighter black Auster's band,

When he was aware of a princely pair

That rode at his right hand.

So like they were, no mortal

Might one from other know:

White as snow their armor was:

Their steeds were white as snow.

Never on earthly anvil

Did such rare armor gleam;

And never did such gallant steeds

Drink of an earthly stream.

* * * * *

So answered those strange horsemen,

And each couched low his spear;

And forthwith all the ranks of Rome

Were bold and of good cheer:

And on the thirty armies

Came wonder and affright,

And Ardea wavered on the left,

And Cora on the right.

"Rome to the charge!" cried Aulus;

"The foe begins to yield!

Charge for the hearth of Vesta!

Charge for the Golden Shield!

Let no man stop to plunder,

But slay, and slay, and slay;

The gods who live for ever

Are on our side to-day."

Then the fierce trumpet-flourish

From earth to heaven arose;

The kites know well the long stern swell

That bids the Romans close.

* * * * *

And fliers and pursuers

Were mingled in a mass:

And far away the battle

Went roaring through the pass.

The scene of the following stanza is at Rome, where the watchers at

the gates have learned from the Great Twin Brethren the issue of the

day:

And all the people trembled,

And pale grew every cheek;

And Sergius, the High Pontiff,

Alone found voice to speak:

"The gods who live for ever

Have fought for Rome to-day!

These be the Great Twin Brethren

To whom the Dorians pray!"

Of course, we are not to be understood as intimating that Macaulay was

consciously or otherwise guilty of a plagiarism. Indeed, he was at

the pains, in his preface to the poem in question, to point out how

certain of its features were designedly taken, and others might fairly

be conceived to have been taken, from ballads of an age long before

Livy, whom he cites in the matter of the Great Twin Brethren. He has

even detailed a circumstance, in reference to the legendary appearance

of the divine warriors, curiously relevant to the resemblance just

pointed out. "In modern times," he wrote, "a very similar story

actually found credence among a people much more civilized than the

Romans of the fifth century before Christ. A chaplain of Cortez,

writing about thirty years after the conquest of Mexico, ... had the

face to assert that, in an engagement against the Indians, Saint James

had appeared on a gray horse at the head of the Castilian adventurers.

Many of those adventurers were living when this lie was printed. One

of them, honest Bernal Diaz, wrote an account of the expedition....

He says that he was in the battle, and that he saw a gray horse with

a man on his back, but that the man was, to his thinking, Francesco de

Morla, and not the ever-blessed apostle Saint James. 'Nevertheless,'

Bernal adds, 'it may be that the person on the gray horse was the

glorious apostle Saint James, and that I, sinner that I am, was

unworthy to see him.'" Other striking instances of identity between

classical, Castilian and Saxon legends are detailed by Lord Macaulay

in the learned and interesting general preface to his _Lays of Ancient

Rome_. But the reappearance of this particular story in such remote

times and places, and with such marked similarities and variations,

would entitle it to a place among the indestructible popular legends

collated by Mr. Baring-Gould in his _Curious Myths of the Middle

Ages_.

A WARNING TO LOVERS.

"Metildy, you are the most good-for-nothin', triflin', owdacious,

contrary piece that ever lived."

"Oh, ma!" sobbed Matilda, "I couldn' help myself--'deed I couldn'."

"Couldn' help yourself? That's a pretty way to talk! Ain't he a nice

young man?"

"Yes'm."

"Got money?"

"Yes'm."

"And good kinfolks?"

"Yes'm."

"And loves you to destrackshun?"

"Yes'm."

"Well, in the name o' common sense, what did you send him home for?"

"Well, ma, if I must tell the truth, I must, I s'pose, though I'd

ruther die. You see, ma, when he fetcht his cheer clost to mine, and

ketcht holt of my hand, and squez it, and dropt on his knees, then

it was that his eyes rolled and he began breathin' hard, and _his

gallowses kept a creakin and a creakin'_, I till I thought in my soul

somethin' terrible was the matter with his in'ards, his vitals; and

that flustered and skeered me so that I bust out a-cryin'. Seein' me

do that, he creaked worse'n ever, and that made me cry harder; and the

harder I cried the harder he creaked, till all of a sudden it came

to me that it wasn't nothin' but his gallowses; and then I bust out a

laughin' fit to kill myself, right in his face. And then he jumpt

up and run out of the house mad as fire; and he ain't comin' back no

more. Boo-hoo, ahoo, boo-hoo!"

"Metildy," said the old woman sternly, "stop sniv'lin'. You've made

an everlastin' fool of yourself, but your cake ain't all dough yet. It

all comes of them no 'count, fashionable sto' gallowses--' 'spenders'

I believe they calls 'em. Never mind, honey! I'll send for Johnny,

tell him how it happened, 'pologize to him, and knit him a real nice

pair of yarn gallowses, jest like your pa's; and they never do creak."

"Yes, ma," said Matilda, brightening up; "but let _me_ knit 'em."

"So you shall, honey: he'll vally them a heap more than if I knit 'em.

Cheer up, Tildy: it'll all be right--you mind if it won't."

Sure enough, it proved to be all right. Tildy and Johnny were married,

and Johnny's gallowses never creaked any more.

NOTES.

Milton, in his famous description of the woman Delilah, sailing like a

stately ship of Tarsus "with all her bravery on, and tackle trim," is

particular to note "an amber scent of odorous perfume, her harbinger."

Perfume as an adjunct of feminine dress has been celebrated from the

days of the earliest poet, and probably will be to the latest; but

it was reserved for the modern toilet to project a regular theory of

harmony between odors and colors--a theory which might never have been

dreamed of in the studio of the painter, but is not unworthy of the

boudoir of the belle. It is the young Englishwomen at Vienna who, if

we may believe Eugène Chapus, have taken the initiative in this new

refinement of coquetry, which employs not only a greater variety and

quantity of perfume than in previous years, but employs it according

to a certain scientific system. At balls, perfumes are especially _de

rigueur_, and it is in her ball-dress that Araminta aims to establish

a species of relation between the nature of the perfume she carries

and the general character of the toilette she wears. That is to say,

gravely proceeds Monsieur Chapus, if pink predominates in the stuff

of her gown, the proper perfume will be essence of roses; if light

yellow, it will be Portugal water; if the color be réséda (which has

such a run at present for ladies' costumes), the chosen perfume

will be an essence of mignonette; and so on with the other flowers

corresponding to the shades commonly used in fresh ball-toilettes.

Undoubtedly to a Rimmel the relation between different odors and

different styles of personal beauty or personal traits would be

as obvious as is this newly-discovered harmony between perfume and

costume; but we fear that the new fashion is due to coquettish art

rather than aesthetic taste, and that, like many another whim of

the drawing-room, it will die out before the science is fairly

established.

* * * * *

The _enfant terrible_ plays an important rôle in literature as in

society during these modern days, and although a little of him goes a

good way, yet it must be owned that his sayings are sometimes spicy.

A grandfather was holding Master Tom, a youth of five, on his knees,

when the youngster suddenly asked him why his hair was white. "Oh,"

says grandpapa, "that's because I'm so old. Why, don't you know that I

was in the ark?"

"In the ark?" cries Tommy: "why you aren't Noah, are you, grandpapa?"

"Oh no, I'm not Noah."

"Ah, then you're Shem."

"No, not Shem, either."

"Oh, then I suppose you're Japhet."

"No, you haven't guessed right: I'm not Japhet."

"Well, then, grandpapa," said the child, driven to the extremity of

his biblical knowledge, "you must be one of the beasts."

Not less critical was the comment of a lad who was taken to church one

Sunday for the first time.

"You see, Augustus," said his fond mamma, anxious to impress his

tender mind at such a moment with lasting remembrances, "how many

people come here to pray to God?"

"Yes, but not so many as go to the circus," says the practical lad.

Quite natural, also, was the reply of a little lady who was found

crying by her mother because one of her companions had given her a

slap.

"Well, I hope you paid her back?" cried the angry mother, her

indignation getting the better of her judgment.

"Oh yes, I paid her back _before-hand_!"

Another little girl, after attending the funeral of one of her

schoolmates, which ceremony had been conducted at the school, was

giving an animated account of the exercises on her return home.

"And I suppose you were all sobbing as if your hearts would break,

poor things!" says papa.

"Oh no," replies the child: "only the front row cried."

* * * * *

It was one of the features of the shah-mania that British journalism

was overrun and surfeited with Persian topics, Persian allusions and

fragments of the Persian language and literature. Every pedant of

the press displayed an unexpected and astonishing acquaintance with

Persian history, Persian geography, Persian manners and customs.

Desperate cramming was done to get up Persian quotations for leading

articles, or at least a saying or two from Hafiz or Saadi of the sort

commonly found at the end of a lexicon or in some popular book of

maxims. Ludicrous disputes arose between morning papers as to the

comparative profundity of each other's researches into Persian lore;

but the climax was capped, we think, by one London journal, which

politely offered advice to Nasr-ed-Dîn about his conduct and his

reading. "Should Nasr-ed-Dîn be impressed by English flattery," said

this editor gravely, "with an exaggerated sense of his own importance,

His Majesty, as a corrective, may recall to mind the Persian fable of

'Ushter wa Dirâz-kush,' from the 'Baharistân' of Jaumy." In ordinary

times an explanation might be vouchsafed of what the said fable

is, but none was given in the present instance, it being taken for

granted, during the shah's visit, that the Baharistân of Jaumy was as

familiar to the average Englishman as Mother Goose. Upon the whole,

our country has not been wholly unfortunate in not seeing the shah.

Horace's famous "Persicos odi, puer, apparatus," has a very close

application in the "Persian stuff" with which British journalism has

lately been flooded.

How various his employments whom the world

Calls idle!

says Cowper. To describe the holiday amusement provided for the shah

in England as having been a grand "variety entertainment" would feebly

represent the mixture actually furnished him. One day, for example

(a Monday), His Majesty began by reviewing the Fire Brigade; and then

Captain Shaw was presented to the shah--likewise Colonel Hogg; and

then, according to the _Morning Advertiser_, "Joe Goss, Ned Donelly,

Alex. Lawson, and young Horn had the honor of appearing and boxing

before the shah and a small company, at which His Majesty seemed

highly delighted;" and next came deputations successively from

the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Society for the

Promotion of Christian Knowledge, the Bible Society, the Church

Missionary Society, and the Evangelical Alliance; then a deputation

from the Mohammedans residing in London was presented, and Sir Moses

Montefiore had a private interview with His Majesty; and finally, to

wind up the day's programme, the shah, attended by many princes and

princesses, and an audience of 34,000 people, witnessed a performance

at the Crystal Palace expressly selected to suit his taste--namely,

gymnastic feats by Germans and Japanese, followed by "Signor Romah"

on the trapeze. All this was done before dinner; and the curious

combination of piety and pugilism, missionaries and acrobats, may be

supposed to have had the effect of duly "impressing" the illustrious

guest.

A French writer some time since informed his countrymen that in

America wooden hams were a regular article of manufacture. This is a

fact not generally known; but at any rate, according to Pierre Véron,

we have not yet quite outdone the Old World in the arts of commercial

fraud. Worthy Johnny Crapaud used to flatter himself that he outwitted

the grocers in buying his coffee unground, but now rogues make

artificial coffee-kernels in a mould, and the Paris police court

(which does not appreciate ingenuity of that sort) lately gave

six months in prison to some makers of sham coffee-grains, thus

interfering with a business which was earning twenty thousand dollars

a year. Some of the Paris pastry-cooks make balls for _vol-au-vent_

with a hash of rags allowed to soak in gravy; sham larks and

partridges for pâtés are constructed out of chopped-up meat, neatly

shaped to represent those birds; peddlers of sweet-meats sell

marshmallow paste made out of Spanish white; the fish-merchant inserts

the eyes of a fresh mackerel in a stale turbot, to trick his sharp

customers; and as to drinks, one dyer boldly puts over his door

"Burgundy Vintages!" They make marble of pasteboard and diamonds

of glass. Adulteration on adulteration, moans M. Véron, all is

adulteration!

* * * * *

The problem of aërial navigation seems at present to be agitating as

many pseudo-scientific minds as did that of perpetual motion not many

years ago, or the philosopher's stone at a more remote period. It

possesses perhaps a still stronger attraction in the danger connected

with the experiments--the source, we suppose, of the eagerness shown

by Professor Wise and his associates to _fly_ to evils that they

know not of. Perpetual motion received its quietus from the blasts of

ridicule. Air-voyaging has a worse foe to encounter. It may survive

the attacks of gayety, but it will succumb, we fancy, to the

resistless force of _gravity_.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Scintillations from the Prose Works of Heinrich Heine. New York: Holt

& Williams.

The task formerly undertaken by Mr. Charles Godfrey Leland, in

adapting to our language the songs of Heine, is now well supplemented

with some versions from among his prose works by another Philadelphian

translator, Mr. Simon Adler Stern. Heine's prose, delicate in its

pellucid brightness as any of his poetry, cannot be held too precious

by the interpreter. The latter must have all his wits about him, or he

will not find English at once simple enough and distinguished enough

to stand for the original. To get at Heine's prose exactly in another

language must be almost as hard as to get at his poetry. The principal

selection made by Mr. Stern is a long rambling rhapsody called

"Florentine Nights," in which the author professes to pour into the

ears of a dying mistress the history of some of his former amours and

exaltations, the natural jealousy of the listener going for a stimulus

in the recital. His first love, however, is an idealization--a Greek

statue which he visits by moonlight, as Sordello in Browning's poem

does the

Shrinking Caryatides

Of just-tinged marble, like Eve's lilied flesh.

This weird love-ballad in prose must have taxed the translator almost

as much as if it had been in rhyme; for although an interpreter of

poetry undeniably has the difficulties of form to struggle with, yet

there is, on the other hand, an inspiration and waft of feeling in the

metre which lends him wings and helps him on. If Mr. Stern does not

encumber his style with a betrayal of the difficulties he has got

over--if he does not give us pedantry and double-epithets, so common

in vulgar renderings from the German--he certainly shows no timidity

in turning the polished familiarity of Heine's prose into our

commonest vernacular. "What lots of pleasure I found on my arrival;"

"for the men, lots of patience:" trivialities of expression like these

are not rare in his version. If they are not quite what Heine would

have written if he had been writing in English, at least the fault

of familiarity is better than the fault of hardness; and these

translations are never at all hard or uncomfortable. When we add that

Mr. Stern gives us an index without showing what works the extracts

are taken from, and that he gives us an article on Heine without any

mention that we can discover of Heine's wife, we have vented about all

the objections we can make to this welcome publication; and they are

very few to find in a collection of hundreds of "scintillations."

The pleasures that remain for the reader are manifold: so liberally

and judiciously are the extracts chosen that we get a complete exhibit

of Heine's mind on nearly all the topics he occupied himself about. We

have his views on French and German politicians; on French, German and

English authors; on art and poetry; on his own soul and character; on

religion; besides a great deal of that persiflage, the most exquisite

persiflage surely that ever was heard, which flutters clear away from

the regions of sense and information, yet which only a man of sense

and information could have uttered.

Heine came to Paris in 1831, and saw all the sights and found

everything "charming." His wit is a little cheap, perhaps, when he

calls the Senate Chamber at the Luxembourg "the necropolis in which

the mummies of perjury are embalmed;" at least it becomes tiresome to

hear his constant disparagement of the politics which he chose to live

under, and which protected him so agreeably; but he is his own keen

self where he observes that the signs of the revolution of 1830,

what he calls the legend of _liberté, egalité, fraternité_ at the

street-corners, had "already been wiped away." Victor Hugo, for his

part, did not find it so: he says that the years 1831 and 1832 have,

in relation to the revolution of July, the aspect of two mountains,

where you can distinguish precipices, and that they embody "la

grandeur révolutionnaire." The cooler spectator from Hamburg inspects

at Paris "the giraffe, the three-legged goat, the kangaroos," without

much of the vertigo of precipices, and he sees "M. de La Fayette and

his white locks--at different places, however," for the latter were

in a locket and the hero was in his brown wig. Elsewhere he associates

"the virtuous La Fayette and James Watt the cotton-spinner." The age

of industry, commerce and the Citizen-King, in fact, was not quite

suited to the poet who celebrated Napoleon; yet was Heine's admiration

of Napoleon not such as an epic hero would be comfortable under:

"Cromwell never sank so low as to suffer a priest to anoint him

emperor," he says in allusion to the coronation. He respects Napoleon

as the last great aristocrat, and says the combined powers ought to

have supported instead of overturned him, for his defeat precipitated

the coming in of modern ideas. The prospect for the world after his

death was "at the best to be bored to death by the monotony of a

republic." Ardent patriots in this country need not go for sympathy to

the king-scorner Heine. For the theory of a commonwealth he had small

love: "That which oppresses me is the artist's and the scholar's

secret dread, lest our modern civilization, the laboriously achieved

result of so many centuries of effort, will be endangered I by the

triumph of Communism." We have drifted into the citation of these

sentiments because many conservatives think of Heine only as an

irreconcilable destroyer and revolutionist, and do not care to welcome

in him the basis of attachment to order which must underlie every

artist's or author's love of freedom. "Soldier in the liberation of

humanity" as he was, that liberation was to be the result of growth,

not of destruction. As for Communism, it talks but "hunger, _envy_

and death." It has but one faith, happiness on this earth; and the

millennium it foresees is "a single shepherd and a single flock, all

shorn after the same pattern, and bleating alike." Such passages are

the true reflection of Heine's keen but not great mind, miserably

bandied between the hopes of a republican future, that was to be the

death of art and literature, and the rags of a feudal present, whose

conditions sustained him while they disgusted him. If Heine fought,

scratched and bit with all his might among the convulsions of the

politics he was helpless to rearrange, he was equally mordant when

he turned his attention to society, and perhaps more frightfully

impartial. He hated the English for "their idle curiosity, bedizened

awkwardness, impudent bashfulness, angular egotism, and vacant delight

in all melancholy objects." As for the French, they are "les comédiens

ordinaires du bon Dieu;" yet "a blaspheming Frenchman is a spectacle

more pleasing to the Lord than a praying Englishman." And Germany:

"Germany alone possesses those colossal fools whose caps reach unto

the heavens, and delight the stars with the ringing of their bells."

Thus shooting forth his tongue on every side, Heine is shown "in

action" by this little cluster of "scintillations," and the whole

book is the shortest definition of him possible, for it makes the

saliencies of his character jut out within a close compass. It can be

read in a couple of hours, and no reading of the same length in any

of his complete writings would give such a notion of the most witty,

perverse, tender, savage, pitiable and inexcusable of men.

* * * * *

Monographs, Personal and Social. By Lord Houghton. New York: Holt &

Williams.

Lord Houghton is one of those fortunate persons who seem to find

without trouble the exact niches in life which Nature has designed

them to fill. There probably never entered the world a man more

eminently made to appreciate the best kind of "high life" which London

has offered in the present century; and he has been able to avail

himself of it to his heart's content. The son of a Yorkshire squire in

affluent circumstances and of high character, Monckton Milnes was not

spoilt by finding, as he might have done had he been the heir to a

dukedom, the world at his feet; whilst at the same time all the good

things were within his reach by a little of that exertion which does

so much toward enhancing the enjoyment of them. From the period of his

entry upon London life he displayed that anxiety to know celebrities

which, though in a somewhat different way, was a marked feature of

his contemporary and acquaintance, Crabb Robinson; and the story

illustrative of this tendency which gained him the _sobriquet_ of "the

cool of the evening" will be always associated with the name he has

since merged in a less familiar title.

Lord Houghton has now passed through some sixty London seasons, during

which he has been more or less acquainted with nearly every social and

literary celebrity in the English metropolis. Having regard to this

circumstance, and the fact of his possessing a polished and graceful

style of expressing himself, one would naturally expect a great deal

from this volume of reminiscences. Nor will such expectations be

entirely disappointed. The monographs are eight in number, and will be

read with varying degrees of interest, according to the taste of

the reader, as well as the subjects and quality of the papers. The

portrait which will perhaps be the newest to American readers is that

of Harriet, Lady Ashburton, wife of the second Baring who bore that

title. Lady Ashburton was daughter of the earl of Sandwich, and Lord

Houghton says of her: "She was an instance in which aristocracy gave

of its best and showed at its best, although she may have owed little

to the qualities she inherited from an irascible race and to an

unaffectionate education"--a sentence reminding us of a remark in

the London _Times_, that "with certain noble houses people are apt

to associate certain qualities--with the Berkeleys, for instance, a

series of disgraceful family quarrels." Lady Ashburton appears to us

from this account to have been a brilliant spoilt child of fortune,

who availed herself of her great social position to do and say what,

had she remained Lady Harriet Montagu with the pittance of a poor

nobleman's daughter, she would hardly have dared to do or say. It

is one of the weak points of society in England that a woman who has

rank, wealth, and ability, and contrives to surround herself with men

of wit to whom she renders her house delightful, can be as hard and

rude as she pleases to the world in general. Fortunately, in most

cases native kindness of heart usually hurries to heal the wound that

"wicked wit" may have made. This would scarcely seem to have been so

with Lady Ashburton, for Lord Houghton tells us that "many who would

not have cared for a quiet defeat shrank from the merriment of her

victory," one of them saying, "I do not mind being knocked down, but

I can't stand being danced upon afterward." Lord Houghton,

however, defines this "jumping" as "a joyous sincerity that no

conventionalities, high or low, could restrain--a festive nature

flowing through the artificial soil of elevated life." And it must be

owned that there was at least nothing petty or rancorous in a nature

which showed so rare an appreciation of genius, and an equal capacity

for warm and disinterested friendship.

In contrast with this chapter is the one on the Berrys, which is

full of interesting details in regard to those remarkable women, and

reveals a pathetic history hardly to have been expected in connection

with the amusing gossip that has hitherto clustered around their

names.

But by far the most interesting paper is that on Heinrich Heine. A

letter from an English lady whom Heine had known and petted in her

childhood, and who visited the poet in his last days, when he himself,

wasted by disease, "seemed no bigger than a child under the sheet that

covered him," gives what is perhaps the most lifelike picture we

have ever had of a nature that seems equally to court and to baffle

comprehension. Lord Houghton has little to add, on this subject, from

his personal recollections; but his comments upon it evince perhaps

as close a study and sagacious criticism, if not as much subtlety of

thought, as Matthew Arnold's famous essay. The following passage, for

example, sums up very felicitously the social aspect of Germany, and

its influence on Heine: "The poem of 'Deutschland' is the one of his

works where his humor runs over into the coarsest satire, and the

malice can only be excused by the remembrance that he too had been

exposed to some of the evil influences of a servile condition. Among

these may no doubt be reckoned the position of a man of commercial

origin and literary occupation in his relation to the upper order of

society in the northern parts of Germany. ...Here there remained, and

after all the events of the last year there still remains, sufficient

element of discontent to justify the recorded expression of a

philosophic German statesman, that 'in Prussia the war of classes had

still to be fought out.'"

Of the other papers in the volume, those on Humboldt, Landor and

Sydney Smith, though readable, contain little to supplement the

biographies and correspondence that have long been before the world;

while the one on "Suleiman Pasha" (Colonel Selves) suggests a doubt

whether Lord Houghton has always taken pains to sift the information

he has so eagerly accumulated. When we find him stating that the siege

of Lyons occurred under the _Directory_--which it preceded by a year

or two; that his hero, then seven years old, "grew up," entered

the navy, was present at the battle of Trafalgar (1805), and,

_subsequently_ enlisted "in the Army of Italy, then flushed with

triumph, but glad to receive young and vigorous recruits"--language

indicating the campaign of 1796-97; that "soon after his enrollment in

the regiment it became necessary to instruct the cavalry soldiers

in infantry practice, and young Selves' knowledge of the exercise

[acquired apparently on shipboard] was of the greatest use and

_brought him into general notice_"--making him, we may infer, a

special favorite of Bonaparte;--we can easily believe that these

things were related, as he tells us they were, "with epic simplicity,"

and may even conclude that some other qualities of the epic would to

more cautious ears have been equally perceptible in the narration. Of

a like character, we suspect, is the statement that Selves, being on

the staff of Grouchy on the day of Waterloo, "urgently represented

to that general the propriety of joining the main body of the army as

soon as the Prussians, whom he had been sent to intercept, were out of

sight." Lord Houghton has evidently not read the best and most recent

criticisms on the Waterloo campaign, but he should at least have known

that Grouchy was sent, not to intercept, but to follow the Prussians

in their retreat from Ligny, and that, if he lost sight of them,

it was because, instead of falling back on their own line of

communication, as Napoleon had expected them to do, they turned off to

effect a junction with the English army.

_Books Received_.

Key to North American Birds: containing a concise account of every

species of living and fossil bird at present known from the continent

north of the Mexican and United States boundary. Illustrated by six

steel plates and upward of two hundred and fifty wood-cuts. By Elliott

Coues, Assistant Surgeon United States Army. Salem: Naturalists'

Agency.

Modern Diabolism, commonly called Modern Spiritualism, with New

Theories of Light, Heat, Electricity and Sound. By M.J. Williamson.

New York: James Miller.

The True Method of Representation in Large Constituencies. By C.C.P.

Clarke of Oswego, N.Y. New York: Baker & Godwin.

On the Eve: A Tale. By Ivan S. Turgénieff. Translated from the Russian

by C.E. Turner. New York: Holt & Williams.

The Prophecies of Isaiah: A New and Critical Translation. By Franz

Delitzsch, D.D. Philadelphia: The Lutheran Bookstore.

Harry Coverdale's Courtship and Marriage. By Frank E. Smedley.

Illustrated. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

Afoot and Alone: A Walk from Sea to Sea by the Southern Route.

Illustrated. Hartford: Columbian Book Company.