CHAPTER I.

CRUSOE IN NEW YORK, AND OTHER TALES.

BY EDWARD E. HALE,

AUTHOR OF "THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY," "IN HIS NAME," "TEN TIMES ONE IS

TEN," "HOW TO DO IT," "HIS LEVEL BEST," ETC.

BOSTON:

ROBERTS BROTHERS.

1880.

_Copyright_, 1880,

BY ROBERTS BROTHERS.

UNIVERSITY PRESS:

JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.

PREFACE.

So far as these little stories have met the public eye, they have

called forth criticism from two points of view. It is said, on the one

hand, that the moral protrudes too obviously; that if a preacher wants

to preach, he had better preach and be done with it; that, in the

nineteenth century, which is given to realism, nobody wants "invented

example," or stories written to enforce certain theories of right. It

is said, on the other hand, that the stories have no right to be,

because they have no purpose; that nobody can tell what the author is

driving at,--perhaps he cannot tell himself; and that, in the

nineteenth century, nobody has any right to thrust upon an exhausted

world stories which are not true unless they teach a lesson.

It was early settled for me by the critics, in my little experience as

a story-writer, that it is wrong for an author to make his stories

probable,--that he who does this is "a forger and a counterfeiter."

There is, however, high authority for teaching by parable--and that

parable which has a very great air of probability.

My limited experience as an editor has taught me, that, whatever else

people will read or will not read, they do read short stories, on the

whole, more than they read anything else,--nineteenth century to the

contrary notwithstanding.

Whether these little tales have any right to be or not, they exist. To

those who think they should have been cast in the shape of sermons, I

have only to say that there also exist already, in that form of

instructions, one thousand and ninety-six short essays by the same

author, to which number every week of his strength and health makes an

addition. These are open to the perusal or the hearing of any person

who is not "partial to stories," to use an expressive national dialect.

Some few even are for sale in print by the publishers of these tales.

The little book is dedicated, with the author's thanks, to those kind

readers who have followed his earlier stories, and have been so

tolerant that they were willing to ask for more.

MATUNUCK ON THE HILL, RHODE ISLAND,

July 15, 1880.

CONTENTS.

CRUSOE IN NEW YORK

ALIF-LAILA

A CIVIL SERVANT

NICOLETTE AND AUCASSIN

THE LOST PALACE

THE WESTERN GINEVRA:

BOUGHT

SOLD

CAUGHT AND TOLD

MAX KEESLER'S HORSE-CAR:

THE PAINT-SHOP

THE WOMAN BEGAN IT

A LODGMENT MADE

AN EXPERIMENT

REGULAR WORK

YOUR UNCLE

THE END

THE MODERN PSYCHE

CRUSOE IN NEW YORK.

PART I.

I was born in the year 1842, in the city of New York, of a good family,

though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who

settled first in England. He got a good estate by merchandise, and

afterward lived at New York. But first he had married my mother, whose

relations were named Robinson--a very good family in her country--and

from them I was named.

My father died before I can remember--at least, I believe so. For,

although I sometimes figure to myself a grave, elderly man, thickset

and wearing a broad-brimmed hat, holding me between his knees and

advising me seriously, I cannot say really whether this were my father

or no; or, rather, whether this is really some one I remember or no.

For my mother, with whom I have lived alone much of my life, as the

reader will see, has talked to me of my father so much, and has

described him to me so faithfully, that I cannot tell but it is her

description of him that I recollect so easily. And so, as I say, I

cannot tell whether I remember him or no.

He never lost his German notions, and perhaps they gained in England

some new force as to the way in which boys should be bred. At least,

for myself, I know that he left to my mother strict charge that I

should be bound 'prentice to a carpenter as soon as I was turned of

fourteen. I have often heard her say that this was the last thing he

spoke to her of when he was dying; and, with the tears in her eyes, she

promised him it should be so. And though it cost her a world of

trouble--so changed were times and customs--to find an old-fashioned

master who would take me for an apprentice, she was as good as her

word.

I should like to tell the story of my apprenticeship, if I supposed the

reader cared as much about it as I do; but I must rather come to that

part of my life which is remarkable, than hold to that which is more

like the life of many other boys. My father's property was lost or was

wasted, I know not how, so that my poor mother had but a hard time of

it; and when I was just turned of twenty-one and was free of my

apprenticeship, she had but little to live upon but what I could bring

home, and what she could earn by her needle. This was no grief to me,

for I was fond of my trade, and I had learned it well. My old master

was fond of me, and would trust me with work of a good deal of

responsibility. I neither drank nor smoked, nor was I overfond of the

amusements which took up a good deal of the time of my fellow-workmen.

I was most pleased when, on pay-day, I could carry home to my mother

ten, fifteen, or even twenty dollars--could throw it into her lap, and

kiss her and make her kiss me.

"Here is the oil for the lamp, my darling," I would say; or, "Here is

the grease for the wheels"; or, "Now you must give me white sugar twice

a day." She was a good manager, and she made both ends meet very well.

I had no thought of leaving my master when my apprenticeship was over,

nor had he any thought of letting me go. We understood each other well,

he liked me and I liked him. He knew that he had in me one man who was

not afraid of work, as he would say, and who would not shirk it. And

so, indeed, he would often put me in charge of parties of workmen who

were much older than I was.

So it was that it happened, perhaps some months after I had become a

journeyman, that he told me to take a gang of men, whom he named, and

to go quite up-town in the city, to put a close wooden fence around a

vacant lot of land there. One of his regular employers had come to him,

to say that this lot of land was to be enclosed, and the work was to be

done by him. He had sent round the lumber, and he told me that I would

find it on the ground. He gave me, in writing, the general directions

by which the fence was ordered, and told me to use my best judgment in

carrying them out. "Only take care," said he, "that you do it as well

as if I was there myself. Do not be in a hurry, and be sure your work

stands."

I was well pleased to be left thus to my own judgment. I had no fear of

failing to do the job well, or of displeasing my old master or his

employer. If I had any doubts, they were about the men who were to work

under my lead, whom I did not rate at all equally; and, if I could have

had my pick, I should have thrown out some of the more sulky and lazy

of them, and should have chosen from the other hands. But youngsters

must not be choosers when they are on their first commissions.

I had my party well at work, with some laborers whom we had hired to

dig our post-holes, when a white-haired old man, with gold spectacles

and a broad-brimmed hat, alighted from a cab upon the sidewalk, watched

the men for a minute at their work, and then accosted me. I knew him

perfectly, though of course he did not remember me. He was, in fact, my

employer in this very job, for he was old Mark Henry, a Quaker

gentleman of Philadelphia, who was guardian of the infant heirs who

owned this block of land which we were enclosing. My master did all the

carpenter's work in the New York houses which Mark Henry or any of his

wards owned, and I had often seen him at the shop in consultation. I

turned to him and explained to him the plans for the work. We had

already some of the joists cut, which were to make the posts to our

fence. The old man measured them with his cane, and said he thought

they would not be long enough.

I explained to him that the fence was to be eight feet high, and that

these were quite long enough for that.

"I know," he said, "I know, my young friend, that my order was for a

fence eight feet high, but I do not think that will do."

With some surprise I showed him, by a "ten-foot pole," how high the

fence would come.

"Yes, my young friend, I see, I see. But I tell thee, every beggar's

brat in the ward will be over thy fence before it has been built a

week, and there will be I know not what devices of Satan carried on in

the inside. All the junk from the North River will be hidden there, and

I shall be in luck if some stolen trunk, nay, some dead man's body, is

not stowed away there. Ah, my young friend, if thee is ever unhappy

enough to own a vacant lot in the city, thee will know much that thee

does not know now of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. Thee will know of

trials of the spirit and of the temper that thee has never yet

experienced."

I said I thought this was probable, but I thought inwardly that I would

gladly be tried that way. The old man went on:--

"I said eight feet to friend Silas, but thee may say to him that I have

thought better of it, and that I have ordered thee to make the fence

ten feet high. Thee may say that I am now going to Philadelphia, but

that I will write to him my order when I arrive. Meanwhile thee will go

on with the fence as I bid thee."

And so the old man entered his cab again, and rode away.

I amused myself at his notion, for I knew very well that the

street-boys and other loafers would storm his ten-foot wall as readily

as they would have stormed the Malakoff or the Redan, had they supposed

there was anything to gain by doing it. I had, of course, to condemn

some of my posts, which were already cut, or to work them in to other

parts of the fence. My order for spruce boards was to be enlarged by

twenty per cent by the old man's direction, and this, as it happened,

led to a new arrangement of my piles of lumber on my vacant land.

And all this it was which set me to thinking that night, as I looked on

the work, that I might attempt another enterprise, which, as it proved,

lasted me for years, and which I am now going to describe.

I had worked diligently with the men to set up some fifty feet of the

fence where it parted us from an alley-way, for I wanted a chance to

dry some of the boards, which had just been hauled from a raft in the

North River. The truckmen had delivered them helter-skelter, and they

lay, still soaking, above each other on our vacant lot.

We turned all our force on this first piece of fence, and had so much

of it done that, by calling off the men just before sundown, I was able

to set up all the wet boards, each with one end resting on the fence

and the other on the ground, so that they took the air on both sides,

and would dry more quickly. Of course this left a long, dark tunnel

underneath.

As the other hands gathered up their tools and made ready to go, a

fellow named McLoughlin, who had gone out with one of the three months'

regiments not long before, said:--

"I would not be sorry to sleep there. I have slept in many a worse

place than that in Dixie"; and on that he went away, leaving me to make

some measurements which I needed the next day. But what he said rested

in my mind, and, as it happened, directed the next twelve years of my

life.

Why should not I live here? How often my mother had said that, if she

had only a house of her own, she should be perfectly happy! Why should

not we have a house of our own here, just as comfortable as if we had

gone a thousand miles out on the prairie to build it, and a great deal

nearer to the book-stores, to the good music, to her old friends, and

to my good wages? We had talked a thousand times of moving together to

Kansas, where I was to build a little hut for her, and we were to be

very happy together. But why not do as the minister had bidden us only

the last Sunday--seize on to-day, and take what Providence offered now?

I must acknowledge that the thought of paying any ground rent to old

Mr. Henry did not occur to me then--no, nor for years afterward. On the

other hand, all that I thought of was this,--that here was as good a

chance as there was in Kansas to live without rent, and that rent had

been, was still, and was likely to be my bugbear, unless I hit on some

such scheme as this for abating it.

The plan, to be short, filled my mind. There was nothing in the way of

house-building which I shrank from now, for, in learning my trade, I

had won my Aladdin's lamp, and I could build my mother a palace, if she

had needed one. Pleased with my fancy, before it was dark I had

explored my principality from every corner, and learned all its

capabilities.

The lot was an oblong, nearly three times as long as it was wide. On

the west side, which was one of the short sides, it faced what I will

call the Ninety-ninth Avenue, and on the south side, what I will call

Fernando Street, though really it was one of the cross-streets with

numbers. Running to the east it came to a narrow passage-way which had

been reserved for the accommodation of the rear of a church which

fronted on the street just north of us. Our back line was also the back

line of the yards of the houses on the same street, but on our

northeast corner the church ran back as far as the back line of both

houses and yards, and its high brick wall--nearly fifty feet high--took

the place there of the ten-foot brick wall, surmounted by bottle-glass,

which made their rear defence.

The moment my mind was turned to the matter, I saw that in the rear of

the church there was a corner, which lay warmly and pleasantly to the

southern and western sun, which was still out of eye-shot from the

street, pleasantly removed from the avenue passing, and only liable to

inspection, indeed, from the dwelling-houses on the opposite side of

our street,--houses which, at this moment, were not quite finished,

though they would be occupied soon.

If, therefore, I could hit on some way of screening my mother's castle

from them--for a castle I called it from the first moment, though it

was to be much more like a cottage--I need fear no observation from

other quarters; for the avenue was broad, and on the other side from us

there was a range of low, rambling buildings--an engine-house and a

long liquor-saloon were two--which had but one story. Most of them had

been built, I suppose, only to earn something for the land while it was

growing valuable. The church had no windows in the rear, and that

protected my castle--which was, indeed, still in the air--from all

observation on that side.

I told my mother nothing of all this when I went home. But I did tell

her that I had some calculations to make for my work, and that was

enough. She went on, sweet soul! without speaking a word, with her

knitting and her sewing, at her end of the table, only getting up to

throw a cloth over her parrot's cage when he was noisy; and I sat at my

end of the table, at work over my figures, as silent as if I had been

on a desert island.

Before bedtime I had quite satisfied myself with the plan of a very

pretty little house which would come quite within our space, our means,

and our shelter. There was a little passage which ran quite across from

east to west. On the church side of this there was my mother's kitchen,

which was to be what I fondly marked the "common-room." This was quite

long from east to west, and not more than half as long the other way.

But on the east side, where I could have no windows, I cut off, on its

whole width, a deep closet; and this proved a very fortunate thing

afterward, as you shall see. On the west side I made one large square

window, and there was, of course, a door into the passage.

On the south side of the passage I made three rooms, each narrow and

long. The two outside rooms I meant to light from the top. Whether I

would put any skylight into the room between them, I was not quite so

certain; I did not expect visitors in my new house, so I did not mark

it a "guest-room" in the plan. But I thought of it as a storeroom, and

as such, indeed, for many years we used it; though at last I found it

more convenient to cut a sky-light in the roof there also. But I am

getting before my story.

Before I had gone to bed that night I had made a careful estimate as to

how much lumber I should need, of different kinds, for my little house;

for I had, of course, no right to use my master's lumber nor Mr.

Henry's; nor had I any thought of doing so. I made out an estimate that

would be quite full, for shingles, for clapboards, white pine for my

floors and finish,--for I meant to make good a job of it if I made

any,--and for laths for the inside work. I made another list of the

locks, hinges, window furniture and other hardware I should need; but

for this I cared less, as I need not order them so soon. I could

scarcely refrain from showing my plan to my mother, so snug and

comfortable did it look already; but I had already determined that the

"city house" should be a present to her on her next birthday, and that

till then I would keep it a secret from her, as from all the world; so

I refrained.

The next morning I told my master what the old Quaker had directed

about the fence, and I took his order for the new lumber we should need

to raise the height as was proposed. At the same time I told him that

we were all annoyed at the need of carrying our tools back and forth,

and because we could only take the nails for one day's use; and that,

if he were willing, I had a mind to risk an old chest I had with the

nails in it and a few tools, which I thought I could so hide that the

wharf-rats and other loafers should not discover it. He told me to do

as I pleased, that he would risk the nails if I would risk my tools;

and so, by borrowing what we call a hand-cart for a few days, I was

able to take up my own little things to the lot without his asking any

other questions, or without exciting the curiosity of McLoughlin or any

other of the men. Of course, he would have sent up in the shop-wagon

anything we needed; but it was far out of the way, and nobody wanted to

drive the team back at night if we could do without. And so, as night

came on, I left the men at their work, and having loaded my hand-cart

with a small chest I had, I took that into the alley-way of which I

told you before, carried my box of tools into the corner between the

church and our fence, under the boards which we had set up to-day, and

covered it heavily, with McLoughlin's help, with joists and boards, so

that no light work would remove them, if, indeed, any wanderer of the

night suspected that the box was there. I took the hand-cart out into

the alley-way and chained it, first by the wheel and then by the

handle, in two staples which I drove there. I had another purpose in

this, as you shall see; but most of all, I wanted to test both the

police and the knavishness of the neighborhood, by seeing if the

hand-cart were there in the morning.

To my great joy it was, and to my greater joy it remained there

unmolested all the rest of the week in which we worked there. For my

master, who never came near us himself, increased our force for us on

the third day, so that at the end of the week, or Saturday night, the

job was nearly done, and well done, too.

On the third day I had taken the precaution to throw out in the inside

of our inclosure a sort of open fence, on which I could put the wet

boards to dry, which at first I had placed on our side fence. I told

McLoughlin, what was true enough, that the south sun was better for

them than the sun from the west. So I ran out what I may call a screen

thirty-five feet from the church, and parallel with it, on which I set

up these boards to dry, and to my great joy I saw that they would

wholly protect the roof of my little house from any observation from

the houses the other side of the way while the workmen were at work, or

even after they were inhabited.

There was not one of the workmen with me who had forethought enough or

care for our master's interest to ask whose boards those were which we

left there, or why we left them there. Indeed, they knew the next

Monday that I went up with Fergus, the Swede, to bring back such lumber

as we did not use, and none of them knew or cared how much we left

there.

For me, I was only eager to get to work, and that day seemed very long

to me. But that Monday afternoon I asked my master if I might have the

team again for my own use for an hour or so, to move some stuff of mine

and my mother's, and he gave it to me readily.

I had then only to drive up-town to a friendly lumberman's, where my

own stuff was already lying waiting for me to load up, with the

assistance of the workmen there, and to drive as quickly as I could

into the church alley. Here I looked around, and seeing a German who

looked as if he were only a day from Bremen, I made signs to him that

if he would help me I would give him a piece of scrip which I showed

him. The man had been long enough in the country to know that the scrip

was good for lager. He took hold manfully with me, and carried my

timbers and boards into the inclosure through a gap I made in the fence

for the purpose. I gave him his money, and he went away. As he went to

Minnesota the next day, he never mentioned to anybody the business he

had been engaged in.

Meanwhile, I had bought my hand-cart of the man who owned it. I left a

little pile of heavy cedar logs on the outside, spiking them to each

other, indeed, that they should not be easily moved. And to them and to

my posts I padlocked the hand-cart; nor was it ever disturbed during my

reign in those regions. So I had easy method enough when I wanted a

bundle or two of laths, or a bunch of shingles, or anything else for my

castle, to bring them up in the cool of the evening, and to discharge

my load without special observation. My pile of logs, indeed, grew

eventually into a blind or screen, which quite protected that corner of

the church alley from the view of any passer-by in Fernando Street.

Of that whole summer, happy and bright as it all was, I look back most

often on the first morning when I got fairly to work on my new home. I

told my mother that for some weeks I should have to start early, and

that she must not think of getting up for my breakfast. I told her that

there was extra work on a job up-town, and that I had promised to be

there at five every day while the summer lasted. She left for me a pot

of coffee, which I promised her I would warm when the time for

breakfast and dinner came; and for the rest, she always had my dinner

ready in my tin dinner-pail. Little did she know then, sweet saint!

that I was often at Fernando Street by half-past three in the first

sweet gray of those summer days.

On that particular day, it was really scarcely light enough for me to

find the nail I drew from the plank which I left for my entrance. When

I was fairly within and the plank was replaced, I felt that I was

indeed monarch of all I surveyed. What did I survey? The church wall on

the north; on the south, my own screen of spruce boards, now well dry;

on the east and west, the ten-foot fence which I had built myself; and

over there on the west, God's deep, transparent sky, in which I could

still see a planet whose name I did not know. It was a heaven, indeed,

which He had said was as much mine as his!

The first thing, of course, was to get out my frame. This was a work of

weeks. The next thing was to raise it. And here the first step was the

only hard one, nor was this so hard as it would seem. The highest wall

of my house was no higher than the ten-foot fence we had already built

on the church alley. The western wall, if, indeed, a frame house has

any walls, was only eight feet high. For foundations and sills, I dug

deep post-holes, in which I set substantial cedar posts which I knew

would outlast my day, and I framed my sills into these. I made the

frame of the western wall lie out upon the ground in one piece; and I

only needed a purchase high enough, and a block with repeating pulleys

strong enough, to be able to haul up the whole frame by my own

strength, unassisted. The high purchase I got readily enough by making

what we called a "three-leg," near twenty feet high, just where my

castle was to stand. I had no difficulty in hauling this into its place

by a solid staple and ring, which for this purpose I drove high in the

church wall. My multiplying pulley did the rest; and after it was done,

I took out the staple and mended the hole it had made, so the wall was

as good as ever.

You see it was nobody's business what shanty or what tower old Mark

Henry or the Fordyce heirs might or might not put on the vacant corner

lot. The Fordyce heirs were all in nurseries and kindergartens in

Geneva, and indeed would have known nothing of corner lots, had they

been living in their palace in Fourteenth Street. As for Mark Henry,

that one great achievement by which he rode up to Fernando Street was

one of the rare victories of his life, of which ninety-nine hundredths

were spent in counting-houses. Indeed, if he had gone there, all he

would have seen was his ten-foot fence, and he would have taken pride

to himself that he had it built so high.

When the day of the first raising came, and the frame slipped into the

mortises so nicely, as I had foreordained that it should do, I was so

happy that I could scarcely keep my secret from my mother. Indeed, that

day I did run back to dinner. And when she asked me what pleased me so,

I longed to let her know; but I only smoothed her cheeks with my hands,

and kissed her on both of them, and told her it was because she was so

handsome that I was so pleased. She said she knew I had a secret from

her, and I owned that I had, but she said she would not try to guess,

but would wait for the time for me to tell her.

And so the summer sped by. Of course I saw my sweetheart, as I then

called my mother, less and less. For I worked till it was pitch-dark at

the castle; and after it was closed in, so I could work inside, I often

worked till ten o'clock by candlelight. I do not know how I lived with

so little sleep; I am afraid I slept pretty late on Sundays. But the

castle grew and grew, and the common-room, which I was most eager to

finish wholly before cold weather, was in complete order three full

weeks before my mother's birthday came.

Then came the joy of furnishing it. To this I had looked forward all

the summer, and I had measured with my eye many a bit of furniture, and

priced, in an unaffected way, many an impossible second-hand finery, so

that I knew just what I could do and what I could not do.

My mother had always wanted a Banner stove. I knew this, and it was a

great grief to me that she had none, though she would never say

anything about it.

To my great joy, I found a second-hand Banner stove, No. 2, at a sort

of old junk-shop, which was, in fact, an old curiosity shop, not three

blocks away from Ninety-ninth Avenue. Some one had sold this to them

while it was really as good as new, and yet the keeper offered it to me

at half-price.

I hung round the place a good deal, and when the man found I really had

money and meant something, he took me into all sorts of alleys and

hiding-places, where he stored his old things away. I made fabulous

bargains there, for either the old Jew liked me particularly, or I

liked things that nobody else wanted. In the days when his principal

customers were wharf-rats, and his principal business the traffic in

old cordage and copper, he had hung out as a sign an old tavern-sign of

a ship that had come to him. His place still went by the name of "The

Ship," though it was really, as I say, a rambling, third-rate old

furniture shop of the old-curiosity kind.

But after I had safely carried the Banner to my new house, and was sure

the funnel drew well, and that the escape of smoke and sparks was

carefully guarded, many a visit did I make to The Ship at early morning

or late in the evening, to bring away one or another treasure which I

had discovered there.

Under the pretence of new-varnishing some of my mother's most precious

tables and her bureau, I got them away from her also. I knocked up,

with my own hatchet and saw, a sitting-table which I meant to have

permanent in the middle of the room, which was much more convenient

than anything I could buy or carry.

And so, on the 12th of October, the eve of my mother's birthday, the

common-room was all ready for her. In her own room I had a new carpet

and a new set of painted chamber furniture, which I had bought at the

maker's, and brought up piece by piece. It cost me nineteen dollars and

a half, for which I paid him in cash, which indeed he wanted sadly.

So, on the morning of the 13th of October, I kissed my mother forty

times, because that day she was forty years old. I told her that before

midnight she should know what the great surprise was, and I asked her

if she could hold out till then.

She let me poke as much fun at her as I chose, because she said she was

so glad to have me at breakfast; and I stayed long after breakfast, for

I had told my mother that it was her birthday, and that I should be

late. And such a thing as my asking for an hour or two was so rare that

I took it quite of course when I did ask. I came home early at night,

too. Then I said,--

"Now, sweetheart, the surprise requires that you spend the night away

from home with me. Perhaps, if you like the place, we will spend

to-morrow there. So I will take Poll in her cage, and you must put up

your night-things and take them in your hand."

She was surprised now, for such a thing as an outing over night had

never been spoken of before by either of us.

"Why, Rob," she said, "you are taking too much pains for your old

sweetheart, and spending too much money for her birthday. Now, don't

you think that you should really have as good a time, say, if we went

visiting together, and then came back here?"

For, you see, she never thought of herself at all; it was only what I

should like most.

"No, sweetheart dear," said I. "It is not for me, this 13th of October,

it is all for you. And to-night's outing is not for me, it is for you;

and I think you will like it and I think Poll will like it, and I have

leave for to-morrow, and we will stay away all to-morrow."

As for Tom-puss, I said, we would leave some milk where he could find

it, and I would leave a bone or two for him. But I whistled Rip, my

dog, after me. I took Poll's cage, my mother took her bag, and locked

and left her door, unconscious that she was never to enter it again.

A Ninety-ninth Avenue car took us up to Fernando Street. It was just

the close of twilight when we came there. I took my mother to Church

Alley, muttered something about some friends, which she did not

understand more than I did, and led her up the alley in her confused

surprise. Then I pushed aside my movable board, and, while she was

still surprised, led her in after me and slid it back again.

"What is it, dear Rob? Tell me--tell me!"

"This way, sweetheart, this way!" This was all I would say.

I drew her after me through the long passage, led her into the

common-room, which was just lighted up by the late evening twilight

coming in between the curtains of the great square window. Then I

fairly pushed her to the great, roomy easy-chair which I had brought

from The Ship, and placed it where she could look out on the evening

glow, and I said,--

"Mother, dear, this is the surprise; this is your new home; and, mother

dear, your own boy has made it with his own hands, all for you."

"But, Rob, I do not understand--I do not understand at all. I am so

stupid. I know I am awake. But it is as sudden as a dream!"

So I had to begin and to explain it all,--how here was a vacant lot

that Mark Henry had the care of, and how I had built this house for her

upon it. And long before I had explained it all, it was quite dark. And

I lighted up the pretty student's-lamp, and I made the fire in the new

Banner with my own hands.

And that night I would not let her lift a kettle, nor so much as cut a

loaf of bread. It was my feast, I said, and I had everything ready,

round to a loaf of birthday-cake which I had ordered at Taylor's, which

I had myself frosted and dressed, and decorated with the initials of my

mother's name.

And when the feast was over, I had the best surprise of all. Unknown to

my mother, I had begged from my Aunt Betsy my own father's portrait,

and I had hung that opposite the window, and now I drew the curtain

that hid it, and told my sweetheart that this and the house were her

birthday presents for this year!

* * * * *

And this was the beginning of a happy life, which lasted nearly twelve

years. I could make a long story of it, for there was an adventure in

everything,--in the way we bought our milk, and the way we took in our

coals. But there is no room for me to tell all that, and it might not

interest other people as it does me. I am sure my mother was never

sorry for the bold step she took when we moved there from our tenement.

True, she saw little or no society, but she had not seen much before.

The conditions of our life were such that she did not like to be seen

coming out of Church Alley, lest people should ask how she got in, and

excepting in the evening, I did not care to have her go. In the evening

I could go with her. She did not make many calls, because she could not

ask people to return them. But she would go with me to concerts, and to

the church parlor meetings, and sometimes to exhibitions; and at such

places, and on Sundays, she would meet, perhaps, one or another of the

few friends she had in New York. But we cared for them less and less, I

will own, and we cared more and more for each other.

As soon as the first spring came, I made an immense effort, and spaded

over nearly half of the lot. It was ninety feet wide, and over two

hundred and sixty long--more than half an acre. So I knew we could have

our own fresh vegetables, even if we never went to market. My mother

was a good gardener, and she was not afraid even to hoe the corn when I

was out of the way. I dare say that the people whom the summer left in

the street above us often saw her from their back windows, but they did

not know--as how should they?--who had the charge of this lot, and

there was no reason why they should be surprised to see a cornfield

there. We only raised green corn. I am fond of Indian cake, but I did

not care to grind my own corn, and I could buy sweet meal without

trouble. I settled the milk question, after the first winter, by

keeping our own goats. I fenced in, with a wire fence, the northwest

corner of our little empire, and put there a milch goat and her two

kids. The kids were pretty little things, and would come and feed from

my mother's hand. We soon weaned them, so that we could milk their

mother; and after that our flock grew and multiplied, and we were never

again troubled for such little milk as we used.

Some old proprietor, in the old Dutch days, must have had an orchard in

these parts. There were still left two venerable wrecks of ancient

pear-trees; and although they bore little fruit, and what they bore was

good for nothing, they still gave a compact and grateful shade. I

sodded the ground around them, and made a seat beneath, where my mother

would sit with her knitting all the afternoon. Indeed, after the sods

grew firm, I planted hoops there, and many a good game of croquet have

she and I had together there, playing so late that we longed for the

chance they have in Sybaris, where, in the evening, they use balls of

colored glass, with fire-flies shut up inside.

On the 11th of February, in the year 1867, my old master died, to my

great regret, and I truly believe to that of his widow and her

children. His death broke up the establishment, and I, who was always

more of a cabinet-maker or joiner than carpenter or builder, opened a

little shop of my own, where I took orders for cupboards, drawers,

stairs, and other finishing work, and where I employed two or three

German journeymen, and was thus much more master of my own time. In

particular, I had two faithful fellows, natives of my own father's town

of Bremen. While they were with me, I could leave them a whole

afternoon at a time, while I took any little job there might be, and

worked at it at my own house at home. Where my house was, except that

it was far uptown, they never asked, nor ever, so far as I know, cared.

This gave me the chance for many a pleasant afternoon with my mother,

such as we had dreamed of in the old days when we talked of Kansas. I

would work at the lathe or the bench, and she would read to me. Or we

would put off the bench till the evening, and we would both go out into

the cornfield together.

And so we lived year after year. I am afraid that we worshipped each

other too much. We were in the heart of a crowded city, but there was

that in our lives which tended a little to habits of loneliness, and I

suppose a moralist would say that our dangers lay in that direction.

On the other hand, I am almost ashamed to say, that, as I sat in a seat

I had made for myself in old Van der Tromp's pear-tree, I would look

upon my corn and peas and squashes and tomatoes with a satisfaction

which I believe many a nobleman in England does not enjoy.

Till the youngest of the Fordyce heirs was of age, and that would not

be till 1880, this was all my own. I was, by right of possession and my

own labors, lord of all this region. How else did the writers on

political economy teach me that any property existed!

I surveyed it with a secret kind of pleasure. I had not abundance of

pears; what I had were poor and few. But I had abundance of sweet corn,

of tomatoes, of peas, and of beans. The tomatoes were as wholesome as

they were plentiful, and as I sat I could see the long shelves of them

which my mother had spread in the sun to ripen, that we might have

enough of them canned when winter should close in upon us. I knew I

should have potatoes enough of my own raising also to begin the winter

with. I should have been glad of more. But as by any good day's work I

could buy two barrels of potatoes, I did not fret myself that my stock

was but small.

Meanwhile my stock in bank grew fast. Neither my mother nor I had much

occasion to buy new clothes. We were at no charge for house-rent,

insurance, or taxes. I remember that a Spanish gentleman, who was fond

of me, for whom I had made a cabinet with secret drawers, paid me in

moidores and pieces-of-eight, which in those times of paper were a

sight to behold.

I carried home the little bag, and told my mother that this was a

birthday present for her; indeed, that she was to put it all in her bed

that night, that she might say she had rolled in gold and silver. She

played with the pieces, and we used them to count with, as we played

our game of cribbage.

"But really, Robin, boy," said she, "it is as the dirt under our feet.

I would give it all for three or four pairs of shoes and stockings,

such as we used to buy in York, but such as these Lynn-built shoes

and steam-knit stockings have driven out of the market."

Indeed, we wanted very little in our desert home.

And so for many years we led a happy life, and we found more in life

than would have been possible had we been all tangled up with the cords

of artificial society. I say "we," for I am sure I did, and I think my

dear mother did.

But it was in the seventh year of our residence in the hut that of a

sudden I had a terrible shock or fright, and this I must now describe

to you. It comes in about the middle of this history, and it may end

this chapter.

It was one Sunday afternoon, when I had taken the fancy, as I often did

of Sundays, to inspect my empire. Of course, in a certain way, I did

this every time I climbed old Van der Tromp's pear-tree, and sat in my

hawk's-nest there. But a tour of inspection was a different thing. I

walked close round the path which I had made next the fence of the

inclosure. I went in among my goats,--even entered the goat-house and

played with my kids. I tried the boards of the fence and the

timber-stays, to be sure they all were sound. I had paths enough

between the rows of corn and potatoes to make a journey of three miles

and half a furlong, with two rods more, if I went through the whole of

them. So at half-past four on this fatal afternoon I bade my mother

good-by, and kissed her. I told her I should not be back for two hours,

because I was going to inspect my empire, and I set out happily.

But in less than an hour--I can see the face of the clock now: it was

twenty-two minutes after five--I flung myself in my chair, panting for

breath, and, as my mother said, as pale as if I had seen a ghost. But I

told her it was worse than that.

I had come out from between two high rows of corn, which wholly covered

me, upon a little patch which lay warm to the south and west, where I

had some melons a-ripening, and was just lifting one of the melons, to

be sure that the under surface did not rot, when close behind it I saw

the print of a man's foot, which was very plain to be seen in the soft

soil.

I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition. I

listened; I looked round me. I could hear nothing but the roar of the

omnibuses, nor could I see anything. I went up and down the path, but

it was all one. I could see no other impression but that one. I went to

it again, to see if there were any more, and to observe if it might not

be my fancy. But there was no room for that, for there was exactly the

print of an Englishman's hobnailed shoe,--the heavy heel, the prints of

the heads of the nails. There was even a piece of patch which had been

put on it, though it had never been half-soled.

How it came there I knew not; neither could I in the least imagine.

But, as I say, like a man perfectly confused and out of myself, I

rushed home into my hut, not feeling the ground I went upon. I fled

into it like one pursued, and, as my mother said, when I fell into my

chair, panting, I looked as if I had seen a ghost.

It was worse than that, as I said to her.

PART II.

I cannot well tell you how much dismay this sight of a footprint in the

ground gave me, nor how many sleepless nights it cost me. All the time

I was trying to make my mother think that there was no ground for

anxiety, and yet all the time I was showing her that I was very

anxious. The more I pretended that I was not troubled, the more

absentminded, and so the more troubled, I appeared to her. And yet, if

I made no pretence, and told her what I really feared, I should have

driven her almost wild by the story of my terrors. To have our pretty

home broken up, perhaps to be put in the newspapers--which was a lot

that, so far, we had always escaped in our quiet and modest life--all

this was more than she or I could bear to think of.

In the midst of these cogitations, apprehensions, and reflections, it

came into my thoughts one day, as I was working at my shop down-town,

with my men, that all this might be a chimera of my own, and that the

foot might be the print of my own boot as I had left it in the soil

some days before when I was looking at my melons. This cheered me up a

little, too. I considered that I could by no means tell for certain

where I had trod and where I had not, and that if at last this was the

print of my own boot, I had played the part of those fools who strive

to make stories of spectres, and then are themselves frightened at them

more than anybody else.

So I returned home that day in very good spirits. I carried to my

mother a copy of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, which had in it

some pictures that I knew would please her, and I talked with her, in

as light-hearted a way as I could, to try to make her think that I had

forgotten my alarm. And afterward we played two or three games of

Egyptian solitaire at the table, and I went to bed unusually early.

But, at the first break of day, when I fancied or hoped that she was

still asleep, I rose quickly, and half-dressing myself, crept out to

the melon-patch to examine again the imprint of the foot and to make

sure that it was mine.

Alas! it was no more mine than it was Queen Victoria's. If it had only

been cloven, I could easily have persuaded myself whose it was, so much

grief and trouble had it cost me. When I came to measure the mark with

my own boot, I found, just as I had seen before, that mine was not

nearly so large as this mark was. Also, this was, as I have said, the

mark of a heavy brogan--such as I never wore--and there was the mark of

a strange patch near the toe, such as I had never seen, nor, indeed,

have seen since, from that hour to this hour. All these things renewed

my terrors. I went home like a whipped dog, wholly certain now that

some one had found the secret of our home: we might be surprised in it

before I was aware; and what course to take for my security I knew not.

As we breakfasted, I opened my whole heart to my mother. If she said

so, I would carry all our little property, piece by piece, back to old

Thunberg, the junk-dealer, and with her parrot and my umbrella we would

go out to Kansas, as we used to propose. We would give up the game. Or,

if she thought best, we would stand on the defensive. I would put

bottle glass on the upper edges of the fences all the way round.

There were four or five odd revolvers at The Ship, and I would buy them

all, with powder and buckshot enough for a long siege. I would teach

her how to load, and while she loaded I would fire, till they had quite

enough of attacking us in our home. Now it has all gone by, I should be

ashamed to set down in writing the frightful contrivances I hatched for

destroying these "creatures," as I called them, or, at least,

frightening them, so as to prevent their coming thither any more.

"Robin, my boy," said my mother to me, when I gave her a chance at

last, "if they came in here to-night--whoever 'they' may be--very

little is the harm that they could do us. But if Mr. Kennedy and twenty

of his police should come in here over the bodies of--five times five

are twenty-five, twenty-five times eleven are--two hundred and

seventy-five people whom you will have killed by that time, if I load

as fast as thee tells me I can, why, Robin, my boy, it will go hard for

thee and me when the day of the assizes comes. They will put handcuffs

on thy poor old mother and on thee, and if they do not send thee to

Jack Ketch, they will send thee to Bloomingdale."

I could not but see that there was sense in what she said. Anyway, it

cooled me down for the time, and I kissed her and went to my work less

eager, and, indeed, less anxious, than I had been the night before. As

I went down-town in the car, I had a chance to ask myself what right I

had to take away the lives of these poor savages of the neighborhood

merely because they entered on my possessions. Was it their fault that

they had not been apprenticed to carpenters? Could they help themselves

in the arrangements which had left them savages? Had any one ever given

them a chance to fence in an up-town lot? Was it, in a word, I said to

myself--was it my merit or my good luck which made me as good as a

landed proprietor, while the Fordyce heirs had their education? Such

thoughts, before I came to my shop, had quite tamed me down, and when I

arrived there I was quite off my design, and I concluded that I had

taken a wrong measure in my resolution to attack the savages, as I had

begun to call men who might be merely harmless loafers.

It was clearly not my business to meddle with them unless they first

attacked me. This it was my business to prevent; if I were discovered

and attacked, then I knew my duty.

With these thoughts I went into my shop that day, and with such

thoughts as these, and with my mother's good sense in keeping me

employed in pleasanter things than hunting for traces of savages, I got

into a healthier way of thinking.

The crop of melons came in well, and many a good feast we had from

them. Once and again I was able to carry a nice fresh melon to an old

lady my mother was fond of, who now lay sick with a tertian ague.

Then we had the best sweet corn for dinner every day that any man had

in New York. For, at Delmonico's itself, the corn the grandees had had

been picked the night before, and had started at two o'clock in the

morning on its long journey to town. But my mother picked my corn just

at the minute when she knew I was leaving my shop. She husked it, and

put it in the pot, and, by the time I had come home, had slipped up the

board in the fence that served me for a door, and had washed my face

and hands in my own room, she would have dished her dinner, would have

put her fresh corn upon the table, covered with a pretty napkin; and

so, as I say, I had a feast which no nabob in New York had. No, indeed,

nor any king that I know of, unless it were the King of the Sandwich

Islands, and I doubt if he were as well served as I.

So I became more calm and less careworn, though I will not say but

sometimes I did look carefully to see if I could find the traces of a

man's foot; but I never saw another.

Unless we went out somewhere during the evening we went to bed early.

We rose early as well, for I never lost the habits of my

apprenticeship. And so it happened that we were both sound asleep in

bed one night, when a strange thing happened, and a sudden fright came

to us, of which I must tell quite at length, for it made, indeed, a

very sudden change in the current of our lives.

I was sound asleep, as I said, and so, I found, was my mother also. But

I must have been partly waked by some sudden noise in the street, for I

knew I was sitting up in my bed, in the darkness, when I heard a woman

scream,--a terrible cry,--and while I was yet startled, I heard her

scream again, as if she were in deadly fear. My window was shaded by a

heavy green curtain, but in an instant I had pulled it up, and, by the

light of the moon, I seized my trousers and put them on.

I was well awake by this time, and when I flung open the door of my

house, so as to run into my garden, I could hear many wild voices, some

in English, some in German, some in Irish, and some with terrible

cries, which I will not pretend I could understand.

There was no cry of a woman now, but only the howling of angry or

drunken men, when they are in a rage with some one or with each other.

What startled me was that, whereas the woman's cry came from the street

south of me, which I have called Fernando Street, the whole crowd of

men, as they howled and swore, were passing along that street rapidly,

and then stopped for an instant, as if they were coming up what I

called Church Alley. There must have been seven or eight of them.

Now, it was by Church Alley that my mother and I always came into our

house, and so into our garden. In the eight years, or nearly so, that I

had lived there, I had by degrees accumulated more and more rubbish

near the furthest end of the alley as a screen, so to speak, that when

my mother or I came in or out, no one in the street might notice us. I

had even made a little wing-fence, out from my own, to which my

hand-cart was chained. Next this I had piled broken brickbats and

paving-stones, and other heavy things, that would not be stolen. There

was the stump and the root of an old pear-tree there, too heavy to

steal, and too crooked and hard to clean or saw. There was a bit of

curbstone from the street, and other such trash, which quite masked the

fence and the hand-cart.

On the other side--that is, the church side, or the side furthest from

the street--was the sliding-board in the fence, where my mother and I

came in. So soon as it was slid back, no man could see that the fence

was not solid.

At this moment in the night, however, when I found that this riotous,

drunken crew were pausing at the entrance of Church Alley, as doubting

if they would not come down, I ran back through the passage knocking

loudly for my mother as I passed, and, coming to my coal-bin, put my

eye at the little hole through which I always reconnoitred before I

slid the door. I could see nothing, nor at night ought I to have

expected to do so.

But I could hear, and I heard what I did not expect. I could hear the

heavy panting of one who had been running, and as I listened I heard a

gentle low voice sob out, "Ach, ach, mein Gott! Ach, mein Gott!" or

words that I thought were these, and I was conscious, when I tried to

move the door, that some one was resting close upon it.

All the same, I put my shoulder stoutly to the cross-bar, to which the

boards of the door were nailed; I slid it quickly in its grooves, and

as it slid, a woman fell into the passage.

She was wholly surprised by the motion, so that she could not but fall.

I seized her and dragged her in, saying, "Hush, hush, hush!" as I did

so. But not so quick was I but that she screamed once more as I drew to

the sliding-door and thrust in the heavy bolt which held it.

In an instant my mother was in the passage, with a light in her hand.

In another instant I had seized the light and put it out. But that

instant was enough for her and me to see that here was a lovely girl,

with no hat or bonnet on, with her hair floating wildly, both her arms

bleeding, and her clothes all stained with blood. She could see my

mother's face of amazement, and she could see my finger on my mouth, as

with the other I dashed out the candle. We all thought quickly, and we

all knew that we must keep still.

But that unfortunate scream of hers was enough. Though no one of us all

uttered another sound, this was like a "view-halloo," to bring all

those dogs down upon us. The passage was dark, and, to my delight, I

heard some of them breaking their shins over the curbstone and old

pear-tree of my defences. But they were not such hounds as were easily

thrown off the scent, and there were enough to persevere while the

leaders picked themselves up again.

Then how they swore and cursed and asked questions! And we three stood

as still as so many frightened rabbits. In an instant more, one of

them, who spoke in English, said he would be hanged if he thought she

had gone into the church, that he believed she had got through the

fence; and then, with his fist, or something harder, he began trying

the boards on our side, and others of them we could hear striking those

on the other side of the alley-way.

When it came to this, I whispered to my mother that she must never

fear, only keep perfectly still. She dragged the frightened girl into

our kitchen, which was our sitting-room, and they both fell, I know not

how, into the great easy-chair.

For my part, I seized the light ladder, which always hung ready at the

door, and ran with it at my full speed to the corner of Fernando Street

and the alley. I planted the ladder, and was on the top of the fence in

an instant.

Then I sprang my watchman's rattle, which had hung by the ladder, and I

whirled it round well. It wholly silenced the sound of the swearing

fellows up the passage, and their pounding. When I found they were

still, I cried out:--

"This way, 24! this way, 47! I have them all penned up here! Signal the

office, 42, and bid them send us a sergeant. This way, fellows--up

Church Alley!"

With this I was down my ladder again. But my gang of savages needed no

more. I could hear them rushing out of the alley as fast as they might,

not one of them waiting for 24 or 47. This was lucky for me, for as it

happened I was ten minutes older before I heard two patrolmen on the

outside, wondering what frightened old cove had been at the pains to

spring a rattle.

The moonlight shone in at the western window of the kitchen, so that as

I came in I could just make out the figure of my mother, and of the

girl, lying, rather than sitting, in her lap and her arms. I was not

afraid to speak now, and I told my mother we were quite safe again, and

she told the poor girl so. I struck a match and lighted the lamp as

soon as I could. The poor, frightened creature started as I did so, and

then fell on her knees at my mother's feet, took both her hands in her

own, and seemed like one who begs for mercy, or, indeed, for life.

My poor, dear mother was all amazed, and her eyes were running with

tears at the sight of the poor thing's terror. She kissed her again and

again; she stroked her beautiful golden hair with her soft hands; she

said in every word that she could think of that she was quite safe now,

and must not think of being frightened any more.

But it was clear in a moment that the girl could not understand any

language that we could speak. My mother tried her with a few words of

German, and she smiled then; but she shook her head prettily, as if to

say that she thanked her, but could not speak to her in that way

either. Then she spoke eagerly in some language that we could not

understand. But had it been the language of Hottentots, we should have

known that she was begging my mother not to forsake her, so full of

entreaty was every word and every gesture.

My dear, sweet mother lifted her at last into the easy-chair and made

her lie there while she dipped some hot water from her boiler and

filled a large basin in her sink. Then she led the pretty creature to

it, and washed from her arms, hands, and face the blood that had

hardened upon them, and looked carefully to find what her wounds were.

None of them were deep, though there were ugly scratches on her

beautiful arms; they were cut by glass, as I guessed then, and as we

learned from her afterward. My mother was wholly prepared for all such

surgery as was needed here; she put on two bandages where she thought

they were needed, she plastered up the other scratches with

court-plaster, and then, as if the girl understood her, she said to

her, "And now, my dear child, you must come to bed; there is no danger

for you more."

The poor girl had grown somewhat reassured in the comfortable little

kitchen, but her terror seemed to come back at any sign of removal; she

started to her feet, almost as if she were a wild creature. But I would

defy any one to be afraid of my dear mother, or indeed to refuse to do

what she bade, when she smiled so in her inviting way and put out her

hand; and so the girl went with her, bowing to me, or dropping a sort

of courtesy in her foreign fashion, as she went out of the door, and I

was left to see what damage had been done to my castle by the savages,

as I called them.

I had sprung the rattle none too soon; for one of these rascals, as it

proved--I suppose it was the same who swore that she had not gone into

the church--with some tool or other he had in his hand, had split out a

bit of the fence and had pried out a part of a plank. I had done my

work too well for any large piece to give way. But the moment I looked

into my coal-bin I saw that something was amiss. I did not like very

well to go to the outside, but I must risk something; so I took out a

dark lantern which I always kept ready. Sure enough, as I say, the

fellow had struck so hard and so well that he had split out a piece of

board, and a little coal even had fallen upon the passage-way. I was

not much displeased at this, for if he thought no nearer the truth than

that he had broken into a coal-bin of the church, why, he was far

enough from his mark for me. After finding this, however, I was anxious

enough, lest any of them should return, not to go to bed again that

night; but all was still as death, and, to tell the truth, I fell

asleep in my chair. I doubt whether my mother slept, or her frightened

charge.

I was at work in the passage early the next morning with some

weather-stained boards I had, and before nine o'clock I had doubled all

that piece of fence, from my wing where my hand-cart was to the church,

and I had spiked the new boards on, which looked like old boards, as I

said, with tenpenny nails; so that he would be a stout burglar who

would cut through them unless he had tools for his purpose and daylight

to work by. As I was gathering up my tools to go in, a coarse,

brutal-looking Irishman came walking up the alley and looked round. My

work was so well done, and I had been so careful to leave no chips,

that even then he could not have guessed that I had been building the

fence anew, though I fancied he looked at it. He seemed to want to

excuse himself for being there at all, and asked me, with an oath and

in a broad Irish brogue, if there were no other passage through. I had

the presence of mind to say in German, "_Wollen sie sprechen Deutsch?_"

and so made as if I could not understand him; and then, kneeling on the

cellar-door of the church, pretended to put a key into the lock, as if

I were making sure that I had made it firm.

And with that, he turned round with another oath, as if he had come out

of his way, and went out of the alley, closely followed by me. I

watched him as long as I dared, but as he showed no sign of going back

to the alley, I at last walked round a square with my tools, and so

came back to my mother and the pretty stranger.

My mother had been trying to get at her story. She made her understand

a few words of German, but they talked by signs and smiles and tears

and kisses much more than by words; and by this time they understood

each other so well that my mother had persuaded her not to go away that

day.

Nor did she go out for many days after; I will go before my story far

enough to say that. She had, indeed, been horribly frightened that

night, and she was as loath to go out again into the streets of New

York as I should be to plunge from a safe shore into some terrible,

howling ocean; or, indeed, as one who found himself safe at home would

be to trust himself to the tender mercies of a tribe of cannibals.

Two such loving women as they were were not long in building up a

language, especially as my mother had learned from my father and his

friends, in her early life, some of the common words of German--what

she called a bread-and-butter German. For our new inmate was a Swedish

girl. Her story, in short, was this:--

She had been in New York but two days. On the voyage over, they had had

some terrible sickness on the vessel, and the poor child's mother had

died very suddenly and had been buried in the sea. Her father had died

long before.

This was, as you may think, a terrible shock to her. But she had hoped

and hoped for the voyage to come to an end, because there was a certain

brother of hers in America whom they were to meet at their landing, and

though she was very lonely on the packet-ship, in which she and her

mother and a certain family of the name of Hantsen--of whom she had

much to say--were the only Swedes, still she expected to find the

brother almost as soon, as I may say, as they saw the land.

She felt badly enough that he did not come on board with the quarantine

officer. When the passengers were brought to Castle Garden, and no

brother came, she felt worse. However, with the help of the clerks

there, she got off a letter to him, somewhere in Jersey, and proposed

to wait as long as they would let her, till he should come.

The second day there came a man to the Garden, who said he was a Dane,

but he spoke Swedish well enough. He said her brother was sick, and had

sent him to find her. She was to come with her trunks, and her

mother's, and all their affairs, to his house, and the same afternoon

they should go to where the brother was.

Without doubt or fear she went with this man, and spent the day at a

forlorn sort of hotel which she described, but which I never could find

again. Toward night the man came again, and bade her take a bag, with

her own change of dress, and come with him to her brother.

After a long ride through the city, they got out at a house which,

thank God! was only one block from Fernando Street. And there this

simple, innocent creature, as she went in, asked where her brother was,

to meet only a burst of laughter from one or two coarse-looking men,

and from half-a-dozen brazen-faced girls, whom she hated, she said, the

minute she saw them.

Except that an old woman took off her shawl and cloak and bonnet, and

took away from her the travelling things she had in her hand, nobody

took any care of her but to laugh at her, and mock her if she dared say

anything.

She tried to go out to the door to find even the Dane who had brought

her there, but she was given to understand that he was coming again for

her, and that she must wait till he came. As for her brother, there was

no brother there, nor had been any. The poor girl had been trapped, and

saw that she had been trapped; she had been spirited away from

everybody who ever heard of her mother, and was in the clutches, as she

said to my mother afterward, of a crew of devils who knew nothing of

love or of mercy.

They did try to make her eat and drink--tried to make her drink

champagne, or any other wine; but they had no fool to deal with. The

girl did not, I think, let her captors know how desperate were her

resolutions. But her eyes were wide open, and she was not going to lose

any chance. She was all on the alert for her escape when, at eleven

o'clock, the Dane came at last whom she had been expecting so

anxiously.

The girl asked him for her brother, only to be put off by one excuse or

another, and then to hear from him the most loathsome talk of his

admiration, not to say his passion, for her.

They were nearly alone by this time, and he led her unresisting, as he

thought, into another smaller room, brilliantly lighted, and, as she

saw in a glance, gaudily furnished, with wine and fruit and cake on a

side-table,--a room where they would be quite alone.

She walked simply across and looked at herself in the great mirror.

Then she made some foolish little speech about her hair, and how pale

she looked. Then she crossed to the sofa, and sat upon it with as tired

an air as he might have expected of one who had lived through such a

day. Then she looked up at him, and even smiled upon him, she said, and

asked him if he would not ask them for some cold water.

The fellow turned into the passage-way, well pleased with her

submission, and in the same instant the girl was at the window as if

she had flown across the room.

Fool! The window was made fast, not by any moving bolt, either. It was

nailed down, and it did not give a hair's-breadth to her hand.

Little cared she for that. She sat on the window-seat, which was broad

enough to hold her; she braced her feet against the foot of the

bedstead, which stood just near enough to her; she turned enough to

bring her shoulder against the window-sash, and then with her whole

force she heaved herself against the sash, and the entire window, of

course, gave way.

The girl caught herself upon the blind, which swung open before her.

She pulled herself free from the sill and window-seat, and dropped

fearless into the street.

The fall was not long. She lighted on her feet, and ran as only fear

could teach her to run. Where to, she knew not; but she thought she

turned a corner before she heard any voices from behind.

Still she ran. And it was when she came to the corner of the next

street that she heard for the first time the screams of pursuers.

She turned again, like a poor hunted hare as she was. But what was her

running to theirs? She was passing our long fence in Fernando Street,

and then for the first time she screamed for help.

It was that scream which waked me.

She saw the steeple of the church. She had a dim feeling that a church

would be an asylum. So was it that she ran up our alley, to find that

she was in a trap there.

And then it was that she fell against my door, that she cried twice,

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" and that the good God who had heard her sent

me to draw her in.

We had to learn her language, in a fashion, and she to learn ours,

before we understood her story in this way. But at the very first my

mother made out that the girl had fled from savages who meant worse

than death for her. So she understood why she was so frightened at

every sound, and why at first she was afraid to stay with us, yet more

afraid to go.

But this passed off in a day or two. She took to my mother with a sort

of eager way which showed how she must have loved her own mother, and

how much she lost when she lost her. And that was one of the parts of

her sad story that we understood.

No one, I think, could help loving my mother; but here was a poor,

storm-tossed creature, who, I might say, had nothing else to love,

seeing she had lost all trace of this brother, and here was my mother,

soothing her, comforting her, dressing her wounds for her, trying to

make her feel that God's world was not all wickedness; and the girl in

return poured out her whole heart.

When my mother explained to her that she should not let her go away

till her brother was found, then for the first time she seemed

perfectly happy. She was indeed the loveliest creature I ever put my

eyes on.

She was then about nineteen years old, of a delicate complexion

naturally, which was now a little browned by the sea-air. She was

rather tall than otherwise, but her figure was so graceful that I think

you never thought her tall. Her eyes were perhaps deep-set, and of that

strange gray which I have heard it said the goddesses in the Greek

poetry had. Still, when she was sad, one saw the less of all this. It

was not till she forgot her grief for the instant in the certainty that

she might rest with my mother, so that her whole face blazed with joy,

that I first knew what the perfect beauty of a perfect woman was.

Her name, it seemed, was Frida,--a name made from the name of one of

the old goddesses among the Northmen, the same from whom our day Friday

is named. She is the half-sister of Thor, from whom Thursday is named,

and the daughter of Odin, from whom Wednesday is named.

I knew little of all this then, but I did not wonder when I read

afterward that this northern goddess was the Goddess of Love, the

friend of song, the most beautiful of all their divinities,--queen of

spring and light and everything lovely.

But surely never any one took fewer of the airs of a goddess than our

Frida did while she was with us. She would watch my mother, as if

afraid that she should put her hand to a gridiron or a tin dipper. She

gave her to understand, in a thousand pretty ways, that she should be

her faithful, loving, and sincere servant. If she would only show her

what to do, she would work for her as a child that loved her. And so

indeed she did. My dear mother would laugh and say she was quite a fine

lady now, for Frida would not let her touch broom nor mop, skimmer nor

dusting-cloth.

The girl would do anything but go out upon an errand. She could not

bear to see the other side of the fence. What she thought of it all I

do not know. Whether she thought it was the custom in America for young

men to live shut up with their mothers in inclosures of half an acre

square, or whether she thought we two made some peculiar religious

order, whose rules provided that one woman and one man should live

together in a convent or monastery of their own, or whether she

supposed half New York was made up, as Marco Polo found Pekin, of

cottages or of gardens, I did not know, nor did I much care. I could

see that here was provided a companion for my mother, who was else so

lonely, and I very soon found that she was as much a companion for me.

So soon as we could understand her at all, I took the name of her

brother and his address. When he wrote last he was tending a saw-mill

at a place about seven miles away from Tuckahoe, in Jersey. But he said

he was going to leave there at once, so that they need not write there.

He sent the money for their passage, and promised, as I said, to meet

them at New York.

This was a poor clew at the best. But I put a good face on it, and

promised her I would find him if he could be found. And I spared no

pains. I wrote to the postmaster at Tuckahoe, and to a minister I heard

of there. I inquired of the Swedish consuls in New York and

Philadelphia. Indeed, in the end, I went to Tuckahoe myself, with her,

to inquire. But this was long after. However, I may say here, once for

all, to use an old phrase of my mother's, we never found "hide nor

hair" of him. And although this grieved Frida, of course, yet it came

on her gradually, and, as she had never seen him to remember him, it

was not the same loss as if they had grown up together.

Meanwhile that first winter was, I thought, the pleasantest I had ever

known in my life. I did not have to work very hard now, for my business

was rather the laying out work for my men, and sometimes a nice job

which needed my hand on my lathe at home, or in some other delicate

affair that I could bring home with me.

We were teaching Frida English, my mother and I, and she and I made a

great frolic of her teaching me Swedish. I would bring home Swedish

newspapers and stories for her, and we would puzzle them out

together,--she as much troubled to find the English word as I to find

out the Swedish. Then she sang like a bird, when she was about her

household work, or when she sat sewing for my mother, and she had not

lived with us a fortnight before she began to join us on Sunday

evenings in the choruses of the Methodist hymns which my mother and I

sang together. So then we made her sing Swedish hymns to us. And,

before she knew it, the great tears would brim over her deep eyes, and

would run down in pearls upon her cheek. Nothing set her to thinking of

her old home as those Sunday evenings did. Of a Sunday evening we could

make her go out with us to church sometimes. Not but then she would

half cover her face with a vail, so afraid was she that we might meet

the Dane. But I told her that the last place we should find him at

would be at church on Sunday evening.

I have come far in advance of my story, that I might make any one who

reads this life of mine to understand how naturally and simply this

poor lost bird nestled down into our quiet life, and how the house that

was built for two proved big enough for three. For I made some new

purchases now, and fitted up the little middle chamber for Frida's own

use. We had called it the "spare chamber" before, in joke. But now my

mother fitted pretty curtains to it, and other hangings, without

Frida's knowledge. I had a square of carpet made up at the warehouse

for the middle of the floor, and, by making her do one errand and

another in the corner of the garden, one pleasant afternoon in

November, we had it all prettily fitted up for her room before she knew

it. And a great gala we made of it when she came in from gathering the

seeds of the calystegia, which she had been sent for.

She looked like a northern Flora, as she came in, with her arms all

festooned by the vines she had been pulling down. And when my mother

made her come out to the door she had never seen opened before, and led

her in, and told her that this pretty chamber was all her own, the

pretty creature flushed crimson red at first, and then her quick tears

ran over, and she fell on my mother's neck, and kissed her as if she

would never be done. And then she timidly held her hand out to me, too,

as I stood in the doorway, and said, in her slow, careful English,--

"And you, too--and you, too. I must tank you both, also, especially.

You are so good--so good to de poor lost girl!" That was a very happy

evening.

But, as I say, I have gone ahead of my story. For before we had these

quiet evenings we were fated to have many anxious ones and one stormy

one.

The very first day that Frida was with us, I felt sure that the savages

would make another descent upon us. They had heard her scream, that was

certain. They knew she had not passed them, that was certain. They knew

there was a coal-bin on the other side of our fence, that was certain.

They would have reason enough for being afraid to have her at large,

if, indeed, there were no worse passion than fear driving some of them

in pursuit of her. I could not keep out of my mind the beastly look of

the Irishman, who asked me, with such an ugly leer on his face, if

there were no passage through. Not that I told either of the two women

of my fears. But, all the same, I did not undress myself for a week,

and sat in the great easy-chair in our kitchen through the whole of

every night, waiting for the least sound of alarm.

Next to the savages, I had always lived in fear of being discovered in

my retreat by the police, who would certainly think it strange to find

a man and his mother living in a shed, without any practicable outside

door, in what they called a vacant lot.

But I have read of weak nations in history which were fain to call upon

one neighbor whom they did not like, to protect them against another

whom they liked less. I made up my mind, in like wise, to go round to

the police-station nearest me.

And so, having dressed myself in my black coat, and put on a round hat

and gloves, I bought me a Malacca walking-stick, such as was then in

fashion, and called upon the captain in style. I told him I lived next

the church, and that, on such and such a night, there was a regular row

among roughs, and that several of them went storming up the alley in a

crowd. I said, "Although your men were there as quick as they could

come, these fellows had all gone before they came." But then I

explained that I had seen a fellow hanging about the alley in the

daytime, who seemed to be there for no good; that there was a hand-cart

kept there by a workman, who seemed to be an honest fellow, and,

perhaps, all they wanted was to steal that; that, if I could, I would

warn him. But, meanwhile, I said, I had come round to the station to

give the warning of my suspicions, that, if my rattle was heard again,

the patrolmen might know what was in the wind.

The captain was a good deal impressed by my make-up and by the ease of

my manner. He affected to be perfectly well acquainted with me,

although we had never happened to meet at the Century Club or at the

Union League. I confirmed the favorable impression I had made by

leaving my card which I had had handsomely engraved: "MR. ROBINSON

CRUSOE." With my pencil I added my down-town address, where, I said, a

note or telegram would find me.

I was not a day too soon with my visit to this gentleman. That very

night, after my mother and Frida had gone to bed, as I sat in my

easy-chair, there came over me one of those strange intimations which I

have never found it safe to disregard. Sometimes it is of good, and

sometimes of bad. This time it made me certain that all was not well.

To relieve my fears I lifted my ladder over the wall, and dropped it in

the alley. I swung myself down, and carried it to the very end of the

alley, to the place where I had dragged poor Frida in. The moon fell on

the fence opposite ours. My wing-fence and hand-cart were all in shade.

But everything was safe there.

Again I chided myself for my fears, when, as I looked up the alley to

the street, I saw a group of four men come in stealthily. They said not

a word, but I could make out their forms distinctly against the houses

opposite.

I was caught in my own trap!

Not quite! They had not seen me, for I was wholly in shadow. I stepped

quickly in at my own slide. I pushed it back and bolted it securely,

and with my heart in my mouth, I waited at my hole of observation. In a

minute more they were close around me, though they did not suspect I

was so near.

They, also, had a dark-lantern, and, I thought, more than one. They

spoke in low tones; but, as they had no thought they had a hearer quite

so near, I could hear all they said.

"I tell you it was this side, and this is the side I heard their deuced

psalm-singing, day before yesterday."

"What if he did hear psalm-singing? Are you going to break into a man's

garden because he sings psalms? I came here to find out where the girl

went to; and now you talk of psalm-singing and coal-bins." This from

another, whose English was poor, and in whom I fancied I heard the

Dane. It was clear enough that he spoke sense, and a sort of doubt fell

on the whole crew; but speaker No. 1, with a heavy crowbar he had,

smashes into my pine wall, as I have a right to call it now, with a

force which made the splinters fly.

"I should think we were all at Niblo's," said a man of slighter build,

"and that we were playing Humpty Dumpty. Because a girl flew out of a

window, you think a fence opened to take her in. Why should she not go

through a door?" and he kicked with his foot upon the heavy sloping

cellar-door of the church, which just rose a little from the pavement.

It was the doorway which they used there when they took in their supply

of coal. The moon fell full on one side of it. To my surprise it was

loose and gave way.

"Here is where the girl flew to, and here is where Bully Bigg, the

donkey, let her slip out of his fingers. I knew he was a fool, but I

did not know he was such a fool," said the Dane (if he were the Dane).

I will not pretend to write down the oaths and foul words which came in

between every two of the words I have repeated.

"Fool yourself!" replied the Bully; "and what sort of a fool is the man

who comes up a blind alley, looking after a girl that will not kiss him

when he bids her?"

"Anyway," put in another of the crew, who had just now lifted the heavy

cellar-door, "other people may find it handy to hop down here when the

'beaks' are too near them. It's a handy place to know of, in a dark

night, if the dear deacons do choose to keep it open for a poor

psalm-singing tramp, who has no chance at the station-house. Here,

Lopp, you are the tallest--jump in and tell us what is there"; and at

this moment the Dane caught sight of my unfortunate ladder, lying full

in the moonlight. I could see him seize it, and run to the doorway with

it, with a deep laugh, and some phrase of his own country talk, which I

did not understand.

"The deacons are very good," said the savage who had lifted the

cellar-door. "They make everything handy for us poor fellows."

And though he had not planted the ladder, he was the first to run down,

and called for the rest to follow. The Dane was second, Lopp was third,

and "The Bully," as the big rascal seemed to be called by distinction,

was the fourth.

I saw him disappear from my view, with a mixture of wonder and terror

which I will not describe. I seized my light overcoat, which always

hung in the passage. I flung open my sliding-door, and shut it again

behind me. I looked into the black of the cellar to see the reflections

from their distant lanterns, and, without a sound, I drew up my ladder.

Then I ran to the head of the alley, and sounded my rattle as I would

have sounded the trumpet for a charge in battle. The officers joined me

in one moment.

"I am the man who spoke to the captain about these rowdies. Four of

them are in the cellar of the church yonder now."

"Do you know who?"

"One they called Lopp, and one they called Bully Bigg," said I. "I do

not know the others' names."

The officers were enraptured.

I led them, and two other patrolmen who joined us, to the shelter of my

wing-wall. In a few minutes the head of the Dane appeared, as he was

lifted from below. With an effort and three or four oaths, he struggled

out upon the ground, to be seized and gagged the moment he stepped

back. With varying fortunes, Bigg and Lopp emerged, and were seized and

handcuffed in turn. The fourth surrendered on being summoned.

What followed comes into the line of daily life and the morning

newspaper so regularly that I need not describe it. Against the Dane it

proved that endless warrants could be brought immediately. His lair of

stolen baggage and other property was unearthed, and countless

sufferers claimed their own. I was able to recover Frida's and her

mother's possessions--the locks on the trunks still unbroken. The Dane

himself would have been sent to the Island on I know not how many

charges, but that the Danish minister asked for him that he might be

hanged in Denmark, and he was sent and hanged accordingly.

Lopp was sent to Sing-Sing for ten years, and has not yet been

pardoned.

Bigg and Cordon were sent to Blackwell's Island for three years each.

And so the land had peace for that time.

* * * * *

That winter, as there came on one and another idle alarm that Frida's

brother might be heard from, my heart sank with the lowest terror lest

she should go away. And in the spring I told her that if she went away

I was sure I should die. And the dear girl looked down, and looked up,

and said she thought--she thought she should, too. And we told my

mother that we had determined that Frida should never go away while we

stayed there. And she approved.

So I wrote a note to the minister of the church which had protected us

so long, and one night we slid the board carefully, and all three

walked round, fearless of the Dane, and Frida and I were married.

* * * * *

It was more than three years after, when I received, by one post, three

letters, which gave us great ground for consultation. The first was

from my old friend and patron, the Spaniard. He wrote to me from

Chicago, where he, in his turn, had fallen in with a crew of savages,

who had stripped him of all he had, under the pretext of a

land-enterprise they engaged him in, and had left him without a real,

as he said. He wanted to know if I could not find him some clerkship,

or even some place as janitor, in New York.

The second letter was from old Mr. Henry in Philadelphia, who had

always employed me after my old master's death. He said that the fence

around the lot in Ninety-ninth Avenue might need some repairs, and he

wished I would look at it. He was growing old, he said, and he did not

care to come to New York. But the Fordyce heirs would spend ten years

in Europe.

The third letter was from Tom Grinnell.

I wrote to Mr. Henry that I thought he had better let me knock up a

little office, where a keeper might sleep, if necessary; that there was

some stuff with which I could put up such an office, and that I had an

old friend, a Spaniard, who was an honest fellow, and if he might have

his bed in the office, would take gratefully whatever his services to

the estate proved worth. He wrote me by the next day's mail that I

might engage the Spaniard and finish the office. So I wrote to the

Spaniard and got a letter from him, accepting the post provided for

him. Then I wrote to Tom Grinnell.

The last day we spent at our dear old home, I occupied myself in

finishing the office as Friend Henry bade me. I made a "practicable

door," which opened from the passage on Church Alley. Then I loaded my

hand-cart with my own chest, and took it myself, in my working clothes,

to the Vanderbilt Station, where I took a brass check for it.

I could not wait for the Spaniard, but I left a letter for him, giving

him a description of the way I managed the goats, and directions to

milk and fatten them, and to make both butter and cheese.

At half-past ten, a "crystal," as those cabs were then called, came to

the corner of Fernando Street and Church Alley, and so we drove to the

station. I left the key of the office, directed to the Spaniard, in the

hands of the baggage-master.

When I took leave of my castle, as I called it, I carried with me for

relics the great straw hat I had made, my umbrella, and one of my

parrots; also I forgot not to take the money I formerly mentioned,

which had lain by me so long useless that it was grown rusty and

tarnished, and could scarcely pass for money till it had been a little

rubbed and handled. With these relics, and with my wife's and mother's

baggage and my own chest, we arrived at our new home.

ALIF-LAILA.

THE ORIGIN OF THE "SERIAL."

The monthly magazine, as known to our Western civilization, dates, of

course, from a period this side of the re-invention of printing in

Europe, or of what Bishop Whately wisely calls the introduction of

paper in the West. Our sets of monthlies, bi-monthlies, and

semi-monthlies only run back a hundred or two years, therefore--to the

joy of librarians, to whom, be it confessed, they bring misery untold.

But in the East, where printing has existed so long that the memory of

man goes not to the contrary, it is almost impossible to say how far

back was the introduction of the monthly literary magazine. This

publication was accompanied with certain advantages and certain

disadvantages, which sprang from the peculiarities of the Eastern

calendar. The Eastern month being lunar, the magazine, if accuracy were

consulted, had to be issued once in twenty-nine days, twelve hours, and

forty-four minutes. On the other hand, the people of the East are less

exacting or precise than we are in their estimates of time; and in the

long run, if they had thirteen monthlies in one year, and twelve in

each of the next two years, it generally proved that subscribers were

satisfied.

There is a story of two of these early magazines--universally known

through the East, where, indeed, it is told in many exaggerated and

impossible forms--which is worth repeating for Western readers not yet

familiar with it. It gives both instruction and warning in an age in

which every boy in college, and every girl in a "female seminary,"

regards magazine-writing as the chief end of man and of woman,--an age

in which editors are feeling round, somewhat blindly, to know what

their rights may be, or whether, in fact, they have any rights, which

is doubtful. The story simply told, without any of the absurd

adornments which are put upon it in the East, teaches all men how some

of the most difficult editorial questions were decided there, and what

are the delicate relations between contributors and the public.

Far back in the period of mythical history in the East two brothers,

men of spirit, tact, shrewdness, and literary culture, conducted at the

same time two monthly magazines. The offices of publication were so far

from each other, and the "constituencies" were so different, that the

two journals did not in the least interfere with each other. Those were

in the happy days when there were no mails; and each magazine had its

own staff and its own contributors, the one set skilled in the language

and literature of Tartary, and the other in those of India. Though the

two brothers loved each other, they seldom exchanged letters, and the

chosen contributors of one journal never sent articles to the other.

One of these magazines, called the "Friend of the City," in their queer

Eastern way, was published at Delhi. The other, called the "King of the

Age," was published at Samarcand. Each of them achieved great

popularity, and, by virtue of its popularity, great power. At Delhi, in

particular, the editor became the real controlling power in the city,

and in what we call the kingdom. Not but what there was some kind of a

sachem or mikado, who in after ages would have been called a sultan or

an emperor, who did not edit the magazine, but was kept for or by his

sins in a certain prison, which he called a palace, which stood where

Shah Jehan long after built his magnificent abode. But this poor dog of

a mikado had nothing to do with the real government. He had to put his

seal to a good many documents, and he had to settle a horrible mess of

quarrels among his servants and harem people every day; and sometimes

he had the bore of turning out in the hot sun, with umbrellas and

elephants and bands of music, and so on, to receive some foreign

embassy. This he called reigning, and a very stupid life it was, and

very hard work did it bring upon him. But all the fun of command, all

the real disposition of the forces of Delhi and that country, and all

the comfort of life which comes from success and the "joy of eventful

living," these came, not to this poor shah, mogul, sultan, emperor, or

sachem, or whatever you choose to call him, but to the editor of the

"Friend of the City." He drove his span of horses when he chose and as

he chose, he sent the army where he chose when he chose, and he

dictated the terms of the treaties with the foreign powers. All this he

did because he had a large subscription list and he edited well.

With similar success, though with some difference in form, his younger

brother edited the "King of the Age" at distant Samarcand. Now you

ought to know, dear reader, what I am sorry to say you do not know,

that Samarcand is far, far away from Delhi. It is more than a thousand

miles, were a carrier-dove flying to his love in Delhi from his cage in

Samarcand; and when you come to tedious travelling by camels and horses

and asses--why, there are rivers and mountains between, and the ways,

such as they are, turn hither and thither, so that the journey is two

thousand miles or more. All the same, the editor of the "Friend of the

City" dearly loved his brother who edited the "King of the Age"; and

after they had been parted twenty years, he felt so strong a desire to

see this brother that he directed his chief assistant editor to repair

to him at Samarcand and to bring him.

Having taken the advice of this sub-editor, who was a more practical

person than he was, he gave orders to prepare handsome presents, such

as horses adorned with costly jewels, and mamelukes and beautiful

virgins, and the most expensive stuffs of India. He then wrote a letter

to his brother, in which he told him how eager he was to see him; and

having sealed it and given it to the sub-editor, together with the

presents, he bade him strain his nerves and tuck up his skirts, and go

and return as quickly as possible. The sub-editor answered, "I hear,

and I obey." He packed his baggage and made ready his provisions in

three days, and on the fourth day he departed and went toward the

wastes and the mountains. He travelled night and day. The different

news-agents in the provinces where he stopped came forth to meet him

with costly presents and gifts of gold and silver, and accounts of

sales and orders for back numbers and bound volumes, and each

news-agent accompanied the sub-editor one day's journey. Thus he

continued until he approached the city of Samarcand, when he sent

forward a messenger to the editor of the "King of the Age" to inform

him of his approach. The messenger entered the city, inquired the way

to the office, and introducing himself to the editor, kissed the ground

before him, and acquainted him with the approach of his brother's

sub-editor. On this the editor ordered all his staff, with the

proof-readers and publishers, to go forth a day's journey to meet him,

and they did so. And when they met him, they welcomed him and walked by

his stirrups till they returned into the city. The messenger from Delhi

then delivered his chief's letter. The Samarcand editor took it, read

it, and understood its contents. "But," said he to the messenger, "I

will not go till I have entertained thee three days." He therefore

lodged him in a palace befitting his rank, accommodated all his suite

in tents, and appointed all things requisite in food and drink, and for

three days they feasted. His New-Year's number was just printed, and

having got that off his hands, on the fourth day he equipped himself

for the journey, and collected presents suitable to his brother's

dignity.

Having completed these preparations, he left the charge of the magazine

with his chief of staff, and set out for his visit to his brother. As

is the custom in the East, the caravan encamped a mile from the city to

make sure that nothing was forgotten. It occurred to the Samarcand

brother, after his evening meal, that it would be well to take with him

an early copy of the New-Year's number in advance to his brother, as

they were not yet delivered to the trade. He mounted his horse,

therefore, and rode back to the city, and to save himself from going to

the office, he stopped near the gates, at the house of one of his chief

contributors--a young lady of great promise, whose reputation had been

manufactured, indeed, by the "King of the Age"--to ask her, for the

"early copy" which had been sent to her because she had some verses in

it.

What did he see as he entered the house but that this false woman was

giving a sealed letter to a negro slave. He seized it, he tore it open,

and found that it was a copy of verses which she had written and

addressed to the "Fountain of Light," which was the rival magazine in

Samarcand. On beholding this, the world became black before his eyes.

He said to himself, "If this happens when I have not departed from the

city, what will not this vile woman do while I am sojourning with my

brother?" He then drew his cimeter and cut off her head, as she fell at

his knees for pardon. He took from her table the early copy of the

"King of the Age," gave orders for departure, and journeyed to the city

of Delhi.

As they approached Delhi, the "Friend of the City," or the editor of

that journal, came out to meet them, and welcomed his brother with the

utmost delight. He then ordered that the city should be decorated for

the occasion. But the mind of his brother was distracted by reflections

upon the conduct of his favorite contributor. Excessive grief took

possession of him, and his countenance became sallow and his frame

emaciated. His brother observed these symptoms of a mind ill at ease,

and asked him the cause. "O my brother," he replied, "I have an inward

wound"; but he explained not to him the cause. His host then proposed a

great press excursion on the Jumna, which he hoped might cheer his

brother's mind. But after all the preparations had been made, he was

destined to suffer disappointment, his brother being so ill that the

party proceeded without him.

After they had gone, the poor sufferer from Samarcand sat in his

beautiful apartment in his brother's palace, and to divert his mind,

looked out into the garden. Scarcely was the excursion party gone, when

a gay, laughing party of young men and women came into the garden, whom

he recognized at once as being the contributors to his brother's

magazine, all of whom had been introduced to him at a collation the day

before. He was interested to see their proceedings. They entertained

themselves in the garden; and the favorite contributor of all, a lady

celebrated through India for her short stories, sat down by a fountain,

clapped her hands, and cried, "Masoud! Masoud!" Now Masoud was the

editor of the "Pearl of Wit," which was an upstart magazine, the hated

rival of the "Friend of the City." In a moment he came in, led by two

mamelukes, who made prostrations before him; and he bowed to the chief

contributor, and sat at her feet. Then she drew from her pocket a

little roll of vellum, and read to him and to all the others a short

story of only six thousand words. And all the contributors applauded,

some from sympathy and some to conceal their jealousy. But Masoud

applauded most of all, and took the roll, and hung around her neck a

necklace of diamonds. Then all the other contributors read articles in

turn; and Masoud took an article from each, and to each he gave either

a purse of gold or a bracelet or a diamond, according to the reputation

before the public of each contributor. Now all these reputations had

been made by the advertising clerk of the "Friend of the City."

When, therefore, the Samarcand editor saw from his window these

shameless proceedings, his heart warmed gladly within him. "By Allah!"

he exclaimed, "my affliction is lighter than this affliction!" His

grief was soothed, and he no longer abstained from food and drink.

And so it fell out that when, after five days, his brother returned

from the excursion, he was delighted to find that his brother guest was

cheerful and well. His face had recovered its color, and he ate with

appetite. "O my brother," he cried, "how is this change? Acquaint me

with thy condition." Then his brother took him on one side, away from

the staff, from the mamelukes and the publishers, and told him all. The

Delhi editor could not believe the tale. But the next day he made as if

he would go on an excursion with the Board of Trade; and no sooner had

the party left the city than he returned to his palace in disguise, and

then, looking from the window as his brother had done, he saw a like

sight: the contributors were all reading their articles, and selling

them to Masoud and other editors of rival magazines.

As soon as the editor saw this, he wrote a note to the chief

contributor, and asked her to call at the office the next day. So soon

as she entered, he charged her with her guilt; and before the miserable

creature could reply, he drew his cimeter and cut off her head. He then

sent shorter notes to the lesser contributors; and as each one entered

the office, he explained briefly that he knew all, and, with his own

hand, beheaded him. He then ordered the porters and janitors to throw

the heads and bodies into the Jumna, and, with his brother's

assistance, he called in a new circle of new contributors, and made up

the next number of the "Friend of the City" from their poems and

articles. The director of advertisements and of press criticisms

manufactured reputations for them all, and the number was pronounced

the most brilliant number of the "Friend of the City" which had ever

been published.

Then the editor sent advance copies to each of these contributors, and

asked them to call at the office the next morning. As each one called,

the editor drew his cimeter and cut off the contributor's head. He then

called the porters and janitors, and bade them throw the carcasses and

heads into the Jumna, and proceeded to make up the next number. And

thus he did for three years.

As the third year passed, however, the assistant editors began to

observe that there was a certain difficulty in collecting poems and

articles. Nay, it was even whispered that in the publication office

they feared that the magazine was losing popularity. The rumors from

the publication office were not often permitted to exhale in the

editorial rooms. But still there was a suspicion that from the homes of

the authors, who had been cut short so summarily, there was going out a

sort of public opinion unfavorable to the renewal of subscriptions. As

for authors, for some time they presented themselves freely. Each poet

and each story-writer was quite sure that her communication was so much

better than anything which had ever been written before that they all

moved up to the fatal edge of publication with serenity, each quite

sure that for herself the rule would be reversed, and each quite sure

that the others deserved decapitation. But, as has been said, after

three years the steady supply of articles was a little checked, perhaps

because a rumor was put in circulation by the conductors of the "Pearl

of Wit" that the editor of the "Friend of the City" was crazy, and

could not if he would, and would not if he could, tell a bad article

from a good one.

All these rumors and contingencies made the position of the sub-editor

very uncomfortable as the third year drew to a close. He had to make up

each number all the same, and he had to direct the chief of the

advertisements how to make the reputations of the authors. But really

the authors were so short-lived now that the reputations were scarcely

worth the making.

Of this remarkable man the name unfortunately is lost. But, happily for

literature and for posterity, he had two remarkable daughters, of whom

the eldest has won an extraordinary reputation in the East, where she

stands, indeed, at the very head of literature. At the period with

which this history deals she was young and beautiful. She had a courage

above her sex, remarkable penetration, and genius unbounded. She had

read everything, and her memory was so wonderful that of all she had

read she forgot nothing. She had studied history, philosophy, medicine,

and the arts, and her verses were acknowledged to be better than those

of the most distinguished poets of her time. As has been said, her

beauty was ravishing, and her amiability and her virtue rivalled her

wit, her memory, her prudence, her accomplishments, and her personal

loveliness.

One day, when the sub-editor had white paper before him, wondering how

he should make up the "schedule" for his next number, this lovely girl

came to him and said, "Papa, grant me a boon!" and she kissed him.

And he said, "A thousand, my darling."

"Though they should cost you the half of your kingdom, papa?"

"Though they should cost me the whole, my darling," said the fond

father rashly.

The girl clapped her hands and cried, "Victory! victory! Papa, I want

to write the first article for the next number of the 'Friend of the

City.'"

Oh, how agonized was her poor father! How he begged her to release him

from his fatal promise! but in vain. The girl was determined. She had

her father's word, and she would not let him go.

"Dear child," he said, "have you lost your senses? You know that the

chief cuts off the head of each contributor as soon as she has received

the advanced copy of the magazine. Do you really ask me to offer you to

the knife?"

"Yes, papa," said the brave girl; "I know all the danger that I run,

and it does not deter me. If I die, my death will be glorious. If I

live, I save my country."

And at last the wretched father, driven to a partial consent by his

daughter's firmness, went to the editor-in-chief with the schedule of

the number for his approval, and showed to him that the first article

on the fatal list, namely,

"THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT,"

was

"BY SCHEHEREZADE."

The editor knew the name full well, and he knew that the author was the

sub-editor's daughter.

"Dog," said he, "do you suppose that because I am fond of you and use

you, I shall spare your cursed house more than any other house in

Delhi?"

The poor sub-editor, all in tears, said that he had no such hope.

"Be not deceived," said the editor. "When you bring to me your daughter

Scheherezade's article, you take her life with your own hands."

"Sir," said the sub-editor, "I hear and I obey. My heart will break,

but I shall obey you. Nature will murmur, but I know my place, and you

will see that the proofs are well read and that my hands do not

flinch." The editor accepted his promise, and bade him bring the

article when he pleased.

Quite in time for the first or illustrated form, the sub-editor brought

in the article, with a series of spirited illustrations, drawn on the

block by Dinarzade, the sister of the virgin martyr Scheherezade. This

celebrated article has never been fully printed in Western journals

till now, although it has attained great celebrity all over the world,

and has often been printed in abridged forms. The following is a more

complete and correct version of it than we have found elsewhere:--

THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT.

Once upon a time there was a rich merchant, wonderfully successful in

his dealings, who had great store of goods of all sorts, of money also,

and of women, children, and all sorts of slaves, as well as of houses,

warehouses, and lands. And he had this wealth not only at home, but in

all the countries of the world. He had to make journeys sometimes, so

that he might see his factors and correspondents face to face. And

once, when he was obliged to go and collect some money, he took his

scrip or travel-bag, and packed in it some biscuit and some dates of

Mecca for provision for the journey, because he would have in some

places to pass over deserts. And so he mounted his horse and set out

upon his journey. God gave him good success in his travelling. He came

prosperously to the place he sought, he finished his business

prosperously, and prosperously he set out upon his return.

After he had travelled three days toward home, the fourth day was very

hot. And the merchant was so much distressed by the heat that he turned

aside into a garden by the wayside to rest himself under the shade of

some trees he saw there. He made his resting place under the shade of a

large nut-tree, he fastened his horse so that he could not run, and

then opening his scrip, he took out one or two biscuits and a few dates

to make a meal. He ate the biscuits and the dates, and threw the

date-stones right and left upon the ground. Then, having satisfied

himself with his frugal repast, he stood up and washed himself, and

then knelt down and said his prayers.

He had not finished his prayers, but was still upon his knees, when he

saw before him an immense genie, so large that while his feet were on

the ground, his head was in the clouds, and so old that he was white

with age. He held in his hand a long drawn sword, and before the

merchant could move, the genie cried out to him,--

"Stand up, that I may kill you with this sword, as you have killed my

son!"

When the merchant heard these words of horror he was terrified by them

as much as he had been at the sight of the monster; but in the midst of

his terror he stammered out, "O my lord, what is my crime? why do you

kill me?"

Then the genie replied again, "I will kill you, as you have killed my

son."

Then the merchant said, "Who has killed your son?"

And the genie answered, "You."

"O my lord," said the poor merchant, "I never saw your son, and I do

not know who he is."

But the genie said, "You have killed him."

Then the merchant said, "My lord, by the living Allah, I have not

killed him. How and where and when did I kill him?"

The genie answered him, "Did you not lie down when you came into the

garden? Did you not take dates out of your travel-bag, did you not eat

the dates, and did you not throw the stones about, some on the left

side and some on the right?"

"It is true, my lord," said the merchant; "I did as you say."

"Very well," said the genie, "and so you killed my son; for my son was

passing by just then, and as you threw the date-stones, one of them

struck him and killed him. Does not the law say, 'Whoso killeth

another, shall be killed in turn'?"

"Verily, this is the law," said the merchant; "but indeed, indeed, my

lord, I did not kill your son; or, if I killed him, I call upon Allah

to witness, without Whom is no might and no wisdom, that I did it

unwittingly. Forgive me, my lord, oh, forgive me if I have done this

thing!"

"No," said the genie; "surely you must die."

So saying, he seized the merchant and threw him upon the ground. Then

he lifted his great sword into the air again and held it ready to

strike. The poor merchant thought of his home and family, of his wives

and his little ones. He thought he had not a moment more to live, and

he shed such floods of tears that his clothes were wet with the

moisture.

He cried again, "There is no power nor might but with the infinite

Allah alone!" and then he repeated the following verses:--

"Time knows two days:

Of one the face is bright and clear;

Of one the face is dark and drear.

"Life has two sides:

One is as warm and glad as light;

One is as cold and black as night.

"Time fooled with me:

His flattering fingers soothed with magic spell,

Just while his lying kiss was luring me to hell.

"Who sneers at me?

Are not the trees that feel the tempest's blow

The stately trees of pride that highest grow?

"Come sail with me:

See floating corpses on the topmost waves;

The precious pearls are hid in secret caves.

"See the eclipse!

A thousand stars unquenched forever blaze;

But sun and moon must hide their brighter rays.

"I looked for fruit:

On branches green and fresh no fruit I found;

I plucked the fruit from branches sere and browned.

"Night smiled on me!

Because I saw the diamonds in the sky,

Poor fool! I had forgot that death was nigh."

When the merchant had finished these verses, and had wept to his

heart's content, the genie, who had waited through it all, said, "It is

enough; now I must kill you."

"What!" said the merchant, "will nothing change you?"

"Nothing," said the genie. "You must die."

TO BE CONTINUED.

These last words were emblazoned in a beautiful scroll of Dinarzade's

most perfect designing.

The editor of the "Friend of the City" was not accustomed, himself, to

read manuscripts, proofs, or revises, unless the articles were his own.

He first saw the articles of the sub-editor and contributors in

plate-proof. When the plate-proofs of this number were brought to him

he began at once on the story of the merchant. He read it with

unaffected, not to say unwonted, interest. When he turned the last

page, he said to himself, "However will she wind it up in so few

lines?" And when he came to the masterpiece of Scheherezade's success

and of Dinarzade's art, he laid down the sheets with a mingled feeling

not easily described. His cruelty was foiled. But of that he thought

little. His curiosity was piqued. A jaded editor of twenty-three years'

experience was curious for a _dénouement_. But of this he thought

little. For not one moment did he think of taking the author's blood.

He saw too clearly the future of the magazine. In short, every other

emotion sank within him before the profound awe which overwhelmed his

being. The editor looked down the ages. He saw that his magazine might

last forever. For in that series of plate-proofs the SERIAL was born.

From that moment the position of the lovely Scheherezade and her

accomplished sister Dinarzade on that magazine was secure. That single

serial ran twenty-seven years, through one thousand and one numbers,

and was known through the East as "Alif-Laila." Long before it ended,

other serials had been begun, and no citizen of Delhi or the

neighborhood ever subscribed for the "Friend of the City" but he

continued his subscription for generation after generation.

The tales of Scheherezade have been collected, as is well known, in

endless editions, and translated into all languages. The languages of

the East are so little understood that the names of the magazines have

in time been transferred to the two editors. The "Friend of the City"

in Arabic is "Shahriar," and that name in varied spelling is generally

given to the editor of that print. His brother, by a similar oversight,

is usually called "Shahzeban," which word means the "King of the Age."

But these names are forgotten, as they should be. The name which is

remembered is that of the lovely and virtuous Scheherezade, the savior

of her country, who, to her other titles to the gratitude of men, adds

this,--that she invented the Serial.

A CIVIL SERVANT.

President Madison was fond of telling the story of a visit made to him

by one of his supporters. After due introductory discussion of the

weather and the state of parties, the voter explained to the President

that he had called upon him to ask for the office of Chief Justice of

the United States.

Mr. Madison was a little surprised; but, with that ready tact which he

had brought from his diplomatic experience, he concealed his

astonishment. He took down the volume which contained the Constitution

of the United States, and explained to this Mr. Swearingin--if that

were his name--that the judges held office on the tenure of good

behavior, and that Judge Marshall, then the ornament of the bench,

could not be removed to make place for him.

Mr. Swearingin received the announcement quietly; and, after a moment,

said he thought he should like to be Secretary of State.

The President said that that was undoubtedly a place where a man could

do good service to the country; but that Monroe, like Mr. Swearingin

and himself, was a Virginian; and he did not like to remove him.

"Then," said Mr. Swearingin, "I will be Secretary of the Treasury."

Unfortunately, the President said, the present incumbent was a

Pennsylvanian: it was necessary to conciliate Pennsylvania; and he

could not remove him.

"Then," said Mr. Swearingin, "I think I will go abroad. I should like

to go to France."

"Do you speak French?" asked the President kindly.

"No, no; I speak nothing but Old Dominion English,--good enough for me,

Mr. President."

"Yes, yes; and for me. But I don't think it will do to send you to the

Mounseers, unless you can speak their language."

"Then I'll go to England."

"Ah, Mr. Swearingin, that will never do! King George might remember how

often your father snapped his rifle at Lord Cornwallis."

So Europe was exhausted. And Mr. Swearingin fell back on one and

another collectorship, naval office, district-attorneyship; but for

each application, the astute President had his reply.

"I think, then, Mr. President, I will be postmaster at our office at

home."

Mr. Madison had forgotten where that was; but, learning that it was at

Slate Creek, Four Corners, Botetourt County, Virginia, he sent for the

register. Alas! it proved that the office was in the hands of one of

Morgan's veterans. Impossible to remove him!

"Truly, Mr. Madison," said Mr. Swearingin, "I am obliged to you for

your attention to my case. I see the difficulties that surround you.

Now, seeing you cannot give me the chief justice's place, nor Mr.

Monroe's, nor the Treasury, nor any of those others, don't you think

you could give me a pair of _old leather breeches?_"

Mr. Madison thought he could,--did better; gave him an order on his

tailor for the breeches; and Mr. Swearingin went happily on his way.

I have changed the name in this story, but tell it much as Mr. Madison

told it. Something of that kind has happened every day in Washington,

from 1800 to 1880. And it is of the career of one of these very civil

servants of the state, who are so easily pleased if only you give them

something which they have never earned, that I now am writing. I am by

no means sure that our hero is not the grandson of the very man whom,

by a pair of leather breeches, James Madison made happy.

* * * * *

The first epoch of his life is the great success, as his young friends

thought it, when, before he was of age, he received an appointment as

clerk in the War Department in Washington. It was then that he entered

the "Civil Service," and became a "civil servant" of the United States.

Why was he appointed? Why? Because there was nothing else for him to

do. He had grown up shiftlessly, the oldest son of a widow, who had not

a firm hand enough to keep him at school. He threw his Latin Grammar

into the fire the day it was bought for him, and refused to go to

college. One of his uncles offered him a farm at the West; but he did

not choose to be a farmer: he said he thought he would rather be a

gentleman. The same prejudice interfered with his being apprenticed to

learn the printer's trade or the painter's or the carriage-builder's,

or any of the other methods by which hand-laborers subdue the world; so

an effort had been made, with a good deal of solicitation to back it,

to put him into a wholesale importing house. But it turned out, the

first day, that his figures were so dubious that no one could tell by

his memoranda whether he had counted two hundred and fifteen bales of

gunny cloth or 2,015. And when, on the second day, he gave to a

teamster an order for two bundles of pine kindlings, which was so

written and spelled that the next day one hundred bundles of pine

shingles were found encumbering the stairway of the warehouse, and when

this blunder was traced home to Master John's handwriting, he was

notified that the firm of Picul, Sapan, & Company had no further need

for his services. Then his much-enduring uncles, by much letter-writing

and vigilant attendance at many congressional district conventions, got

him nominated by their member of Congress to a cadetship at West Point.

This gentleman was called _their member_ because they had _quoad hoc_

bought him by such services. But when Master John presented himself for

examination at West Point, he was so uncertain whether eleven times

eleven were a hundred and seven, or whether it were not a hundred and

seventeen, that he was passed by, and a little Irish boy, named Phil

Sheridan, who had no uncles that were ever heard of, was taken in his

place. How much the country lost in that substitution can never be

told. After a similar experience as to a midshipman's berth, Master

John had been left to follow up his own views in the training for a

gentleman. Sometimes, in terrible pinch for pocket-money, he would

shovel sidewalks for the neighbors. He was always ready, in summer, to

burn a good deal of powder in shooting beach-birds; but he had attained

the age of twenty without the knowledge of any handicraft, mystery, or

profession except that of catching flounders from the wharves of the

seaport village where he lived.

It was, therefore, as I have said, welcomed as a special providence,

almost, that a benignant government at the demand of the uncles

aforesaid, was able to give to Mr. John Sapp a desk in the War

Department.

The duties of this post he was told, and he found, were such as would

"explain themselves" to him. The first duty was to come in at nine, and

the second was to leave at three. Mr. Sapp soon learned the second duty

very well, and even assisted in arrangements by which, at noon every

day, the in-door clock of the department was crowded forward ten

minutes so as to make duty number two the easier. As for the first

duty, he was never perfect. But, as he justly said, it made no sort of

difference whether he were there early or late. The truth is, that it

was an economy to him to come late; because he then needed fewer cigars

to go through the morning. After he did arrive, he had the "National

Intelligencer" to read, and the "Madisonian," and the "Globe"; he had

such letters to acknowledge as had been sent down open to his room; and

he had to get rid of the time till three o'clock, as amended, came.

All this was very comfortable for many years, while it lasted. It might

have lasted till now, but for a little accident. It happened, one day,

that a woman with a black veil came into the room where Mr. Sapp was

reading, with his feet on the mantelpiece, and handed him a letter.

"Take a seat," said he; "I am engaged just now." So the widow took a

seat, while Mr. Sapp finished an account of a prize fight in the

"Madisonian." He then left her, and went upstairs to settle his bets on

this fight with one of the gentlemen there; and the widow waited an

hour. Then he came back; and she asked him if he would look at her

letter. He looked at it, and told her she had come to the wrong office,

and wrote a memorandum, which directed her to go to the head-quarters

of the army. The poor woman said she had been there, and they had sent

her to him. By this continued importunity she wearied Mr. Sapp; and he

said, with some warmth, that he would be damned if he would be bullied

by her or by anybody; that he knew his business, if at the

head-quarters they did not know theirs, and that she had better leave

the office, and that very quickly, too. And so Mr. Sapp relapsed to his

cigar.

Now it happened that this lady was the widow of a major-general, and

the sister of another who was acting as assistant-adjutant on the

general staff. She was attending to a mere piece of detail, drawing the

money due to her son, who had died in service. It was merely for her

own convenience that she had stopped at the department herself; and, in

an hour more, she had reported at head-quarters, as bidden by Mr. Sapp.

In twenty-four hours more, therefore, Mr. John Sapp had his arrears of

pay paid up to him, was dismissed from the service of the government,

and Mr. Dick Nave was appointed to the vacant desk. This gentleman was

the next on the list; that was the reason he was appointed.

Mr. John Sapp was free of the world.

But, from that moment, Mr. Sapp had found his profession. He was, as

you have seen from what he did and said to the widow, what is called a

"civil servant." He had seen the color of Uncle Sam's money. It was

paid in coin in those days: and Mr. Sapp knew how regular were the

quarter days, and how bright the quarters and the halves. If he were

prejudiced before against the meaner professions, in which one receives

his pay from his fellow-men, how much more was he prejudiced against

them now, when he had learned how well Uncle Sam pays, even if he pays

but little, and how easy it had been for him, till this misfortune

came, to do even less than he was paid for. A civil servant had Mr.

John Sapp begun in life; and a civil servant he would remain.

So he returned home. But he did not return before two or three "own

correspondents" had announced in the "Buncombe True Eagle" and the

"Bobadil True Flag" that our distinguished fellow-citizen, Mr. John

Sapp, having pressed a series of reforms in the War Department which

cut off the perquisites of some of the epaulette wearers who were

parading on Pennsylvania Avenue, had been hunted down by them with

relentless hostility, and at last had been driven from the post which

he had so bravely maintained. The "Eagle" intimated that the least sop

thrown to these hungry beagles by Mr. Sapp would have silenced their

howl. But he was not the man to bribe. He preferred to go down with his

colors flying, although the yellow flag of corruption should be

flaunted in the hot sirocco of political and party tergiversation; and,

with this talisman of integrity wrapped about his form, he would

present himself in his native town for the verdict of the people whose

rights he had maintained. In this cloud of mixed metaphor, Mr. Sapp

returned to Shirk Corners, and took up his quarters at the village

hotel.

On consultation with his friends, Mr. Sapp offered himself as candidate

for the legislature,--the great mistake of his life, as he afterwards

declared. Uncle Sam, he said, required little, if he paid little; paid

well what he paid; and, if a man's politics were right, asked no

questions. But when a man offered himself for the legislature, there

were a thousand questions; "and a feller did not understand; and then

what could a feller do?" But this was after he had learned what was

what. While he was learning, his friends advised him to be seen freely

among the people, and to attach the young men to him, and to gain the

respect of the solid men. So Mr. Sapp became a fine member of the Light

Infantry, and paid the entrance fees. He joined the Silver Fountain

Division of Sons of Temperance, and attended their meetings. He invited

all gentlemen of respectability into the private office of the Shirk

House, and treated to champagne and cigars. He took a half pew in the

Methodist Church, and generally attended the occasional and evening

services at the Church of the Disciples. He looked in at the editorial

office of the "Spy" in the morning; and if he got a good letter from

Washington in the afternoon, he sent it to the editor of the

"Informer." He joined the reading-club, and made himself agreeable to

the ladies. He subscribed to the Orphans' Home, so that he might win

the suffrages of orphans. He held yarn for those who knit at the

ladies' sewing society, and spun yarns for those who would listen. He

was faithful in his attendance at primary meetings. He sat through the

speaking of the boys at the quarterly school exhibitions. He permitted

himself to be made a director of the Horse-Thief Association, and when

there was a fire, he worked at the brakes of the engines till he was

spelled. These little occupations I mention only by way of

illustration. He said himself that this set of duties was endless, and

that anybody who knew what hard work a feller had before he could go to

the legislature, would never envy any man his seat. "For his part, he

was sure that a civil servant did more mean work than any nigger of

them all."

If he is to be the standard, I am sure I agree with him.

At last the time for nomination came, and Mr. Sapp was nominated by the

old Whig line, which was then in the majority in Buncombe County. Had

the Democrats been in the majority, Mr. Sapp would have solicited their

nomination. "It's best to be on the winning side," he said. In times of

long peace, the army and the navy are generally unpopular; and the

impression that Mr. Sapp had been snubbed by shoulder-strapped men was

enough to bring him into favor. "We shall walk over the track," said

Mr. Hopkirk, his principal backer; and Mr. Facer, though not so

confident, offered three to one in betting on him.

But alas! the Democrats named a candidate; and some thorny come-outers

named another: so there was no walking over the track. And, by the same

ill luck which made our civil servant insult Mrs. Gen. Armitage, he

happened to ask Deacon Whitman, the Most Grand Worthy of the Sons of

Temperance, to step into his room on a cold day and try some hot punch

he had been brewing. Who could ever have thought that a jolly-looking

old cove like that was a deacon? The deacon published this invitation

in the next "Water-Bucket." He added some comments, which drew forth

some dozen lies from Mr. Hopkirk the next day in the "Spy." "The

deacon's letter lost us all the temperance vote; and Mr. Hopkirk's lost

us all the liberal vote,"--so was the vote of the liquor houses and

their coteries called. Then one day, at a conference meeting, Brother

Sapp was asked pointedly if he believed in the objectivity of the

atonement. "How is a feller to know?" he said afterwards to Mr. Facer.

And poor Mr. Sapp, not knowing, told the truth, and said that under

certain circumstances he did, and other circumstances he did not. He

said this in such a way as to offend the class-leader, who was a man of

courage, and in the habit of saying yes for yes, and no for no. After a

dozen other such pieces of ill-luck as this, it is no wonder that John

Throop, the Independent, stood at the head of the poll; Reuben Gerry,

the Democrat, came next, and John Sapp last of all. But he had all the

liquor bills of his friends, all the printing of the canvass, and half

of the bets upon it to pay.

* * * * *

By this time, John was thrown back upon his uncles again. As for them,

worthy men, they had written so many letters of introduction in his

favor that they began to believe their own words, and regarded him as a

much abused man, and themselves as worse abused than he.

The earliest form of this letter which I have found is simply this:--

DEAR SIR,--I take the liberty to introduce to you my nephew, Mr. John

Sapp, who will explain to you the object with which he calls.

Respectfully yours,

PHILEMON PLAICE,

_or_ AILANTHUS PLAICE, _as the case might be_.

But after the uncles became indignant themselves with the public's

dulness, and especially after they found they were paying John Sapp's

bills, the letters became eloquent enlargements on these themes.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--The bearer, my nephew, Mr. John Sapp, is a young

gentleman who has been very hardly treated in the public service. He

calls to ask your advice and interest in an application he is making

for--

For whatever it might happen to be; as, the post of superintendent of

oil lamps;

Of chief marshal of the Kossuth procession;

Of county surveyor (duties done by proxy);

Of assistant marshal for the census;

Of assistant assessor;

Of pilot commissioner;

Of librarian of the Archæological Institute;

Of messenger in the State House;

Of head of the lamplighting bureau in the City Hall;

Of ticket-seller at the Coliseum;

Of lecturer for the Free Trade League;

Of trustee of the Protectionist Fund;

Of secretary to the Board of Health;

Of auditor of the Alabama claims;

Of secretary to the commissioners at Vienna;

Of clerk to the inspectors of Ward 2;

Or whatever other function might prove to need a functionary. Indeed,

the Messrs. Plaice soon persuaded themselves that he had special

fitness, in turn, for any and all posts which fell vacant:--

For inspector of fish, because his father went on a mackerel voyage

when he was a boy.

For toll-keeper of the Potomac bridge, because his mother was of a

misanthropic turn of mind.

For firewarden, because he was blown up with gunpowder when he was a

child. And with each rebuff in Mr. John Sapp's line of applications,

his uncles were the more indignant for the ingratitude of the world.

So was Mr. Sapp; but none the less did he push his traverses towards

the works of what he called the common enemy.

He was at one time urging his claims to be employed inspector of Orange

Peel, as it was found on sidewalks,--a post for which he was specially

fitted, because a boy with whom he went to school was our consul at

Fayal. Some one who met him said, very unkindly, that John Sapp's life

seemed to be a very easy one; and the phrase came to John's ears.

"Easy?" said he. "I should like to know what is hard. This fellow

thinks all you have to do is to ask to be appointed Inspector of Orange

Peel, and then to begin to draw the salary. Shows what he knows of our

business.

"Now see; this inspector is appointed by the county commissioners. Have

to find out who they are. Make no mistake. Get the names right

first,--all the letters right. William Claflin and Tennie Claflin's

husband not the same man,--very different men. Then find out their

friends,--where they go to church, who's the minister, who's the

doctor, what bank they're in, and so on. Then find out who knows the

friends. See?

"Then begin. Speak first to John Jones at the barber's or post-office

quite accidentally. Get John Jones to give you letter--see?--to

introduce you to David Dodder. See? Simple letter,--general letter.

'Friend Mr. Sapp,--little matter of business.' Then call on David

Dodder--see?--after dinner, when he's good-natured. Ask him to

introduce you to William Belcher,--'important matter of business,

necessary for public benefit.' See? Then go to William Belcher,--best

coat on, clean shirt, shaved on purpose,--and ask him for letter of

introduction to county commissioners,--knows 'em all,--see?--something

like this:--

"'My dear Mr. Sheriff,--Will you present to the county commissioners my

friend Mr. John Sapp, who is a candidate for the Inspection of Orange

Peel? I do not personally know Mr. Sapp, whose public service has been

mostly at Washington; but my friend, Mr. Dodder, on whose judgment I

rely, &c., &c. See?

"Now," said Mr. Sapp, when he explained this, "what man says it is easy

to get those letters together? What man says I did not earn this

inspectorship by hard work? And when a fellow's got it, I'll be hanged

if the Know-nothings did not come in before I had been in office a

week, and before I had any chance to join them; and I was turned out

before I had inspected one orange!"

Mr. Carlyle says that the hatter of the present day, instead of

exerting himself to make good hats, exerts himself to write good

advertisements of hats, or to make the largest hat that can be made of

lath and plaster, to be carted round the streets of London upon wheels,

bearing advertisements of his hat store. The evil is not a new one. The

cat in Æsop told the fox that she had but one way to save her life, if

the enemy should come. "How sad!" said the fox. "I have a hundred; and

I will explain them to you." Just as he began to explain, the hounds

dashed upon them. The cat ran up a tree, and was safe; but the fox, at

the end of his hundredth turn, was devoured. Mr. John Sapp was as badly

off as the fox. He was fit for a hundred places, but he never could

stay in one of them. Had he known how to do one thing, he could have

done it his life long.

For, when a crisis comes, or anything like a crisis, the world has a

hopeless fashion of jamming its old stout felt hat over its ears, tying

a stout scarf above it, and going out to battle in the storm, and

forgets, in the fight, the lath-and-plaster hat which has dragged the

street yesterday. It trusts a proved friend, though his felt be a

little rough, and his braid a little frayed. And while Mr. John Sapp's

portfolio of recommendations grew larger and larger, and showed he was

good for everything, from a post on the Board of Health round to the

janitorship of the public library, the public, when it was on its

mettle, had a brutal way of appointing what he called "new men," who

had made no application, or what he called "old fogies," who had been

trained by experience to understand their duties. And it must be

confessed that Mr. Sapp held back very modestly from the places which

involved danger to-day, or which required preparation in years bygone.

When the war came, he made no offer of service in the field, but was

quite sure there must be some place as storekeeper that he should like.

When Kansas was to be settled of a sudden, he did not think of

emigrating; but he thought there might be some place for him in the

office that sent the emigrants. I happen to remember that forty-nine

thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine other men of his age thought

much the same thing. Having, indeed, been educated for nothing in

particular, Mr. Sapp was always on the front list of applicants for

places where there was nothing in particular to do.

I have had a great many such men to examine, sooner or later. If Mr.

Sapp had come before me, sitting as county commissioner, or inspector

of prisons, the question I would have put him first would have been,

"What can you do best in this world? What do you think you are most

good for? What do you like to do?" It is pathetic to see how

disappointed men break down under that question. I once asked a foreign

missionary what he would do if he had _carte-blanche_,--had a hundred

thousand dollars to expend in the next year?

"I--I--I think, ah, ah--you had better ask the advisory board," he

said.

There was nothing in particular that he wanted to do; and so he did

nothing. I used to ask young men what they were reading, but I do not

now, unless I am quite sure of them. So many men said, "Oh,--really,

you know,--the newspapers, you know,--and the magazines, you

know,--'Littell's' and 'Old and New' and the 'Atlantic,' you know--must

keep up with the times, you know." I did not know any such thing. They

read nothing in particular, and practically read nothing at all. Now,

the people,--who are, on the whole, wiser than we think,--when their

moments of crisis come, sweep all such Jacks-of-all-trades by. They

light on some one man, who has done some one thing well. He has made

fish leap up the falls at Lowell into the Merrimack. He has taught the

waves to obey his bidding, and sheer off the shore at Chicago. He has

administered a railroad, so that no widow weeps when she hears its

name, no orphan curses the recklessness of its managers. The grateful

people know such men. And when a crisis comes, that voice of the

people, which is as the voice of God, says to such a man,--

"Thou hast been faithful in a few things: I will make thee ruler over

many things. Thou hast been faithful in a very little. Have thou

authority over ten cities!"

But Mr. Sapp heard no such order to come up higher. The truth is, that,

in three cases out of four, official life with us is not a good

training for business in any other work. And Mr. Sapp's office at the

War Department had been one of those three cases. It had taught him to

file letters, to note their contents in an alphabetical index, to refer

them respectfully to somebody else, to write back in an invariable form

to the authors that they had been respectfully referred, and, once a

week, to send a volume of letters to the binder. But this was all that

it taught him. The consequence was that when he was appointed to any

function with any different duties, he functioned ill.

Thus he was a poor librarian at the Archæological; and the directors

voted not to have any librarian. They appointed a superintendent; and

Mr. Sapp was discharged.

He lectured ill for the Free Trade League, so that the people stayed at

home. Now, as Lord Dundreary says, "How can a feller lecture, if people

will not listen?"

He inspected orange peel ill, so that, whether the Know-nothings had

come in or not, he would have gone out. In truth, he was, as I said,

trained to do nothing in particular; and the only place he was fit for,

therefore, was some place where there was nothing in particular to do.

In the English civil service there are many such places; but in that of

America there are very few.

The last time I saw Mr. Sapp, he was standing rather ruefully at the

door of Dr. Chloral's office. Dr. Chloral, you remember, is the

celebrated dentist of that name, with the striking sign on Cambridge

Street, where a gutta-perch mouth, propelled by Cochituate, opens and

shuts to slow music, as if it were listening to a lyceum lecture

two-thirds done. Fortunately for me, Mr. Sapp did not see me.

At that moment he was laying his lines for an inspectorship in the

Custom House. He had no letter of introduction which he thought would

move Judge Russell, the collector. But he knew, or thought he knew,

that Dr. Chloral and Judge Russell were intimate; so he stood at Dr.

Chloral's street-door till some patient might come in whom Mr. Sapp

could engage to introduce him to the dentist, who in his turn could

then introduce him to the collector.

An admirable plan! Well, many patients came, you may be sure. Ladies

came in carriages with their children, from Chester Square. Students

came in the Union cars from Cambridge. Laboring men came up from North

Street. Later in the day, toothaching bankers came from State Street,

and neuralgic aldermen from City Hall. But hour passed after hour; and

no man came whom Mr. Sapp could ask for an introduction to Dr. Chloral.

Hour passed after hour. The clock struck three, when Mr. Sapp knew that

office hours were over for that day. The hard-worked doctor, released

at last, came running down to take his walk before dinner, when lo, one

more patient on the stairway!

It was poor John Sapp. Failing other introduction, he had, with the

promptness of genius, invented a toothache.

He met Dr. Chloral, and acted agony so well, that he compelled the

doctor to return.

"But there's nothing the matter with that tooth, man! It is sound for

thirty years."

"O," said Mr. Sapp, "I wish I thought so!"

"Why, man, I wish it were in my head!" said the doctor.

"O," said Mr. Sapp, "I wish it were!"

"Well," said Dr. Chloral, "if you say so, here goes"; and in a moment

he pulled as honest a tooth as ever ground gristle or tendon.

"Now rinse your mouth here, sir; here's a towel, sir; I'm rather late,

sir"; and then, as Mr. Sapp loitered,--

"What else can I do for you?"

"Could not you,--Dr. Chloral,--could not you write me a line of

introduction to Mr. Collector Russell at the Custom House?"

"And after all, do you think," said Mr. Sapp,--"after all, Judge

Russell appointed a one-legged soldier, who had served in the war; and

I lost my tooth for nothing."

After this repulse, Mr. Sapp became low in his mind. His uncles were

dead,--that is, his real uncles were; and he carried to his other

uncles most of his portable property for pawn. At last he got up a

paper which many men signed--without reading it. They hoped, perhaps,

it was a petition to the governor that he would give Mr. Sapp a place,

holding for good behavior, in the state-prison. It _was_ a

recommendation to the benevolent to subscribe for his relief. With this

paper he called, as it happened, on Mrs. Gen. Armitage, who was

spending the summer at the sea-shore at Shirk Corners. Mrs. Armitage

was interested in the fate of the worn-out office-seeker. She gave him

a chair, a piece of cake, and a glass of water, and made him tell his

whole story. To her dismay, she found that _she_ had been the arbiter

of his fortunes. She had long since forgotten his rudeness, and he had

never known her name. But Mrs. Armitage gave him five dollars; and,

thinking that she had, perhaps, some influence still in Washington,

wrote a confidential note to a very, very, very high authority, to know

if there was really no place, with ever so little salary,--in which a

man could just live,--which Mr. Sapp could have. "Some place, you

know," said she, "where there is nothing in particular to do, but where

you just want a single man, who does not drink, and who, I believe,

does not steal."

The answer, alas! was--as it always is--that nothing was vacant but the

consulate at Fernando Po. The quarter's fees there were never more than

fifty-seven dollars. How much they would be in a year, no one knows;

for no consul has ever survived that climate more than four months. But

it is thought that the fees may be larger now; for no one has applied

for the place since the last consul died, seven years ago. This is the

only place in the gift of the government that no one has applied for.

Mrs. Armitage showed this letter to Mr. John Sapp. "Have you ever lived

in a warm climate?" said she kindly. "There can be no danger of

rheumatism there."

No, there could be no danger of rheumatism; but, for all that, Mr. Sapp

declined the offer. It did him good to decline it. He wrote a letter on

square letter-paper, and sealed it with his father's seal-ring. It was

the first thing in life he had ever declined!

I think that seal touched them in Washington. They are hard-hearted,

but sealing-wax--real red sealing-wax--touches them when rhetoric is

powerless.

I think so. For the next week came this letter, autograph from the

very, very, very high authority:--

WASHINGTON, April 1, 18--

DEAR MRS. ARMITAGE,--We must send at once, without noise, a trusty

man to take possession of the Island of St. Lazarus, one of Aleutian

group, west of Alaska, in the name of the United States. It will be

some years before we establish a post there; but meanwhile the flag

must be kept flying. Would your friend like this? There is a sealer's

hut there; and he will have his passage free, full rations, and

stationery. I think he also has the franking privilege for all

official correspondence. I will inquire at the post-office. He will

be commissioned as Governor-General of the island; but there are no

inhabitants except the seals, unless he chooses to take his family

with him.

This was a long letter for the very high authority. "He forgets," said

Mrs. Armitage, "that I told him that Mr. Sapp was a single man!" And

from that time she bore that grudge against the very high authority

which a woman always bears against a man who does not read her letters

twice through.

Mr. Sapp was delighted. He had been appointed confidentially to an

office for which he had never applied. It was a secret office. No man

knew of it. He accepted the appointment, for no bondsmen were required.

He was distressed to find that no oath was to be taken. He went to

Washington to receive his instructions, which was quite unnecessary. He

drew on the navy yard at Charlestown for stationery, and he drew for a

great deal. There was one large tin box filled with red tape, which was

his especial glory.

He was landed at St. Lazarus prosperously; and, with the assistance of

a boat's crew, they got the flag flying. They cleared out the sealer's

house. They carried up ten barrels of salt junk, twelve of salt pork,

thirteen of potatoes, fourteen of flour, fifteen of sour-krout, and

sixteen of white beans. These were the supplies Mr. John Sapp was to

subsist on for a year. They carried up four reams of foolscap paper,

ruled and margined, for his official reports to the War Department;

four of quarto letter-paper, for his reports to the Navy; four of royal

octavo, for his reports to the Smithsonian; four of large congress

note, for his reports to the Weather Bureau; four of small congress

note, for his reports to the Treasury; and four of gilt-edged note,

with initials J. S., for his private correspondence. They carried up

eleven pounds of red sealing-wax, the tin box of red tape they carried

up; and so they bade him good-by. The boat returned to the ship. Then

it proved that his dog and cat and parrot and umbrella were still on

board; and the captain's gig was sent with them. So Mr. Sapp was not

left alone.

Here was a _place_. It was a place with nothing particular to do; and

Mr. Sapp was left to do it.

He kept no diary. Nothing, therefore, is known of his experience for

the year, but when, the next year, the store-ship landed his stores,

the boatswain in charge ran up the beach, and met a grave man in

seal-skins, who made a military salute.

The boatswain saluted him, and was about to speak, when old Sealskin,

as he afterwards called him, said, "Have you passed quarantine!"

"Quarantine? No, sir!"

"Take your boat round into the South Cove, and see the health officer,

and bring me his permit."

The boatswain, from habit of obedience, obeyed,--took the boat round in

half an hour's pulling. Health officer! There were some stupid seals

who jumped off the rocks; and that was all.

The captain of the store-ship, meanwhile, had seen this manoeuvre with

amazement, and sent a second boat ashore. With this boat, he sent his

second officer. He also met the lonely Robinson, and saluted.

"Have you passed quarantine?"

"All right, my man," said the friendly sailor; and Sealskin turned, and

walked with him to his hut. A moment more, and the boatswain followed.

He could find no health officer, he said.

"It must be past his office hours," said Mr. Sapp gravely. "They close

at eleven there. You shall be examined to-morrow."

The boatswain stared at this postponement of quarantine; but then, on a

word from his superior officer, he produced a bag of papers and letters

for Mr. Sapp, which he had been afraid to offer him before.

"They will be respectfully fumigated and respectfully referred," said

Mr. Sapp.

And he hung them to the crane in the chimney.

Then he lifted off a pot of bean-soup, and filled a bowl for each of

the wondering men. He produced hard-tack from a closet, and whiskey and

water. And then, still asking no question, he took down the smoky

letters, and opened them slowly.

But, to the men's amazement, he did not read one.

He folded the first with a steel letter file, two inches and a quarter

wide, and docketed it,--"Received June 11. Respectfully referred to

Next Friday, Esq., P.M."

When the boatswain heard of Mr. Friday, he thought it was surely

Robinson Crusoe.

But the next letter, unread, was filed and docketed--"Respectfully

referred to Next Saturday, Esq., A.M."

"P.M. and A.M.," cried the boatswain; "they have masters of arts here

as well as postmasters."

"Not at all," said the governor severely; "A.M.--Ante-Meridiem;

P.M.,--Post-Meridiem"; and without reading the next letter, he filed

it, and indorsed it,--"Respectfully referred to Next Sunday, Esq., M."

"Young man," said he, "I shall examine and file this letter on Friday

afternoon; this one on Saturday morning; this on Sunday noon. Let all

things be done regularly and in order."

The mate and boatswain were alarmed. They hastily finished their

bean-soup and fled to the boat, returning with six men, who rolled a

barrel of junk up the well-kept gravel walk.

"Invoice?" said the governor.

There was no invoice.

"Prepare an invoice."

And the meek boatswain obeyed.

"My man, take this to the inspector," said Mr. Sapp to one of the crew,

after he had indorsed it,--"Respectfully referred to the

Inspector-General."

The sailor was a Portuguese,--understood no English; bobbed his head,

and waited for light.

Mr. Sapp led him to the door, and pointed to a bearded walrus,--who sat

on a rock above the landing,--bidding him take the invoice to him, and

land nothing more without his orders.

* * * * *

Poor man!--or happy man shall I call him? He had what he sought for. He

had a place with nothing to do, and faithfully he had done it,--so

faithfully that, in that sad loyalty, the little fragment of his

untrained wits gave way.

NICOLETTE AND AUCASSIN.

A TROUBADOUR'S TALE.

[I have introduced the beginning of this romance in my little story

called "In His Name." In the form in which the reader sees it, it

belongs to the twelfth century, in which the action of that story is

laid. The French critics think they have found traces of the narrative

at a time even earlier. Some of the English critics have spoken of the

story with more harshness than I think it deserves. Aucassin's bitter

contrast of the hell and heaven of which he has been taught is

certainly in character; and the reader must give no more weight to it

than it deserves.]

I.

Who will listen yet again

To the old and jovial strain,--

The old tale of love that's always new?

She's a girl that's fair as May;

He's a boy as fresh as day;

And the story is as gay as it is true.

II.

Who will hear the pretty tale

Of my thrush and nightingale,--

Of the dangers and the sorrows that they met?

How he fought without a fear,

For his charming little dear,--

Aucassin and his loving Nicolette?

III.

For, my lords, I tell you true

That you never saw or knew,

Man or woman so ugly or so gray,

Who would not all day long,

Sit and listen to the song

And the story that I tell you here to-day.

Now you must know, my lords and my ladies, that the Count Bougars de

Valence chose to make war with the Count Garin de Beaucaire. And the

war was so cruel, that the count never let one day go by, but that he

came thundering at the walls and barriers of the town, with a hundred

knights, and with ten thousand men-at-arms, on foot and on horseback,

who burned all the houses, and stole all the sheep, and killed all the

people that they could.

Now the Count Garin de Beaucaire was very old, and was sadly broken

with years. He had used his time very ill, had the Count de Beaucaire.

And the old wretch had no heir, either son or daughter, except one boy,

whose name was

AUCASSIN.

Aucassin was gentle and handsome. He was tall and well made. His legs

were good, and his feet were good; his body was good, and his arms were

good. His hair was blonde, a little curly. His eyes were like gray fur,

for they were near silver, and near blue, and they laughed when you

looked at them. His nose was high and well placed. His face was clear

and winning. Yes, and he had everything charming, and nothing bad about

him. But this young man was so wholly conquered by love (who conquers

everybody), that he would not occupy himself in any other thing. He

would not be a knight; he would not take arms; he would not go to the

tourneys; he would not do any of the things he ought to do.

His father was very much troubled by this, and he said to him one

morning,--

"My son, take your arms, mount your horse, defend your country, protect

your people. If they only see you in the midst of them, this will give

them more courage; they will fight all the better for their lives and

their homes, for your land and mine."

"Father," said Aucassin, "why do you say this to me?

"May God never hear my prayers, if I ever mount horse, or go to tourney

or to battle, before you have yourself given to me my darling

Nicolette,--my sweetheart whom I love so dearly."

"My son," said the father to him, "this cannot be.

"Give up forever your dreams of this captive girl, whom the Saracens

brought from some strange land, and sold to the viscount here.

"He trained her; he baptized her; she is his god-child.

"Some day he will give her to some brave fellow who will have to gain

his bread by his sword.

"But you, my son, when the time comes that you wish to take a wife, I

will give you some king's daughter, or at least the daughter of a

count.

"There is not in all France a man so rich that you may not marry his

daughter, if you choose."

So said the old man. But Aucassin replied,--

"Alas, my father! there is not in this world the principality which

would not be honored, if my darling Nicolette, my sweetest, went to

live there.

"If she were queen of France or of England, if she were empress of

Germany or of Constantinople, she could not be more courteous or more

gracious; she could not have sweeter ways or greater virtues."

[_Now they sing it._]

All the night and all the day

Aucassin would beg and pray,--

"Oh, my father! give my Nicolette to me."

Then his mother came to say,--

"What is it that my foolish boy can see?"

"Nicolette is sweet and gay."

"But Nicolette's a slave.

If a wife my boy would have,

Let him choose a lady fair of high degree."

"Oh, no! my mother, no!

For I love my darling so!

Her face is always bright,

And her footstep's always light;

And I cannot let my dainty darling go.

No, mother dear, she rules my heart;

No, mother dear, we cannot part."

[_Now they speak it, and talk it, and tell it._]

When the Count Garin de Beaucaire saw that he could not drag Nicolette

out from the heart of Aucassin, he went to find the viscount, who was

his vassal; and he said to him,--

"Sir Viscount, we must get rid of your god-child Nicolette.

"Cursed be the country where she was born! for she is the reason why I

am losing my Aucassin, who ought to be a knight, and who refuses to do

what he ought to do.

"If I can catch her, I will burn her at the stake, and I will burn you

too."

"My lord," replied the viscount, "I am very sorry for what has

happened; but it is no fault of mine.

"I bought Nicolette with my money; I trained her; I had her baptized;

and she is my god-child.

"I wanted to marry her to a fine young man of mine, who would gladly

have earned her bread for her, which is more than your son Aucassin

could do.

"But, since your wish and your pleasure are what they are, I will send

this god-child of mine away to such a land, in such a country, that

Aucassin shall never set his eyes upon her again."

"See that you do so!" cried the Count Garin to the viscount, "or great

misfortunes will come to you."

So saying, he left his vassal.

Now the viscount had a noble palace, of high walls, surrounded by a

thickly planted garden. He put Nicolette into one of the rooms of this

palace, in the very highest story.

She had an old woman for her only companion, with enough bread and meat

and wine, and everything else that they needed to keep them alive.

Then he fastened and concealed the door, so that no one could go in;

and he left no other opening but the window, which was very narrow, and

opened on the garden.

[_Now they sing it._]

Nicolette was put in prison;

And a vaulted room

Wonderfully built and painted

Was her prison home.

The pretty maiden came

To the marble window-frame:

Her hair was light,

Her eyes were bright,

And her face was a charming face to see.

No; never had a knight a maid

With such a charming face to see.

She looked into the garden close,

And there she saw the open rose,

Heard the thrushes sing and twitter,--

And she sang in accent bitter,--

"Oh! why am I a captive here?

Why locked up in cruel walls?

Aucassin, my sweetheart dear,

Whom my heart its master calls,

I have been your sweetheart for this livelong year:

That is why I've come

To this vaulted room;

But by God, the son of Mary, no!

I will not be captured so,

If only I can break away, and go."

[_Now they speak it, and talk it, and tell it._]

So Nicolette was put in prison, as you have just heard; and soon a cry

and noise ran through the country that she was lost. Some said that she

had run away; others said that the Count Garin de Beaucaire had killed

her.

All in despair at the joy which this news seemed to cause to some

people, Aucassin went to find the viscount of the town.

"Lord Viscount," he asked him, "what have you done with Nicolette, my

sweetest love, the thing in all the world which I love best?

"You have stolen her!

"Be sure, Viscount, that, if I die of this, the blame shall fall on

you.

"For surely it is you who tear away my life in tearing away my darling

Nicolette!"

"Fair sir," answered the viscount, "do let this Nicolette alone, for

she is not worthy of you. She is a slave whom I have bought with my

_deniers_; and she must serve as a wife to a young fellow of her own

state, to a poor man, and not to a lord like you, who ought to marry

none but a king's daughter, or at least a count's daughter.

"What should you be doing for yourself, if you did make a lady of this

vile creature, and marry her?

"Then would you be very happy indeed, very happy; for your soul would

abide forever in hell, and never should you enter into paradise."

"Into paradise?" repeated Aucassin angrily. "And what have I to do

there? I do not care to go there if it be not with Nicolette, my

sweetest darling whom I love so much.

"Into paradise? And do you know who those are that go there,--you who

think it is a place where I must wish to go? They are old priests, old

cripples, old one-eyed men, who lie day and night before the altars,

sickly, miserable, shivering, half-naked, half-fed, dead already before

they die. These are they who go to paradise; and they are such pitiful

companions, that I do not desire to go to paradise with them.

"But to hell would I gladly go; for to hell go the good clerks, and the

fair knights slain in battle and in great wars, the brave

sergeants-at-arms, and the men of noble lineage; and with all these

would I gladly go."

"Stop!" says the viscount. "All which you can say, and nothing at all,

are exactly the same thing. Never shall you see Nicolette again.

"What you and I may get for this would not be pleasant, if you still

will be complaining.

"We all might be burned by your father's command,--Nicolette, you, and

I myself into the bargain."

"Despair!" said Aucassin to himself. And he left the viscount, who was

quite as much disturbed as he.

[_Now they sing it._]

Then Aucassin went home;

But his heart was wrung with fear

By the parting from his dainty dear,

His dainty dear so fair,

Whom he sought for everywhere;

But nowhere could he find her, far or near.

To his palace he has come,

And he climbs up every stair:

He hides him in his room,

And weeps in his despair.

"Oh, my Nicolette!" said he,

"So dear and sweet is she!

So sweet for that, so sweet for this,

So sweet to speak, so sweet to kiss,

So sweet to come, so sweet to stay,

So sweet to sing, so sweet to play,

So sweet when there, so sweet when here,

Oh, my darling! Oh, my dear!

Where are you, my sweet, while I

Sit and weep so near to die,

Because I cannot find my darling dear?"[1]

[_Now they speak it, and talk it, and tell it._]

[Footnote 1: The original is very pretty, and can be guessed out, even

by the unlearned reader:--

"Nicolete biax esters,

Biax venir et biax alers

Biax déduis et dous parlers,

Biax borders et biax jouers,

Biax baisiers, biax acolers."

_Biax_ is _beata_.]

Now, while Aucassin was mourning thus in his room, always grieving for

Nicolette his love, the Count Bougars de Valence was keeping up his war

against the Count Garin de Beaucaire.

He had drawn out his footmen and his horsemen to assault the castle;

and the defendants of the castle seized their arms to meet him, and ran

to the gates and walls where they thought the besiegers would attack.

The people of the town followed the knights and the sergeants: they

mounted the ramparts, and poured down a storm of quarrels and javelins.

In the very most terrible moment of the assault, the Count Garin de

Beaucaire came into the room where Aucassin was grieving in his sorrow

for his sweet darling, Nicolette.

"Oh, my boy!" he said, "what are you doing here while your castle is

besieged, good and strong though it be? Do you know, that, if you lose

it, you are disinherited? Boy, take your arms, mount your horse, defend

your lands, and lead your men to battle. As soon as they see you in the

midst of them, they will bravely defend their homes and their lives,

your lands and mine. You are tall and strong; and you ought to show

that you are."

"Father," replied Aucassin, "what are you talking about? May God refuse

me all that I may ever ask him, if I consent to be made a knight, to

mount a horse, or to go to fight, before you have given me Nicolette,

my darling sweetheart!"

"Boy," replied his father, "this cannot be. I had rather be

disinherited, and lose all I have, than that you should have her for

your wife."

On this the Count Garin de Beaucaire turned away. But Aucassin called

him back, and said to him, "Come, father, I beg you! I have one

condition to propose to you."

"What is that, dear boy?"

"It is this. I will take my arms, I will mount my horse, and I will do

my duty bravely, on condition that, if God bring me out of the battle

unhurt, you will let me see my darling sweetheart, Nicolette, and

embrace her. There shall be time to say two or three words to her, and

to kiss her once."

"I grant it willingly," said the father; and he went away.

[_Now they sing it._]

Not diamonds bright, or heaps of gold

Would give to you such bliss

As blessed this boy when he was told

The way to earn a kiss.

They quickly brought him arms of steel,

His helmet and his crest;

Upon his head the helmet laced;

And then a double hauberk braced

Across his breast.

He springs upon his charger white;

And when he glances on his feet

His greaves are tight and silver bright:

His darling dear he thinks upon;

He spurs his war-horse fleet,

And rushes straight before him down

To the fight.

[_Here they speak it, and talk it, and tell it._]

Aucassin was armed, then, as you have heard.

How bright his shield, as it hung from his neck! how well his helmet

fitted his head! and how his sword clanged, hanging upon his thigh!

The young man was tall, strong, handsome, and well armed. His horse was

swift; and he was soon at the castle-gate.

Now, do not go and think that he was thinking the least in the world of

capturing oxen or cows or goats! No, nor of giving mortal blows to the

knights or the other soldiers of Count Bougars de Valence!

Oh, no, not he! He had something else in his head and in his heart; for

he was thinking of Nicolette, his darling sweetheart. So he even forgot

to hold up his reins; and his horse, as soon as he once felt the spurs,

carried him in full _mêlée_ into the very middle of his enemies.

They were overjoyed at such luck. They surrounded him, and seized his

lance and his shield, and, as they led him away prisoner, began to ask

each other with what death they would make him die.

"Alas!" said Aucassin to himself, "these are my mortal enemies, who are

leading me away to cut off my head. But, if my head is cut off, I shall

never be able to speak again to Nicolette, my darling sweetheart."

Then he added, "I still have my good sword. I am mounted on a strong

horse. If he does not save me from the _mêlée_, it is because he never

loved me, and then may God never help him!"

So he grasped his sword in his hand, and drove his spurs into his

horse's side again, and struck to right, and struck to left, and cut

and thrust. At every blow, he chopped off heads and arms, and all

around him he made the place bloody and empty, as a boar does when he

is assailed by dogs in a forest. Ten knights were thus maimed, and

seven others were wounded. Then he withdrew at once from the _mêlée_

with his horse at full gallop, still grasping his sword in his hand.

Now the Count Bougars de Valence had heard they had captured his enemy

Aucassin, and that they were going to hang him. He came up there at

just this moment. Aucassin recognized him, and struck him a heavy blow

with his sword full on his helmet, so that it was crushed down upon his

head, and he fell stunned upon the ground. Then the young man took him

by the hand to help him up, and, as soon as he could stand, took him by

the nose-piece of his helmet, and led him, without more ado, to his

father, the Count Garin de Beaucaire, to whom he said,--

"Father, here is your enemy, who has fought so long against you, and

done you so much mischief. This war which he has made against you has

lasted now for twenty years, and no one has been able to bring it to a

good end. But I hope it is finished to-day."

"Dear son," replied the old count, "such feats of youth as this are

worth much more than your foolish loves."

"Father," replied Aucassin, "do not begin to preach to me, I beg you.

Think, rather, of keeping the promise which you gave to me."

"What promise, my dear boy?"

"What! have you already forgotten it, my father? By my head! forget it

who will, I shall remember it. What! my father, do you not remember,

that when I consented to arm myself, and go and fight this count's

people, it was on condition that, if God should bring me out of the

battle unhurt, you would let me see my darling sweetheart, Nicolette,

and say two or three words to her, and kiss her once? As you promised

this, my father, so you must perform."

"I hear," replied the count; "but I do not understand. It is impossible

that I ever promised anything so foolish. Why, if your Nicolette was

here, I should burn her without pity, and you yourself might expect the

same fate."

"Is that all, my father?" said Aucassin.

"Yes," replied the count.

"_Certes_" replied the boy, "I am very sorry to see a man of your age

such a liar!"

Then he turned towards the Count de Valence, and said to him, "Count de

Valence, are you not my prisoner?"

"Certainly."

"Give me your hand, then, I beg you."

"Gladly," replied the count; and he placed his hand in Aucassin's.

Aucassin replied, "Count de Valence, pledge me your faith that,

whenever you have the wish or the power to shame my father, or to hurt

him, in his person or in his goods, you will do so."

"_Pardieu_, sir! do not mock me, but name my ransom. Ask for gold or

silver, horses or palfreys, dogs or birds, and I will try to give you

what you ask. This is another thing."

"What!" cried Aucassin, "do you not own yourself my prisoner?"

"Indeed I do," cried the Count de Bougars.

"Well, if you will not take the oath I demand, your head shall fly

off."

"Enough! I take the oath you exact," said the count quickly.

Then Aucassin ordered a horse for him, mounted another, and led him to

a place of safety.

[_Now they sing it._]

Now when the Count Garin

Finds out that Aucassin

His darling sweet

Will not forget,

His darling of the charming face,

He claps him in a dungeon,

In a cellar underground,

All walled in with heavy stones,

Built double thick around;

And my wretched Aucassin

So sad as now had never been.

"Oh, my darling Nicolette!"

In his misery said he,

"My darling dear of charming face,

My darling _fleur de lis_,

My darling sweeter than the grape,

My darling, list to me,

Imprisoned in this horrid place.

"The other day a pilgrim gray

From Limousin had made his way,

And on the straw the poor man lay,

So sick was he, and near to die.

But Nicolette passed by his door.

The pilgrim heard my darling's feet

Pit-pat across the floor;

He saw my darling's little cloak

Her cape so white, her ermine bright;

And though no word she spoke,

Yet, when he saw my darling sweet,

The poor old pilgrim raised his head,

And, cured by her, he left his bed,

And took his staff, and took his way,

And found his home once more.

"Oh, darling dear! oh, _fleur de lis!_

So sweet to come, so sweet to stay,

So sweet to sing, so sweet to play,

So sweet for that, so sweet for this,

So sweet to speak, so sweet to kiss,

Who is there who my love can see,

And hate a girl so sweet as she?

For you, dear child, your love is bound

In this dungeon underground:

Here they will see me die alone

For you, my _fleur de lis!_"

[_Now they speak it, and talk it, and tell it._]

Aucassin was thrown into prison, as you have just heard. And Nicolette,

on her part, was still in the vaulted room, imprisoned also.

It was in the summer-time in the month of May, when the days are so

warm, and so long, and so full of light, and the nights so sweet and so

serene. Nicolette lay in her bed, and saw the moon shine clear through

the window, and heard the nightingale sing among the trees of the

garden. She remembered Aucassin, the friend she loved so well, and she

began to sigh tenderly. Then she thought upon the deadly hatred of the

Count Garin de Beaucaire, and she knew that she was lost if she

remained in this room, and that her dear Aucassin would be lost also if

he remained in his dungeon.

Then she looked at the old woman who was set to guard her, and she saw

that she was asleep. Nicolette rose quickly, threw a fine silk mantle

which she had saved over her shoulders, took the sheets and coverlet of

her bed, made of them as long a rope as she could, and tied it to the

window-post. When she had done this, she seized it with both hands, one

above, and one below, and slid down upon the turf, which was covered

with dew.

Thus she descended into the garden.

Nicolette's hair was blonde, fine, and curly; her eyes were soft and

laughing; her complexion was fair and fresh; her nose high and well

placed; her lips were redder than cherries and roses in summer-time,

and her teeth white and small. You could span her little waist with

your two hands; and the daisies which she broke when she stepped upon

them, as they fell back upon her ankles, seemed black against her feet,

so fair was this girl.

She went to the garden-gate and opened it; she walked through the

streets of Beaucaire by the light of the moon, and strayed here, and

strayed there, till she found the tower in which was her sweetheart,

Aucassin. Now, this tower had loopholes in it on each side.

Nicolette crept in behind one of the pillars, and wrapped herself in

her mantle, and thrust her blonde head into one of the crevices, so

that she could hear the voice of her dear Aucassin, who was weeping

within bitterly, in great grief for the loss of his darling sweetheart,

who was absent from his eyes. And, when Nicolette had heard him, she

resolved to speak to him, in turn.

[_Now they sing it._]

Nicolette, of lovely face,

Rested in this darksome place,

Against a pillar, where

The heavy wall her lover kept:

She heard her darling as he wept

In his despair.

Then, in turn, to him she cried,

"Aucassin, of noble race,

Freeman born, and proud of place,

Why should you complain and grieve,

Because you must your sweetheart leave?

Your father fain would burn me,

And all your kinsmen spurn me.

From you, my darling love, I flee:

I shall go and cross the sea,

In other lands than this to be."

Then she cut off her golden hair,

And threw it to her lover there.

Each heavy lock, each pretty curl,

Aucassin in rapture prest,

And hid them on his panting breast,

While he wept in his despair

For his darling girl.

[_Now they speak it, and talk it, and tell it._]

Now, when Aucassin heard Nicolette say that she going to another

country, he was very much distressed.

"My darling sweetheart," he said, "you shall never go; for that would

be to give me my death-blow, and the most cruel death-blow of all. The

first man that saw you would take you for his own; and, when I heard

that, I should plunge my knife into my heart. No, I would not do that!

I would run with all my might against a wall or a rock, and I would

throw myself head first upon it, with such a plunge, that my eyes

should spring out, and I would brain myself. I would rather by a

hundred times die such a death, than know that you belonged to any

other man!"

"Aucassin," replied Nicolette, "I do not believe that you love me as

much as you say; but I am quite sure that I love you more than you love

me."

"Never!" replied Aucassin. "Oh, my darling sweetheart! you cannot love

me more than I love you. No woman can love man as man loves woman; for

woman's love is in her eye, it is in the tip of her toe, and the end of

her finger: but man's love is in the bottom of his heart, and so firmly

does it grow there, that it can never be uprooted."

So did Aucassin and Nicolette talk together when the watchmen of the

town came up by the next street, with their swords hidden under their

cloaks.

Now, the Count Garin had bidden these people kill Nicolette if they

could take her; and just as they were coming up where they would see

her, and run to seize her, the lookout on the tower saw them.

"What a pity," cried he, "to kill so pretty a girl as this! It would be

a mercy to warn her before these wretches see her. For, as soon as they

kill her, my boy Aucassin will die; and that would be a pity,

_certes!_"

[_Now they sing it._]

Now, I tell you that this lookout

Was as courteous as brave,

And so this song the man began,

Poor Nicolette to save,--

"Oh, my pretty girl!" said he,

"Whose heart can beat so true and free,

Whose eyes are bright, whose form is light,

And whose face is so sweet to see,

I know you're watching there

For your lover underground;

He weeps for you in his despair,

Bolted, barred, and bound.

Now, maiden, list to me:

Of the night-watch beware,

For they are passing by,

A hidden sword on every thigh;

Hide yourself as they pass by;

Maiden, beware."

[_Now they speak it, and talk it, and tell it._]

"Ah!" replied Nicolette to the lookout, "may God grant eternal repose

to the souls of your father and of your mother for this kindly warning

you have given to me! I will take care of the rascals, whoever they may

be; and in this the good God will help me."

So saying, she wrapped herself in her mantle as closely as she could,

and hid herself silently in the shadow of the pillar. So she waited

till the watchmen had passed by; and, when she thought them far enough

gone, she took leave of Aucassin, and went her way.

So she came to the castle walls. Now these were broken in many of the

joints; and the active girl was able to let herself down, with the help

of her hands, as a little four-footed kid would have done. But, when

she was half-way down, she looked into the ditch, and she was

frightened to see how sheer and steep it was.

"Oh, my dear Maker God!" she whispered, "if I let myself fall, I shall

break my neck; if I stay where I am, they will seize me, and burn me:

well, one death with another, I had rather run the risk of being killed

than serve as a sight for all the people to-morrow."

So she made the sign of the cross, and let herself slide down the face

of the wall to the very bottom of the ditch. Then she looked at her

pretty feet and her pretty hands, which had never known what it was to

be wounded before. They were all scratched and torn; and the blood

flowed from them in a dozen places. But Nicolette felt no pain, because

she was still so much afraid; for she had only succeeded in getting

into the ditch, and now she must get out again.

The bold girl tried here, and she tried there; for she knew that it was

a bad place to stay in; and at last she found one of the pointed

stakes, which the defenders of the castle had thrown down on the

besiegers when they were attacked. This she took, and with its aid she

clambered up the reverse of the ditch, step after step. And soon she

was at the top, though not without great pains.

The woods were two arbalist shots away from her,--woods which stretched

thirty leagues this way, and thirty leagues that way, all haunted by

wild beasts and venomous serpents. Poor Nicolette was frightened to

death when she thought of them, because she did not want to be eaten

alive; but still she pressed on, because she had no more wish to be

burned alive.

[_Now they sing it._]

Nicolette, of lovely face,

Clambered from the ditch so deep,

And then began to wail and weep,

And to Jesus Christ to cry:--

"Father, king of majesty,

I do not know

Where I shall go;

For if, in flight, I should

Lose me in the wood,

The boars and lions grim

Would tear me limb from limb;

But if men find me anywhere,

And to the town I am returned,

They'll light a fire in the square,

And to the stake will tie me there,

And my body will be burned.

"No, my God, no!

Hear me as I cry;

It shall not be so;

Better far that I

By the wolves be hunted down,

Than go captive to the town

So to die!

"I will not go."

[_Now they tell it, and speak it, and talk it._]

Nicolette grieved, as you have heard, and then commended herself to

God, and plunged into the woods, but did not dare go too far in, for

fear of beasts and snakes.

She walked along for some time by the edge of the wood, frightened to

death, starting at the slightest sound, and then going forward again

with the utmost care. She walked this way and that, till she was so

tired that she could walk no longer, and she lay down on a smooth bed

of grass, and went to sleep; and there she slept till morning.

Early in the morning some shepherds passed by, on their way towards the

town, as they were driving their sheep and herds to feed between the

woods and the river. Now there was a fresh fountain near the place

where Nicolette was lying; and it happened that the shepherds came to

the fountain, and spread a cloak on the grass, and put their bread upon

it, and sat down there for their simple breakfast.

While they were eating it, Nicolette was wakened by their talk, and by

the song of the birds who were twittering in the branches.

She went to the shepherds, and spoke to the youngest of them, and

said,--

"Pretty boy, may our Lady Mary take care of you!"

"May God bless you!" replied this young shepherd, whose speech came

easier to him than the others.

"Pretty boy," said Nicolette, "do you know Aucassin, the son of Count

Garin, of Beaucaire?"

"Oh, yes! we know him."

"As you would have God bless you, pretty boy, tell him that there is a

strange wild beast in this wood; and that he ought to come out to hunt

for her; and that, if he takes her, he would not give one of her

limbs,--no, not for a hundred marks of gold, nor for five hundred

marks, nor for all the gold that can be told."

As she said this, the shepherds were looking at Nicolette, and were

wondering at her beauty.

"You speak false in saying this," said the shepherd, who had his tongue

more at command than the others had; "for there is not in all this

forest a single lion, or boar, or stag, or any other brute, so rare,

that one of his limbs should be worth more than two deniers, or three

at most. And you talk of such sums of money, that no one will believe a

word you say. You are a fairy, and no human creature. We do not want

your company; and so go your way."

"Ah, pretty boy!" said Nicolette again, "do what I bid you in the name

of God; for the creature of which I speak to you has such power, that

she can cure Aucassin of this trouble in which he is now. I have five

sous in my purse, take them, and say to him, that, for three days, he

must come to hunt for this creature in this forest; that, if he do not

find her in three days at most, he will never be cured from his pain."

"By my faith!" said the young shepherd, "we will take your money. If

Aucassin passes this way, we will tell him what you say; but we will

not go to find him."

"God bless you!" said Nicolette. And so she bade the shepherds good-by

courteously.

[_Now they sing it._]

Nicolette of lovely face

Bade the shepherd boys good-day,

And through the forest took her way,

Till she came to a crossing-place,

Where seven roads met in the wood;

There, all alone, she thought it good

Her lover's love to try.

She gathers store of _fleurs-de-lis_

And thyme and brake,

And many leaves,

Her hut to make;

And from all these she weaves

The prettiest hut your eyes did ever see.

And then, by every saint above,

The pretty builder swore,

That, if her darling dear

Should never enter here,

She would not be his darling more,

Nor should he be her love.

[_Now they speak it, and talk it, and tell it._]

Nicolette having thus made her little hut, and thatched it thickly on

the inside and on the outside with fresh leaves and fragrant flowers,

hid herself under a bush to see what Aucassin would do.

Now the rumor ran through all the country that Nicolette was lost. Some

said that she had escaped, and others said that the Count Garin had

killed her.

If everybody else had been sure of this, Aucassin would not have been.

But of this he gave no sign. And his father, well pleased to be rid of

Nicolette, ordered that he should be released from prison, and bade all

the knights and damsels of the country give _fêtes_ for him, which

might distract him.

The day when Nicolette disappeared, when the court of the count was

crowded with knights and ladies, Aucassin was leaning against a pillar,

all dejected, and out of his senses with sorrow, and only thinking of

her he loved.

A knight who saw how melancholy he was came to him and said,--

"Aucassin, I have been sick of the same disease as you, so that I know

how to give you good advice, if you will only hear me."

"Thank you, sir!" said Aucassin; "for indeed I am greatly in need of

good advice and cure."

Then the knight said, "Mount your horse, and go into the woods yonder.

The sight of the plains, the sweet odor of the plants, and the songs of

the little birds will all comfort you, believe me."

"Thank you, indeed, sir!" said Aucassin. "I will gladly do so."

So he went out from the hall at once, and went down the steps, hurried

to the stable, and put saddle and bridle on one of his horses, which

was waiting there. He put his foot in the stirrup, sprang upon the

noble beast, and rode out from the castle walls. Once outside, he

remembered the advice which the knight had given to him, and went

straight to the woods. Here he soon met the shepherds seated on the

grass around the spring, eating their bread with great joy; for it was

now noon.

[_Now they sing it._]

All the shepherd-boys had met,

Esmeret and Martinet,

Johannot and Fruclinet,

Aubuget and Robecon.

By the spring they sat; and one

With the sweetest voice began,

"God bless Master Aucassin,

And the girl so fair and bright,

With teeth so white, and eyes so gray,

Who to us this blessed day

The money brought,

With which we bought

Cakes to eat, and pipes to play,

Flutes and horns and whittles good,

And heavy mauls to cleave the wood.

May God cure him!

May God cure her!

This is what I say."

[_Now they tell it, and say it, and talk it._]

When Aucassin heard the shepherds singing this, he thought in a moment

that his sweetheart Nicolette, his well-beloved, had passed that way.

To make sure of this, he hastened to them.

"God bless you, my fine boys!" he cried.

"God care for you!" replied he whose speech came easiest to him.

"My good boys," said Aucassin, "sing me the song again which you were

singing just now."

"No, my fine lord, we will not sing it again; and cursed be he who

shall sing it to you!"

"My fine fellows, do you not know me?"

"We know you very well, sir: we know that you are Aucassin, our young

gentleman. But we are not your men; we are the count's men."

"I beg you to do what I ask you."

"Why should I sing for you, if I do not choose to sing? It is very true

that the Count of Garin is the richest man in all this country; but if

he found one of my oxen or cows or sheep, in his grazing-lands or in

his grain, he would make their eyes fly out. Why should I sing for you,

then, if I choose to hold my tongue?"

"May God bless you, my boys!" said Aucassin again. "See, here are ten

sols which I have found in my pocket. Take them, and sing to me again

the song I heard you sing just now."

"Sir," said the shepherd, "I will take your money; but I will not sing

to you, because I have sworn that I will not. I will do what I can; and

I will tell it to you, if you please."

"_Pardieu!_" cried Aucassin, "I had rather hear your story than hear

nothing."

"Sir," said the shepherd again, "we were sitting here by the spring,

just as we are now. It was between the first hour and the third hour.

We were eating our bread here, when there came up a girl who was the

most beautiful creature in the world, so that we thought she was a

fairy; for the whole wood was lighted up by her.

"She gave us so much of her money that we promised her that, if you

passed by here, we would tell you that you must go and hunt in the

forest; and that there was such a creature, that, if you caught her,

you would not sell one of her joints,--no, not for five hundred marks

of silver,--and also that you would be cured of your disease. She also

said that, if you did not catch this creature before three days had

passed, you would never see her. Go to the hunt, then, if you please,

or do not go to the hunt, if you do not please: as to that, I have

nothing to do. I have told my message."

"You have said quite enough, my boys," replied Aucassin. "God grant

that I may meet her!"

[_Now they sing it._]

Aucassin most gladly heard

Every sweet and loving word

Of his darling of the charming face:

In his heart they pierced him so,

That he left the shepherds good,

And plunged into the deepest wood,

Where'er his horse might choose to go.

"O Nicolette, my sweet!"

He sighed as sadly as before,

"It is you I hope to meet:

I do not hunt nor deer or boar.

In this forest black

It is you I track,

That I this blessed day

Your pretty smile may greet,

May see your pretty eyes of gray;

See you, my darling sweet!

For oh! the Almighty I implore

That I may see your face once more,

My dear!"

[_Now they tell it, and speak it, and talk it._]

Aucassin wandered here and there in the forest, just as his horse might

carry him. Do not think that the brambles and briers spared him. I can

tell you that they tore his clothes so that he had hardly a rag left

upon him. And the blood ran down his arms, his sides, and his legs, in

thirty or forty different places; so that you might have tracked him in

the wood by the red drops which he left on the grass wherever he went.

But Aucassin was all the time thinking of his darling sweetheart

Nicolette, so that he did not once feel any pain.

So he travelled through the forest all day long, without gaining any

news of his beautiful sweetheart; and, when he saw the night coming on,

he began to weep bitterly.

As he was riding along through an old path, where the bushes had grown

up thick and high, he saw before him, right in the middle of the road,

a man whom I will describe to you.

He was large, and marvellously ugly. His face was blacker than broiled

meat, and it was so large that there was a palm-breadth between his two

eyes. His cheeks were enormous; and so were his nostrils and his nose,

which was flat; his lips were big, and redder than coals; and he had

frightful great yellow teeth. He had on sandals of leather, and greaves

of leather, which were tied with thongs up to his knees. He was covered

with a great double cloak, and was resting on a heavy club.

Aucassin was frightened, and said to him, "Good brother, may God help

you!"

"God bless you!" replied the other.

"What are you doing there?" said Aucassin.

"What affair is that of yours?"

"I only ask with good will."

"Well, why are you mourning and weeping so? If I were as rich a man as

you are, I am sure nothing in the world would make me weep."

"How do you know me, then?"

"I know that you are Aucassin, the son of the count; and, if you will

tell me why you weep, I will tell you why I am here."

"I am very glad to tell you. I came out to hunt this morning. I had a

white harrier, the prettiest dog in the whole world; and I have lost

him. That is the reason why I am weeping."

"What! For a miserable dog will you use the tears in your eyes or the

heart in your breast? You are a poor creature to be weeping so--and you

the richest man in the country! If your father wanted fifteen or twenty

white harriers, he could have them in a minute. Now I am in sorrow for

something real."

"What is that?"

"I am going to tell you, sir. I was hired by a rich farmer here to

drive his cart, which was drawn by four oxen. It is three days since I

lost the red ox, who was the finest of the four. I went here, and I

went there; I left my wagon, and sought everywhere for the beast, but I

could not find him. It is three days since I ate anything or drank

anything; and here I stray about, for I do not dare go into the town.

They would put me in prison; for I have nothing to pay with. All my

wealth is what you see upon my body. I have a mother. She, poor woman,

was not richer than I. All she had was an old petticoat to cover her

poor old body; and they pulled that off her back, and now she is lying

in the straw. That troubles me more than my condition. For money comes

and goes. If I lose to-day, I will gain to-morrow; and, when I can pay

for the ox, I will. I will never shed a tear for such a trifle as that.

And here are you crying for a lost dog! You are a poor creature!"

"_Certes_, my good fellow, you are a good comforter," said Aucassin.

"May God bless you! Tell me, how much was the red ox worth?"

"They charge me twenty sols for him, sir; nor can I beat them down a

doit."

"Here are twenty sols which I have in my purse; take them, and pay for

your ox."

"Thank you, indeed, sir!" said the man, "and may God send you that you

are looking for!" So saying, he took leave; and Aucassin went on upon

his way.

The night was fine and clear. Aucassin rode and rode for a long time;

and after he had passed from one road to another, and from one path to

another, he came at last to Nicolette's little lodge.

Inside and outside, before and behind, it had flowers marvellous sweet

and lovely to the eye. A ray of moonlight lighted it up, so that

Aucassin saw the pretty lodge, and stopped in a minute.

"Ah!" said he, "nobody but my darling Nicolette made this bower; and

she has made it with her own pretty hands. For her sake and in memory

of her I will dismount now; and I will spend the night here."

So saying, he took his foot from the stirrup, that he might dismount.

But alas! he was thinking of nothing but Nicolette, and was taking no

care of himself. Besides, his horse was large and was high; and so it

happened that he fell upon a stone, and fell so hard that he put his

shoulder out of joint.

All wounded as he was, still he was able to fasten the horse to a tree

with his other arm. Then he went back to the lodge, and entered it, and

lay upon his back, and looked up at the blue sky and the golden stars

through a hole in the roof of his fragrant retreat. As he lay and

looked, he saw one star brighter than all the others. Then, with a

sigh, he began to sing.

[_Now they sing it._]

Star of light, which I behold

With the Queen of Light,

Nicolette of locks of gold

Is with thee to-night.

Oh! if I were there in bliss

In thy still home above,

How gladly would I pet and kiss

My sweetest love!

[_Now they tell it, and speak it, and talk it._]

When Nicolette heard Aucassin, she ran to him; for she was not far off.

She entered the lodge, and threw her beautiful arms around his neck,

kissed him, and embraced him most tenderly.

"Well found, dear sweet friend!" said she.

"And you, my darling, you are well found!" and so they kissed again and

again with infinite joy.

"O my darling," said Aucassin, "my shoulder is sadly wounded. But, now

I am with you, I know no pain nor grief."

Nicolette, when she heard this, felt of the place, and found, indeed,

that the shoulder was out of joint. Then she tore a piece of linen, and

placed in it a tuft of flowers and fresh herbs, and placed it on the

sick place; and so she tended it and bandaged it with her white hands,

that, with the aid of God, who cares for lovers, she cured him.

"Aucassin, my darling," said she, "what will you do now? If your father

searches this wood to-morrow, he will find us. I do not know what will

happen to you; but for me, I know I shall be killed."

"That is true, my darling," said Aucassin; "and that would be great

grief to me: but, as long as I can, I will defend you and save you."

So saying, he mounted his horse, took his sweetheart before him,

kissing her and embracing her; and so they rode across the country.

[_Now they sing it._]

Aucassin, the handsome boy,

Glad with love and quick with joy,

Leaves this bower of their rest;

Nicolette he fondly prest

In his arms upon his breast;

He folded fast his pretty prize,

Kissed her lips, and kissed her eyes,

Kissed her lovely face all over,--

Laughing boy and happy lover.

But all this must not last.

"Dear Aucassin,"

The girl began,

"To what country shall we go?"

"Dear child," said he, "how should I know?

Little, dearest, do I care,

How we go, or when, or where,--

In this wood, or far away,

If from you I do not stray."

Then mountains high they passed,

Passed through many lands,

Till to the sea they found their way,

And stood upon the sands

By the shore.

[_Now they tell it, and speak it, and talk it._]

Aucassin and his darling then dismounted. He took his horse by the

bridle, and her by the hand, and so they walked along the beach. By and

by they saw some sailors, and made signals to them, and the men landed,

and agreed to take them back with them to the ship.

As soon as they were at sea, a terrible storm arose, so wonderful that

it hurled them along from one country to another, till they came to a

harbor at the castle of Torelore.[2] They asked what country it was,

and were told it was the country of the King of Torelore. Then Aucassin

asked if he were at war; and they said he was, and that it was a very

cruel war. Then he thanked the sailors, and took leave of them; mounted

his horse, with Nicolette before him, and so rode towards the castle.

[Footnote 2: Torelore, or Turelure, so called, it is said, from the

singularities of the people. Now, _Turelure_ is the refrain of an old

French song, which means, "_always the same_," as; we might say, "So,

so, so, so, so." The place is _Aigues Mortes_, known to tourists, but

now five or six miles from the sea. Aigues Mortes was originally _Aquæ

Mortuæ_, the name of a land-locked seaport.--E. E. H.]

"Where is the king?" said he.

"He is in bed," they said.

"And where is his wife?" said Aucassin.

"She is in the army, where she leads all the people of the country."

When Aucassin heard this, he was very much amazed. He went to the

palace, dismounted with Nicolette, begged her to hold his horse, and,

with his sword at his side, went to the king's chamber. There he pulled

the clothes off the bed, and threw them into the middle of the room.

Then he seized a stick, and beat the king so heartily that you would

have thought he would kill him.

"Oh, oh, oh! my dear sir," cried the king. "What are you doing with me?

Are you crazy, to beat a man so in his own house?"

"By the heart of God!" replied Aucassin, "I will kill you, misbegotten

dog, if you do not swear that no man in this country shall ever lie in

bed as you do."

The king took the oath; and Aucassin then said, "Now take me to the

army, where your wife is."

"With pleasure," said the king.

Both went down to the court. The king mounted a horse, Aucassin mounted

his own; Nicolette took refuge in the queen's chamber; and both the men

went to the army. When they arrived, the battle was in all its fury.

The battle was fought with wild apples, eggs, and green cheeses.

[_Now they sing it._]

Aucassin, of noble blood,

By the battling armies stood,

And wondered at the sight;

For men-at-arms were seen

Keeping up the fight:

With eggs they threw, with all their might,

Apples raw and cheeses green!

And the soldier who with these

Most disturbed the fountain bright,

He was deemed the bravest knight.

Aucassin, of noble blood,

Watched this battle where he stood,

And laughed outright.

[_Now they tell it, speak it, and talk it._]

Aucassin went to the king, and said to him, "Are these your enemies,

sir?"

"Yes," replied the king.

"Do you wish to have me avenge you?"

"Indeed I do!"

Then Aucassin drew his sword, plunged into the thick of the fight, and

cut and thrust from right to left; so that in almost no time he had

killed a great number.

"My dear sir," cried the king, seizing Aucassin's horse by the bridle,

"do not kill them in this way!"

"How else can I avenge you?" said Aucassin.

"Sir, you do too much. It is not our custom to kill each other in this

fashion: all that we do is to put the enemy to flight."

Then they returned to the Castle of Torelore, where the people of the

country advised the king to drive Aucassin out of his land, and to keep

this pretty girl Nicolette for his wife; for she seemed to them a lady

of high degree.

When Nicolette heard this, she was sorely grieved, and said,--

[_Now they sing it._]

"Sire, king of Torelore,

Puissant prince and lord of glory,"

Said the pretty Nicolette,

"You think me like a fool in story:

I am not one yet.

Aucassin shall I forget,

Who loves me as his own?

Not all your shows and dances proud,

Not all your harps and viols loud,

Are worth my dear alone."

[_Now they tell it, and speak it, and talk it._]

Aucassin and his darling Nicolette took great delight and ease in the

Castle of Torelore.

While they were there, some Saracens came up by sea, who assaulted the

castle, and took it by storm. As soon as they had taken it, they

carried off the people prisoners. They put Nicolette into one ship, and

Aucassin into another, tied hand and foot. Then they set sail again.

As they sailed, a violent storm arose; and the ships were separated

from each other. The ship in which Aucassin was was thrown so far at

the mercy of the waves that at last she came to the Castle of

Beaucaire.

The people of that country ran to the harbor; and when they recognized

Aucassin, they were very happy, for he had been away for three years,

and his father and mother were dead. They took him in triumph to the

Castle of Beaucaire, and acknowledged him as their lord and master in

place of the Count Garin. He took possession of his lands in peace.

[_Now they sing it._]

Aucassin did repair

To his town of Beaucaire,

And well governed kingdom and city.

How glad would he be,

If he only could see

His own Nicolette so pretty!

"Dear child of sweet face,

How I wish that I knew

To what sort of place

I must go to find you!

There is no land or sea

God has made here below,

Where to look after thee

I would not gladly go."

[_Now they tell it, they speak it, and talk it._]

We will leave Aucassin there, that we may tell about Nicolette.

The ship on which she had been taken away was that of the King of

Carthage and his twelve brothers, who were princes and kings like

himself. When they saw how beautiful Nicolette was, they did her great

honor, and asked who she was; for she seemed to them a noble lady of

high degree. But she could give them no account of herself, having been

carried from home when she was a very little girl.

Soon they came to Carthage. As soon as they saw the walls of the

castle, and all the country round about, Nicolette recollected that it

was here that she had been nursed, and had grown up, and that it was

here where she had been taken as a slave; for she had not been so young

but she remembered perfectly well that she had been daughter of the

King of Carthage.

[_Now they sing it._]

The wise Nicolette

Walks up on the shores,

And she does not forget

The castles and towers.

At first, the grand sight

Filled the child with delight,

Then she sighed, "Well-a-day!

What would Aucassin say,

My own darling knight,

If he knew that the pirates, that terrible day,

The Princess of Carthage had carried away?

"Dear boy, thy heart's love

Brings me sorrow and pain;

May the good God above

Let me see thee again!

Come, fold me in thine own embrace,

Kiss my lips, and kiss my eyes,

Kiss again your sweetheart's face!"

So his princess sadly cries

To her lord and lover.

When Nicolette sang this, the King of Carthage heard her.

"My dear child," he cried, throwing his arms around her neck, "tell me

who you are, I beg you! Do not be afraid of me."

"Sir," replied Nicolette, "I am the daughter of the King of Carthage,

from whom I was stolen fifteen years ago."

It was easy for the king and his brothers to see that what Nicolette

said was true. So they took her to the palace, and made a great _fête_

for her, as was fitting for the daughter of a king. They wished to give

her for a wife to a king of the pagans; but she refused. She said she

did not yet wish to marry.

After three or four days, she thought of the way by which she could

gain some news of Aucassin. The only way she could think of was to

learn to play the violin; and one day, when they wanted to marry her to

a rich pagan prince, she ran away, and came to the harbor, where she

lodged with a poor old woman who lived there. Then she took a certain

herb, and squeezed the juice out of it; and with this juice she stained

her pretty face from top to bottom, so that all of a sudden it became

quite black. Then she made herself a tunic, a mantle, shirt, and

breeches, and so disguised herself as a minstrel; took her violin, and

went to a sailor, who, with some hesitation, agreed to take her into

his ship.

The sails were already set; and so swiftly did the ship sail here and

there through the high sea, that she arrived at the country of

Provence; and there Nicolette landed with her violin. Once on land, the

gentle girl began wandering through the country, playing her violin as

she went from this place to that, until she came to the Castle of

Beaucaire, where was Aucassin.

[_Now they sing it._]

Aucassin is sitting there

At his castle at Beaucaire;

All his barons brave surround him,

Sweet the flowers and birds around him:

But he is in despair.

For Aucassin cannot forget

His charming Nicolette,

His darling fair.

While he sighs, the girl has found him;

For she stands upon the stair,

Deftly tunes her viol-strings,

And to the prince and barons sings:--

"Wise and loyal knights,

Hear my little lay:

How Nicolette and Aucassin were kept so far apart,

While he loved her, as she loved him, with all his heart,

As you do not love every day.

"One day the pagans made her slave

In the tower of Torelore.

Where was Aucassin the brave?

I do not know his story.

But Nicolette, of whom I sing,

Is in Carthage bound,

Where she has her father found,

And where he reigns as king.

He would give the maiden over

To wed in pomp a pagan lover.

But Nicolette says, No!

She loves a damoiseau,

Named Aucassin, and so

She will wed no pagan hound,

She waits alone till she has found

Him whom she loves."

[_Now they tell it, and speak it, and talk it._]

When Aucassin heard Nicolette sing this, he was full of joy. He led her

on one side, and said,--

"My good fellow, do you know anything more of this Nicolette, whose

story you have been singing to us?"

"Yes, sir: I know that she is the most constant, and the wisest

creature that ever was born, as well as the most beautiful. She is the

daughter of the King of Carthage, from whom she was stolen in her

childhood; and he, in turn, took her and Aucassin from the Castle of

Torelore. Glad was he, indeed, to find her; and now he wants to marry

her to one of the mightiest kings of Spain. But Nicolette would rather

be hanged and burned than consent to be the wife of any but Aucassin,

though she were asked to wed the most powerful and the richest prince

in the earth."

"My good fellow," cried Aucassin, "if you could only return to the

country where Nicolette now is, and tell her that I beg her to come

here to speak to me, I would gladly give you all you could ask, or all

you could take of what I have. For love of her, I shall take no other

wife, of however high degree; for I shall never have any except her,

whom here I wait for, and whom I should have gone to seek, had I only

known where to find her."

"Sir, if you have thus determined, I will go and seek Nicolette, for

your sake and for her sake, for I love her truly."

Then Aucassin swore that this was his dearest thought and wish; and he

gave to the minstrel twenty livres.

As the minstrel turned away, she saw that he was weeping, so strong was

his passion.

So she turned on her steps, and said, "Do not be distressed, sir. I

promise you I will bring her before long."

Aucassin thanked her; and Nicolette at once withdrew, and went to the

house of the viscountess, the wife of the viscount, her godfather. He

was dead. At this house Nicolette lodged: she made a confidante of his

widow, and told her the whole story.

Her mistress recognized her readily as being the Nicolette whom she had

educated. She bade her wash herself and bathe, and rest for a week.

Then she anointed her face with the juice of a certain herb she knew;

and she did this so often and so well that Nicolette again became as

beautiful as ever.

When all this was done, Nicolette dressed herself in rich robes of

silk, of which the lady had ample provision. Then she seated herself

upon a sofa of the same stuff, and sent her hostess to seek her friend.

The viscountess came to the palace, where she found Aucassin, who was

weeping and wailing for his darling Nicolette, who was too long in

coming, as he said.

"Aucassin," said the lady to him, "do not lament any longer, but come

with me. I will show you the thing which you love best in all the

world; that is Nicolette, your sweetheart dear, who has come from

distant lands to join you again."

Aucassin was very happy.

[_Now they sing it._]

When Aucassin has heard

This lady's welcome word,

That the girl of lovely face,

His sweetheart dear, had come

To that place,

He comes as quick as wind

With this lady who could find

Her in her home.

He comes into the room

Where his darling has her seat.

When she sees the boy appear,

Quickly to his arms she flies

To kiss his lips, and kiss his eyes,

Her only love, her only dear,

And give him welcome sweet.

So the evening sped away;

And on the morning of another day

She was espoused to him there,

And so became the Lady of Beaucaire.

To both long days of pleasure came,--

Pleasure that was aye the same;

Nicolette, the happy she,

And Aucassin, the happy he.

And here will end my little lay,

Because I've nothing more to say.

THE LOST PALACE.

[From the Ingham Papers.]

"Passengers for Philadelphia and New York will change cars."

This annoying and astonishing cry was loudly made in the palace-car

"City of Thebes," at Pittsburg, just as the babies were well asleep,

and all the passengers adapting themselves to a quiet evening.

"Impossible!" said I mildly to the "gentlemanly conductor," who beamed

before me in the majesty of gilt lace on his cap, and the embroidered

letters P. P. C. These letters do not mean, as in French, "to take

leave," for the peculiarity of this man is, that he does not leave you

till your journey's end: they mean, in American, "Pullman's Palace

Car." "Impossible!" said I; "I bought my ticket at Chicago through to

Philadelphia, with the assurance that the palace-car would go through.

This lady has done the same for herself and her children. Nay, if you

remember, you told me yourself that the 'City of Thebes' was built for

the Philadelphia service, and that I need not move my hat, unless I

wished, till we were there."

The man did not blush, but answered, in the well-mannered tone of a

subordinate used to obey, "Here are my orders, sir; telegram just

received here from head-quarters: '"City of Thebes" is to go to

Baltimore.' Another palace here, sir, waiting for you." And so we were

trans-shipped into such chairs and berths as might have been left in

this other palace, as not wanted by anybody in the great law of natural

selection; and the "City of Thebes" went to Baltimore, I suppose. The

promises which had been made to us when we bought our tickets went to

their place, and the people who made them went to theirs.

Except for this little incident, of which all my readers have probably

experienced the like in these days of travel, the story I am now to

tell would have seemed to me essentially improbable. But so soon as I

reflected, that, in truth, these palaces go hither, go thither,

controlled or not, as it may be, by some distant bureau, the story

recurred to me as having elements of _vraisemblance_ which I had not

noticed before. Having occasion, nearly at the same time, to inquire at

the Metropolitan station in Boston for a lost shawl which had been left

in a certain Brookline car, the gentlemanly official told me that he

did not know where that car was; he had not heard of it for several

days. This again reminded me of "The Lost Palace." Why should not one

palace, more or less, go astray, when there are thousands to care for?

Indeed, had not Mr. Firth told me, at the Albany, that the worst

difficulty in the administration of a strong railway is, that they

cannot call their freight-cars home? They go astray on the line of some

weaker sister, which finds it convenient to use them till they begin to

show a need for paint or repairs. If freight-cars disappear, why not

palaces? So the story seems to me of more worth, and I put it upon

paper.

It was on my second visit to Melbourne that I heard it. It was late at

night, in the coffee-room of the Auckland Arms, rather an indifferent

third-class house, in a by-street in that city, to which, in truth, I

should not have gone had my finances been on a better scale than they

were. I laid down at last an old New-York Herald, which the captain of

the "Osprey" had given me that morning, and which, in the hope of

home-news, I had read and read again to the last syllable of the

"personals." I put down the paper as one always puts down an American

paper in a foreign land, saying to myself, "Happy is that nation whose

history is unwritten." At that moment Sir Roger Tichborne, who had been

talking with an intelligent-looking American on the other side of the

table, stretched his giant form, and said he believed he would play a

game of billiards before he went to bed. He left us alone; and the

American crossed the room, and addressed me.

"You are from Massachusetts, are you not?" said he. I said I had lived

in that State.

"Good State to come from," said he. "I was there myself for three or

four months,--four months and ten days precisely. Did not like it very

well; did not like it. At least, I liked it well enough: my wife did

not like it; she could not get acquainted."

"Does she get acquainted here?" said I, acting on a principle which I

learned from Scipio Africanus at the Latin School, and so carrying the

war into the enemy's regions promptly. That is to say, I saw I must

talk with this man, and I preferred to have him talk of his own

concerns than of mine.

"O sir, I lost her,--I lost her ten years ago! Lived in New Altoona

then. I married this woman the next autumn, in Vandalia. Yes, Mrs.

Joslyn is very well satisfied here. She sees a good deal of society,

and enjoys very good health."

I said that most people did who were fortunate enough to have it to

enjoy. But Mr. Joslyn did not understand this bitter sarcasm, far less

resent it. He went on, with sufficient volubility, to give to me his

impressions of the colony,--of the advantages it would derive from

declaring its independence, and then from annexing itself to the United

States. At the end of one of his periods, goaded again to say

something, I asked why he left his own country for a "colony," if he so

greatly preferred the independent order of government.

Mr. Joslyn looked round somewhat carefully, shut the door of the room

in which we were now alone,--and were likely, at that hour of the

night, to be alone,--and answered my question at length, as the reader

will see.

"Did you ever hear of the lost palace?" said he a little anxiously.

I said, no; that, with every year or two, I heard that Mr. Layard had

found a palace at Nineveh, but that I had never heard of one's being

lost.

"They don't tell of it, sir. Sometimes I think they do not know

themselves. Does not that seem possible?" And the poor man repeated

this question with such eagerness, that, in spite of my anger at being

bored by him, my heart really warmed toward him. "I really think they

do not know. I have never seen one word in the papers about it. Now,

they would have put something in the papers,--do you not think they

would? If they knew it themselves, they would."

"Knew what?" said I, really startled out of my determination to snub

him.

"Knew where the palace is,--knew how it was lost."

By this time, of course, I supposed he was crazy. But a minute more

dispelled that notion; and I beg the reader to relieve his mind from

it. This man knew perfectly well what he was talking about, and never,

in the whole narration, showed any symptom of mania,--a matter on which

I affect to speak with the intelligence of the "experts" indeed.

After a little of this fencing with each other, in which he satisfied

himself that my ignorance was not affected, he took a sudden

resolution, as if it were a relief to him to tell me the whole story.

"It was years on years ago," said he. "It was when they first had

palaces."

Still thinking of Nimrod's palace and Priam's, I said that must have

been a great while ago.

"Yes, indeed," said he. "You would not call them palaces now, since you

have seen Pullman's and Wagner's. But we called them palaces then. So

many looking-glasses, you know, and tapestry carpets and gold

spit-boxes. Ours was the first line that run palaces."

I asked myself, mentally, of what metal were the spit-boxes in

Semiramis' palace; but I said nothing.

"Our line was the first line that had them. We were running our

lightning express on the 'Great Alleghanian.' We were in opposition to

everybody, made close connections, served supper on board, and our

passengers only were sure of the night-boat at St. Louis. Those were

the days of river-boats, you know. We introduced the palace feature on

the railroad; and very successful it was. I was an engineer. I had a

first-rate character, and the best wages of any man on the line. Never

put me on a dirt-dragger or a lazy freight loafer, I tell you. No, sir!

I ran the expresses, and nothing else, and lay off two days in the

week, besides. I don't think I should have thought of it but for

Todhunter, who was my palace conductor."

Again this IT, which had appeared so mysteriously in what the man said

before. I asked no question, but listened, really interested now, in

the hope I should find out what IT was; and this the reader will learn.

He went on, in a hurried way:--

"Todhunter was my palace conductor. One night he was full, and his

palace was hot, and smelled bad of whale-oil. We did not burn petroleum

then. Well, it was a splendid full moon in August; and we were coming

down grade, making the time we had lost at the Brentford Junction.

Seventy miles an hour she ran if she ran one. Todhunter had brought his

cigar out on the tender, and was sitting by me. Good Lord! it seems

like last week.

"Todhunter says to me, 'Joslyn,' says he, 'what's the use of crooking

all round these valleys, when it would be so easy to go across?'

"You see, we were just beginning to crook round, so as to make that

long bend there is at Chamoguin; but right across the valley we could

see the stern lights of Fisher's train: it was not more than half a

mile away, but we should run eleven miles before we came there."

I knew what Mr. Joslyn meant. To cross the mountain ranges by rail, the

engineers are obliged to wind up one side of a valley, and then, boldly

crossing the head of the ravine on a high arch, to wind up the other

side still, so that perhaps half an hour's journey is consumed, while

not a mile of real distance is made. Joslyn took out his pencil, and on

the back of an envelope drew a little sketch of the country; which, as

it happened, I still preserve, and which, with his comments, explains

his whole story completely. "Here we are," said he. "This black line is

the Great Alleghanian,--double track, seventy pounds to the yard; no

figuring off there, I tell you. This was a good straight run, down

grade a hundred and seventy-two feet on the mile. There, where I make

this X, we came on the Chamoguin Valley, and turned short, nearly

north. So we ran wriggling about till Drums here, where we stopped if

they showed lanterns,--what we call a flag-station. But there we got

across the valley, and worked south again to this other X, which was,

as I say, not five eighths of a mile from this X above, though it had

taken us eleven miles to get there."

[Illustration: Map of train route.]

He had said it was not more than half a mile; but this half-mile grew

to five eighths as he became more accurate and serious.

"Well," said he, now resuming the thread of his story, "it was

Todhunter put it into my head. He owns he did. Todhunter says, says he,

'Joslyn, what's the use of crooking round all these valleys, when it

would be so easy to go across?'

"Well, sir, I saw it then, as clear as I see it now. When that trip was

done, I had two days to myself,--one was Sunday,--and Todhunter had the

same; and he came round to my house. His wife knew mine, and we liked

them. Well, we fell talking about it; and I got down the Cyclopædia,

and we found out there about the speed of cannon-balls, and the

direction they had to give them. You know this was only talk then; we

never thought what would come of it; but very curious it all was."

And here Mr. Joslyn went into a long mathematical talk, with which I

will not harass the reader, perfectly sure, from other experiments

which I have tried with other readers, that this reader would skip it

all if it were written down. Stated very briefly, it amounted to this:

In the old-fashioned experiments of those days, a cannon-ball travelled

four thousand and one hundred feet in nine seconds. Now, Joslyn was

convinced, like every other engineman I ever talked to, that on a steep

down-grade he could drive a train at the rate of a hundred miles an

hour. This is thirteen hundred and fourteen feet in nine

seconds,--almost exactly one third of the cannon-ball's velocity. At

those rates, if the valley at Chamoguin were really but five eighths of

a mile wide, the cannon-ball would cross it in seven or eight seconds,

and the train in about twenty-three seconds. Both Todhunter and Joslyn

were good enough mechanics and machinists to know that the rate for

thirty-three hundred feet, the width of the valley, was not quite the

same as that for four thousand feet; for which, in their book, they had

the calculations and formulas; but they also knew that the difference

was to their advantage, or the advantage of the bold experiment which

had occurred to both of them when Todhunter had made on the tender his

very critical suggestion.

The reader has already conceived the idea of this experiment. These

rash men were wondering already whether it were not possible to leap an

engine flying over the Chamoguin ravine, as Eclipse or Flying Childers

might have leaped the brook at the bottom of it. Joslyn believed

implicitly, as I found in talk with him, the received statement of

conversation, that Eclipse, at a single bound, sprang forty feet. "If

Eclipse, who weighed perhaps one thousand two hundred, would spring

forty feet, could not my train, weighing two hundred tons, spring a

hundred times as far?" asked he triumphantly. At least, he said that he

said this to Todhunter. They went into more careful studies of

projectiles, to see if it could or could not.

The article on "Gunnery" gave them just one of those convenient tables

which are the blessing of wise men and learned men, and which lead

half-trained men to their ruin. They found that for their "range,"

which was, as they supposed, eleven hundred yards, the elevation of a

forty-two pounder was one degree and a third; of a nine-pounder, three

degrees. The elevation for a railway train, alas! no man had

calculated. But this had occurred to both of them from the beginning.

In descending the grade, at the spot where, on his little map, Joslyn

made the more westerly X, they were more than eleven hundred feet above

the spot where he had made his second, or easterly X. All this descent

was to the advantage of the experiment. A gunner would have said that

the first X "commanded" the second X, and that a battery there would

inevitably silence a battery at the point below.

"We need not figure on it," said Todhunter, as Mrs. Joslyn called them

in to supper. "If we did, we should make a mistake. Give me your

papers. When I go up, Monday night, I'll give them to my brother Bill.

I shall pass him at Faber's Mills. He has studied all these things, of

course; and he will like the fun of making it out for us." So they sat

down to Mrs. Joslyn's waffles; and, but for Bill Todhunter, this story

would never have been told to me, nor would John Joslyn and "this

woman" ever have gone to Australia.

But Bill Todhunter was one of those acute men of whom the new

civilization of this country is raising thousands with every year; who,

in the midst of hard hand-work, and a daily duty which to collegians,

and to the ignorant men among their professors, seems repulsive, carry

on careful scientific study, read the best results of the latest

inquiry, manage to bring together a first-rate library of reference,

never spend a cent for liquor or tobacco, never waste an hour at a

circus or a ball, but make their wives happy by sitting all the

evening, "figuring," one side of the table, while the wife is hemming

napkins on the other. All of a sudden, when such a man is wanted, he

steps out, and bridges the Gulf of Bothnia; and people wonder, who

forget that for two centuries and a half the foresighted men and women

of this country have been building up, in the face of the Devil of

Selfishness on the one hand, and of the Pope of Rome on the other, a

system of popular education, improving every hour.

At this moment Bill Todhunter was foreman of Repair Section No. 11 on

the "Great Alleghanian,"--a position which needed a man of first-rate

promptness, of great resource, of good education in engineering. Such a

man had the "Great Alleghanian" found in him, by good luck; and they

had promoted him to their hardest-worked and best-paid section,--the

section an which, as it happened, was this Chamoguin run, and the long

bend which I have described, by which the road "headed" that stream.

The younger Todhunter did meet his brother at Faber's Mills, where the

repair-train had hauled out of the way of the express, and where the

express took wood. The brothers always looked for each other on such

occasions; and Bill promised to examine the paper which Joslyn had

carefully written out, and which his brother brought to him.

* * * * *

I have never repeated in detail the mass of calculations which Bill

Todhunter made on the suggestion thus given to him. If I had, I would

not repeat them here, for a reason which has been suggested already. He

became fascinated with the problem presented to him. Stated in the

language of the craft, it was this:--

"Given a moving body, with a velocity eight thousand eight hundred feet

in a minute, what should be its elevation that it may fall eleven

hundred feet in the transit of five eighths of a mile?" He had not only

to work up the parabola, comparatively simple, but he had to allow for

the resistance of the air, on the supposition of a calm, according to

the really admirable formulas of Robins and Coulomb, which were the

best he had access to. Joslyn brought me one day a letter from Bill

Todhunter, which shows how carefully he went into this intricate

inquiry.

Unfortunately for them all, it took possession of this spirited and

accomplished young man. You see, he not only had the mathematical

ability for the calculation of the fatal curve, but, as had been

ordered without any effort of his, he was in precisely the situation of

the whole world for trying in practice his own great experiment. At

each of the two X X of Joslyn's map, the company had, as it happened,

switches for repair-trains or wood-trains. Had it not, Bill Todhunter

had ample power to make them.

For the "experiment," all that was necessary was, that under the

pretext of re-adjusting these switches, he should lay out that at the

upper X so that it should run, on the exact grade which he required, to

the western edge of the ravine, in a line which should be the direct

continuation of the long, straight run with which the little map

begins.

An engine, then, running down that grade at the immense rapidity

practicable there, would take the switch with its full speed, would fly

the ravine at precisely the proper slopes, and, if the switch had been

rightly aligned, would land on the similar switch at the lower X. It

would come down exactly right on the track, as you sit precisely on a

chair when you know exactly how high it is.

"If." And why should it not be rightly aligned, if Bill Todhunter

himself aligned it? This he was well disposed to do. He also would

align the lower switch, that at the lower X, that it might receive into

its willing embrace the engine on its arrival.

When the bold engineer had conceived this plan, it was he who pushed

the others on to it, not they who urged him. They were at work on their

daily duty, sometimes did not meet each other for a day or two. Bill

Todhunter did not see them more than once in a fortnight. But whenever

they did meet, the thing seemed to be taken more and more for granted.

At last Joslyn observed one day, as he ran down, that there was a large

working-party at the switch above Drums, and he could see Bill

Todhunter, in his broad sombrero, directing them all. Joslyn was not

surprised, somehow, when he came to the lower switch, to find another

working-party there. The next time they all three met, Bill Todhunter

told them that all was ready if they were. He said that he had left a

few birches to screen the line of the upper switch, for fear some

nervous bungler, driving an engine down, might be frightened, and

"blow" about the switch. But he said that any night when the others

were ready to make the fly, he was; that there would be a full moon the

next Wednesday, and, if there was no wind, he hoped they would do it

then.

"You know," said poor Joslyn, describing it to me, "I should never have

done it alone; August would never have done it alone; no, I do not

think that Bill Todhunter himself would have done it alone. But our

heads were full of it. We had thought of it and thought of it till we

did not think of much else; and here was everything ready, and neither

of us was afraid, and neither of us chose to have the others think he

was afraid. I did say, what was the truth, that I had never meant to

try it with a train. I had only thought that we should apply to the

supe, and that he would get up a little excursion party of

gentlemen,--editors, you know, and stockholders,--who would like to do

it together, and that I should have the pleasure and honor of taking

them over. But Todhunter poohed at that. He said all the calculations

were made for the inertia of a full train, that that was what the

switch was graded for, and that everything would have to be altered if

any part of the plan were altered. Besides, he said the superintendent

would never agree, that he would insist on consulting the board and the

chief engineer, and that they would fiddle over it till Christmas.

"'No,' said Bill, 'next Wednesday, or never! If you will not do it

then, I will put the tracks back again.' August Todhunter said nothing;

but I knew he would do what we agreed to, and he did.

"So at last I said I would jump it on Wednesday night, if the night was

fine. But I had just as lief own to you that I hoped it would not be

fine. Todhunter--Bill Todhunter, I mean--was to leave the switch open

after the freight had passed, and to drive up to the Widow Jones's

Cross Road. There he would have a lantern, and I would stop and take

him up. He had a right to stop us, as chief of repairs. Then we should

have seven miles down-grade to get up our speed, and then--we should

see!"

* * * * *

"Mr. Ingham, I might have spared myself the hoping for foul weather. It

was the finest moonlight night that you ever knew in October. And if

Bill Todhunter had weighed that train himself, he could not have been

better pleased,--one baggage-car, one smoking-car, two regular

first-class, and two palaces: she run just as steady as an old cow! We

came to the Widow Jones's, square on time; and there was Bill's lantern

waving. I slowed the train: he jumped on the tender without stopping

it. I 'up brakes' again, and then I told Flanagan, my fireman, to go

back to the baggage-car, and see if they would lend me some tobacco.

You see, we wanted to talk, and we didn't want him to see. 'Mr.

Todhunter and I will feed her till you come back,' says I to Flanagan.

In a minute after he had gone, August Todhunter came forward on the

engine; and, I tell you, she did fly!

"'Not too fast,' said Bill, 'not too fast: too fast is as bad as too

slow.'

"'Never you fear me,' says I. 'I guess I know this road and this

engine. Take out your watch, and time the mile-posts,' says I; and he

timed them. 'Thirty-eight seconds,' says he; 'thirty-seven and a half,

thirty-six, thirty-six, thirty-six,'--three times thirty-six, as we

passed the posts, just as regular as an old clock! And then we came

right on the mile-post you know at Old Flander's. 'Thirty-six,' says

Bill again. And then she took the switch,--I can hear that switch-rod

ring under us now, Mr. Ingham,--and then--we were clear!

"Was not it grand? The range was a little bit up, you see, at first;

but it seemed as if we were flying just straight across. All the rattle

of the rail stopped, you know, though the pistons worked just as true

as ever; neither of us said one word, you know; and she just

flew--well, as you see a hawk fly sometimes, when he pounces, you know,

only she flew so straight and true! I think you may have dreamed of

such things. I have; and now,--now I dream it very often. It was not

half a minute, you know, but it seemed a good long time. I said nothing

and they said nothing; only Bill just squeezed my hand. And just as I

knew we must be half over,--for I could see by the star I was watching

ahead that we were not going up, but were falling again,--do you think

the rope by my side tightened quick, and the old bell on the engine

gave one savage bang, turned right over as far as the catch would let

it, and stuck where it turned! Just that one sound, everything else was

still; and then she landed on the rails, perhaps seventy feet inside

the ravine, took the rails as true and sweet as you ever saw a ship

take the water, hardly touched them, you know, skimmed--well, as I have

seen a swallow skim on the sea; the prettiest, well, the tenderest

touch, Mr. Ingham, that ever I did see! And I could just hear the

connecting rods tighten the least bit in the world behind me, and we

went right on.

"We just looked at each other in the faces, and we could not speak; no,

I do not believe we spoke for three quarters of a minute. Then August

said, 'Was not that grand? Will they let us do it always, Bill?' But we

could not talk then. Flanagan came back with the tobacco, and I had

just the wit to ask him why he had been gone so long. Poor fellow! he

was frightened enough when we pulled up at Clayville, and he thought it

was Drums. Drums, you see, was way up the bend, a dozen miles above

Clayville. Poor Flanagan thought we must have passed there while he was

skylarking in the baggage-car, and that he had not minded it. We never

stopped at Drums unless we had passengers, or they. It was what we call

a flag-station. So I blew Flanagan up, and told him he was gone too

long.

"Well, sir, at Clayville we did stop,--always stopped there for wood.

August Todhunter, he was the palace conductor; he went back to look to

his passengers. Bill stayed with me. But in a minute August came

running back, and called me off the engine. He led me forward, where it

was dark; but I could see, as we went, that something was to pay. The

minute we were alone he says,--

"'John, we've lost the rear palace.'

"'Don't fool me, August,' says I.

"'No fooling, John,' says he. 'The shackle parted. The cord parted, and

is flying loose behind now. If you want to see, come and count the

cars. The "General Fremont" is here all right; but I tell you the

"James Buchanan" is at the bottom of the Chamoguin Creek.'

"I walked back to the other end of the platform, as fast as I could go,

and not be minded. Todhunter was there before me, tying up the loose

end of the bell-cord. There was a bit of the broken end of the shackle

twisted in with the bolt. I pulled the bolt, and threw the iron into

the swamp, far as I could fling her. Then I nodded to Todhunter, and

walked forward, just as that old goose at Clayville had got his

trousers on, so he could come out, and ask me if we were not ahead of

time. I tell you, sir, I did not stop to talk with him. I just rang

'All aboard!' and started her again; and this time I run slow enough to

save the time before we came down to Steuben. We were on time, all

right, there."

Here poor Joslyn stopped a while in his story; and I could see that he

was so wrought up with excitement that I had better not interrupt,

either with questions or with sympathy. He rallied in a minute or two,

and said,--

"I thought--we all thought--that there would be a despatch somewhere

waiting us. But no; all was as regular is the clock. One palace more or

less,--what did they know, and what did they care? So daylight came. We

could not say a word, you know, with Flanagan there; and he only

stopped, you know, a minute or two every hour; and just then was when

August Todhunter had to be with his passengers, you know. Was not I

glad when we came into Pemaquid,--our road ran from Pemaquid across the

mountains to Eden, you know,--when we came into Pemaquid, and nobody

had asked any questions?

"I reported my time at the office of the master of trains, and I went

home. I tell you, Mr. Ingham, I have never seen Pemaquid Station since

that day.

"I had done nothing wrong, of course. I had obeyed every order, and

minded every signal. But still I knew public opinion might be against

me when they heard of the loss of the palace. I did not feel very well

about it, and I wrote a note to say I was not well enough to take my

train the next night; and I and Mrs. Joslyn went to New York, and I

went aboard a Collins steamer as fireman; and Mrs. Joslyn, she went as

stewardess; and I wrote to Pemaquid, and gave up my place. It was a

good place, too; but I gave it up, and I left America.

"Bill Todhunter, he resigned his place too, that same day, though that

was a good place. He is in the Russian service now. He is running their

line from Archangel to Astrachan; good pay, he says, but lonely. August

would not stay in America after his brother left; and he is now

captain's clerk on the Harkaway steamers between Bangkok and Cochbang;

good place, he says, but hot. So we are all parted.

"And do you know, sir, never one of us ever heard of the lost palace!"

Sure enough, under that very curious system of responsibility, by which

one corporation owns the carriages which another corporation uses,

nobody in the world has to this moment ever missed "The Lost Palace."

On each connecting line, everybody knew that "she" was not there; but

no one knew or asked where she was. The descent into the rocky bottom

of the Chamoguin, more than fifteen hundred feet below the line of

flight, had of course been rapid,--slow at first, but in the end rapid.

In the first second, the lost palace had fallen sixteen feet; in the

second, sixty-four; in the third, one hundred and forty-four; in the

fourth, two hundred and fifty-six; in the fifth, four hundred feet; so

that it must have been near the end of the sixth second of its fall,

that, with a velocity now of more than six hundred feet in a second,

the falling palace, with its unconscious passengers, fell upon the

rocks at the bottom of the Chamoguin ravine. In the dead of night,

wholly without jar or parting, those passengers must have been sleeping

soundly; and it is impossible, therefore, on any calculation of human

probability, that any one of them can have been waked an instant before

the complete destruction of the palace, by the sudden shock of its fall

upon the bed of the stream. To them the accident, if it is fair to call

it so, must have been wholly free from pain.

The tangles of that ravine, and the swamp below it, are such that I

suppose that even the most adventurous huntsman never finds his way

there. On the only occasion when I ever met Mr. Jules Verne, he

expressed a desire to descend there from one of his balloons, to learn

whether the inhabitants of "The Lost Palace" might not still survive,

and be living in a happy republican colony there,--a place without

railroads, without telegrams, without mails, and certainly without

palaces. But at the moment when these sheets go to press, no account of

such an adventure has appeared from his rapid pen.

THE WESTERN GINEVRA.

CHAPTER I.

BOUGHT.

As pretty a girl as there was in Ohio. And how much that says!

Brunette, or of that tendency, yet with blue eyes. And how much that

says!

Tall and strong, not too plump, but still not scrawny, nor as a

skeleton in clothing. I do not say that she could whip her weight in

wild-cats; I do not know. Of that breed of animals few are left in

Ohio, thanks to the prowess of the grandmothers of the present

generation. But I do say that of the mother of the mother of Hester

Bryan, of whom I write, this eulogy was simple truth. The _Puma

concolor_, or native catamount of those regions, had yielded a hundred

times before her prowess. And this I will add,--that Hester Bryan was

just a bit taller and prettier than her mother, as she, in her day, was

taller and prettier than hers. For there are worlds of life in which

"Nature gives us more than all she ever takes away."

Now do not go to thinking that Hester Bryan was a great strapping

Amazon, and looked like a female prize-fighter. She was tall, and she

was strong, and she was graceful as the Venus of the Porta Portese, if

by good luck you ever saw her.

And she was as good as pretty; and she was the queen of the whole town,

because she was pretty and good, and so bright. She never set herself

up as grander than the other girls, and all the other girls set her up

as the queen of their love and worship.

And the boys? Oh, that was of course. But then there were no

"pretenders," as the French say. All that was settled long ago--as long

ago as when she wore a sun-bonnet, and walked barefoot to school.

Horace would always be waiting for her at the Five Corners, with the

largest and ripest raspberries, or with whatever other offering was in

season. As long ago as when he made his first canoe, there would hang

under her window, before breakfast, great bunches of the earliest

pond-lilies. As soon as it would do for these young folks to go on

sleigh-rides, it was in Horace's cutter that Hester always rode. And

when Hester sang in the choir, she always stood at the right hand of

the altos, and just across the passage stood Horace, at the left hand

of the tenors. Not a young man in the village interfered with Horace's

pre-emption there. But not a young man in the village who did not stand

by Horace as loyally as the girls stood by Hester; and if he had needed

to summon a working party to build a bridge across a slue, that Hester

might walk dry-shod with a white slipper on, why, all the young men of

the neighborhood would be there as soon as Horace wound his horn.

A nice girl at the West once wrote me to ask why all the good young

men, who were bright and spirited and nice, were in my books, and why,

in fact, the bright boys, who knew something and could do something and

could be something--in short, were agreeable--were apt to be lounging

round liquor saloons in the village when they should be better

employed. I told her, of course, to wait a little; that she was looking

through some very small key-hole. How I wish that my unknown

correspondent could have seen Horace Ray! He was handsome, he was

bright, he was strong, he was steady, he was full of fun; he could read

French well, and could talk German, and he knew enough Latin. And yet

he did not lounge round a liquor saloon, and the minister was glad, and

not sorry, that he sung in the choir.

When this story begins, Horace Ray was twenty-two years old, and Hester

Bryan was twenty-one. I know that that is dreadfully old for a story,

but how can I help that? Do you suppose I make it up as I go along? If

they did not choose to be married when he was eighteen and she

seventeen, can I help that? The truth is, that Hester's father was a

man who liked to have his own way, and in some things had it. He had

not had it in making a large fortune, though he had always tried for

that. In that business he had failed,--had failed badly. He was always

just close to it; but always, just as he touched the log on which he

was to stand erect, quite out of the water, the log was pushed away by

his touch, and floated quite out of reach, he paddling far behind.

Hester's mother was in heaven, or things might have been made easier

for her. As it was, her father would not hear of her marrying Horace

till Horace should have something better than expectations, till he was

fixed in a regular business, with a regular income. Perhaps Ohio is now

so far established as a conservative and old-fashioned country that

most fathers of charming girls in Ohio will agree with him. Yet I never

heard of any one's starving in Ohio. They do say that no one was ever

hungry there!

Because of this horrible sentence of old Mr. Bryan--because of

this--the happiest day of Horace's life was the day when he could come,

at last, to Hester, and could tell her that he was appointed assistant

engineer on the Scioto Valley Railroad, with a salary of one thousand

dollars a year, to be increased by one hundred dollars at the end of

the first year. Here was the "regular income in the regular business,"

and now all would be well. Would she be married in church, or would she

rather go to Columbus, to be married quietly? For his part, he was all

ready; he would like to be married that day.

Of course this last part was only his little joke. But Hester, dear

child, how well I remember how pretty and how cheerful she seemed all

that week, and how little any of us thought of what was to come! Hester

was by no means a prude, and she was as happy as he. And the news

lighted up all the village. Everybody knew it, from the canal-locks up

to the mills, and everybody was glad. Horace Ray had a good place, and

he and Hester Bryan could be married right away.

Four days that happy dream lasted; and even now Horace looks back on

those four dream-days as days of unutterable joy and blessedness. He

has a little portfolio which Hester herself made for him, and on the

back of which she painted his own monogram. It lies among his choicest

treasures, and is never handled but with the most dainty care. It

contains every note she wrote him--five in all--as those blessed days

went by. Them it contains--ah, the pity!--four little sunny songs which

Horace wrote to her on four of those evenings, and which he sent to her

on the four mornings, with the bunch of flowers which she found at the

front-door as she threw it open. These the poor girl had to give back

to him. And all this is tied with a bit of ribbon, which is stained yet

by the moisture on the stems of the flowers it tied together,--a little

bunch of roses which Hester gave to him. For, as you must hear, these

four days came to an end.

Old Mr. Bryan came home--"old" he was called, in the fresh and active

phrase of a young community, because he was older than John Bryan the

miller.

In truth, our Mr. Bryan was forty-five. He came home--from no one knew

where. He was in low spirits: that all men saw as he left the railroad

station--the dépôt, as they called it. The boy who drove him to his

home--that is, who drove the horse which dragged the wagon in which old

Bryan was carried to his home--this boy, I say, did not dare allude to

Horace's good news. Pretty Hester came running to meet him at the gate,

fresh as a rose and glad as a sunbeam; but she saw that all was wrong.

All the same, everything was pleasant and cheerful; the children were

neat and nice in their best clothes, the supper was perfect, and no

returning conqueror had ever a more happy welcome.

Before they slept, even to her downcast, not to say cross, father,

Hester told her story,--her story and Horace's. But old Bryan took it

very hardly. It was all nonsense, he said. She must not think of

weddings. His was no house to be married from. He was ruined: those

infernal Swartwouts and Dousterswivels, or whatever else may have been

the names of the swindlers who had fooled him, had cleaned him out; and

the sooner the town knew he was ruined, and the world, why, the better,

he supposed. Poor old Bryan was really to be pitied this time. Often as

he had fallen, he had never fallen so far; and it certainly seemed as

if he had fallen into mud and slime so thick and so deep, in a bog so

utterly without bottom, that for him there was no recovery.

"No time to talk of weddings." This was all old Bryan would say.

When Horace came to plead, it was no better. There was a time when old

Bryan had liked Horace. If any man knew how to manage him, it was

Horace. But now he was simply unmanageable, and too soon the reason

appeared.

There was a St. Louis merchant whom Bryan had met at Columbus the

winter when he represented the district in the Legislature. From the

first they seemed to have been great friends. When our pretty Hester

made her winter visit to Columbus, to stay with Mrs. Dunn, this de

Alcantara saw her,--the Duke de Alcantara, the Columbus girls called

him, mostly in joke, but partly in mystery; for it was whispered that

he might be a duke in Spain if he chose to be. This was certain,--that

he was very rich--very. Those who disliked him most--and some people

disliked him very much--had to own that he was very rich. Black-haired

he was, very dark of complexion, and, Horace said, and all the party of

haters, odious in expression. But whether Horace would have said that,

had the two not crossed each other's lines, who shall say? The truth is

that Baltasar de Alcantara was a great diamond merchant.

And now the mystery appeared. Old Bryan said he could not talk of

weddings, but soon enough he began to talk of one. Baltasar de

Alcantara wanted to marry our Hester. This she had guessed at; but she

had thought she had put a very summary end to it. She had said to him

squarely, the last time she saw him, "Do you not know that I am engaged

to be married, Mr. de Alcantara?" She had supposed that would be

enough. She had not thought of the Oriental fashion of buying your

wife; but Baltasar de Alcantara had. There must have been Eastern blood

in him. Horace Ray, after he heard of the new proposal of marriage,

said his rival had a nose which looked Eastern,--arched, but not Roman.

However it was about the nose, the diamond merchant offered to buy our

Hester. If she would marry him, or if old Bryan would make her marry

him, he would lend old Bryan all the money he wanted, up to fifty

thousand dollars, on his personal security; he would take at their face

all old Bryan's worthless stock in the Green Bay Iron Company, and he

would make old Bryan vice-president in the Cattaraugus and Tallahassee

Railroad, of which he was a managing director. All this statement old

Bryan repeated to our Hester.

Of course Hester refused point-blank. And then for six months--nay,

ten--came awful times for her. Hard times had she seen in that house

before, but nothing like these! Horace was banished first. She had to

send back her engagement ring, and the letters and the songs I told you

of. She had to promise not to meet him in the village, and she kept her

promise; not to speak to him if she did meet him there. Then she could

not go out anywhere. Then she was kept on bread and water, and the

children too. Then there was this and that piece of furniture carried

off to be sold at auction,--everything that was her mother's and that

her mother prized. Then poor Hester fell sick, and almost died. As soon

as she rallied at all, old Bryan began again. And then Hester

capitulated. That horrid Duke de Alcantara came--he came after dark,

and came in his own carriage all the way from the station at London.

Our boys would have mobbed him, I believe. He came, and I am bound to

say he behaved very well. He was not obtrusive. He was gentle and

gentlemanly. And when he went away he put a ring on Hester's finger;

and she did not throw it in his face, nor did she tear out his eyes.

And so it was settled. And the house was furnished again, and Betsey

Boll and old Miss Tucker came back to work in the kitchen again, and

old Bryan's bank account was better than it ever was. And on the 2d of

April he went to Cincinnati to sit as V. P. of the C. and T. R. R. Co.,

and to draw his first quarter's salary.

And poor Horace never set his eyes on poor Hester's pale face.

And all the village knew that on the 15th of May Hester Bryan was to be

married to the Duke de Alcantara. And Lucy Lander surrendered so far

from the general tone of opinion of the girls as to agree to be a

bridemaid. She had a splendid dress sent to her from St. Louis. Jane

Forsyth and the other girls said they would burn at the stake first.

But Lucy said--and I think she was right--that Hester had a right to

have one friend near her to the last.

The wedding was to be at St. Louis at St. Jude's Church. The boys said

it was Judas Iscariot's Church, but this was their mistake. They said

the Duke de Alcantara was afraid to be married in Hester's home. This,

I think, is probable. The arrangements were left mostly to "the Duke"

and to old Bryan's sister, Mrs. Goole--a skinny, wiry, disagreeable

person, of a very uncertain age, who had made herself so unpleasant to

all the neighbors on her visit to her brother, many years ago, that she

had never come again till now. Now that he needed some womenfolk, Mrs.

Goole was summoned to the rescue.

CHAPTER II.

SOLD.

On the 14th of May, the Pullman palace, Cleopatra, was waiting on a

side-track at London, ready to take its first trip. It had been

chartered, John the porter said, by a chap from St. Louis, who was

going to take quite a party there. A bridal party it was. How large the

party was to be, the porter did not know, though it was important

enough to him. But he had dusted the new plush, clean as it was, and

had wiped off the wood-work, though he could not stain his cloth on it.

Presently the party came, headed by a dark gentleman talking to the

station-master. The station-master introduced him to the conductor as

Mr. De Alcantara. The eagle eye of the porter saw that there were

twelve in the party. He waited for no introduction, but seized the

hand-baggage and distributed it to the different sections. Meanwhile

the party entered the car.

But though the porter had assigned to each of their grandeurs a section

of four seats, they did not mount each a separate throne. On the

contrary, a pleasant-looking young lady, who might perhaps be the

bride, and two children, sat down in the middle of the car. The rest

were distributed according to their different degrees of lack of

acquaintanceship.

"I want to bid you good-by now, dears," said the bride to the children.

"You see there'll be a great row when you go to bed, and to-morrow

morning I'll have hardly time to kiss you. So while they're setting

supper ready, and he's talking to papa, I'll tell you each one of my

old stories--no, you're so old now, Edward, that I'll tell Amelia two

stories, and you can listen if you want to. Then we'll have just as

good a good-by as if it were to-morrow, and two--no, three sets of

kisses."

"But it's not so very far to St. Louis--so far as to make much of a

fuss about; and we'll come and see you, sha'n't we?" said Edward

stoutly.

"Yes, if I stay in St. Louis all the time;" and the poor girl told how

often she would have to go down the river, and sometimes even across

the ocean to Amsterdam. But presently she began on her stories, and the

children at least were happy till they were all called to supper.

And then, to the surprise of the porter, the splendid Mr. De Alcantara

took out a dried-up little woman whom he had hardly noticed, while Mr.

Bryan and the bride filled up the table.

And such a supper as it was! Though it was past eight, the cook gave

them as solid a first course as his French education would allow him

before he covered the little tables with salads and ices.

To old Bryan's surprise, Hester took a little of De Alcantara's

champagne--not as much as her cousins behind her; but he had never

known her to take wine even in his flush times. Not that he cared,--he

saw two full bottles opposite,--but yet he noticed it. Perhaps it was

that which gave her rosier cheeks than she had had for a month; and

perhaps it was that which put her in such good spirits.

"I am quite relieved," said she, as the last waiter went out. "I really

expected to see a wedding-cake come on after this luxury, and hear that

Mr. Prayerbook was in the next car, ready to marry me or bury me."

"If I had known you expected it," said De Alcantara, "I should have had

it ready. And even now, I dare say, there is a priest on the train, my

dear."

"Oh no, indeed," said Mrs. Goole, who took everything in earnest; "it

will be far better for you to retire now with the children. It's nine

o'clock, and just think how hard a day you'll have to-morrow."

"I don't know," said Hester. "I think that it is never so hard to do a

thing as to make up one's mind to it; and as for going to bed, I don't

care to. Perhaps Mr. De Alcantara has a pack of cards or so with him,

and then you can have some whist, aunt, and we-- Shall we have Sancho

Pedro or euchre, your Grace?"

"Grace me no grace," said De Alcantara, as cards were produced--to his

credit, be it said, from a friend's portmanteau. "I vote for euchre, if

it be for four hands; Pedro by itself is far from exciting."

"Not when it's played for love, your Grace?" said Hester.

Who shall say how much the Don understood of the gambling terms of

Great Britain? He stumbled and said, "Certainly, if you put it in that

way."

But Hester would not, and so De Alcantara took the home-bridemaid, Lucy

Lander, as his partner, and a "son of St. Louis" sat opposite Hester.

"I didn't quite know what to think," said Lucy Lander, afterward, to

her sister. "Sometimes I thought she had made up her mind to it, and

then again I thought something awful would happen. You see, he kept

calling her 'my dear,' and she never blushed nor anything, except once,

when she was leaning back, shading her face with her cards, and then

her eyes sort of glittered; it could hardly have been the light, you

know. And once she had dealt, and the cards fell ace, two, three, four,

and then Mr. Gardner, the St. Louis man, said, in a sort of hesitating

way, 'That means kiss the dealer, you know'; and then the duke took up

her hand, which was lying on the table, but she pulled it away, and

said, 'Wait--till to-morrow.' That could have meant anything, you

know."

And as Lucy sat and wondered, Hester sat and played, better than Lucy

did, perhaps. She did not let De Alcantara kiss her hand, but she did

laugh with him, and at him a little. She asked the St. Louis man if her

hands were large enough to pass muster there, and then explained that

her father took a Chicago paper. Indeed, so loud was the laughter of

the gentlemen that Mrs. Goole kept looking round in an anxious way, and

trying to catch Hester's eye. But Hester kept her back resolutely

turned, and Lucy would not understand any telegrams from the chaperon;

so when Mrs. Goole found, to her joy, that it was eleven, she broke up

the somewhat shaky whist-table, and spoke to Hester.

"My dear," said she, "it is really too late for any one to stay up any

longer. My girls must go, and you too."

So Hester jumped up, kissed her father good-night, and bade _au revoir_

to De Alcantara. Then she turned to section six, directed by the

obsequious John.

"Wait," said De Alcantara, "I have a surprise for you;" and he led her

to number nine, where her immense Saratoga stood on the sofa. "If you

need anything," said he, "you yourself have been careful that you will

find it here." And he kissed his hand and walked forward. As Mr. Bryan

was following, Mrs. Goole stopped him. Looking round to see that Hester

had disappeared, she said,--

"Fergus, that girl of yours doesn't mean to be married to-morrow."

"How do you know that?" said old Bryan.

"I can see it; I've been watching her," said Mrs. Goole. "You see that

you have the forward section; I have the rear one. She won't pass me in

the night, whatever she does at your end."

"Do you mean to sit up all night?" said poor Bryan.

"Of course I do, fool!" said his tender sister, "and that you shall sit

up all night, too. If you don't, there'll be no wedding to-morrow."

"Well," said Bryan, as his sister left him.

He thought it over with a cigar on the front platform, and decided that

his sister was right. So he worked his way back to her section, and

found her there, sitting on the edge of the berth, as grim as a

sentinel at Pompeii.

"I'll do it," said he.

"You'd better," said she.

And so all night he sat on the edge of his berth and tried to read, and

then took another cigar on the platform, and then back and forth, till

his cigars were gone; but not a wink of sleep passed his eyes that

night.

As for Mrs. Goole, who shall say what passed in her vigils? Certain she

was that on that night no one passed her but the two conductors and one

brakeman. She was once startled at Chimborazo as a new black face

appeared; but it was explained that there was a change of porters, and

whether Mungo or John it mattered little to her.

And so morning came. No, it is no business of mine to tell who slept

and who did not; who dreamed, or what the dreams portended. Sunrise is

sure, or well-nigh sure; and even in a sleeping-car morning comes. Mrs.

Goole looked a little more scraggy and haggard than usual. The

bridemaids did their best, in the way of toilet, in their somewhat

limited dressing-room. Baltasar was radiant in a fresh paper

collar,--the utmost that even wealth like his could produce, as one

travelled forty miles an hour, on the morning of one's wedding-day.

Mungo, the porter, "made up" the several sections one after another.

From beds they became elegant sofas again, and only section six,

Hester's section, was intact. Its heavy curtains hung as at midnight,

secured half-way down, as one might see, by a heavy brooch which

Baltasar himself had given her.

"Let her sleep," said Lucy Lander. "Perhaps she did not sleep well at

first. I did not."

"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Goole grimly; "let her sleep. I never can sleep in

these things. I sat up all night without a wink."

"Oh, yes, let her sleep," said her father; and so they dashed on. Eight

o'clock passed, half-past eight, nine o'clock, and yet no sign from

number six.

Meanwhile obsequious waiters came in from the kitchen-car. The

breakfast would be spoiled,--one breakfast had been spoiled already. De

Alcantara consulted with old Bryan.

"Lucy," said old Bryan at last to Lucy Lander, "you must wake her. You

girls will faint without your coffee. And in half an hour more there

will be no breakfast."

Lucy assented, a little unwillingly, went to number six, withdrew the

brooch, and put her head inside the curtains, and then--a shriek from

Lucy. She flung the curtains back, and no Hester was there!

What was worse, no Hester had been there. The compartment had not been

"made up," it would seem. Here were the two sofas, here was the _Wreck

of the Grosvenor_, here was a faded nosegay, just as they had left them

when they fell to playing euchre. But here was no Hester Bryan. Where

was the girl? What had she done with herself?

De Alcantara turned on Mrs. Goole like a wild creature. He was ready to

throttle her in his rage. "This is some confounded joke of yours,

ma'am!" But no; she was no such actress as to feign that dismay and

horror.

"It is he," she shrieked, pointing at her speechless brother, "it is

he! He fell asleep, and the minx passed him at his door."

No. Old Bryan was no such fool as to sleep at his post. "Sartin" he had

not slept a wink since this porter came upon the train at Chimborazo.

Porter and brakemen were alike confident that no one had left the car

at either door. The brakemen testified for the whole time. The porter

was certain after Chimborazo.

Then the window of number six was examined,--a double window, and stuck

fast with new varnish. Everyone remembered that they could not start it

the day before, when Hester tried to throw out a banana-peel. And if

she had opened both windows, not Rebecca of York herself could have

closed them after her, poised upon nothing, and the train rushing

underneath at the rate of forty miles.

From section nine, however, which had not been made up, and of which

the windows were ajar, Miriam Kuh, one of the St. Louis bridemaids,

produced a handkerchief. It had lain on the top of the Saratoga trunk.

It was Hester's handkerchief,--one of the _trousseau_

handkerchiefs,--and tied in a close knot was the engagement-ring

Baltasar de Alcantara had given her. Those windows--the windows of

section nine--were ajar. But that proved nothing. Baltasar himself said

he started those windows for more air after everyone was asleep.

Besides, a hawk could not crowd out of those cracks; and if Hester had

opened them further, how did she close them again?

All the same the porter and the brakemen were sure she had flung

herself from number nine--most likely when they were crossing "the

bridge." The brakeman offered confidentially to show any man for five

dollars how it could be done.

Old Bryan was sure Mrs. Goole had slept on her post. Mrs. Goole was

sure old Bryan had slept on his.

Baltasar de Alcantara was mad with rage, and the bridemaids were faint

with hunger. Miss Kuh gave him the ring and handkerchief, and he flung

both out of the open window.

The groomsmen stole forward into the kitchen and ate cold chops and

flattened omelets. Some cold coffee was smuggled back to the

bridemaids.

And so the express-train arrived at St. Louis, and the loafers at the

station watched the arrival of the "special bridal-car," and no bride

emerged therefrom! only some very sick bridemaids, some very cross

groomsmen, a disgusted bridegroom, an angry father and a frightened

aunt, and the gigantic Saratoga trunk.

"Where to?" asked the porters, who staggered under the trunk.

"Nowhere," answered De Alcantara, with a useless oath. "Leave it in

your baggage-room till it is called for."

And he went his way.

CHAPTER III.

CAUGHT AND TOLD.

Yet there was a wedding after all! The sexton and organist at St.

Jude's had not been summoned for nothing, nor the parsons. It was not

in vain that Ax, Kidder, & Co. had spread a whole piece of Brussels

carpet across the wide pavement of Eleventh Street, from the curb-stone

up the church-steps into the very porch.

For, as Baltasar de Alcantara left the Central Station, just as he was

stepping into the elegant coupé which awaited him, a wild,

foreign-looking woman, with a little child in her arms, sprang across

his way.

"Take your baby to your wedding," the wild creature cried, crazy with

excitement.

Baltasar de Alcantara stopped a full minute without speech, looking at

her. Then he laughed grimly. "Hold your jaw," he said. "You're just in

time. You'll do. Stop your howling. Go dress yourself decently in a

travelling dress, and be at the church at twelve,--not one minute late

nor one minute early,--and, mind, a thick veil. Moses, go with her, and

see that she is there."

And so he entered his coupé and rode to his hotel. And at noon his

party passed up his aisle, and this Bohemian woman, led by Moses

Gardner, walked up the other aisle. There was the least hitch in the

service, as De Alcantara bade the minister substitute the name of Faris

for Hester. But of the company assembled, not ten people knew that it

was not the Ohio beauty who passed on De Alcantara's arm from the

chancel to the vestry.

In the vestry, however, there was a different scene. Baltasar, black

with rage, was still trying to be civil to the minister's clerk, whom

he found there with a book, waiting for the bridegroom's signature. As

he took the pen, from the side-door another gentleman entered, and,

without giving the bridegroom time to write, said to him, "You will

please come with me, sir."

"And who are you?" said De Alcantara, with another useless oath.

"You know me very well. I could have arrested you upstairs, but I am

good-natured. I have the governor's warrant to deliver you to this

gentleman, who arrived from London this morning. He represents the

chief of police there. You are to answer in London for receiving Lady

Eustace's diamonds. We have been waiting for you since Tuesday, but

this gentleman only arrived this morning."

De Alcantara turned speechless upon the other, who, with the

well-trained civility of an officer of high rank in the English police,

hardly smiled. But the two recognized each other at a glance. De

Alcantara had known the other long before. And even he felt that rage

and oaths were useless.

"No," he said, as the other offered handcuffs; "_parole d'honneur_."

But the handcuffs were put on. And the officers declined his civil

offer of his own coupé.

On the registry of St. Jude's Church there is one certificate which

lacks the signature of the bridegroom and the bride.

In the state-prison at Amsterdam, prisoner No. 57, in Corridor D, is

sentenced to hard labor for fourteen years. He is the Duke de

Alcantara, without his mustache, and with very little of the rest of

his hair. The London authorities gave him up to the Dutch, when they

found that these last had the heaviest charges against him.

De Alcantara had known that the United States had no extradition treaty

with Holland, but he had not rightly judged the ingenuity of the Dutch

police.

* * * * *

Whoever else was at this wedding, old Bryan was not there, nor was Mrs.

Goole. But thanks to the enterprise of the evening press of St. Louis,

old Bryan learned, before five o'clock, where his son-in-law that was

to be was spending his honeymoon. So did Mrs. Goole.

She waited on her brother to ask where she should go next. He bade her

go home, and never let him see her face again. Nor did she, so far as I

know.

For him, the poor "old" man--one can but pity him--took a return ticket

to Blunt Axe, which is the station nearest to the bridge. There must be

some watchman at the bridge, and perhaps he would know something. At

the Central Station the obsequious Pullman's porter met him.

"Cleopatra, sir? Have your choice of berths, sir. Going home empty,

sir."

So little did the porter remember the haggard man. Old Bryan did not

reply. He shuffled by the porter. But the question reminded him of the

Saratoga trunk, and after a moment's doubt he went to claim it.

"No, sir. Bring the check, sir. No baggage given here, sir, without the

checks." Poor old man, he could even see the trunk. But the check, most

likely, was in De Alcantara's pocket. He tried to explain.

"No use talking, sir. You keep this gentleman waiting. Bring the

check." And all poor old Bryan could do was to select a seat in the car

most distant from that fatal Cleopatra. The Pullman porter could enlist

but three passengers for her,--Lucy Lander and the frightened Bryan

children.

No! it was morning before they had any companions to whom to tell

dreams or adventures. But, early in the morning, the train stops at

Chimborazo. Poor old Bryan had left it in the night at Blunt Axe, and

was even then scanning the rails of the fatal bridge and peering down

into the river. Was this blood or iron-rust? Was yonder white gleam a

bit of his child's clothing?

The train stops at Chimborazo. And Lucy Lander and the children are not

to be longer alone. Horace Ray enters. Jane Forsyth enters. And here

are Fanny and Alice and Emma--all the girls--and Walter and Siegfried

and James--all the boys. We change porters. Here comes John, the boy we

started with on the wedding journey.

Scree! Scree! "All aboard!" The train dashes away.

"John, you make up six," says Horace, to the amazement of all the

others; and Horace stands by as John unbolts the upper berth and lets

it down.

And there, as fresh as a rose, as if she were just waking from happy

dreams--there lies, there smiles, our Hester! Yes, it is she. She rises

on her elbow, she jumps into Horace's arms. Fairly before all these

people--are they not friends, and true friends?--kisses her, and she

kisses him.

"Did you sleep well, my darling?"

"I believe--well, I believe it has not seemed long. Yes, I must have

slept sometimes."

And Horace slipped the old engagement-ring upon the naked finger.

"You may bring in breakfast, John."

And this time the breakfast was hot, the appetites were sure, and,

without champagne, the party was merry.

Lucy Lander told the fate of Baltasar. Jane Foryth asked where the

Saratoga trunk was, and Hester produced the check from her own pocket.

At the crossing at New Dutzow the Cleopatra was detached from the

express-train, and, to the marvel of waiting Buckeye boys, passed up on

the virgin rails of the Scioto Valley Line, unaccustomed to such

wonders. A special engine was waiting. A short hour brought the merry

party to Kiowa Centre. There was Horace's buggy, there were carriages

galore, and a more modest procession than that of yesterday took them

to the Methodist meeting-house.

And there Asbury Perham, who told me the end of the story, asked Horace

Ray if he would have this woman to be his wedded wife. And he said, "I

will."

And there the existence of Hester Bryan, my pretty friend, under that

particular name which she had borne from her infancy, ended.

MAX KEESLER'S HORSE-CAR.

Yes, Mr. Keesler told me the story, virtually in confession. It is a

queer story, and I was somewhat at loss as to the counsel I was to give

him. So I take the gentle reader into my confidence and his. I may as

well say, as I begin, that it was not in Boston or in Brooklyn or in

New York that this happened. The place was a sea-board town, where most

of the people lived in a pretty suburb, but came into the old compact

city for their work and for their amusements.

CHAPTER I.

THE PAINT-SHOP.

"It all began with the paint-shop," he said.

I knew that "the dumb man's borders still increase," so I asked no

question what the paint-shop was, and by listening I learned.

"The paint-shop was in the garden of the little house Bertha and I had

hired just after Elaine was born. When the agent gave me the keys, he

said, 'There is a paint-shop in the garden, but you can make that

useful for something.'"

So, indeed, it proved. Max Keesler and Bertha Keesler did make the

paint-shop good for something, as you shall see, if you dare keep on

with the story. But he never thought of it at the beginning.

Max had married Bertha, prudently or imprudently, as you may

think--prudently, I think--just because he loved her and she loved him.

They were not quite penniless; they were not at all penniless. He had

two or three thousand dollars in the savings-bank, and she had rather

more in bonds. Max had a good berth, the day he was married, in a

piano-forte factory. He earned his twenty-five dollars a week, with a

good chance to earn more. I do not think they were imprudent at all.

But while they were on their wedding journey a panic began. Max always

remembered afterward that he read of the first gust of misfortune in a

Tribune which he bought in the train as they came from Niagara. That

was the first gust, but by no means the last. The last? I should think

not. Gusts, blasts, hurricanes, and typhoons came. Half the business

establishments of the country went to the bottom of the oceans they

were cruising on, and among the rest poor Max's own piano-forte

factory. Nay, it seemed to Max that every other piano factory he ever

heard of had gone under, or was likely to.

So that when the little Elaine was born, and they wanted to leave the

boarding-house, which they hated, Max was out of work, and they were as

economical as they could be. Still they determined that they would hire

rooms somewhere, and keep house. Bertha knew she could manage better

than that odious Mrs. Odonto, who polished their teeth so with her

horrid steaks. And it ended in their hiring--dog-cheap, because times

were so bad--this tumble-down old house on the corner of Madison Avenue

and Sprigg Court, which, as you know, had a paint-shop in the garden.

"The truth is," said the agent, "that the Cosmopolitan Railway Company,

when they began, hired the barn and fitted it up for a paint-shop. They

would leave their cars there to dry. But that was long ago. And no one

has wanted to hire these premises till now. You don't happen to know a

painter you could underlet the shop to?"

No. Max knew no such painter. But he figured to himself better times,

when they would fit up the paint-shop as a sort of summer music-room.

And it was pleasant to know that they had something to let, if only any

one wanted to hire.

All the same, as he said to me when he began his confession, all his

guilt, if it were guilt, all the crime, where there was crime, was

"along of the paint-shop," as the reader, if he be patient, shall see.