I think I can relate nothing else of that softest month of summer, nor
of sultry June. It was not until the last week I was to change my
quarters; but long as it seemed in coming, it came when I was hardly
prepared for the transfer. Aronach returned to his stricter self again
after that supper, but I felt certain he had heard a great deal after
we had left the table, as an expression of softer character forsook
not his eyes and smile for many days. I could not discover whether
anything had passed concerning Starwood, who remained my chief
anxiety, as I felt if I left him there alone, he would not get on at
all. Iskar and I preserved our mutual distance, though I would fain
have been more often with him, for I wanted to make him out. He
practised harder than ever, and hardly took time to eat and drink, and
only on Sundays a great while to dress. He was always very jauntily
put together when we set out to church, and looked like a French
manikin. But for his upper lip and the shallow width of his forehead,
I thought him very handsome, while, yet so young, he was so; but his
charm consisted for me in his being unapproachable, and as I thought,
mysterious.
We saw about as little of each other as it was possible to see, living
in the same house and dining in the same room; but we never talked at
meals, we had no time.
It is but fair to allow myself an allusion to my violin, as it was
becoming a very essential feature in my history. With eight hours'
practice a day I had made some solid progress; but it did not convict
me of itself yet, as I was not allowed to play, only to acquaint
myself with the anatomy of special compositions, as exercises in
theory. Iskar played so easily, and gave such an air of playing to
practice, that it never occurred to me I was getting on, though it was
so, as I found in time. At this era I hated the violin, just as
pianoforte students hate the pianoforte during the period of
apprenticeship to mechanism. I hated the sound that saluted me
morning, noon, and night; I shrank from it ever unaccustomed, for the
penetralia of my brain could never be rendered less susceptible by
piercing and searching its recesses. I believe my musical perception
was as sensitive as ever, all through this epidemic dislike, but I
felt myself personally very musically indisposed. I could completely
dissociate my ideal impression of that I loved from my absolute
experience of what I served. I was patient, because waiting; content,
because faithful; and I pleased myself albeit with reflecting that my
violin--my own property, my very own--had a very different soul from
that thing I handled and tortured every day, from which the soul had
long since fled. For all the creators of musical forms have not power
to place in them the soul that lives for ages, and a little wear and
tear separates the soul from the body. As for my Amati, I knew its
race so pure that I feared for it no premature decay. In its dark box
I hoped it was at least not unhappy, but I dearly longed for a sight
of it, and had I dared, I would have crept into the closet, but that
whenever it was unlocked I was locked up. The days flew, though they
seemed to me so long, as ever in summer; and I felt how ravishing
must the summer be without the town. I wearied after it; and although
the features of German scenery are quite without a certain bloom I
have only found in England, they have some mystic beauty of their own
unspeakably more touching; and as I lived then, all life was a
fairy-tale book, with half the leaves uncut. I was ever dreaming, but
healthfully,--the dreams forgotten as soon as dreamed; so it chanced
that I can tell you nothing of all I learned or felt, except what was
tangibly and wakingly presented to myself. I remember, however, more
than distinctly all that happened the last evening I passed in that
secluded house, to my sojourn in which I owe all the benisons bestowed
upon my after artist life. We had supped at our usual hour, but when I
arose and advanced to salute Aronach as usual, and sighed to see how
bright the sun was still upon everything without and within, he
whispered in my ear,--an attention he had never before paid me,--"Stay
up by me until the other two are off; for I wish to speak to thee and
to give thee some advice."
Iskar saw him whisper, and looked very black because he could not
hear; but Aronach waved him out, and bade me shut the door upon him
and Starwood. I trembled then, for I was not used to be along with him
_tete-a-tete_; we usually had a third party present in the company of
Marpurg or Albrechtsberger.[17] He went into the closet first, and
rummaged a few minutes, and then returning, appeared laden with a
bottle of wine and my long hid fiddle-case. Oh, how I flew to relieve
him of it! But he bade me again sit down, while he went back into the
closet and rummaged again; this time for a couple of glasses and two
or three curious jars, rich china, and of a beautiful form. He
uncorked the bottle and poured me, as I expected, a glass of wine.
It was not the wine that agitated me, but the rarity of the attention,
so much so that I choked instead of wishing him his health, as I ought
to have done. But he was quite unmoved at my excitation, and leaned
back to pour glass after glass down his own throat. I was so unused to
wine that the sip I took exhilarated me, though it was the slightest
wine one can imbibe for such purpose. And then he uncovered the odd
gay jars, and helped me profusely to the exquisite preserves they
contained. They were so luscious and delicate that they reminded me of
Eden fruits; and almost before my wonder had shaped itself into form,
certainly before it could have betrayed itself in my countenance,
Aronach began to speak,--
"They pique thee, no doubt, and not only thy palate, for thou wast
ever curious. They come from him of whom thou hast never spoken since
thy holiday."
"Everything comes from him, I think, sir."
"No, only the good, not the evil nor the negative; and it is on this
point I would advise thee, for thou art as inconsiderate as a
fledgling turned out of the nest, and art ware of nothing."
"Pray advise me, sir," I said, "and I shall be glad that I am
inconsiderate, to be advised by you."
I looked at him, and was surprised that a deep seriousness
overshadowed the constant gravity,--which was as if one entered from
the twilight a still more sombre wood.
"I intend to advise thee because thou art ignorant, though pure;
untaught, yet not weak. I would not advise thy compeers,--one is too
young, the other too old."
"Iskar too old!" I exclaimed.
"Iskar was never a child; whatever thou couldst teach him would only
ripen his follies, already too forward. He belongs to the other
world."
"There are two worlds then in music," I thought; for it had been ever
a favorite notion of my own, but I did not say so, I was watching him.
He took from the breast pocket of his coat--that long brown coat--a
little leather book, rolled up like a parchment; this he opened, and
unfolded a paper that had lain in the curves, and yet curled round
unsubmissive to his fingers. He deliberately bent it back, and held it
a moment or two, while his eyes gathered light in their fixed gaze
upon what he clasped, then smoothed it to its old shape with his palm,
and putting on his horn-set eye-glasses, which lent him an owl-like
reverendness, he began to read to me. And as I have that little paper
still, and as, if not sweet, it is very short, I shall transcribe it
here and now:--
"When thou hearest the folks prate about art, be certain thou art
never tempted to make friends there; for if they be wise in any other
respect, they are fools in this, that they know not when to keep
silence and how. For art consists not in any of its representatives,
and is of itself alone. To interpret it aright we must let it make its
own way, and those who talk about it gainsay its true impressions,
which alone remain in the bosom that is single and serene. If thou
markest well, thou wilt find how few of those who make a subsistence
out of music realize its full significance; for they are too busy to
recall that they live for it, and not by it, even though it brings
them bread. And just as few are those who set apart their musical life
from all ambition, even honorable,--for ambition is of this earth
alone, and in a higher yearning doth musical life consist; so the
irreligious many are incapable of the fervor of the few. And the few,
those I did exclude,--the few who possess in patience this
inexhaustible desire,--are those who compose my world."
"You mean, sir," I exclaimed, so warm, so glowing at my heart, that
the summer without, brooding over the blossomed lindens, was as winter
to the summer in my veins, so suddenly penetrated I felt,--"you mean,
sir, that as good people I have heard speak of the world, and of good
people who are not worldly, apart, and seem to know them from each
other,--in religion I mean,--so it is in music. I am sure my sister
thought so,--my sister in England; but she never dared to say so."
"No, of course not; there is no right to say so anywhere now, except
in Germany, for here alone has music its priesthood, and here alone,
though little enough here, is reverentially regarded as the highest
form of life, subserving to the purposes of the soul. But thou art
right to believe entirely so, that, young as thou art, thou mayest
keep thy purity, and mighty may be thy aptness to discern what is new
to thee in the old, no less than what answers to the old in the new.
"And, first, when thou goest out of leading-strings, never accustom
thyself to look for faults or feelings differing from thine own in
those set over thee. It is certain that many a student of art has lost
ground in this indulgence; for oftentimes the student, either from
natural imagination, or from the vernal innocence of youth, will be
outstripping his instructors in his grand intentions, and giving
himself up to them will be losing the present hours in the air that
should be informing themselves, with steady progress, in the strictest
mechanical course. Never till thou hast mastered every conceivable
difficulty, dream of producing the most distant musical effect.
"But, secondly, lest thine enthusiasm should perish of starvation
under this mechanical pressure, keep thy wits awake to contemplate
every artist and token of art that come between thee and daylight. And
the more thou busiest thyself in mechanical preparation, the more
leisure thou shalt discover so to observe; the more serene and
brilliant shall thy imagination find itself,--a clear sky filled with
the sunshine of that enthusiasm which spreads itself over every object
in earth and heaven.
"Again, of music, or the tone-art, as thou hast heard me name it,
never let thy conception cease. Never believe thou hast adopted the
trammels of a pursuit bounded by progress because thine own progress
bounds thine own pursuit. In despair at thy slow induction,--be it
slow as it must be gradual,--doubt not that it is into a divine and
immeasurable realm thou shalt at length be admitted; and if the
ethereal souls of the masters gone before thee have thirsted after the
infinite, even in such immeasurable space, recall thyself, and bow
contented that thou hast this in common with those above thee,--the
insatiable presentment of futurity with which the Creator has chosen
to endow the choicest of his gifts,--the gift in its perfection
granted ever to the choicest, the rarest of the race."
"And that is why it is granted to the Hebrew nation,--why they all
possess it like a right!" I cried, almost without consciousness of
having spoken. But Aronach answered not; he only slightly, with the
least motion, leaned his head so that the silver of his beard
trembled, and a sort of tremor agitated his brow, that I observed not
in his voice as he resumed.
"Thou art young, and mayest possibly excel early, as a mechanical
performer. I need not urge thee to prune the exuberance of thy fancy
and to bind thy taste--by nature delicate--to the pure, strong models
whose names are, at present, to thee their only revelation. For the
scapegrace who figures in thy daily calendar as so magnificently thy
superior, will ever stand thee instead of a warning or ominous
repulsion, so long as thy style is forming; and when formed, that
style itself shall fence thee alike with natural and artful antipathy
against the school he serves, that confesses to no restriction, no,
not the restraint of rule, and is the servant of its own caprice.
"Thou shalt find that many who profess the art, confess not to that
which they yet endure,--a sort of shame in their profession, as if
they should ennoble _it_, and not it _them_. Such professors thou
shalt ever discover are slaves, not sons; their excellence as
performers owing to the accidental culture of their imitative
instinct; and they are the _ripieni_ of the universal orchestra, whose
chief doth appear but once in every age.
"Thou shalt be set on to study by thine instructors, and, as I before
hinted, wilt ever repose upon their direction. But in applying to the
works they select for thine edification, whether theoretic or
practical, endeavor to disabuse thyself of all thy previous
impressions and prepossessions of any author whatsoever, and to absorb
thyself in the contemplation of that alone thou busiest thyself upon.
"Thus alone shall thine intelligence explore all styles, and so
separate each from each as finally to draw the exact conclusion from
thine own temperament and taste of that to which thou dost essentially
incline.
"In treating of music specifically, remember not to confound its
elements. As in ancient mythology many religious seeds were sown, and
golden symbols scattered, so may we apply its enforcing fables where
the new wisdom denies us utterance, and the nearer towards the
expression of the actual than if we observed the literal forms of
speech. Thus ever remembering that as the 'aorasia' was a word
signifying the invisibility of the gods, and the 'avatar' their
incarnation, so is _time_ the aorasia of music the god-like, and
_tone_ its avatar.
"Then, in _time_, shalt thou realize that in which the existence of
music as infallibly consists as in its manifestation, _tone_, and
thine understanding shall become invested with the true nature of
_rhythm_, which alike doth exist between time and tone, seeming to
connect in spiritual dependence the one with the other inseparably.
"In devoting thine energies to the works of art in ages behind thine
own, thou shalt never be liable to depress thy consciousness of those
which are meritorious _with_ thee, and _yet_ to come before thee. For
thou wilt learn that to follow the supreme of art with innocence and
wisdom was ever allotted to the few whose labors yet endure; while as
to the many whose high-flown perfections in their day seduced the
admiration of the myriads to the neglect of the few, except _by_ few,
find we nothing of them at present, but the names alone of their
operas, or the mention of their having been, and being now no more.
And this is while the few are growing and expanding their fame, as the
generations succeed, ever among the few of every generation, but yet
betokening in that still, secluded renown, the immortal purpose for
which they wrote and died _not_.
"Be assured that in all works that have endured there is something of
the nature of truth; therefore acquaint thyself with all, ever
reserving the right to honor with peculiar investigation those works
in which the author by scientific hold upon forceful imagination
intimates that he wrote with the direct intention to illustrate his
art, not alone for the love of it, but in the fear of its service.
Thus apply thyself to the compositions of Palestrina, of Purcell, of
Alessandro Scarlatti, and the indefatigable Corelli; thus lend thyself
to the masterpieces of Pergolesi, of Mozart, and Handel; thus lean
with thine entire soul upon the might and majesty of John Sebastian
Bach. All others in order, but these in chief; and this last
generalissimo, until thou hast learnt to govern thyself."
He paused and stayed, and the summer evening-gold crowned him as he
sat. That same rich gleam creeping in, for all the deep shade that
filled the heavenly vault, seemed to touch me with solemn ecstasy
alike with his words. He was folding up that paper, and had nearly
settled it before I dared to thank him; but as he held it out, and I
grasped it, I also kissed the ivory of his not unwrinkled hand, and he
did not withdraw it. Then I said, "My dear master, my dear, dear Herr
Aronach, is that for me to keep?"
"It is for thee," he answered; "and perhaps, as there is little of it,
thou wilt digest it more conveniently than a more abundant lecture.
Thou art imaginative, or I should not set thee laws, and implicit, or
thou wouldst not follow them."
"I should like to know, sir, whether those are the sort of rules you
gave the Chevalier Seraphael when he was a little boy?"
"No, no; they are not such as I gave him, be certain."
"I thought not, perhaps. Oh, sir, how very surprising he must have
been when he was so young and little!"
"He did not rudely declaim, thou mayest imagine, at eight years old,
and his voice was so modest to strangers that it was hard to make him
heard at all,--this it was that made me set no laws before him."
"How then, sir, did you teach him?" was my bolder question.
"He would discourse of music in its native tongue, when his small
fingers conversed with the keys of his favorite harpsichord, so
wondrously at home there, from the first time they _felt_ themselves.
And in still obedience to the law of that inborn harmony that governed
his soul, he would bend his curly pate over the score till all the
color fell off his round cheek; and his forehead would work and frown
with thoughts strong enough to make a strong man's brain quiver. I was
severe with him to save my conscience; but he ever outwitted me, nor
could I give him enough to do, for he made play of work, and no light
work of play. It was as if I should direct the south wind to blow in
summer, or the sunbeams to make haste with the fruit. At length it
came to such a pass--his calm attainment--that I gave him up to die!
He left off growing too, and there was of him so little that you would
have thought him one the pleasant folk had changed at birth: bright
enough were his eyes for such suspicion. So I clapped upon him one day
as he was lying upon a bit of shade in my garden, his cap of velvet
tumbled off, and the feather flying as you please, while over the
score of Graun he had fallen fast asleep. When I came to him, I
thought the little heart-strings had given way, to let him free
altogether, he lay so still and heavy in his slumber, and no breath
came through his lips that I could see. So I took him up, never waking
him, and laid him away in bed, and locked up every staved sheet that
lay about, and every score and note-book, and shut the harpsichord;
and when at last he awoke, I took him upon my knee,--for it was then
he came to my house for his lessons, and I could do with him as I
pleased. 'Now,' said I, 'thou hast been asleep over thy books, and I
have carried them all away, for thou art lazy, and shalt see them
never again, unless thou art content to do as I shall bid thee.'
"Then he looked into my face with his kind child's eyes, and said,--
"'I wish that thou wert my pupil, master; for if so, I should show
thee how I should like to be taught.'
"'Well, thou art now very comfortable on my knee, and mayest pull my
watch-chain if thou wilt, and shalt also tell me the story of what
thou shouldst teach thine old, grand pupil,--we will make a play of
it.'
"'I do not care to pull thy chain now, but I should like to watch thy
face while I tell thee.'
"So then, Master Carl, this elf stood upright on my knees, and spread
out his arms, and laughed loud till the wet pearls shone; and while I
held his feet--for I thought he would fly away--says he to mock me,--
"'Now, Master Aronach, thou mayest go home and play with thy little
sister at kings and queens, and never do any more lessons till thou
art twelve years old; for that is the time to be a man and do great
things: and now thou art a poor baby, who cannot do anything but play
and go to sleep. And all the big books are put away, and nobody is to
bring them out again until thou art big and canst keep awake.'
"Then I looked at him hard, to see whether he was still mocking me;
but when I found he looked rather about to cry, I set him down, and
took my hat, and walked out of my house to the lower ramparts. On the
lower ramparts stood the fine house of his father, and I rang the bell
quite free, and went boldly up the stairs. His mother was alone in her
grand drawing-room, and I said that she might either come and fetch
him away altogether, or let him stay with me and amuse himself as he
cared for; that I would not teach him for those years to come, as he
had said. The stately lady was offended, and carried him off from me
altogether; and when he went he was very proud, and would not shed one
tear, though he clung round my collar and whispered, elf that he
was,--'I shall come back when I am twelve. Hush! master, hush!'"
"And did he come back?" I cried, no less in ecstasy at the story than
at the confidence reposed in me.
"All in good time--peace," said Aronach. "I never saw him again until
the twenty-second morning of May, in the fourth year after his mother
carried him off. I heard of the wonder-boy from every mouth,--how he
was taken here, and flourished there, to show off; and petted and
praised by the king; and I thought often how piteous was it thus to
spoil him. On that very morning I was up betimes, and was writing a
letter to an old friend of mine whose daughter was dead, when I heard
feet like a fawn that was finding quick way up my dark stairs, and I
stopped to listen. The door was burst open all in a moment, as if by
the wind, and there he stood, in his little hat and feather and his
gay new dress, bright as a birthday prince, with a huge lumbering
flower-pot in his two little arms. He set that upon the floor and
danced up to me directly, climbing upon my knees. 'Will you take me
back? For I am twelve, and nobody else can teach me! I know all
_they_ know.'
"He folded his little arms together round my collar, and held on there
tight. What a minimus he was! scarcely a half-foot taller; but with
such a noble air, and those same kind eyes of old. I pinched his fair
cheek, which was red as any rose; but it was only a blossom born of
the morning air: as he still sat upon my knees, the beauteous color
fell, faded quite away, and left him pale,--pale as you now see him,
Master Carl."
"Oh, sir! tell me a little, little more. What did he tell you? What
did he do?"
"He told me, with the pale face pressed against my coat, 'Thou seest,
sweet master, I would not take pains just at first, and mamma was very
grand; she never blessed me for a week, and I never kissed her. I did
lessons with her, though, and tried to plague her, and played very
sad, very ill, and would hardly read a bar. So mamma took it into her
head to say that _you_ had not taught me properly; and I grew very
wild, angry,--so hurt at least that I burst out, and ran downstairs,
and came no more for lessons five whole days. Then I begged her
pardon, and she sent for Herr Huemmel to teach me. I played my very
best to Herr Huemmel, master mine!'
"'I daresay he did,' thought I, 'the naughty one! the elf!' There he
lay back with his pale face, and all the mischief in his starry eyes.
"'And Herr Huemmel,' my loveling went on, pursing his lips, 'said he
could not teach me to play, but perhaps he could teach me to write. So
I wrote for him ever so many pages, and he could not read them, for I
wrote so small, so small; and Herr Huemmel has such very weak eyes!'
"Oh! how naughty he looked, lying across my knees!
"'And then,' he prattled, 'mamma set herself to look for somebody very
new and great; and she picked up Monsieur Milans-Andre, who is a very
young master, only nineteen years old; and mamma says he is a great
genius. Now, as for me, dear master, I don't know what a great genius
is; but if Monsieur Andre be one, _thou_ art not one, nor I.'
"Oh, the haughty one! still prattling on,--
"'I did take pains, and put myself back, that he might show me over
again what you, dear master, had taught me, so that I never forget,
and could not forget, if I tried; and in a year I told mamma I would
never touch the harpsichord again if she did not promise I should come
back to you again. She said she couldn't promise, and, master, I never
_did_ again touch the harpsichord, but instead, I learned what was
better, to play on Monsieur Andre's grand pianoforte!'
"'And how didst thou admire that, eh?' I asked, rather curious about
the matter.
"'Oh! it is very comfortable; I feel quite clear about it, and have
written for it some things. But Monsieur Andre is to go a tour, so he
told mamma yesterday, and this morning before he came I ran away, and
I am returned to you, and have brought my tree to keep my birthday
with you. And, master mine, I _won't_ go back again!'
"Before I could answer him, as I expected, comes a pull at the bell to
draw the house down, and up the stairs creaks Rathsherr Seraphael, the
father, a mighty good looking and very grand man. He takes a seat, and
looks queer and awful. But the little one, quitting me, dances round
and round his chair and kisses away that frown.
"'Dear and beautiful papa, thou must give me leave to stay I am thine
only son!'
"'Thou art indeed, and hast never before disobeyed me. Why didst thou
run away, my Adonais?'
"'Papa, _he_ can only teach me; I will _not_ leave him, for I must
obey music before you, and in him music calls me.'
"He ran back to my knee, and there his father left him (but very
disconcerted), and I don't know how they settled it at home. But
enough for me, there was never any more difficulty, and he and I kept
his birthday together; the little candles burned out among the
linden-flowers, and beautiful presents came for him and for me from
the great house on the ramparts.
"And he never left me," added Aronach, with a prodigious pleasure too
big to conceal either by word or look, "he never left me until he set
off for his travels all over Europe, during which travels I removed,
and came up here a long distance from the old place, where I had him
all to myself, and he was all to me."
"Thanks, dear master, if I too may so call you. I shall always feel
that you are; but I did not know how very much you had to do with
him."
"Thou mayest so name me, because thou art not wanting in veneration,
and canst also be _mastered_."
"Thanks forever. And I may keep this precious paper? In your own
writing, sir, it will be more than if you had said it, you know,
though I should have remembered every word. And the story, too, is
just as safe as if you had written it for me."
And so it was.
END OF VOL. I.
FOOTNOTE:
[17] Famous theorists and contrapuntists of the eighteenth century;
the latter was the teacher of Beethoven.
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It is the intent to admit to the series only such tales as
have for years or for generations commended themselves not
only to the fastidious and the critical, but also to the
great multitude of the refined reading public,--tales, in
short, which combine purity and classical beauty of style
with perennial popularity.
MONK AND KNIGHT.
An Historical Study in Fiction.
BY THE REV. DR. F. W. GUNSAULUS.
Two Vols. 12mo, 707 pages. Price, $2.50.
This work is one that challenges attention for its ambitious
character and its high aim. It is an historical novel,--or,
rather, as the author prefers to call it, "An Historical
Study in Fiction." It is the result of long and careful study
of the period of which it treats, and hence is the product of
genuine sympathies and a freshly-fired imagination. The field
is Europe, and the period is the beginning of the sixteenth
century,--a time when the fading glow of the later
Renaissance is giving place to the brighter glories of the
dawning Reformation.
The book deals, in a broad sense, with the grand theme of the
progress of intellectual liberty. Many of its characters are
well-known historical personages,--such as Erasmus, Sir
Thomas More, Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII. of England, Francis
I. of France, the disturbing monk Martin Luther, and the
magnificent Pope Leo X.; other characters are of course
fictitious, introduced to give proper play to the author's
fancy and to form a suitable framework for the story.
Interwoven with the more solid fabric are gleaming threads of
romance; and bright bits of description and glows of
sentiment relieve the more sombre coloring. The memorable
meeting of the French and English monarchs on the Field of
the Cloth of Gold, with its gorgeous pageantry of knights and
steeds and silken banners, and all the glitter and charm of
chivalry, furnish material for several chapters, in which the
author's descriptive powers are put to the severest test;
while the Waldensian heroes in their mountain homes,
resisting the persecutions of their religious foes, afford
some thrilling and dramatic situations.
MARTHA COREY.
_A TALE OF THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT._
BY CONSTANCE GODDARD DU BOIS.
12mo, 314 pages. Price, $1.25.
The same material drawn upon by Longfellow for his "New
England Tragedies" is here used with greater fulness and with
no less historical exactitude. The story has for its
background the dark and gloomy pictures of the witchcraft
persecution, of which it furnishes a thrilling view. It is
remarkable for bold imagination, wonderfully rapid action,
and continued and absorbing interest.
In short, it is too good a piece of fiction to be accepted as
truth, which is to the credit of the author's imaginative
powers; for "Martha Corey" is an absorbing tale.--_Public
Ledger, Philadelphia._
The story is curious and quaint, differing totally from the
novels of this day; and the pictures of life among the early
inhabitants of Massachusetts show that the author has been an
untiring and faithful student for her work.--_Weekly Item,
Philadelphia._
The characters are well delineated; the language is smooth
and refined; and from frequent change of scene and character
the book is rendered very entertaining. The passions, love
and hate, are carefully analyzed and faithfully described. It
is a valuable little book.--_Globe, Chicago._
An interesting tale of love and intrigue.... Miss Du Bois has
given us a very readable book, and has succeeded where others
have failed.--_Advertiser, Boston._
The story of this book is pleasantly told; and as a picture
of those sad times, when some of the worst and the best, of
the darkest and the brightest, of the most hateful and the
most lovable traits of human nature were openly manifested,
is well worth reading.--_Illustrated Christian Weekly, New
York._
A story of marked strength, both of imagination and
narration.--_Home Journal, New York._
THE BEVERLEYS.
_A Story of Calcutta._
BY MARY ABBOTT,
Author of "Alexia," etc.
12mo, 264 pages. Price, $1.25.
The uncommonly favorable reception of Mrs. Abbott's brilliant
novelette, "Alexia," by the public bespeaks in advance a
lively interest in her new novel, "The Beverleys." It is a
more extended and ambitious work than the former, but has the
same grace of style and liveliness of treatment, together
with a much more considerable plot and more subtle
delineations of character and life. The action of the story
takes place in India, and reveals on the part of the
authoress the most intimate knowledge of the official life of
the large and aristocratic English colony in Calcutta. The
local coloring is strong and unusual.
A more joyous story cannot be imagined.... A harum-scarum
good-nature; a frank pursuit of cakes and ale; a heedless,
happy-go-lucky spirit, are admirable components in a novel,
however trying they may be found in the walks of daily life.
Such are the pleasures of "The Beverleys." To read it is
recreation, indeed.--_Public Ledger, Philadelphia._
The author writes throughout with good taste, and with a
quick eye for the picturesque.--_Herald, New York._
It is a pretty story, charmingly written, with cleverly
sketched pictures of various types of character.... The book
abounds in keen, incisive philosophy, wrapped up in
characteristic remarks.--_Times, Chicago._
An absorbing story. It is brilliantly and vivaciously
written.--_Literary World, Boston._
The author has until now been known, so far as we are aware,
only by her former story, "Alexia." Unless signs fail which
seldom _do_ fail, these two with which her name is now
associated are simply the forerunners of works in a like vein
of which American literature will have reason to be
proud.--_Standard, Chicago._
THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS.
_A ROMANCE OF INDIAN OREGON._
By F. H. BALCH.
12mo, 280 pages. Price, $1.25.
This is a masterly and original delineation of Indian life.
It is a strong story, charged with the elemental forces of
the human heart. The author portrays with unusual power the
intense, stern piety of the ministers of colonial New
England, and the strange mingling of dignity, superstition,
ferocity, and stoicism that characterized the early Indian
warriors.
There is no need of romancing, and Mr. Balch's scenic
descriptions are for all practical purposes real
descriptions. The legends he relates of the great bridge
which once spanned the Columbia, for which there is some
substantial history, adds to the mystical charms of the
story. His Indian characters are as real as if photographed
from life. No writer has presented a finer character than the
great chief of the Willamettes, Multnomah; Snoqualmie the
Cayuse; or Tohomish the Seer. The night visit of Multnomah to
the tomb of his dead wife upon that lonely island in the
Willamette is a picture that will forever live in the
reader's memory.... To those who have traversed the ground,
and know something of Indian character and the wild, free
life of pioneer days, the story will be
charming.--_Inter-Ocean, Chicago._
It is a truthful and realistic picture of the powerful Indian
tribes that inhabited the Oregon country two centuries
ago.... It is a book that will be of value as a historical
authority; and as a story of interest and charm, there are
few novels that can rival it.--_Traveller, Boston._
There is much and deep insight in this book. The characters
stand in clear outline, and are original. The movement of the
story is quick and varied, like the running water of the
great river.--_The Pacific, San Francisco._
Its field is new for fiction; it is obviously the work of one
who has bestowed a great deal of study on the subjects he
would illustrate. It is very interesting reading, fluently
written.--_Times, Chicago._
_Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by_
A. C. MCCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS,
COR. WABASH AVE. AND MADISON ST., CHICAGO.