CHAPTER XI.

LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

OF

_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.

Vol XII, No. 31.

OCTOBER, 1873.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE [Illustrated] By EDWARD STRAHAN.

IV.--A Day In Strasburg.

FROM THE POTOMAC TO THE OHIO. [Illustrated]

AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A STRONG-MINDED WOMAN By MARSHALL NEIL.

THE KING OF BAVARIA. by E.E.

ON THE CHURCH STEPS By SARAH C. HALLOWELL.

Chapter X.

Chaper XI.

Chapter XII.

A STRANGE LAND AND A PECULIAR PEOPLE By WILL WALLACE HARNEY.

SIMILITUDE By EMMA LAZAROS.

OUR HOME IN THE TYROL [Illustrated] By MARGARET HOWITT.

Chapter XI.

Chapter XII.

UNSAID By CHARLOTTE F. BATES.

LAURENTINUM By A.A.B.

A PRINCESS OF THULE By WILLIAM BLACK.

Chapter XVI.--Exchanges.

Chapter XVII.--Guesses.

Chapter XVIII.--Sheila's Strategem.

THE LAST OF THE IDYLLS By F.F. ELMS.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

An Evening In Calcutta By W.H.S.

No Danbury For Me By SARSFIELD YOUNG.

Another Ghost By S.C. CLARKE.

NOTES.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Books Received.

ILLUSTRATIONS

TEARING UP THE PONTOON BRIDGE.

STRASBURG CATHEDRAL IN FLAMES.

THE HIGHEST SPIRE IN EUROPE.

THE GREAT CLOCK.

CHURCH OF SAINT THOMAS.

BEAUTY'S QUINTESSENCE.

VOICI LE SABRE!

STREET OF THE GREAT ARCADES.

BEER-GARDEN OF THE DAUPHIN.

SUCKLED IN A CREED OUTWORN.

THE BLESSING OF THE BÂB.

THE BOTANIST.

VIEW NEAR ANTIETAM, MARYLAND.

POTOMAC TUNNEL, NEAR HARPER'S FERRY.

BATTLE-GROUNDS OF THE POTOMAC VALLEY.

SCENE AMONG THE MARYLAND ALLEGHANIES.

SCENE AT CUMBERLAND NARROWS.

CLIFF VIEW, CUMBERLAND NARROWS.

VALLEY FALLS, WEST VIRGINIA.

FISH CREEK VALLEY, WEST VIRGINIA.

CHEAT RIVER VALLEY AND MOUNTAINS.

CHEAT RIVERS NARROWS.

SCHLOSS SCHWALBEN.

THE NEW HYPERION.

FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE.

IV.--A DAY IN STRASBURG.

[Illustration: TEARING UP THE PONTOON BRIDGE.]

Behold me, then, with five hours around my neck, like so many

millstones, in Strasburg, on the abjured Rhine! Had I not vowed never

to visit that bewitched current again? Was it not by Rhine-bank that

I learned to quote the minnesingers and to unctuate my hair? From her

owl-tower did not old Frau Himmelauen use to observe me, my cane, and

my curls, and my gloves? Did not her gossips compare me to Wilhelm

Meister? And so, when he thought he was ripe, the innocent Paul

Flemming must needs proceed to pour his curls, his songs and his love

into the lap of Mary Ashburton; and the discreet siren responded, "You

had better go back to Heidelberg and grow: you are not the Magician."

Yet before that little disaster of my calf period I sighed for the

Rhine: I used its wines more freely than was perhaps good for me, and

when the smoke-colored goblet was empty would declare that if I were a

German I should be proud of the grape-wreathed river too. At Bingen

I once sat up to behold the bold outline of the banks crested with

ruins, which in the morning proved to be a slated roof and chimneys.

And when at Heidelberg I saw the Neckar open upon the broad Rhine

plain like the mouth of a trumpet, I felt inspired, and built

every evening on my table a perfect cathedral of slim, spire-shaped

bottles--sunny pinnacles of Johannisberger.

And now, decoyed to the Rhine by a puerile conspiracy, how could I

best get the small change for my five hours?

[Illustration: STRASBURG CATHEDRAL IN FLAMES.]

Should I sulk like a bear in the parlor of the Maison Rouge until the

departure of the Paris train, or should I explore the city? Some wave

from my fond, foolish past flowed over me and filled me with desire.

I felt that I loved the Rhine and the Rhine cities once more. And where

could I better retie myself to those old pilgrim habits than in this

citadel of heroism, a place sanctied by recent woes, a city proved

by its endurance through a siege which even that of Paris hardly

surpassed? One draught, then, from the epic Rhine! To-morrow, at

Marly, I could laugh over it all with Hohenfels.

The Münster was before me--the highest tower in Europe, if we except

the hideous cast-iron abortion at Rouen. I recollected that in my

younger days I had been defrauded of my fair share of tower-climbing.

Hohenfels had a saying that most travelers are a sort of children, who

need to touch all they see, and who will climb to every broken tooth

of a castle they find on their way, getting a tiresome ascent and hot

sunshine for their pains. "I trust we are wiser," he would observe,

so unanswerably that I passed with him up the Rhine quite, as I may

express it, on the ground floor.

I marched to the cathedral, determined to ascend, and when I saw the

look of it changed my mind.

The sacristan, in fact, advised me not to go up after he had taken my

fee and obtained a view of my proportions over the tube of his

key, which he pretended to whistle into. We sat down together as I

recovered my breath, after which I wandered through the nave with

my guide, admiring the statue of the original architect, who stands

looking at the interior--a kind of Wren "circumspecting" his own

monument. At high noon the twelve apostles come out from the famous

horologe and take up their march, and chanticleer, on one of the

summits of the clock-case, opens his brazen throat and crows loud

enough to fill the farthest recesses of the church with his harsh

alarum.

A portly citizen was talking to the sacristan. "I hear many objections

to that bird, sir," he remarked to me, "from fastidious tourists: one

thinks that a peacock, spreading its jewels by mechanism, would have

a richer effect. Another says that a swan, perpetually wrestling with

its dying song, would be more poetical. Others, in the light of late

events, would prefer a phoenix."

The dress of the stout citizen announced a sedentary man rather than a

cosmopolitan. He had a shirt-front much hardened with starch; a white

waistcoat, like an alabaster carving, which pushed his shirt away

up round his ears; and a superb bluebottle-colored coat, with metal

buttons. It was the costume of a stay-at-home, and I learned afterward

that he was a local professor of geography and political science--the

first by day, the last at night only in beer-gardens and places of

resort.

[Illustration: THE HIGHEST SPIRE IN EUROPE.]

"Nay," I said, "the barnyard bird is of all others the fittest for a

timepiece: he chants the hours for the whole country-side, and an old

master of English song has called him Nature's 'crested clock.'"

"With all deference," said the bourgeois, "I would still have a

substitute provided for yonder cock. I would set up the Strasburg

goose. Is he not our emblem, and is not our commerce swollen by the

inflation of the _foie gras_? In one compartment I would show him fed

with sulphur-water to increase his biliary secretion; another might

represent his cage, so narrow that the pampered creature cannot even

turn round on his stomach for exercise; another division might be

anatomical, and present the martyr opening his breast, like some

tortured saint, to display his liver, enlarged to the weight of three

pounds; while the apex might be occupied by the glorified, gander in

person, extending his neck and commenting on the sins of the Strasburg

pastry-cooks with a cutting and sardonic hiss."

You have not forgotten, reader, the legend of the old clock?

Many years ago there lived here an aged and experienced mechanic.

Buried in his arts, he forgot the ways of the world, and promised his

daughter to his gallant young apprentice, instead of to the hideous

old magistrate who approached the maiden with offers of gold and

dignity. One day the youth and damsel found the unworldly artist

weeping for joy before his completed clock, the wonder of the earth.

Everybody came to see it, and the corporation bought it for the

cathedral. The city of Basel bespoke another just like it. This

order aroused the jealousy of the authorities, who tried to make

the mechanic promise that he would never repeat his masterpiece

for another town. "Heaven gave me not my talents to feed your vain

ambition," said the man of craft: "the men of Basel were quicker to

recognize my skill than you were. I will make no such promise." Upon

that the rejected suitor, who was among the magistrates, persuaded his

colleagues to put out the artist's eyes. The old man heard his fate

with lofty fortitude, and only asked that he might suffer the sentence

in the presence of his darling work, to which he wished to give a

few final strokes. His request was granted, and he gazed long at the

splendid clock, setting its wonders in motion to count off the last

remaining moments of his sight. "Come, laggard," said the persecuting

magistrate, who had brought a crowd of spectators, "you are taxing the

patience of this kind audience." "But one touch remains," said the old

mechanic, "to complete my work;" and he busied himself a moment among

the wheels. While he suffered the agonies of his torture a fearful

whir was heard from the clock: the weights tumbled crashing to

the floor as his eyes fell from their sockets. He had removed the

master-spring, and his revenge was complete. The lovers devoted

their lives to the comfort of the blind clockmaker, and the wicked

magistrate was hooted from society. The clock remained a ruin until

1842, when parts of it were used in the new one constructed by

Schwilgué.

[Illustration: THE GREAT CLOCK.]

I found my bluebottle professor to be a Swiss, thirty years resident

in the city, very accessible and talkative, and, like every citizen by

adoption, more patriotic than even the native-born.

"It was a cheerless time for me, sir," said he as we contemplated

together the façade of the church, "when I saw that spire printed in

black against the flames of the town."

I begged frankly for his reminiscences.

"The bombardment of 1870," said the professor, "was begun purposely,

in contempt of the Bonapartist tradition, on the 15th of August,

the birthday of Napoleon. At half-past eleven at night, just as the

fireworks are usually set off on that evening, a shell came hissing

over the city and fell upon the Bank of France, crushing through the

skylight and shivering the whole staircase within: the bombardment

that time lasted only half an hour, but it found means, after much

killing and ruining among the private houses, to reach the buildings

of the Lyceum, where we had placed the wounded from the army of

Woerth. While the city was being touched off in every direction, like

a vast brush heap, we had to take these poor victims down into the

cellars."

"Do you think the bombs were purposely so directed?" I asked.

"Don't talk to me of stray shots!" said the burgher, hotly enough.

"The enemy was better acquainted with the city than we were ourselves,

and his fire was of a precision that extorted our admiration more than

once. Cannons planted in Kehl sent their shells high over the citadel,

like blows from a friend. An artillery that, after the third shot,

found the proper curve and bent the cross on the cathedral, cannot

plead extenuating circumstances and stray shots."

"Was the greatest damage done on that first night?"

[Illustration: CHURCH OF SAINT THOMAS.]

"Ah no! The bombardment was addressed to us as an argument, proceeding

by degrees, and always in a _crescendo_: after the 15th there was

silence until the 18th; after the 18th, silence up to the 23d. The

grand victim of the 23d, you know, was the city library, where lay

the accumulations of centuries of patient learning--the mediæval

manuscripts, the _Hortus deliciarum_ of Herrade of Landsberg, the

monuments of early printing, the collections of Sturm. Ah! when

we gathered around our precious reliquary the next day and saw its

contents in ashes, amid a scene of silence, of people hurrying away

with infants and valuable objects, of firemen hopelessly playing on

the burned masterpieces, there was one thought that came into

every mind--one parallel! It was Omar the caliph and the library of

Alexandria."

"And you imagine that this offence to civilization was quite

voluntary?" I argued with some doubt.

"It is said that General Werder acted under superior orders. But, sir,

you must perceive that in these discretionary situations there is no

such dangerous man as the innocent executant, the martinet, the person

of routine, the soldier stifled in his uniform. I saw Werder after the

capitulation. A little man, lean and bilious. Such was the opponent

who reversed for us successively, like the premisses of an argument,

the bank, the library, the art-museum, the theatre, the prefecture,

the arsenal, the palace of justice, not to speak of our churches. A

man like that was quite capable of replying, as he did, to a request

that he would allow a safe-conduct for non-combatants, that the

presence of women and children was an element of weakness to the

fortress of which he did not intend to deprive it.' The night

illuminated by our burning manuscripts was followed by the day which

witnessed the conflagration of the cathedral. Look at that noble

front, sir, contemplating us with the hoary firmness of six hundred

years! You would think it a sad experience to see it, as I have seen

it, crowned with flames which leaped up and licked the spire, while

the copper on the roof curled up like paper in the heat; and to hear,

as I heard, the poor beadles and guards, from the height of yonder

platform, calling the city to the aid of its cathedral. The next day

the mighty church, now so imperfectly restored, was a piteous sight.

The flames had gone out for want of fuel. We could see the sky through

holes in the roof. The organ-front was leaning over, pierced with

strange gaps; the clock escaped as by miracle; and the mighty saints,

who had been praying for centuries in the stained windows, were

scattered upon the floor. On the 25th the systematic firing of the

faubourgs began, and the city was filled with the choking smell of

burning goods: on the 28th the citadel was kindled."

[Illustration: BEAUTY'S QUINTESSENCE.]

"And what opposition," I naturally demanded, "were you able to make to

all this? I believe your forces were greatly shortened?"

"We were as short as you can think, sir. Most of the garrison had

been withdrawn by MacMahon. The soldiers still among us were miserably

demoralized by the entrance of the fugitives from Woerth. Our defence

was the strangest of mixtures. The custom-house officers were armed

and mobilized: the naval captain Dupetit-Thouars happened to be in

the walls, with some of the idle marine. Colonel Fiévée, with his

pontoneers, hurriedly tore up the bridge of boats leading over to

Kehl, and united himself with the garrison. From the outbreak of the

war we civilians had been invited to form a garde nationale, but never

was there a greater farce. We were asked to choose our own grades, and

when I begged to be made colonel, they inquired if I would not prefer

to be lieutenant or adjutant. Most of us, those at least who had voted

against the imperial candidates, never received a gun. Our artillery,

worthy of the times of Louis XIV., scolded in vain from the ramparts

against the finest cannons in the world, and we were obliged to watch

the Prussian trenches pushing toward the town, and to hear the bullets

beginning to fall where at first were only bombs."

"The capitulation was then imminent."

"There were a few incidents in the mean time. The deputation from

Switzerland, of ever-blessed memory, entered the city on the eleventh

of September. Angels from heaven could not have been more welcome. You

know that a thousand of our inhabitants passed over into Switzerland

under conduct of the delegate from Berne, Colonel Büren, and that they

were received like brothers. From Colonel Büren also we learned for

the first time about Sedan, the disasters of Bazaine and MacMahon, and

the hopelessness of the national cause. We learned that, while they

were crowning with flowers the statue of our city in Paris, they had

no assistance but handsome words to send us. Finally, we learned

the proclamation of the French republic--a republic engendered in

desolation, and so powerless to support its distant provinces! We too

had our little republican demonstration, and on the 20th of September

the prefect they had sent us from Paris, M. Valentin, came dashing in

like a harlequin, after running the gauntlet of a thousand dangers,

and ripped out of his sleeve his official voucher from Gambetta. Alas!

we were a republic for only a week, but that week of fettered freedom

still dwells like an elixir in some of our hearts. For eight days I, a

born Switzer, saw the Rhine a republican river."

"Give me your hand, sir!" I cried, greatly moved. "You are talking to

a republican. I am, or used to be, a citizen of free America!"

"I am happy to embrace you," said the burgher; and I believe he was on

the point of doing it, literally as well as figuratively. "I, for my

part, whatever they make of me, am at least an Alsatian. But I am half

ashamed to talk to an American. On the 29th I went to see our troops

evacuate the city by the Faubourg National. I found myself elbow to

elbow in the throng with the consul from the United States: never in

my life shall I forget the indignant surprise of your compatriot."

"Why should our consul be indignant at disaster?" I demanded.

[Illustration: VOICI LE SABRE!]

"Why, sir, the throng that rolled toward the grave Prussian troops was

composed of desperadoes inflamed with wine, flourishing broken guns

and stumps of sabres, and insulting equally, with many a drunken oath,

the conquerors and our own loyal general Uhrich. The American consul,

blushing with shame for our common humanity, said, 'This is the second

time I have watched the capitulation of an army. The first time it was

the soldiers of General Lee, who yielded to the Northern troops. Those

brave Confederates came toward us silent and dignified, bearing arms

reversed, as at a funeral. We respected them as heroes, while here--'

But I cannot repeat to you, sir, what your representative proceeded

to add. That revolting sight," continued my informant, "was the last

glimpse we had of France our protector. When we returned to the city a

Prussian band played German airs to us at the foot of Kleber's statue.

We are Teutonized now. At least," concluded the burgher, taking me by

the shoulders to hiss the words through my ears in a safe corner, "we

are Germans officially. But I, for my part, am Alsatian for ever and

for ever!"

[Illustration: STREET OF THE GREAT ARCADES.]

Greatly delighted to have encountered so near a witness and so minute

a chronicler of the disasters of the town, I invited the professor

to accompany me in exploring it, my interest having vastly increased

during his recital; but he pleaded business, and, shaking both my

hands and smiling upon me out of a sort of moulding formed around his

face by his shirt-collars, dismissed me. So, then, once more, with a

hitch to my tin box, I became a lonely lounger. I viewed the church of

Saint Thomas, the public place named after Kleber, who was born here,

some of the markets and a beer establishment. In the church of Saint

Thomas I examined the monument to Marshal Saxe, by Pigalle. I should

have expected to see a simple statue of the hero in the act

of breaking a horseshoe or rolling up a silver plate into a

bouquet-holder, according to the Guy-Livingstone habits in which he

appears to have passed his life, and was more surprised than edified

at sight of the large allegorical family with which the sculptor has

endowed him. In the same church I had the misfortune to see in

the boxes a pair of horrible mummies, decked off with robes and

ornaments--a count of Nassau-Saarwerden and his daughter, according to

the custodian--an unhappy pair who, having escaped our common doom of

corruption by some physical aridity or meagreness, have been compelled

to leave their tombs and attitudinize as works of art. In Kleber's

square I saw the conqueror of Heliopolis, excessively pigeon-breasted,

dangling his sabre over a cowering little figure of Egypt, and looking

around in amazement at the neighboring windows: in fact, Kleber

began his career as an architect, and there were solecisms in the

surrounding structure to have turned a better balanced head than

his. In the markets I saw peasants with red waistcoats and flat faces

shaded with triangles of felt, and peasant-girls bareheaded, with a

gilded arrow apparently shot through their brains. I traversed the

Street of the Great Arcades, and saw the statue of Gutenberg, of whom,

as well as of Peter Schöffer, the natives seem to be proud, though

they were but type-setters. Finally, in the Beer-hall, that of the

dauphin, I tasted a thimble-ful of inimitable beer, the veritable beer

of Strasburg. Already, at half-past eight on that fine May morning,

I persuaded myself that I had seen everything, so painful had my feet

become by pounding over the pavements.

My friend the engineer had agreed to breakfast with me at the hotel.

When I entered the dining-room with the intention of waiting for him,

I found two individuals sitting at table. One was no other than the

red-nosed Scotchman, the Eleusinian victim whom I had watched

through the bottle-rack at Épernay. Of the second I recognized the

architectural back, the handsomely rolled and faced blue coat and the

marble volutes of his Ionic shirt-collar: it was my good friend of the

cathedral. Every trace of his civic grief had disappeared, and he wore

a beaming banquet-room air, though the tear of patriotism was hardly

dry upon his cheek.

As I paused to dispose of my accoutrements the red nose was saying,

"Yes, my dear sir, since yesterday I am a Mason. I have the honor," he

pursued, "to be First Attendant Past Grand. It will be a great thing

for me at Edinburgh. Burns, I believe, was only Third Assistant,

Exterior Lodge: the Rank, however, in his opinion, was but the

guinea's stamp. But the advantages of Masonry are met with everywhere.

Already in the train last night I struck the acquaintance of a fine

fellow, a Mason like myself."

"Allow me to ask," said the cheerful bluebottle, "how you knew him for

a Mason like yourself?"

"I'll tell you. I was unable to sleep, because, you see, I had

to drink Moët for my initiation: as I am unaccustomed to anything

livelier than whisky, it unnerved me. To pass the time I went softly

over the signals."

"What signals, if I may be so indiscreet?"

"Number one, you scratch the nose, as if to chase a fly; number two,

you put your thumb in your mouth; number three--"

"H'm!" said the professor doubtfully, "those are singular

instructions, scratching the nose and sucking the thumb. It strikes

me they have been teaching you nursery signals rather than Masonry

signals."

[Illustration: BEER-GARDEN OF THE DAUPHIN.]

"My good friend," said the Scot with extreme politeness, yet not

without dignity, "you cannot understand it, because you were not

present. I received a Light which burned my eyelashes. The sage always

examines a mystery before he decides upon it. My Masonic friend will

be here at breakfast to-day: he promised me. Only wait for him. He

can explain these things better than I, you will see. The little

experiments with our noses and thumbs, you understand, are

symbols--Thummim and Urim, or something of that kind."

"Or else nonsense. You have been quizzed, I fear."

The North Briton bridled his head, knitted his brows and pushed back

his chair; then, after a moment of pregnant and stormy silence, he

turned suddenly around to me, who was enjoying the comedy--"Hand me

the cheese."

To be taken for a waiter amused me. Never in the world would a

domestic have dared to present himself in a hotel habited as I was.

I was in the same clothes with which I had left Passy the morning

previous: my coat was peppered with dust, my linen bruised and dingy,

my tie was nodding doubtfully over my right shoulder. A waiter in my

condition would have been kicked out without arrears of wages.

The professor, looking quickly around, recognized me with a ludicrous

endeavor to relapse into the fiery and outraged patriot. He expended

his temper on the red nose. "Take care whom you speak to," he cried

in a high, portly voice, and pointing to my japanned box, which I had

slung upon a curtain-hook. "Monsieur is not an attaché of the house.

Monsieur is doubtless an herb-doctor."

[Illustration: SUCKLED IN A CREED OUTWORN.]

There are charlatans who pervade the provincial parts of France,

stopping a month at a time in the taverns, and curing the ignorant

with samples according to the old system of _simulacra_--prescribing

kepatica for liver, lentils for the eyes and green walnuts for vapors,

on account of their supposed correspondence to the different organs.

I settled my cravat at the mirror to contradict my resemblance to a

waiter, threw my box into a wine-cooler to dispose of my identity with

the equally uncongenial herbalist, and took a seat. Nodding paternally

to the coat of Prussian blue, I proceeded to order Bordeaux-Léoville,

capon with Tarragon sauce, compôte of nectarines in Madeira jelly--all

superfluous, for I was brutally hungry, and wanted chops and coffee;

but what will not an unsupported candidate for respectability do when

he desires to assert his caste? I was proceeding to ruin myself

in playing the eccentric millionaire when the door opened, giving

entrance to a group of breakfasters.

"There he is--that's the man!" said the homoeopathist, much excited,

and indicating to the blue coat a brisk, capable-looking gentleman of

thirty-two in a neat silver-gray overcoat. The latter, after slightly

touching his nose, nodded to the Scotchman, who in return drew himself

up to his full height and formally wiped his mouth with a napkin, as

if preparing himself for an ovation. Happily, he contented himself

with rubbing his own nose with each hand in turn, and bowing so

profoundly that he appeared ready to break at the knees.

"_Kellner_!" said the silver-gray, making a grand rattle among the

plates and glasses, "some wine! some water! some ink! an omelette! a

writing-pad! a _filet à la Chabrillant_!"

The last-named dish is one which Sciolists are perpetually calling

_filet à la Chateaubriand_, saddling the poetic defender of

Christianity with an invention in cookery of which he was never

capable. I approved the new-comer, who was writing half a dozen notes

with his mouth full, for his nicety in nomenclature: to get the right

term, even in kitchen affairs, shows a reflective mind and tenderness

of conscience. My friend the engineer arrived, and placed himself in

the chair I had turned up beside my own. I was ashamed of the rate at

which I advanced through my capon, but I recollected that Anne Boleyn,

when she was a maid of honor, used to breakfast off a gallon of ale

and a chine of beef.

My canal-maker interrupted me with a sudden appeal. "Listen--listen

yonder," he said, jogging my knee, "it is very amusing. He is in a

high vein to-day."

The gray coat, who had already directed four or five letters, and was

cleaning his middle finger with a lemon over the glass bowl, had just

opened a lofty geographical discussion with the bluebottle. I cannot

express how eagerly I, as a theorist of some pretension in Comparative

Geography, awoke to a discussion in which my dearest opinions were

concerned.

"Geography," the active gentleman was saying as he dipped his finger

in water to attach the flaps of his envelopes--"geography, my dear

professor, is the most neglected of modern sciences. Excuse me if I

take from under you, for a moment, your doctoral chair, and land you

on one of the forms of the primary department. I would ask a simple

elementary question: How many parts of the globe are there?"

"Before the loss of Alsace and Lorraine," said the professor with

plaintive humor, "I always reckoned six."

"Very well: on this point we agree."

"Six!" said the Scotchman in great surprise. "You are liberal: I make

but five."

"Not one less than six," said the patriot, vastly encouraged with the

support he got: "am I not right, sir? We have, first, Europe--"

"Ah, professor," said the silver-gray, interrupting him, "how is this?

You, such a distinguished scholar--you still believe in Europe? Why,

my dear sir, Europe no longer exists--certainly not as a quarter

of the globe. It is simply, as Humboldt very truly remarks in his

_Cosmos_, the septentrional point of Asia."

The surprise seemed to pass, at this point, from the face of the

Scot to that of the Strasburger. After reflecting a moment, "Really,"

murmured he, "I recollect, in _Cosmos_--But how, then, do you reach

six parts of the globe?"

"Only count, professor: Asia, one; Africa, two; Australia, three;

Oceanica, four; North America, five; and South America, six."

"You cut America in two?"

"Nature has taken that responsibility. Each part of the world being

necessarily an insulated continent, an enormous island, it is too much

to ask me to confound the northern and southern continents of America,

hung together by a thread--a thread which messieurs the engineers"--he

bowed airily to my companion--"have very probably severed by this

time."

The honest professor passed his hand over his forehead. "The deuce!"

he said. "That is logic perhaps. Still, sir, I think it is rather

hardy in you to double America and annihilate Europe, when Europe

discovered America."

"The Europeans did not discover America," replied the young

philosopher. "The Americans discovered Europe."

The professor of geography remained stunned: the homoeopathist gave

utterance to a cry--one of admiration, doubtless.

"An American colony was settled in Norway long before the arrival of

Columbus in Santo Domingo: who will contradict me when Humboldt says

so? Only read your _Cosmos_!"

"The dickens! prodigious! prodigious!" repeated the man of blue. The

young silver coat went on:

[Illustration: THE BLESSING OF THE BÂB.]

"I have been three times around the world, professor. The terrestrial

globe was my only chart. I have studied in their places its divisions,

continents, capes and oceans; also the customs, politics and

philosophies of its inhabitants. I have a weakness for learning; I

have caused myself to be initiated in all secret and philosophical

societies; I have taken a degree from the Brahmans of Benares; I

have received the accolade from the emir of the Druses; I have been

instructed by the priests of the Grand Lama, and have joined the

Society of Pure Illumination, the sole possessors of the Future Light.

I have just returned from Persia, where I received the blessing of the

great Bâb; and, like Solomon, I can say, _Vanitas vanitatum_!"

The red nose was by this time quite inflated and inflamed with

disinterested pride. The blue was crushed, but he made a final effort,

as the silver-gray made his preparations to depart and adjusted his

breakfast-bill. "Pardon me, sir," he said, with a little infusion of

provincial pride. "I am not a cosmopolitan, a Constantinopolitan or a

Bâbist. But I enjoy your conversation, and am not entirely without

the ability to sympathize in your geographical calculations. I

am preparing at the present moment a small treatise on Submarine

Geography; I am conducting, if that gives me any right to be heard,

the geographical department in the chief gymnasium here: in addition,

my youngest sister lost her ulnar bone by the explosion of an obus in

the seminary on the night of August 18th, when six innocent infants

were killed or maimed by the Prussians, who put a bomb in their little

beds like a warming-pan."

[Illustration: THE BOTANIST.]

"Never mind the warming-pan," said the traveler kindly, seeing that

the professor was making himself cry, and unconsciously quoting

Pickwick.

"I will not dilate on my title to trouble you for a few words more.

I perceive that I shall have a good deal to modify in my modest

treatise. I beg you to give us your views on some of the modifications

now going on in the East, especially the Turkish question and the

civilization of China."

"My dear professor," said the youthful Crichton sententiously, "do not

disturb yourself with those problems, which are already disposed of.

In twenty years the sultan will become a monk, to get rid of the chief

sultana, who has pestered his life out with her notions of woman's

rights, and who wore the Bloomer costume before the Crimean war. As

for the question about China, it is better to let sleeping dogs lie:

it has been a great mistake to arouse China, for it is a dog that

drags after it three hundred millions of pups. Only see the effect

already in Lima and San Francisco! Before a century has elapsed all

Asia, with Alaska and the Pacific part of America, to say nothing of

that petty extremity you persist in calling Europe, will be in the

power of China. Your little girls, professor, will be more liable to

lose their feet than their arms, for it is a hundred chances to one

but your great-grand-nieces grow up Chinawomen."

"Astonishing!" murmured the professor of geography.

"Admirable!" cried the doctor.

I had hitherto said nothing, though I was capitally entertained.

At length I ventured to take up my own parable, and, addressing the

pretended disciple of the Brahmans, I asked, "Can you enlighten us,

sir, on the true reason of the revolt of the slave States in America?"

The cosmopolitan, by this time standing, turned to me with a courteous

motion of acquiescence; and, after having given me to understand by an

agreeable smile that he did not confound me with his pair of victims,

he said pompously, "The true cause was that each Northern freeholder

demanded the use of two planters, now mostly octoroons, for

body-servants."

"You don't say so?" said the school-teacher, profoundly impressed.

The Scotchman looked like him who digesteth a pill. I decided quickly

on my own rôle, and briskly joined the conversation. Fishing up my

botany-box and extracting the little flower, "Nothing is more likely

when you know the country," I observed. "I have lived in Florida,

gentlemen, where I undertook, as Comparative Geographer and as amateur

botanist" (I looked searchingly at the professor, who had called me

an herb-doctor), "to fix the location of Ponce de Leon's fountain and

observe the medicinal plants to which it owes its virtue. America,

I must explain to you, is a country where proportions are greatly

changed. The pineapple tree there grows so very tall that it is

impossible from the ground to reach the fruit. This little flower now

in my hand becomes in that climate a towering and sturdy plant, the

tobacco plant. The wild justice of those lawless savannahs uses it as

a gibbet for the execution of criminals, whence the term 'Lynchburg

tobacco.' You cannot readily imagine the scale on which life expands.

It was formerly not necessary to be a great man there to have a

hundred slaves. For my part, sixty domestics sufficed me" (I regarded

sternly the homoeopathist, who had taken me for a waiter): "it was but

a scant allowance, since my pipe alone took the whole time of four."

"Oh," said the Scotchman, "allow me to doubt. I understand

the distribution of blood among the planters, because I am a

homoeopathist; but what could your pipe gain by being diluted among

four men?"

"The first filled it, the second lighted it, the third handed it and

the fourth smoked it. I hate tobacco."

The witticism appeared generally agreeable, and I laughed with the

rest. The cheerful philosopher in the gray coat passed out: as he left

the room, followed subserviently by his interlocutors, he bowed very

pleasantly to me and shook hands with my guardian the engineer.

"You know him?" I said to the latter.

"Just as well as you," he replied: "is it possible you don't recognize

him? It is Fortnoye."

"What! Fortnoye--the Ancient of the wine-cellar at Épernay?"

"Certainly."

"In truth it is the same jolly voice. Then his white beard was a

disguise?"

"What would you have?"

"I am glad he is the same: I began to think the mystifiers here were

as dangerous as those of the champagne country. At any rate, he is a

bright fellow."

"He is not always bright. A man with so good a heart as his must be

saddened sometimes, at least with others' woes, and he does not always

escape woes of his own."

This sentiment affected me, and irritated me a little besides, for I

felt that it was in my own vein, and that it was I who had a right

to the observation. I immediately quoted an extract from an Icelandic

Saga to the effect that dead bees give a stinging quality to the very

metheglin of the gods. We exchanged these remarks in crossing the

vestibule of the hotel: a carriage was standing there for my friend.

"I am sorry to leave you. I have a meeting with a Prussian engineer

about bridges and canals and the waterworks of Vauban, and everything

that would least interest you. I must cross immediately to Kehl. I

leave you to finish the geography of Strasburg."

"I know Strasburg by heart, and am burning to get out of it. I want to

cross the Rhine, for the sake of boasting that I have set foot in the

Baden territory. By the by, how have I managed to come so far without

a passport?"

"_This_ did it," said my engineer, tapping the tin box, which a waiter

had restored to me in a wonderful state of polish. "I put a plan or

two in it, with some tracing muslin, and allowed a spirit-level to

stick out. You were asleep. I know all the officials on this route.

I had only to tap the box and nod. You passed as my assistant. Nobody

could have put you through but I."

"You are a vile conspirator," said I affectionately, "and have all the

lower traits of the Yankee character. But I will use you to carry me

to Kehl, as Faust used Mephistopheles. By the by, your carriage is

a comfortable one and saves my time. I have two hours before I need

return to the train."

"It is double the time you will need."

EDWARD STRAHAN.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

FROM THE POTOMAC TO THE OHIO.

[Illustration: VIEW NEAR ANTIETAM, MARYLAND.]

An old writer who dearly loved excursions, Francis Rabelais, inserted

in one of his fables an account of a country where the roads were in

motion. He called the place the Island of Odes, from the Greek

[Greek: odss], a "road," and explained: "For the roads travel, like

animated things; and some are wandering roads, like planets, others

passing roads, crossing roads, connecting roads. And I saw how the

travelers, messengers and inhabitants of the land asked, Where does

this road go to? and that? They were answered, From the south to

Faverolles, to the parish, to the city, to the river. Then hoisting

themselves on the proper road, without being otherwise troubled or

fatigued, they found themselves at their place of destination."

This fancy sketch, thrown off by an inveterate joker three hundred

years ago, is justified curiously by any of our modern railways; but

to see the picture represented in startling accuracy you should find

some busy "junction" among the coal-mountains. Here you may observe,

from your perch upon the hill, an assemblage of roads actively

reticulating and radiating, winding through the valleys, slinking off

misanthropically into a tunnel, or gayly parading away elbow-in-elbow

with the streams. These avenues, upon minute inspection, are seen to

be obviously moving: they are crawling and creeping with an unbroken

joint-work of black wagons, the rails hidden by their moving pavement,

and the road throughout advancing, foot by foot, into the distance.

It is hardly too fanciful--on seeing its covering slide away,

its switches swinging, its turn-tables revolving, its drawbridges

opening--to declare that such a road is an animal--an animal proving

its nature, according to Aristotle, by the power to move itself. Nor

is it at all censurable to ask of a road like this where it "goes to."

The notion of what Rabelais calls a "wayfaring way," a _chemin

cheminant_, came into our thoughts at Cumberland. But Cumberland was

not reached until after many miles of interesting travel along a route

remarkable for beauties, both natural and improved. A coal-distributor

is certain, in fact, to be a road full of attractions for the tourist;

for coal, that Sleeping Beauty of our era, always chooses a pretty bed

in which to perform its slumber of ages. The road which delivers

the Cumberland coal, however, is truly exceptional for splendor of

scenery, as well as for historical suggestiveness and engineering

science. It has recently become, by means of certain lavish

providences established for the blessing of travelers at every turn, a

tourist route and a holiday delight.

It is all very well for the traveler of the nineteenth century to

protest against the artificial and unromantic guidance of the railway:

he will find, after a little experience, that the homes of true

romance are discovered for him by the locomotive; that solitudes and

recesses which he would never find after years of plodding in sandal

shoon are silently opened to him by the engineer; and that Timon now,

seeking the profoundest cave in the fissures of the earth, reaches it

in a Pullman car.

The silvery Capitoline dome at Washington floats up from among its

garden trees, seeming to grow higher and higher as we recede from it.

Quickly dominating the low and mean buildings which encumber and try

to hide it in its own neighborhood, it gradually rises superior to the

whole city, growing greater as Washington grows less. The first

part of the course is over the loop of road newly acquired and still

improving by the company--a loop hanging downward from Baltimore, so

as to sweep over Washington, and confer upon the through traveler the

gift of an excursion through the capital. This loop swings southwardly

from Baltimore to a point near Frederick, Washington being set upon it

like a bead in the midst. The older road, like a mathematical chord,

stretches still between the first points, but is occupied with the

carrying of freight. The tourist notices the stout beams of the

bridges, the new look of the sleepers, and the sheen of the double

lines of fresh steel rail: he observes some heavy mason-work at the

Monocacy River. Two hours have passed: at Frederick Junction he

joins a road whose cuttings are grass-grown, whose quarried rocks are

softened with lichen. He is struck by the change, and with reason,

for he is now being carried under the privileges of the first railroad

charter granted in America.

We may not here undertake the story of the iron track, though it is

from this very road that such a story must take its departure, and

though we cannot grant that that story would be exceeded by any in

the range of the author's skill as a matter of popular interest. This

railroad, this "Baltimore and Ohio" artery, connects, through its

origin, with the very beginnings of modern progress, and indeed with

feudalism; for it was opened in 1828 by Charles Carroll, the patriot

who had staked his broad lands of Carrollton in 1776 against the

maintenance of feudalism in this country. "I consider this," said

Carroll, after his slender and aristocratic hand had relinquished the

spade, "among the most important acts of my life--second only to

my signing the Declaration of Independence." Railroads, excepting

coal-mine trams, were as yet untried; Stephenson had not yet exhibited

the Rocket; for travel and transportation the locomotive was unknown,

and the Baltimoreans conceived their scheme while yet uncertain

whether horse-power or _stationary_ steam-engines would be the

best acting force. It was opened as far as Ellicott's Mills as a

horse-road, the idlers and beauties of Baltimore participating in the

excursion as a novel jest. In 1830, Baron Krudener, the envoy from

Russia, rode upon it in a car with sails, called the Æolus, a model

of which he sent to the emperor Nicholas as something new and hopeful.

Passing the Monocacy, we roll over a rich champaign country, based

upon limestone--the garden of the State, and containing the ancient

manor of Carrollton, through whose grounds, by one of its branches,

this road passes for miles. Near by are quarries of Breccia marble--a

conglomerate of cemented variegated pebbles--out of which were cut

the rich pillars in the House of Representatives at Washington. The

Monocacy is crossed, near whose bank lies the bucolic old Maryland

town of Frederick, to attain which a twig of the road wanders off for

the few necessary miles. Soon the piquant charms of Potomac scenery

are at hand, the mountains are marching upon us, and the road becomes

stimulating.

A jagged spur of the Blue Ridge, the Catoctin Mountain, strides out

to the river, and the railroad, striking it, wraps itself around the

promontory in a sharp curve, like a blow with the flat of an elastic

Damascus sword. The broad Potomac sweeps rushing around its base: it

is the celebrated Point of Rocks. The nodding precipice, cut into a

rough and tortured profile by the engineers, lays its shadow to sleep

on the whizzing roofs of the cars as they glitter by, (Shadows always

seem to print themselves with additional distinctness upon any moving

object, like a waterfall or a foaming stream.) There are a village and

a bridge at the Point, and the mountain-range, broken in two by the

river, recovers itself gracefully and loftily on the other side.

[Illustration: POTOMAC TUNNEL, NEAR HARPER'S FERRY.]

For half an hour more, as we rush to meet the course of the Potomac,

the broad ledges that heave the bed of the river into mounds, and

the ascending configuration of the shore, seem to speak of something

grand, and directly we are in the cradle of romance, at Harper's

Ferry.

To reach this village, perhaps the most picturesque in the country,

we must cross the Potomac from Maryland into Virginia. The bridge is

peculiar and artistic. It is about nine hundred feet long; its two

ends are curved in opposite directions, and at its farther extremity

it splits curiously into two bridge-branches, one of which supports

the road running up the Shenandoah, while the other carries the main

road along the Potomac. The latter fork of the bridge runs for half

a mile up the course of the Potomac stream over the water, the road

having been denied footing upon the shore on account of the presence

there of the government arsenal buildings. The effect to the eye is

very curious: the arsenal is at present razed to the level of the

ground (having been fired, the reader will remember, by the Federal

guard at the beginning of hostilities, and some fifteen thousand stand

of arms burnt to prevent their falling into Lee's hands), and there

is no topographical reason to prevent the track running comfortably on

dry ground. The arrangements, however, for purchasing the right to

a road-bed on the arsenal grounds, though under way, are not yet

complete, and the road marches on aquatically, as aforesaid.

Harper's Ferry, a town supported of old almost entirely by the arsenal

works, is a desolate little stronghold among towering mountains, the

ruins being in the foreground. The precipices on either side of the

river belong to the Elk Ridge, through which, at some antediluvian

period, the colossal current has hewed its way. At the base of

the Virginia side of the mountains, hugged in by the Potomac and

Shenandoah Rivers, and by Loudon and Bolivar Heights, cowers the town.

[Illustration: BATTLE-GROUNDS OF THE POTOMAC VALLEY.]

Across the river towers the mighty cupola of Maryland Height, far

overtopping the other peaks, and farther down the stream, like a

diminishing reflection of it, the softer swell of South Mountain. An

ordinary rifle-cannon on Maryland Height can with the greatest ease

play at bowls to the other summits. From this eminence one Colonel

Ford, on September 13, 1862, toppled down his spiked and coward

cannon: the hostile guns of the enemy quickly swarmed up the summit he

had abandoned, and the Virginia crests of Loudon and Bolivar belched

with rebel artillery. The town was surrendered by Colonel Miles at

the very moment when McClellan, pressing forward through the passes

of South Mountain from Frederick, was at hand to relieve it: Miles was

killed, and the considerable military stores left in the village were

bagged by Stonewall Jackson. Flushed with this temporary advantage,

Jackson proceeded to join Lee, who then advanced from Sharpsburg and

gave unsuccessful battle to the Union forces at Antietam Creek.

This stream pours into the Potomac just above, from the Maryland side.

It gives its name to one of the most interesting actions of the war.

The fields of Antietam and Gettysburg were the only two great battle

grounds on which the Confederates played the rôle of invaders and left

the protection of their native States. Antietam was the first, and if

it could have been made for Lee a more decisive failure, might have

prevented Gettysburg. It occurred September 15th to 18th, 1862. Lee

had just thoroughly whipped that handsome Western braggart, General

Pope, and, elated with success, thought he could assume the offensive,

cross the Potomac, and collect around his banner great armies of

dissatisfied secessionists to the tune of "Maryland, my Maryland."

McClellan (then in the last month of his command over the army of the

Potomac) pushed with unwonted vigor over the mountains, inspired, it

is said, by the accidental foreknowledge of Lee's whole Maryland

plan, and clashed with Lee across the bridges of this pretty highland

stream. As an episode he lost Harper's Ferry; but that was a trifle.

It was a murderous duel, that which raged around the Dunker church

and over the road leading from Sharpsburg to Hagerstown. Lee's forty

thousand men were shielded by an elbow of the Potomac; his batteries

of horse-artillery under Stuart were murdering the forces of Hooker,

when that general was relieved by the support of Mansfield; then

Mansfield was killed and Hooker wounded; and then Sedgwick was sent

up to replace Mansfield; then, when Sedgwick was getting the better of

Jackson and Hood, McLaws and Walker drew up to the Confederate left,

and burst completely through Sedgwick's line. Presently, Franklin and

Smith came across from the stream and reinforced the Federals, driving

the Southern advance back to the church, and Burnside rendered some

hesitating assistance; but then rushed up the force which had received

the surrender of Harper's Ferry, singing victory, and drove back

Burnside; and when McClellan, on the morning of the 19th, found that

Lee had withdrawn across the Potomac, he was too much discouraged with

his own hurts to venture a pursuit. He had lost twelve thousand men,

and Lee eight thousand. But Antietam, though for us a costly and

unsatisfactory victory, was for the South a conclusive lesson. The

Peter-the-Hermit excursion into Maryland lasted just two weeks, and

its failure was signal and instructive. Intended as an invasion that

should result in the occupation of Washington and Philadelphia, it led

to nothing but to Stuart's audacious raid into Pennsylvania with his

thousand troopers--a theatrical flourish to wind up an unsuccessful

drama. As for Harper's Ferry, its overwhelming punishment and

precipitate conquest were not without their use: the retention by

the Federals of the little depot of army stores on the Virginia bank

surprised and thwarted Lee. To reduce it, he had to pause, and ere the

operation was complete McClellan was upon him, and cornered him before

he was enabled to take up a firm position in Western Maryland and

prepare for the Pennsylvania invasion. The Ferry fell into our hands

again, but as a ruin. As for the elaborate bridge approaching it, its

history is the history of the Potomac campaign: three times has it

been destroyed by the Confederates, and twice by the Unionists. Eight

times it has been carried away by freshets.

An earlier interest, yet intimately connected with the rebellion,

belongs to Harper's Ferry. From the car window you see the old

engine-house where John Brown fortified himself, and was wounded and

captured, while these wooded hills were bathed with October red in

1859. The breaches in the walls where he stood his siege are still

apparent, filled in with new brickwork. No single life could have been

so effectually paid out as his was, for he cemented in the cause of

the North the whole abolition sentiment of the civilized world, and

gained our army unnumbered recruits. Truly said the slaves when he

died, "Massa Brown is not buried: he is planted."

Of the site of all these storied ruins we can only say again and again

that it is beautiful. The rocky steeps that enclose the town have

a Scottish air, and traveled visitors, beholding them, are fain

to allude to the Trosachs; but the river that rolls through the

mountains, and has whirled them into a hollow as the potter turns

a vase, is continental in its character, and plunges through the

landscape with a swell of eddy and a breadth of muscle that are like

nothing amid the basking Scottish waters.

On an eminence immediately overlooking Harper's Ferry, and some four

hundred feet thereabove, is the enormous turtle-shaped rock, curiously

blocked up over a fissure, on which Jefferson once inscribed his

name. Chimney Rock, a detached column on the Shenandoah near by, is a

sixty-foot high natural tower, described by Jefferson in his _Notes on

Virginia_. Upon the precipice across the river, on the Maryland side,

the fancy of the tourist has discovered a figure of Napoleon: it forms

a bas-relief of stupendous proportions, having the broad cliff for

background, and clearly defining the hair, the Corsican profile and

the bust, with an epaulette on the shoulder. The Blue Ridge, as it

traverses from this point the breadth of Virginia, breaks into various

natural eccentricities--the Peaks of Otter, rising a mile above the

sea, the Natural Bridge, Weyer's Cave, Madison's Cave--and gives issue

to those rich heated and mineralized springs for which the State is

famous.

[Illustration: SCENE AMONG THE MARYLAND ALLEGHANIES.]

The tinge of regret with which we leave Harper's Ferry is mitigated

by the hope that greater wonders may lie beyond. In two miles the

railroad, as if willing to carve out a picture-frame in which the

heroic river may be viewed, excavates the "Potomac Tunnel," as it is

named, through which the water is seen like a design in _repoussé_

silver, with two or three emerald islands in it for jewel-work. The

perforation is eighty feet through, but in contrast with its rocky

breadth our picture-frame is not too deep: whenever we shift our

position, the view seems to increase in art-beauty, and as a final

comprehensive picture it recedes and crowds under the spandrels of the

arch the whole mountain-pass, with the confluence of the two rivers in

the finest imaginable aspect.

Poor Martinsburg! during the rebellion a mere sieve, through which the

tide of war poured back and forth in the various fluctuations of our

fortune! It is said to have been occupied by both armies, alternately,

fifteen times. The passenger sees it as a mere foreground of big

restaurant and platform, with a conglomeration of village houses in

the rear--featureless as the sheep which the painter of Wakefield put

in for nothing. One incident, however, supervenes. An old man, with

positive voice and manners, and altogether a curious specimen in

looks, gait and outfit, comes through the train with a pannier

of apples and groundnuts. He is pointed out as one of the men of

importance in Martinsburg, owning a row of flourishing houses. With

the anxious servility which wealth always commands, we purchase an

apple of this capitalist, blandly choosing a knotty and unsalable

specimen.

Pretty soon, as we look over into Maryland, we have indicated for

us the site of old Fort Frederick, until lately traceable, but now

completely obliterated. It was an interesting relic of the old Indian

wars. Shortly after Braddock's defeat on the Monongahela, when the

Indians had become very bold, and had almost depopulated this part of

Maryland, Fort Frederick was erected by Governor Sharpe as a menace,

and garrisoned with two hundred men. It was an immediate moral

victory, awing and restraining the savages, though no decided conflict

is known to have occurred from its construction to its quiet rotting

away within the present generation. Those were the days when Frederick

in Maryland and Chambersburg in Pennsylvania were frontier points, the

Alleghanies were Pillars of Hercules, and all beyond was a blank!

Still continuing our course on the Virginia side of the Potomac,

through what is known in this State as the Virginia Valley, while in

Pennsylvania the same intervale is called the Cumberland Valley, we

admire the increasing sense of solitude, the bowery wildness of the

river-banks, and the spirited freshness of the hastening water. At a

station of delightful loneliness we alight.

Here Sir John's Run comes leaping from the hills to slide gurgling

into the Potomac, and at this point we attain Berkeley Springs by

a dragging ascent of two miles and a half in a comfortable country

stage. Sir John's Run was called after Sir John Sinclair, a

quartermaster in the doomed army of Braddock. The outlet into the

Potomac is a scene of quiet country beauty, made dignified by the

hills around the river. A hot, rustic station of two or three

rooms, an abandoned factory building--tall, empty-windowed and

haunted-looking--gone clean out for want of commerce, like a lamp for

lack of oil. Opposite the station a pretty homespun tavern trellised

with grapes, a portrait of General Lee in the sitting-room, and a fat,

buxom Virginia matron for hostess. All this quiet scene was once the

locality of the hot hopes and anxieties of genius, and it is for this

reason we linger here.

When the little harbor at the mouth of Sir John's Run was still more

wild and lonely than now, James Rumsey, a working bath-tender at

Berkeley Springs, launched upon it a boat that he had invented of

novel principle and propulsive force. The force was steam, and Rumsey

had shown his model to Washington in 1780. First discoverers of

steam-locomotion are turning up every few months in embarrassing

numbers, but we cannot feel that we have a right to suppress the

claims of honest Rumsey, the protégé of Washington. The dates are said

to be as follows: Rumsey launched his steamboat here at Sir John's Run

in 1784, before the general and a throng of visitors from the Springs;

in 1788, John Fitch launched another first steamboat on the Delaware,

and sent it successfully up to Burlington; in 1807, Robert Fulton set

a third first steamboat on the Hudson, the Clermont. Rumsey's motion

was obtained by the reaction of a current _squirted_ through the stern

of the boat against the water of the river, the current being pumped

by steam. This action, so primitive, so remote from the principle

of the engine now used, seems hardly worthy to be connected with

the great revolutionary invention of steam-travel; yet Washington

certified his opinion that "the discovery is of vast importance, and

may be of the greatest usefulness in our inland navigation." James

Rumsey, with just a suspicion of the irritability of talent, accused

Fitch of "coming pottering around" his Virginia work-bench and

carrying off his ideas, to be afterward developed in Philadelphia. It

is certain that the development was great. Rumsey died in England of

apoplexy at a public lecture where he was explaining his contrivance.

A sun-burnt, dark-eyed young Virginian now guides us up the

mountain-road to the Springs, where we find a full-blown Ems set

in the midst of the wilderness. The Springs of Berkeley, originally

included in the estates of Lord Fairfax, and by him presented to the

colony, were the first fashionable baths opened in this country. One

half shudders to think how primitive they were in the first ages, when

the pools were used by the sexes alternately, and the skurrying nymphs

hastened to retreat at the notification that their hour was out and

that the gentlemen wanted to come in. They were populous and civilized

in the pre-Revolutionary era when Washington began to frequent them

and became part owner in the surrounding land. The general's will

mentions his property in "Bath," as the settlement was then called.

The Baroness de Reidesel (wife of the German general of that name

taken with Burgoyne at Saratoga) spent with her invalid husband the

summer of 1779 at Berkeley, making the acquaintance of Washington and

his family; and whole pages of her memoirs are devoted to the quaint

picture of watering-place life at that date.

[Illustration: SCENE AT CUMBERLAND NARROWS.]

Berkeley Springs are probably as enjoyable as any on the continent.

There is none of that aspect of desolation and pity-my-sorrows so

common at the faded resorts of the unhappy South, yet a pleasant

rurality is impressed on the entertainment. The principal hotel is

a vast building, curiously rambling in style: the dining-room, for

instance, is a house in itself, planted in a garden. Here, when the

family is somewhat small and select, will be presented the marvels of

Old Dominion cooking--the marrowy flannel-cake, the cellular waffle,

the chicken melting in a beatitude of cream gravy: when the house

is pressed with its hundreds of midsummer guests these choice

individualities of kitchen chemistry are not attainable; but even

then the bread, the roast, the coffee--a great _chef_ is known by

the quality of his simples--are of the true Fifth Avenue style

of excellence. Captain Potts (we have come to the lands where the

hotel-keepers are military officers), an old moustache of the Mexican

war, broods over the large establishment like the father of a great

family. With the men he is wise on a point of horseflesh or the

quality of the brandy; with the matrons he is courtly, gallant,

anecdotic: the young women appear to idolize him, and lean their

pretty elbows on his desk half the day, for he is their protector,

chevalier, entertainer, bonbon-holder, adviser and elder brother, all

in one. Such is the landlord, as that rare expert is understood in

the South. As for the regimen, it is the rarest kind of Pleasure made

Medicinal, and that must be the reason of its efficacy. There is a

superb pool of tepid water for the gentlemen to bathe in: a similar

one, extremely discreet, for the ladies. Besides these, of which

the larger is sixty feet long, there are individual baths, drinking

fountains in arbors, sulphur and iron springs, all close to the hotel.

The water, emerging all the year round at a temperature of about

seventy-five degrees, remains unfrozen in winter to the distance of a

mile or more along the rivulet by which it escapes. The flavor is so

little nauseous that the pure issue of the spring is iced for ordinary

table use; and this, coupled with the fact that we could not detect

the slightest unusual taste, gave us the gravest doubts about the

trustworthiness of this mineral fountain's old and unblemished

reputation: another indication is, that they have never had the liquid

analyzed. But the gouty, the rheumatic, the paralyzed, the dyspeptic,

who draw themselves through the current, and let the current draw

itself through them, are content with no such negative virtues for it,

and assign

To Berkeley every virtue under heaven.

The mountain-village known to Washington as "Bath" is still a scene

of fashionable revel: the over-dressed children romp, the old maids

flirt, the youthful romancers spin in each other's arms to music

from the band, and dowagers carefully drink at the well from the

old-fashioned mug decorated with Poor Richard's maxims; but the

festivities have a decorous and domestic look that would meet the pity

of one of the regular ante-rebellion bloods. After the good people

have retired at an early hour, we fancy the ghost of a lofty Virginia

swell standing in the moonlight upon the piazza, which he decorates

with gleams of phantom saliva. Attended by his teams of elegant

horses, and surrounded by a general halo of gambling, racing,

tourneying and cock-fighting, he seems to shake his lank hair sadly

over the poor modern carnival, and say, "Their tameness is shocking to

me."

There is a good deal of honest sport still to be had in the adjacent

hills: the streams yield trout, and various larger prey, for which the

favorite bait is a small ugly fish called helgamite. The woods contain

turkeys, pheasants, quail and woodcock. The region has a valuable

interpreter in the person of General David H. Strother, so agreeably

known to the public as "Porte Crayon," whose father was lessee of the

Springs, and who at one period himself conducted the hotel. He

addicts himself now to pen and pencil solely. In the village, where

he presides over a pretty cottage home, he has quite a circle of

idolaters: the neighbors' houses display on their walls his sketches

of the village eccentrics, attended by those accessories of dog or gun

or nag which always stamp the likeness, and make the rustic critic cry

out, "Them's his very features!" A large, boisterous painting in the

hotel represents his impressions of the village arena in his youth;

and ancient gamesters, gray-headed now, like to stroll in and

contemplate their own portraits grouped around the cock-pit in all

the hot blood of betting days and in the green dress-coats of 1840.

Strother (now an active graybeard) was profoundly stirred by

the outbreak of the rebellion. His friends were slaveholders and

Confederates: he lived upon the mountain-line dividing the rich,

proud, noble rebels of the eastern counties from the hungry and

jealous loyalists of West Virginia. He himself loved the State as

Bruce loved Scotland, but he loved country better. He shut himself

up with his distracting problem for three days in utter privacy: he

emerged with his mind made up, a Union soldier.

"It must have been awkward for a Virginian to cast his lot against

Virginia," we observed to the stagedriver who bore us back to the

station--an ex-Federal soldier and a faithful devotee of Crayon's.

"No awkwarder than for Virginia to go against her country: that's how

_we_ looked at it," retorted the patriot.

Bidding adieu to Berkeley and its paternal landlord, we resume the

steel road (that well-worn phrase of the "iron way" is a complete

misnomer) with another glance of familiarity at the beautiful

confluence of Sir John's Run with the Potomac, where the sunny waters

still seem to murmur of the landing of Braddock's army and the novel

disturbance of James Rumsey's steamer. The mountains extending from

this point, the recesses of the Blue Ridge, in their general trend

south-westerly through the State, are one great pharmacy of curative

waters. Jordan and Capper Springs, in the neighborhood of Winchester,

lie thirty or forty miles to the south; and beneath those are imbedded

the White, Black, Yellow, and we know not how many other colors in the

general spectrum of Sulphurs. It would perhaps be our duty to indicate

more exactly the Bethesdas of this vast natural sanitarium, to which

our present course gives us the key, but that task has already been

performed, in a complete and very attractive manner, by Mr. Edward A.

Pollard in his little work _The Virginia Tourist_. Our present task is

to attain the main wall of the Alleghany Mountains, which we do at the

town of Cumberland, after passing through the grand curved tunnel at

Pawpaw Ridge, and crossing Little Cacapon Creek, and traversing the

South Branch, which is the larger and true Potomac, and admiring the

lofty precipices, with arched and vaulted strata, on South Branch

Mountain and at Kelly's Rocks and Patterson Creek.

[Illustration: CLIFF VIEW, CUMBERLAND NARROWS.]

It is but a prosaic consideration, but the bracing air of the

mountain-ride from Berkeley Springs down to the railway station, and

the rapid career thence to Cumberland, have given us the appetites of

ogres. We carry our pilgrim scrip into the town of Cumberland without

much hope of having it generously filled, for this coaly capital,

lost among its mountains, had formerly the saddest of reputations for

hospitality. The three or four little taverns were rivals in the

art of how not to diet. Accordingly, our surprise is equal to our

satisfaction when we find every secret of a grand hotel perfectly

understood and put in practice at the "Queen City," the large house

built and conducted by the railway company. A competent Chicago

purveyor, Mr. H.M. Kinsley, who has the office of general manager

of the hotels belonging to the corporation, resides here as at the

head-quarters of his department, and is blessed every day by the

flying guests from the railway-trains, as well as the permanent

boarders who use Cumberland as a mountain-resort. The choicest

dainties from the markets of Baltimore, laid tenderly on ice in that

city and brought as freight in the lightning trains of the road, are

cooked for the tables, and the traveler "exercised in woes," who used

to groan over salt pork and dreadful dodgers, now finds the "groaning"

transferred to the overloaded board. The house is now in all the charm

of freshness and cleanliness, hospitably furnished, with deep piazza,

a pretty croquet-lawn with fountain, and other modern attractions,

the whole surrounded with what is no small gain in a muddy Maryland

town--a broad Schillinger cement pavement, which, like Mr. Wopsle's

acting, may be praised as "massive and concrete."

By day, Cumberland is quite given over to carbon: drawing her supplies

from the neighboring mining-town of Frostburg, she dedicates herself

devoutly to coals. All day long she may be seen winding around her

sooty neck, like an African queen, endless chains and trains and

rosaries of black diamonds, which never tire of passing through

the enumeration of her jeweled fingers. At night the scene is more

beautiful. We clambered up the nearest hill at sunset, while the

colored light was draining into the pass of Wills' Mountain as into

a vase, and the lamps of the town sprang gradually into sight beneath

us. The surrounding theatre of mountains had a singularly calm and

noble air, recalling the most enchanted days of Rome and the Campagna.

The curves of the hills are marvels of swaying grace, depending from

point to point with the elegance of draperies, and seating the village

like a gem in the midst of "great laps and folds of sculptor's work."

The mechanics and miners, as twilight deepened, began to lead their

sweethearts over these beautiful hills, so soft in outline that no

paths are necessary. The clouds of fireflies made an effect, combining

with the village lights below. Then as night deepened, as if they

were the moving principle of all the enchantment, the company's

rolling-mills, like witches' kettles, began to spirt enormous gouts

of flame, which seemed to cause their heavy roofs to flutter like the

lids of seething caldrons.

The commanding attraction of the western journey is necessarily the

passage of the Alleghanies. The climb begins at Piedmont, and follows

an ascent which in eleven consecutive miles presents the rare grade

of one hundred and sixteen feet per mile. The first tableau of real

sublimity, perhaps, occurs in following up a stream called Savage

River. The railway, like a slender spider's thread, is seen hanging at

an almost giddy height up the endless mountain-side, and curved hither

and thither in such multiplied windings that enormous arcs of it can

always be seen from the flying window of the car. The woods, green

with June or crimson with November, clamber over each other's

shoulders up the ascent; but as we attain the elevation of two

hundred feet above the Savage, their tufted tops form a soft and mossy

embroidery beneath us, diminishing in perspective far down the cleft

of the ravine. As we turn the flank of the great and stolid Backbone

Mountain we command the mouth of another stream, pouring in from the

south-west: it is a steeply-enclosed, hill-cleaving torrent, which

some lover of plays and cider, recollecting Shakespeare's Midsummer

Night's slumber beneath the crabapple boughs, has named Crabtree

Creek. There is a point where the woody gorges of both these streams

can be commanded at once by the eye, and Nature gives us few landscape

_pendants_ more primitively wild and magnificent than these.

This ascent was made by the engineers of the company in the early

days of railroads, and when no one knew at what angle the friction of

wheels upon rails would be overcome by gravity. On the trial-trip the

railroad president kept close to the door, meaning, in the case of

possible discomfiture and retrogression, to take to the woods! But all

went well, and in due time was reached, as we now reach it, Altamont,

the alpine village perched two thousand six hundred and twenty-six

feet above the tide.

The interest of the staircase we have run up depends greatly on its

pioneer character. No mountain-chain had been crossed by a locomotive

before the Alleghanies were outraged, as we see them, here and by this

track. As the railroad we follow was the first to take existence in

this country, excepting some short mining roads, so the grade here

used was the first of equal steepness, saving on some English roads of

inferior length and no mountainous prestige. Here the engineer, like

Van Arnburgh in the lion's den, first planted his conqueror's foot

upon the mane of the wilderness; and 'in this spot modern science

first claimed the right to reapply that grand word of a French

monarch, "_Il n'y a plus de Pyrenées_!"

[Illustration: VALLEY FALLS, WEST VIRGINIA.]

We are on the crest of the Alleghanies. On either side of the

mountain-pass we have threaded rise the higher summits of the range;

but, though we seem from the configuration of the land to be in

a valley, we are met at every turn by the indications familiar to

mountain-tops--indications that are not without a special desolation

and pathos. Though all is green with summer, we can see that the

vegetation has had a dolorous struggle for existence, and that the

triumph of certain sparse trees here and there is but the survival

of the strongest. They stand scattered and scraggy, like individual

bristles on a bald pate. Their spring has been borrowed from summer,

for the leafage here does not begin until late in June. The whole

scenery seems to array itself for the tourist like a country wife,

with many an incompleteness in its toilet, and with a kind of haggard

apology for being late. Rough log-houses stand here and there among

the laurels. The tanned gentlemen standing about look like California

miners, as you see them in the illustrations to Bret Harte's stories.

Through this landscape, roughly blocked out, and covered still

with Nature's chips and shavings--and seeming for that very reason

singularly fresh and close to her mighty hand--we fly for twenty

miles. We are still ascending, and the true apex of our path is only

reached at the twentieth. This was the climax which poet Willis came

out to reach in a spirit of intense curiosity, intent to peer over and

see what was on the other side of the mountains, and with some idea,

as he says, of hanging his hat on the evening star. His disgust, as a

bard, when he found that the highest point was only named "Cranberry

Summit," was sublime.

"Willis was particularly struck," said the landlord of the Glades

Hotel, "with a quality of whisky we had hereabouts at the time of his

visit. In those days, before the 'revenue,' an article of rich corn

whisky was made in small quantities by these Maryland farmers. Mr.

Willis found it agree with him particularly well, for it's as pure as

water, and slips through your teeth like flaxseed tea. I explained to

him how it gained in quality by being kept a few years, becoming

like noble old brandy. Mr. Willis was fired with the idea, and took a

barrel along home with him, in the ambitious intention of ripening it.

In less than six months," pursued the Boniface with a humorous twinkle

in his eyes, "he sent for another barrel."

The region where we now find ourselves among these mountain-tops is

known as the Glades--a range of elevated plateaux marked with all the

signs of a high latitude, but flat enough to be spread with occasional

patches of discouraged farms. The streams make their way into the

Youghiogheny, and so into the Ohio and Gulf of Mexico, for we have

mounted the great watershed, and have long ago crossed both branches

of the sun-seeking Potomac! We are in a region that particularly

justifies the claim of the locomotive to be the great discoverer of

hidden retreats, for never will you come upon a place more obviously

disconcerted at being found out. The screams of the whistle day by day

have inserted no modern ideas into this mountain-cranium, which, like

Lord John Russell's, must be trepanned before it can be enlightened.

The Glades are sacred to deer, bears, trout. But the fatal rails guide

to them an unceasing procession of staring citizens, and they are

filled in the fine season with visitors from Cincinnati and Baltimore.

For the comfort of these we find established in the Glades two

dissimilar hotels.

The first hostelry is the Deer Park Hotel, just finished, and

really admirable in accommodations. It is a large and very tasteful

structure, with the general air of a watering-place sojourn of the

highest type--a civilized-looking fountain playing, and the familiar

thunder of the bowling-alley forming bass to the click of the

billiard-room. Here, as in Cumberland, we find an artificial

forwardness of the dinner-table in the midst of the most unpromising

circumstances. The daintiest meats and cates are served by the deftest

waiters. The fact is, the hotel is owned by the company, and the

dinners are wafted over, in Arabian Nights fashion, from the opulent

markets of Baltimore. To prepare a feast, in this desolation, fit for

the nuptials of kings and emperors, would be a very simple matter

of the telegraph. Altogether, the aspect of this ornate,

audacious-looking summer palace is the strangest thing, just where it

is, to be seen on the mountains. The supreme sweetness of the air, the

breath of pine and hemlock, the coolness of midsummer nights, make the

retreat a boon for July and August. In autumn, among the resplendent

and tinted mountain-scenery, with first-rate sport in following the

Alleghany deer, the charms are perhaps greater.

The other resting-place of which we spoke is at the Glades Hotel in

the town of Oakland--the same in which Mr. Willis quenched his poetic

thirst. Oakland, looking already old and quaint, though it is a

creation of the railroad, sits immediately under the sky in its

mountain, in a general dress and equipage of whitewashed wooden

houses. A fine stone church, however, of aspiring Gothic, forms a

contrast to the whole encampment, and seems to have been quickly

caught up out of a wealthy city: it is a monumental tribute by the

road-president, Mr. Garrett, to a deceased brother; the county, too,

in its name of Garrett, bears testimony to the same powerful and

intelligent family. As for the "Glades," it is kept by Mr. Dailey in

the grand old Southern style, and the visitor, very likely for the

first time in his life, feels that he is _at home_. It is a curious

thing that the sentiment of the English inn, the priceless and

matchless feeling of comfort, has now completely left the

mother-country to take refuge with some fine old Maryland or Virginia

landlord, whose ideas were formed before the war. We have at the

"Glades" a specimen. In Captain Potts of Berkeley we found another.

This kind of landlord, in fact, should be a captain, a general or a

major, in order to fill his rôle perfectly. He is the patron and

companion of his guests, looking to their amusement with all the

solicitude of a private householder. His manners are filled with a

beaming, sympathetic and exquisite courtesy. He is necessarily a

gentleman in his manners, having all his life lived that sporting,

playful, supervisory and white-handed existence proper at once to the

master of a plantation and the owner of a hotel. His society is

constantly sought, his table is pounced upon by ladies with backgammon

in the morning, by gentlemen with decks of cards at night. Always

handsome, sunburnt, and with unaffected good-breeding, he is the king

of his delicious realm, the beloved despot of his domain. We have left

ourselves, in sketching the general character, no space to descend to

particulars on Mr. Dailey; but he was all the time before us as a

sitter when we made the portrait. A stroll with him around his farm,

and to his limpid little chalybeate spring, after one of his

famously-cooked, breakfasts of trout and venison, leaves an impression

of amity that you would not take away from many private

country-houses.

[Illustration: FISH CREEK VALLEY, WEST VIRGINIA.]

The affluents of the Little and Great Yok (so the Youghiogheny is

locally called) are still stocked with trout, while a gentleman

of Oakland has abundance of the fish artificially breeding in his

"ladders," and sells the privilege of netting them at a dollar the

pound. As for the wild fish, we were informed by a sharp boy who

volunteered to show us the chalybeate spring, and who guided us

through the woods barefoot, making himself ill with "sarvice" berries

as he went,--we were instructed by this naturalist that the trout were

eaten away from the streams "by the alligators." This we regarded as a

sun-myth, or some other form of aboriginal superstition, until we were

informed by several of the gravest and most trustworthy gentlemen of

several different localities on the mountains that there really is

a creature infesting these streams supposed by them to be a young

alligator, reaching a length of twelve inches, and doubtless

subsisting on fish. An alligator as a mountain-reptile had not entered

into our conception: can these voracious saurians, playing in the

alpine affluents of the Mississippi, possibly be identical with the

vast and ugly beasts of the lower bayous and the Gulf? We leave the

identification for some reptile-loving philosopher.

[Illustration: CHEAT RIVER VALLEY AND MOUNTAINS.]

Descending the western slope of the mountains, we prick up our

attention, although the grade is gradual and easy. We know that we are

coming to the crowning glory of the ride, the region celebrated for

its more than Arcadian beauty, and consecrated by the earliest glories

of our war--by the mountain Iliad of McClellan, the initial action at

Philippi, and the prompt trampling out of West Virginia secession

by the victories of Cheat River. This tameless, mountain-lapped,

hemlock-tinted river had long been our fancied cynosure. "Each mortal

has his Carcassonne," said, after a French poet, the late lamented

John R. Thompson, using the term for what is long desired and never

attained; and Mr. Matthew Arnold, in writing of a "French Eton," says,

"Whatever you miss, do not miss seeing Carcassonne." As Carcassonne

exists in French landscape, exists in the tourist's mind and desire, a

standard of beauty and historic suggestion, such to us had become

this swart and noble river. Now it happens that Thompson has left a

description, in his most polished prose, of glorious Cheat River. As

our own powers of description are very inferior, we make no scruple

of borrowing, or, as Reade calls it, "jewel-setting:" "The grandest

achievement of the engineer (whose name, Benjamin H. Latrobe, should

always be stated in connection with the road) is to be found, however,

in the region of Cheat River, where to the unscientific eye it would

appear almost impossible that a road-bed could ever have been built.

For two miles beyond Rowlesburg, where the Cheat River is crossed on a

massive bridge of iron, there is a continuous succession of marvels

in railway-work, of which the Tray Run viaduct is a dream of lightness

and grace, yet so firm in its welded strength that thousands of tons

of merchandise pass over it daily without causing, the slightest

oscillation of its airy arches. Here, too, the wonders of mechanical

skill are placed in striking juxtaposition with the wonders of Nature,

whose obduracy has been so signally overcome. The sense of security

was heightened in our case by a furious storm which burst upon us.

We were seated on the fender or' cow-catcher,' watching the majestic

marshaling of the thunder-clouds over the mountain-tops, and enjoying

to the full the excitement of the moment, when suddenly the wind

blew a terrific gust, filling the air with dust and dry leaves, and

threatening to carry us individually over the precipice. The train

was stopped, and we sought shelter in the comfortable car, which then

moved on through the driving floods that continued to descend for half

an hour, forming cataracts on every side of us. But the water ran off

harmlessly from the solid track, and our engine bade defiance to the

tempest, which hurled huge branches of the trees into the angry abyss

beneath. The triumph of Science over Nature was complete; and as the

sinking sun threw a glow over the Glades where the clouds had parted,

I think my companions caught some inspirations of the 'Poetry of the

Rail-way.'"

[Illustration: CHEAT RIVERS NARROWS.]

At Grafton we have choice of two routes: one, to Wheeling, leads us by

the beautiful scenery of the Tygart, where the Valley River Falls are

laughing and glistening all day and all night, and by the stupendous

Bollman bridge at Bellaire, almost two miles long, to Wheeling. But we

continue on a straight course to Cincinnati, having promised ourselves

to see the contrast between the City of Monuments and the Metropolis

of Pork. Grafton offers us the accommodations of another of the

company's hotels, where, as at Cumberland, we are daintily and

tenderly fed. At Parkersburg we find another superb bridge, over a

mile in length; at Athens an imposing insane asylum, to take care of

us if all these engineering wonders have deprived us of our senses;

and finally in Cincinnati, just a day after our departure from

Baltimore, the gleam of the Ohio River and the fulfillment of our

intention.

AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A STRONG-MINDED WOMAN.

_Extracts from a Journal_.

November 1, 18----. It is just three years to-day since I began to

keep this journal. I am so glad now that I persisted in doing so,

in spite of the temptations that have often assailed me to throw it

aside. How else could I realize, bring home to myself, these past

three years, strong and vivid as my remembrance of them is? No effort

of mere recollection could have preserved for me as this book has done

a record of my struggles and failures, and of my victories. Yes, I

write the word proudly, _victories_, for I have been beyond my hopes

successful. How well I remember my dear mother's distress at my queer

notions, as she called them--her entreaties, her tender illogical

protests against my making myself "conspicuous"! Dear mother! I can

see now that it was very natural she should have disliked and dreaded

my becoming a "strong-minded woman," for anything narrower than her

ideas of a woman's education and sphere one cannot imagine. She was an

excellent specimen of the old-fashioned mother and wife, and I believe

sincerely thought her whole duty in life and the intention of her

creation was "to suckle fools and chronicle small beer."

Let me see: yes, here it is at the very beginning--November 1, 18----.

How faded the ink looks! Let me read it: "To-day I told mother I meant

to attend a course of medical lectures: we had a scene, and she called

in Cousin Jane to reason with me. How I detest Cousin Jane! She is

nothing but a mass of orthodox dogmatism. Of course we quarreled over

it, and she ended by telling me I was disgracing the family, and

was no true woman. Well, we shall see which of us has the truer

comprehension of a woman's sphere."

It is three years since I wrote that. Those lectures were my first

step, and, like all first steps, cost me more of a struggle than

anything I have done since. As I look back over these three years, I

see that every hope and aspiration I then cherished has been more than

realized. I can trace the steady progress of my intellect. I can go

back to the days when I started to earn my own living--when I thought

it a great thing to have gained a few dollars by my own labor. Yes, I

am very glad to have this record of the past: it makes me strong and

hopeful of the future. I have never regretted my decision to make an

independent life for myself. I have sought only to do that for which

Nature had gifted me, and from which nothing but custom and prejudice

debarred me; and in claiming my own position I am conscious of having

helped other women, and of having led the way for those who may be

less courageous than I am.

All this might sound very conceited and self-confident to any one who

should read it, but I do not write to be read by other eyes than my

own: my journal is the reflex of my thoughts and feelings; so I may be

frank with myself. And why should I _not_ be proud of my independence,

as well as any other human creature?

But I must prepare my speech for to-morrow. They say they can't do

without me, and I really believe they mean it; for though some women

besides myself have opinions, and can put them into words, they mostly

lack the courage that I certainly possess. What a delicious sense of

freedom and unfettered action I have in my life! I don't think I have

laid down the special powers of my sex in asserting my freedom; but

you must wait, little book, for the confession that is on the tip of

my pen. Work first: that is my motto.

_Nov_. 10. Ten days since I opened my journal, and such busy days as

they have been! Three speeches, and half a pamphlet written! I have

done what people commonly term "a man's work" this week. How I despise

all these time-honored phrases, which, dead letters as they are,

act as links to strengthen the chain that binds women in a state of

inferiority. Why not say "a _woman's_ work"? But that is a different

sort of thing, I should be told: a woman should stay at home and take

care of her house and children. Why so, say I, if she has no house,

and does not wish for husband and children, feeling that they would

impede her in her work? All women are not born to be wives and

mothers: some have other work to do. But I need not argue with my

journal: it is of my way of thinking; my ideas meet no opposition

here. "But this is not at all womanly," my critic would say, had

I one, which I have not: "you have not said a word of the really

important event of the week." Dare I say that I had half forgotten it?

A man has asked me to marry him! The great event of a woman's life has

been within my reach, and I refused it. Mr. Whitaker is a very nice

fellow, but too adoring by half. I want an equal, not a slave--a

friend, a companion, not a man drawn to me by his imagination and

desiring to put me on a pedestal before marriage, that he may reverse

our position afterward. And then, too, marriage would hamper and

restrict me. I must not give up to mankind what is meant for a party.

But here I have a reflection to make, the result of my three years'

experience since I became a "strong-minded woman." It is always

maintained that a woman who chooses the life and holds the views that

I do destroys her attraction and charm for the other sex, and that no

man, however clever and successful she may be, will want to marry

a woman who puts her intellect into trousers instead of petticoats.

There was never a greater mistake. I have had four offers of marriage

since I "unsexed" myself (that's the proper expression, I believe),

and all from most respectable, well-to-do, worthy men; and I really

think they all cared for me. I cannot help having a certain sense of

gratified vanity about this, for, in spite of my critics, I am a woman

still. I have earned a rest to-night, so I'll stop writing and go to

bed.

_Nov_. 16. I feel lonely to-night. I am not often lonely: perhaps my

little book will comfort me. Sometimes I have said to myself that my

motto was that of a star: "Einsam bin ich, nicht allein." To-night it

is not so. That Mr. Lawrence who was introduced to me to-night had a

striking face, but there was a sort of masculine manner about him that

I don't fancy. Manliness I like, but he seemed to be so sure that

I was not his equal; and yet he treated me with perfect respect and

courtesy. Some one whispered in my ear, "He is a great society swell."

I have never seen anything of what is called society: I was not born

with a title to admission within its circle, and I have always been

too proud to seek it; yet I confess I have a curiosity to see what it

is like. I suppose I should see the best result that the old way of

looking at women can produce--the pink-cotton system, I call it.

I don't believe that man would ever dream of contradicting me in a

question of fact, or of using his strongest logical weapons against

me in a discussion: he would only play with me mentally. How angry the

very thought makes me! And yet he would defer to my opinion, and

pay me all respect, and listen to everything I said, however silly,

because I am a woman. What a strange, inconsistent mingling of

discordant ideas! A toy and a divinity! His manners were, however,

very agreeable: I suppose he is what is called a man of the world.

Rather a poor thing to be: his manners are dearly bought. He said

something about his cousin Mrs. Fordyce calling on me. Well, if she

does, I shall perhaps have a glimpse at the _beau monde_. I wonder if

all the men in society look as high-bred as he does? He is probably

narrow-minded naturally, but he is one result of our scheme of

civilization, which has its good as well as its bad points. Dear me!

I certainly did not mean to make an analysis of Mr. Lawrence's

character. Good-night, my little book!

_Nov_. 20. I cannot write to-night, and yet I must, I must. My head

is bursting with thoughts and visions, my heart is swelling with new

sensations. What an evening I have had! I shall never, never think

myself courageous again. I, who have faced crowds with calmness, to

quail before forty or fifty men and women, not one of whom was more

intelligent or better educated than myself! But let me write it out if

I can. I accepted Mrs. Fordyce's invitation to a little party. It

was graciously given, and I, fool that I was, thought it was to do

me honor that I was asked. I did not know then that these women of

society will commit a baseness for a new sensation or to gratify an

emotion of curiosity. I have been so admired, so looked up to by the

men who have surrounded me, I never dreamed of being the object of

mere curiosity or amusement. Well, I went. The room was half full of

men and women, talking, laughing, moving about. I was alone, and from

the moment of my entrance into that blaze of light I felt lonely and

weak; but I crossed the room and spoke to my hostess. She greeted

me graciously, and then some one else came up, and I stood aside.

Suddenly the sense of eyes upon me came over me. How those women

stared! Never before had I been among women and felt no bond of

sisterhood. How was it? was I unsexed, or they? There seemed a gulf

between us: I read it in their eyes, it came to me in the air, a

subtle but keen conviction. And how exquisite they were!--so soft and

smooth and white, with no lines on their foreheads or creases round

their mouths. I had never had such a sense of beauty given me before

by anything but pictures. I wondered the men did not kneel to them: I

felt as if I could myself if they would let me. As I stood there, my

heart beating quick, and something in my throat beginning to choke me,

dazzled and bewildered by the scene, a voice said--oh how gently!--in

my ear, "Miss Linton, will you let me take you into the other rooms?

There are one or two pictures you will enjoy." I tried not to start,

but I trembled in spite of myself, the relief was so great. There we

stood--he, Henry Lawrence, taller and handsomer and prouder-looking

than any man in the room, looking down upon me and offering me his

arm! I think I felt as I should if a lifeboat came to take me off a

wreck--in a modified degree, I mean. I took his arm with a few rather

inarticulate words of thanks, and we strolled through the other rooms,

he listening to me with such earnest attentiveness, bending his head

at every word, seeming so absorbed in me, so forgetful of the women

who gazed at me as if I were a pariah, and the men who smiled on them

as they did so. I confess it, I felt as if he stood between me and

the mocking, coldly scrutinizing glances about me. I felt guarded,

protected, and I could not struggle against the feeling, weak though

I knew it was: it seemed irresistible. I suppose, being a woman like

other women, I inherit traditional weakness, and cannot break the

bonds of former generations in a day. Be it as it may, he did not seem

to know or notice that I was not myself: he only seemed interested and

absorbed. I did not feel as if I were taxing his courtesy, and soon

I recovered my self-possession and talked naturally: my spirits rose,

and my natural self-assertion returned to me. I enjoyed looking at the

women, watching their ways and listening to the sound of their voices.

It was a revelation of a new world to me, and I said as much to him.

"What in particular is it," he said, "that strikes you so?"

"I think," I answered, "it is the harmony of the whole effect."

"A thorough-bred woman always produces an harmonious effect," he said.

Something in his tone jarred me, and I said hastily, "I don't think

development should be sacrificed to harmony: incompleteness is better

than perfection sometimes."

He smiled sweetly: "Yes, but I am afraid we should hardly agree about

the development of women, though I should like to hear you talk of

it."

"Why should we not discuss and disagree?"

"I do not like to disagree with a woman at all, especially with a

woman whom I admire," he said, bending his blue eyes on me with a look

such as I had never seen before in a man's eyes. It was what I

suppose would be called a chivalric look; and yet chivalry was only an

improved barbarism.

Mrs. Fordyce came up just then, and introduced some gentlemen to me;

and while they were talking Mr. Lawrence turned away. In a few

moments he was back again with a lovely-looking young girl on his arm,

blushing and yet self-possessed, with the same exquisite simplicity

of manner he has himself. "My cousin Alice Wilton asks me to introduce

her to you, Miss Linton," he said.

I have always--shall I confess it?--patted young girls on the head:

this one I could no more have patronized than I could a statue of

Diana. She was very charming to look at as she stood beside her

cousin, and yet--No, I will make no exception: she was charming in

every way, and I felt more at my ease that a woman had been presented

to me.

Mr. Lawrence put me in my carriage. As he closed the door he said,

"Your maid is not with you?"

I replied that I had none; on which he said to the driver, "Drive

slowly: I mean to walk as far as the hotel with the carriage."

"Won't you get in?" I cried from the window.

He seemed not to hear me, but started off at a rapid pace, and I gave

up the attempt, wondering at what seemed to me an eccentric choice. It

was unnecessary for him to go with me at all, but I thought, "He

has been, I suppose, brought up to think no woman can take care of

herself." He was ready to open the door as I got out, and I longed to

ask him why he had not driven with me; but I hesitated: something tied

my tongue, and in a moment he had said "Good-night," and was gone with

hasty steps into the darkness. I must stop, I am so tired.

_December_ 3. It seems to me I am growing to be a dreadful egotist.

I put nothing down now in this little book but just what concerns

myself--nothing of the great subjects of universal interest which

have always absorbed most of my thoughts, but just my own doings

and sayings. At this very moment I desire only to write about my

afternoon, and the way in which I spent it. I will indulge myself, and

the record may serve me. How it had snowed all day! how it did snow

this afternoon when I started out, wrapped in my waterproof, accoutred

to encounter the storm, and rejoicing in the absence of long skirts

and hooped petticoats! With my India-rubber boots I felt I could plod

through any snow-drift, and I gained a pervading sense of exhilaration

from the beating of the storm in my face. I chose a certain street I

had come to know, which ran straight through the town and on into a

more thinly-settled suburb. It was a good, clear path, and I should

be able to have a splendid walk without meeting probably more than a

dozen people in the course of it. Just as I passed the last square of

closely-built town-houses, and began to come upon the stretching white

landscape before me, as I trudged along, turning my head a little

aside to escape the brunt of the driving snow, I heard an exclamation

of surprise, and a man's voice said, "You _here_, Miss Linton?"

It was he, Mr. Lawrence. There he stood, his eyes brilliant with the

excitement of the storm, his cheek aglow with exercise, looking, as

the old women say, "the very picture of a man." I am very sensitive to

beauty, and his seems to me very great: it draws me to him.

"Yes it is I," I said (we had both stopped). "I wanted exercise and

air, and something to change my frame of mind; so I came out for a

tramp."

He turned with me, and we walked on. In a moment more he said, "Will

you take my arm? It will be easier to keep step and walk fast then."

I took it, and he looked down at me and said, with an inscrutable

smile, which haunts me yet, I suppose because I can't make out its

meaning, "Do you believe in fate?"

"If you mean by fate something which the will is powerless to resist,

against which it is unavailing to struggle, I do not," I answered. "Do

you, Mr. Lawrence?"

He laughed, not a pleasant laugh, albeit musical, but as if his smile

had been one with some hidden meaning in it: "I hardly know what I

believe. Certainly some power seems to lay traps for our wills at

times, and waylay us when they are off duty. As, for instance," he

went on, "I wanted to see you to-day, and I did not go to see you: my

will acted perfectly well, and I seemed able to resist any temptation.

I came out here to walk alone, thinking that I should be even farther

away from you here than elsewhere, when, lo! you start up in my path,

and here we are together. It is just as if some malicious spirit

had mocked me with an idea of my own strength, only to betray me the

better through my weakness." He spoke with an intensity which seemed

out of place, and strangely unlike his usual calm manner. Somehow,

a feeling of great delight had come over me as he spoke. I felt

pleased--why I do not know--at his evident impatience and annoyance.

"But why," said I, "did you turn with me? _There_ would have been the

moment for your will to act."

"You think so? That is hardly fair, Miss Linton. Does one brand a

soldier as a coward and a laggard who has fought and won a battle, and

has sunk exhausted upon his arms to sleep, if he is discomfited and

dismayed when, just as slumber has him in its arms, a fresh foe sets

upon him? No, I _could_ not turn back."

His eyes were bent on me again, and something in them stirred my soul

to its depths. Such a delicious feeling seemed stealing over me--a

feeling of mixed power and weakness. I felt my color rise, but I

looked ahead over the snowfields and said, "I don't see why you should

have turned back. Why should you want to be with me and not be with

me? I wanted to see you too."

I started as he spoke again, for his voice and manner were both

changed--all the quiver and intensity gone out of them. "The 'reason

why' of a mood is hard to find sometimes, and when found one has a

conviction that no one but one's self would see its reasonableness,"

he said with a laugh cold and musical. "Let us talk of something we

can both be sure to understand."

He seemed far away again. For a moment he had seemed so near--nearer,

I think, than I ever remember to have felt a man to be. Then he

talked, and talked very well, and made me talk, though it was not as

easy as it usually is to me, and though we spoke of things that are

generally to me like the sound of a trumpet to the war-horse. My

spirit did not rise: the words would hardly come. I wanted to be alone

and think it over--think over his words, his manner, his voice, the

look in his eyes, and see what they meant, and, if I could, why he had

changed so suddenly to me.

When we had walked some distance farther he himself proposed turning

back, and took me home. As we neared the hotel I could not resist

asking him why he had not come home with me that night in the carriage

instead of walking, or running rather, beside it.

Such a strange look came over his face as I asked him, and his

lips set with a stern expression as he said stiffly, icily, "I had

realized, Miss Linton, how utterly different our ways of looking at

life must be; or else perhaps it is that you do not hold me to be

enough of a knight to consider a woman's position before my own

comfort and pleasure."

"I don't understand you," said I, bewildered. "I _asked_ you to get

into the carriage."

"I know it," he replied; "but in such matters no gentleman can allow

a woman's kindly impulse of courtesy to compromise her in any way: he

must think first of her, and all the more because she has thought of

him."

"What do you mean by compromise?" I exclaimed. "I am quite independent

enough of public opinion to be a free agent in such matters: you must

not forget that I am a very different woman from a society belle."

"Quite true," he answered, stung by my tone, "but I do not claim to be

unsexed because--because--" He stammered.

"Because I am? You are very right to live according to your lights,

Mr. Lawrence, but I must decline to see life by them. Good-night!" His

tone was more than I could bear, and I turned abruptly from him: we

had reached the hotel, and without a word more I ran up stairs to my

parlor. The door was ajar: I entered hastily and pushed it to, but he

had followed me on the instant, and now stood with it in his hand.

"I cannot let you send me away without saying one word," he said. "I

never meant to say that you were unsexed. I beg you will forgive me if

I offended you. I had no right in the world to judge for you. It was a

presumptuous impulse to protect, to guard you that prompted my action

the other night--my words just now. Forgive me. As for my prejudices,

they shall not displease you again: only remember as my excuse that

a man of my class has but one way of looking at a woman

whom--he--" He drew a long breath, hesitated, and then said with an

effort--"admires."

The word was cold and formal, but his voice and manner were warm and

earnest. His mood seemed changed: he seemed again near me, and an

irresistible attraction toward him possessed me, body and soul. There

was something in his very attitude, as he stood by the door with his

head bent down, that seemed to win me. What was it that came over me?

What subtle power is it by which one nature draws another without any

apparent or audible summons? I do not know; but this I know, that

as he said the words I have just written down a floodgate within me

seemed raised, and with a mighty rush my spirit bounded toward him.

And yet I did not move.

"Forgive you?" I said. "Yes, a thousand times!"

He looked up, said, "Thank you!" very softly, and turned to the door.

When he reached it he stopped, turned again, and came up to me. "Will

you give me your hand in token of forgiveness and friendship?" he

said.

I said nothing, but held out my hand. He took it in both of his, and

then in a moment more my arms were about his neck, and our lips had

met. He kissed me again and again, held me very close for an instant,

and then, untwining my arms from their hold, he abruptly left

the room. That was three hours ago, and I have sat here thinking,

thinking, ever since. What does it all mean? Writing it out has helped

me, as I thought it would. Two things have become clear to me: I am

quite conscious that I have sought Mr. Lawrence at least as much as he

has me. I have always believed it to be as natural for a woman who was

once freed from the foolish prejudices of education and tradition to

hold out her hand to any one who attracted her as for a man to seek a

woman. Now I have proved it to be true. He does attract me. Why deny

it, either to myself or him? I do not, I will not. This I see and know

to be true. The other thing which seems clear to me is, that he is

only drawn by one side of his nature--that he does not want to love

me, perhaps can only half love me. Then, if that be so, I have done

wrong to show him my feelings. With his ideas about women, he would

feel it to be almost unmanly to fold his arms on his breast if a woman

put hers about his neck, as I did; and I fear I forced my love upon

him. I feel as I should think a man feels who has taken an unfair

advantage of a woman's fancy for him, and got from her graces and

favors to which her whole heart does not assent. I am not ashamed of

loving him: bear me witness, little book, I am not ashamed of loving

him, nor indeed of telling him so; only I would not "betray his will,"

as he said this afternoon. No, no: if he comes to me, it must be with

a whole and willing heart. Now that's resolved, what next? Write

to him of course, and tell him I am sorry to have led him into this

position, and say, "I won't do so again." Did a woman ever write to a

man before and beg his pardon for letting him kiss her? for throwing

her arms about his neck? I doubt it, but what does that matter? I

belong to the new era, and I will be the "Coming Woman." I laugh, but

I feel, after all, more like crying. Good-night, little book. I will

write to Mr. Lawrence in the morning. Now for bed.

_Dec_. 4. I wrote to him this morning, and sent my note by a

messenger. I could not work, I could neither think nor write, till his

answer came. He had made the bearer of my note wait, and wrote me

just a few words to ask if he might not see me to-night. I wrote back

"Yes," and now it is only four o'clock: he will not come till

eight. It seems an impossible time to wait, and I must not waste

the afternoon as I did the morning. Let me see: shall I finish that

article on English love-poetry, past and present, in which I mean to

show how the germ of degradation and decay always existed, even in the

chivalric idea of woman's nature and sphere, and how it has gone on

developing itself in the poetry which is its truest expression, till

we have got its different stages from the ideal of the school which

really had a gloss of elevation and fine sentiment about it--the woman

of Herrick and Ben Jonson, and later on of Lovelace and Montrose, to

the woman of Owen Meredith and Swinburne, who, instead of inspiring

men to die for her honor, makes them rather wish her to live to be

the instrument of their pleasure? It was not a bad idea, and I think

I could have traced the gradations very well. But I cannot write, I

cannot think. Let me recall my letter to him. Ah, here is one of the

dozen copies I made before I could make it what I wanted:

"MY DEAR MR. LAWRENCE: I must ask you to forgive me, for I am

conscious of having been thoughtless and selfish. I yielded to an

impulse yesterday, and I put you in an unfair position. I never meant

to do it, and I will never do it again. I trust we may be friends, and

I am

"Yours truly,

"MARGARET LINTON."

That was all I said: I wish now I had said more. Ah me! will evening

never come?

* * * * *

Before I go to bed I must write a word or two. Ah, how much happier I

am than I was last night! He came at eight punctually. I trembled all

over when I shook hands with him: I think he must have seen it, but

he said nothing. What a wonderful thing this thing they call high

breeding is! One feels it in a moment, and yet it seems intangible,

indescribable. He has it, I should think, in perfection, and he is the

only person I have ever known who possessed it, except, perhaps that

young girl, his cousin, whom he presented to me at the party. For

a while we talked--at least he did--easily and pleasantly, and then

suddenly he said, smiling at me, "Do you know, I think you are a very

generous woman?"

"Do you? Why?" said I.

"Because you are willing to shoulder other people's peccadilloes.

Don't you know a woman should never do that, especially for a man, who

is naturally selfish and can always take care of himself?"

I did not like the word _peccadilloes_, but I only said, "So can a

woman take care of herself."

"Do you really believe that?" he said with a gleam in his blue eyes.

"Really, I do. I am sure, at least, that I can take care of myself."

"Are you?" said he. We were sitting beside each other on the sofa, and

in another moment he had put his arm about me and drawn me to him. I

could not resist him--his voice, his eyes, his sweet words. I loved

him and was happy. It was a heaven of delight to be so near him; and

how natural it seemed! He said little, nor did I speak many words:

he held me in his arms, kissed me many times on my hands, cheeks and

lips; and then suddenly, almost abruptly, he left me, pleading an

engagement. But my happiness did not go with him. I am happy in the

conviction that he loves me, and I feel strong to make him all my own.

He will come again to-morrow. He did not say so: no need to say so--he

will surely come. He is poor, I know. What of that? I earn a good

income, and together we can defy the world. I shall be able to convert

him from his prejudices and narrow notions, now that he loves me.

What an acquisition to our cause! He loves me as I am. I have yielded

nothing, I have sacrificed nothing--not one iota of principle, not an

inch of ground. He has come to me because he loves me. I can influence

him to think as I do of woman's nature and sphere. My single life will

convince him of the justice of my ideas, and having known me, he can

never "decline on a lower range of feelings and a narrower sphere than

mine."

I am triumphant, I am successful: I could sing a song of rejoicing.

Have I not always felt sure that a woman's true attraction does not

depend on the false attitude in which she is placed by men? This man

has seen me as I am, and I have drawn him to me.

_Dec_. 11. It seems scarcely possible that it is but one week since I

wrote those words above, yet the date stares me in the face, and tells

me that but seven days and seven nights have passed since then. It

seems to me as if all my past life held less of emotion, of

sensation, less of _living_, than this one week; and what absolute,

uncompromising pain it has all been! It seems to me as if I had been

through every stage of suffering in succession; yet to what does it

all amount? what has caused it all? what has racked me with all these

various gradations of torture? Just this: since that night, that

triumphant, happy night, I have neither heard from nor seen Mr.

Lawrence. Silence, unbroken silence, has been between us. I have

borne it, but oh how badly!--not calmly or with quiet self-control

and strength; but I have borne it with passionate out-cry and restless

struggles. I have sobbed myself to sleep at night: I have roamed

aimlessly about during the day, or lain on a lounge, book in hand,

pretending to read, but in reality listening, waiting, longing to hear

his step, his knock, to have some message, some sign, come to me from

him. Then it has seemed to me as if there was but one other human

creature in the world, and that was he--as if all the manifold needs

and wants, losses and gains, of humanity had no longer the slightest

meaning for me. I have no sense of any ambition, any aim, any

obligation pressing upon me. I find nothing within myself to feed upon

but a few pale memories of him, and my whole future seems concentred

in his existence. I do not think I can bear to live as I am now. It

is all profoundly dark to me. Why does he not come? I can think of no

possible explanation--none. I am resolved to think it out to an end,

and then act: it is this passiveness which is killing me.

I am resolved: I will write, and will ask him to come to me, and when

he comes I will say what I feel. Some mistaken hesitation is keeping

him away. I will say, "We love one another: let us unite our lives and

live them together, yoked in all exercise of noble end."

_Letter from Henry Lawrence to George Manning_.

DECEMBER 11.

DEAR GEORGE: I will begin by telling the truth, and here it is: I am

in a scrape. I know you won't think much of the simple fact, but the

scrape is very different from any of my former ones, and I don't see

how I can get out of it honorably. I can see you raise your eyebrows,

and hear you say with an incredulous smile, "Why, Harry, I have heard

you ridicule honor a thousand times where women are concerned, and of

course this scrape involves a woman." You are right there--it does;

or rather a woman has involved me, and there lies the scrape. As for

honor, I laugh at most of the things I believe in, just because it's

the fashion of the day--and I belong to the day I live in--_not_ to

wear one's heart on one's sleeve. Then, too, sometimes one finds that

logically one thinks a thing, an idea, a feeling absurd, and yet when

one's life comes into collision with it, somehow up springs something

within you which I suppose might be called an instinct, and forces you

to respect and cherish and uphold the very feeling or idea which you

have always ridiculed.

Well, I'll tell you my story, and then perhaps you'll tell me what to

do. About--let me see--a month ago I went with some men one evening,

out of pure idleness, to a public meeting. The men who spoke were

all stupid, and roared and mouthed stuff "full of sound and fury,

signifying nothing," and I was thinking how I could get away and have

a game of cards at the club, when suddenly a voice like music smote

upon my astonished ears. I looked up, and there on the platform stood

a woman, speaking, by Jove! and doing it well, too. I listened and

looked, and should have enjoyed it if it had not disgusted me so in

theory. I must confess, barring the fact of her being there, there

was nothing objectionable about her. She was handsome, and had a

magnificent voice: she talked a hundred per cent, better than the men

who preceded her; and it was well for the meeting that it was over

when she stopped: any other speaker would have made a terrible

anti-climax. The two fellows with me proposed our being introduced to

her, and half from curiosity, half--I swore to speak the truth--half,

George, from attraction (hear me out, old fellow: she was

feminine-looking and very handsome)--I went forward and was presented.

She interested and attracted me, the more so perhaps that from the

moment our eyes met I was conscious that there existed between us a

strong natural affinity, latent, but capable of being developed. I

called on her the next day, and made my cousin Clara invite her to a

party. Clara, who is thoroughly unconventional, and would do anything

to please me, did so without a second thought. But imagine my distress

when, as I entered the drawing-room a little late, I saw my fair

Amazon standing in a doorway, not only alone, but alone in the midst

of curious and scornful glances. My courtesy was at stake, my chivalry

was roused, and she looked very handsome and very like any other woman

brought to bay. She had the most charming expression, compounded of

bewilderment and defiance, on her face when my eyes fell on her,

and it changed to one that pleased me still better (which I won't

describe) when our eyes met. You, you unbelieving dog, think that

because she is "strong-minded" she must be repulsive and immodest. But

there is a charming inconsistency about female human nature.

But to go on with my story. I felt quite like a champion, I assure

you, for, after all, it was shabby of the women to give her the cold

shoulder, and cowardly of the men to stand aloof; so I devoted myself

to her, and asked Alice Wilton to be presented to her. Miss Linton has

not a particle of _usage du monde_, nor is she what would be called

high-bred; but she is self-possessed and gentle in her manner, and

makes a good enough figure in the company of ladies and gentlemen.

Here I confess my weakness. I did think her very attractive, and I

was conscious that I had a power over her which I did not forbear to

exercise. The result of this was that when we parted she had every

reason to expect to see me very soon again, and I had inwardly

resolved never to see her again if I could help it. I did keep away,

and then luck would have it that I met her taking a walk one

snowy afternoon. I suspected she had come out to get away from the

remembrance of me, as I had to get away from the desire to see her;

and she was so moved by seeing me that I could not help showing her

that I cared for her, and perhaps seemed to care more than I did.

It was a sore temptation, and I yielded to it. Wrong? Do you think I

don't know that it was wrong? But the worst is to come. I walked back

with her, and an accident led to our having one of those conversations

that people have when they are under the influence of emotion and

cannot give it vent in its natural way, but must do something or talk.

If I could have put my arms about her and kissed her, we could have

got on without words: as it was, I said I hardly know what, and she,

being very much in earnest and very unsophisticated, showed me how

much she cared for me. I vow, George, if I had had a moment to think,

to gather my self-control--But I had not, and so we ended by my

finding her arms round my neck, after all. I rushed away with hardly

a word, and walked and walked, and thought and thought. The next day

comes a note from her--what one would call a manly, straightforward

acknowledgment that she had led me into a position that was an unfair

one, and that she regretted it. Nothing franker or more generous could

have been conceived, but somehow it roused within me the impulse to

make her conscious of the weakness of her sex. My masculine conceit

rose and demanded an opportunity of self-assertion. I went to her,

and she seemed more attractive than ever. Her independence and

self-reliance nettled me, and I was mean enough to yield to the desire

to see if she could resist me. But I was richly punished, for the

knowledge rolled over me like a wave that she loved me, and I left

her, stung by the consciousness of having taken an unworthy advantage

of a simple and trustful nature. I know that this is high tragedy, and

will meet with your displeasure. I can hear you say, "Confound you,

Harry! why don't you marry her?"

Very easy to say; but look at the situation, which is not so simple

as you probably think. Of course any girl of my own class would never

build an edifice of eternal and sacred happiness on such a foundation

as a few warm looks and eloquent words, or even a caress, might

furnish. In plain words, neither she nor I would think marriage

a necessary or even likely sequence to such a preamble. But it is

different with Miss Linton. I am sure, I am confident--laugh if you

like--that she has never given any man what she has given me, either

in degree or kind. Her eccentric notions about women's nature and

position would protect her from tampering with her own feelings or

those of another; and then, too, there has been so much hard reality,

so much serious business, in her life that the sweet follies of

girlhood have not been hers. Shall I say that I cannot help feeling

her innocence and inexperience make her more attractive? I am

not sure, even, that they do not balance her self-reliance and

independence, which certainly repel me. All this I did not dream of

at first. I am not a scoundrel or a coxcomb. It came to me the other

afternoon all at once, when she threw her arms about my neck. I have

been selfish, and perhaps stupid. "Why not marry her?" you say. I have

asked myself that question, and this is my answer: No passion in the

world could make me insensible to the humiliation of her career, and I

should be obliged not only to accept it in the past, but to recognize

it in the future. My wife must be my social equal and the natural

associate of high-bred women. I must be able to take any man by the

throat who looks at or speaks of her as does not please me. This

woman's character, intellect, manners and appearance are public

property for all purposes of criticism and comment. She is unsexed.

My wife must be dependent on me, clinging to me. This woman has always

stood, and will always stand alone; and yet I have thought that she

was capable of such deep, strong, concentrated feeling that the man

who owned her heart might do with her as he liked. This, I admit, has

tempted me to think of marriage, for, after all, George, it would be

a luxury to be very much loved. This woman would love a man in another

fashion from that which prevails in society.

But I have put the idea away from me, and here I am, determined not to

marry her, and yet feeling that I have unintentionally wronged her.

I have not been near her these seven days. I know she expects me--she

has every right to expect me--but I will not go till I have decided

what to say and do. I am too weak to go otherwise. Write to me,

George, and advise me; and remember that she is not like the women of

whom we have both known so many. She has no more idea of flirting than

had Hippolyta queen of the Amazons or Zenobia queen of Palmyra--those

two strong-minded women of old days. I am joking, but I assure you

I am not jolly. I am afraid, George, that she truly loves me, and,

unsexed though she be, love has made a woman of her, and I fear is

unmanning me.

Yours always,

HENRY LAWRENCE.

P.S. I open my letter to say that it is too late for you to write when

you receive this: it will be over. I have just got a note from her

asking to see me. I shall speak frankly, but I feel like a hound. As

ever, H.L.

_Journal_.

_Dec_. 11. I am resolved to write it all down as it happened. I wrote

him a note this afternoon, and this evening he came--handsome, pale

and quiet. He walked up to me, took my hand in his, pressed it and let

it go. He did not wait for me to speak, fortunately, for I could

not have spoken: I could not have commanded my voice. He said--oh

so quietly and steadily!--"I should have come to see you to-night, I

think, if you had not asked me: I had so much to say."

"I thought you would never come," I answered.

He rose and walked hurriedly up and down the room, then paused in

front of me and said--his words seem burned into my brain--"You are

a woman who deserves frankness, and I will be utterly and absolutely

frank with you. I have done very wrong in behaving as I have done.

I had no right, no justification, for it, and I beg you to forgive

me--humbly I beg it on my knees;" and he knelt before me.

I was bewildered and pained beyond measure. I thought I knew not what,

but a tissue of wild absurdities rushed through my brain to account

for his words--anything rather than think he did not love me.

"With many women this confession would be unnecessary," he went on.

"You are genuine and simple, and attach a real meaning to every word

and act, because you do not yourself speak or act without meaning. How

can I, then, part from you without asking your forgiveness for what I

have said and done?"

"Part from me!" I exclaimed, holding out my hands to him: he had risen

now. "Oh, Mr. Lawrence, let us be frank with one another. There is no

need to part. Do you think your poverty is any barrier between us? It

is but an added bond. Can I not work too? And we will learn to think

alike where we now differ. Why should we part? We love each other. Why

should we not marry? What can part us but our own wills? I love you,

you know it, and I think you love me; at least I am sure I could

teach you to love me." He stood while I spoke, his arms hanging by his

sides. What more I said I hardly know. I think--I am sure, indeed--I

told him, standing there, how I loved him. I felt I must speak it once

to one human being. A great foresight came to me: I seemed to see my

life stretching before me, long, lonely, desolate: no other love like

this could come, full well I knew that, and I could not enter on that

dreary path without setting free my soul. Yes, I spoke out to him.

Words of power they were--power and fire and longing. Perhaps I

alone, of all women, have told a man of my love when I knew it to be

hopeless. My hope had died when he first spoke. Had he loved me, he

had spoken otherwise. That I was woman enough to see; but if it be

unwomanly to feel in every pulse-throb the need of expression, to know

that I should die of suppressed passion, tenderness, love, if I did

not speak it all, did not tell him once how I loved him, how I could

have lived his servant, his slave, happy and content--how his smile

seemed the sun and his caresses heaven to me--how I was hungry with

the hunger of my very soul to spend on him the garnered treasure of my

heart,--if this be unwomanly, I was indeed unsexed. I seemed exalted

out of myself, and full of power.

He heard me, and it moved him. He spoke again when I had finished. He

had not lifted his eyes to mine, and did not then. He said, "I could

not marry you: it would be the worst possible thing for both of us.

Your life would be miserable--mine most wretched. You must see that

there are other things in life besides love, and other things which

influence its happiness. Everything would separate us except our

personal affinity. Our education, our ideas, beliefs, our past lives,

our aims for the future, make a gulf between us. We could never bridge

it," He paused.

I laughed aloud: he looked at me then in surprise. "I laugh," said I,

"because I see how absurd it was to fancy that you loved me. A bridge

between us! If you loved me as I love you, our love would turn water

into land, melt mountains into plains: we would cross dry-shod to one

another."

"Do you love me so?" he said, his blue eyes gleaming, and making

a step toward me. I had power enough to make him feel, and feel

strongly, but that was not enough.

"No," I said, "Mr. Lawrence, you must take nothing from me now: I can

give nothing now."

"But if I want all?" he said.

I laughed again. "But you do not," I said. "I have told you I love

you and would marry you. You cannot, you say. Then that ends all

between us. I love you too much to be able to give you only what you

give me."

"We cannot marry," he repeated: "it would be ruin to both of us."

"Go away!" I said: "I would rather be alone." I was spent, and felt

feeble and weak.

"Let me tell you, first, that I admire you, esteem you, infinitely:

let me say this before I go; and you will think of me kindly." He said

this pleadingly.

I looked at him wonderingly. Did he not _yet_ know how much I loved

him? My courage and pride were ebbing fast away. Faintly I said,

"Before you go kneel down in front of me, and let me touch your

forehead with my lips." He did so, and I bent forward and took his

head in both my hands and kissed it. Somehow as I did it the strange

thought came to me that if I had ever had a son, just so I have kissed

his head. It was a yearning feeling, with such tenderness in it that

my heart seemed dissolving. Many times. I kissed it and held it, and

then, "Good-bye, my only love," I said. "I could have loved you very

well."

His eyes were wet with tears as he raised his head. "I shall never

forget you: you are nobleness itself," he said. "God bless and prosper

you, Miss Linton!" Then he went.

That is all, all, and life is where it was a month ago; only, "I wear

my rue with a difference." He was my inferior. I was higher and nobler

and purer than he, but I loved him, and the greatest joy I could know

would have been to lead my life with him. So it is over, and this book

had best be put away. I will go back to my old life, and see what I

can make of it. I am glad to have known what love meant: I shall be

gladder after a while, when this ache is over. If he could but have

loved me as I loved him--if he could! But he could not, and it was not

to be. I must learn to be again a strong-minded woman.

_Letter from Henry Lawrence to George Manning._

DEAR GEORGE: I'm off for Europe to-morrow. I behaved _like a man_ and

broke the whole thing off. She behaved like a man too, told me how

much she loved me, and then accepted the position. I feel like a girl

who has jilted a fellow, and it's a very poor way to feel. Never flirt

with a strong-minded woman. I believe she cared for me, and I think

very likely when I'm fifty I shall think I was a fool not to have

braved it out and married her. I'm sure if I don't think it then,

I shall when I reach the next world; but then, like the girl in

Browning's poem, "she will pass, nor turn her face."

I feel very blue, and I think I'd better ask Alice to marry me. Yours,

H.L.

MARSHALL NEIL.

THE KING OF BAVARIA.

Of all the prominent personages who, through their official position

or individual power, or both combined, occupy at present the eye

of the public, probably not one is more unjustly criticised or

more generally misunderstood than Ludwig II., king of Bavaria. As

a reigning monarch, young, handsome, secluded in his habits and

unmarried, he is of course exposed to all the inquisitive observation

and exaggerated gossip which the feminine curiosity and masculine envy

of a court and capital can supply--gossip which is eagerly listened

to by the annual crowd of foreigners who spend a few days in Munich

to visit the Pinakothek, listen to a Wagner opera, and catch, if

possible, a glimpse of the romantic young king; and is by them carried

home to find public circulation at third hand through the columns of

sensation newspapers. And when to this personal criticism is added

the strife of opinion over his political acts, and the ill-will of the

extreme Church party in consequence of his liberal tendencies, it may

easily be believed that his real character is but little known, and is

in many cases deliberately falsified. A brief review of the facts and

circumstances of his reign may serve to correct, in some degree, the

false impressions which have so long prevailed.

In 1864, in the midst of the confusion of the Schleswig-Holstein war,

which was then agitating all Germany, King Max died, and his eldest

son, Ludwig, only nineteen years old, was summoned from the quiet

routine of his university studies to ascend the throne of Bavaria. In

childhood his health had been extremely delicate, and on that account

he had been educated in unusual privacy--training which, joined to

his naturally reserved and meditative disposition, and the various

disenchantments of his public career, may satisfactorily account for

his present confirmed love of solitude. The position to which he was

so unexpectedly called was an exceedingly difficult one for a mind

filled, as his was, with ideal visions of liberty and progress,

and totally inexperienced in the ways of a selfish world and in the

profundity of Jesuitical intrigues; and the unavoidable embarrassments

of the time had been increased by the course of his immediate

predecessors. Ludwig I., through a sentimental love of the

picturesque, had encouraged the multiplication of monasteries and

convents and brotherhoods of wandering friars, and Maximilian, though

naturally tolerant, and still more liberalized by the influence of his

Protestant queen, was a firm believer in the divine right of kings;

and having joined hands with the clerical party in putting down the

revolution of 1848, found himself afterward so far compromised in

their behalf that he was unable to oppose their aggrandizing plans; so

that in his reign the priests, and especially the Jesuits, attained to

a greater degree of power than they had ever before known.

The young king for a while carried on the government after his

father's policy, and with the same ministerial officers; but he

soon began to show signs of independence of character, the first

manifestation of which was an attempt to curtail the power of the

Jesuits, especially in the matter of public instruction. This was,

of course, enough to rouse the enmity of the whole Society of Jesus

against him, and its members have been busy ever since in thwarting

all his plans and doing their utmost to render him unpopular with his

subjects.

Unfortunately, the king soon gave his people a plausible excuse for

fault-finding by the unbounded favor which he bestowed upon Wagner,

whose ideas and whose music were at that time alike obnoxious to the

majority of Germans. The favorite theory of this great genius, but

arrogant and unscrupulous man, was the elevation of the German nation

through the aesthetic and moral influence of a properly developed

theatre; and the king was ready to offer every facility for the

practical realization of this visionary plan. But the Jesuits scented

heresy in the alliance between the experienced composer and the

youthful dreamer, and the liberal party were indignant that Wagner's

affairs should be made a cabinet question at a time of such great

national anxiety. The dissatisfaction rose to such a height at last

that it became necessary for Wagner to leave Munich, and for his royal

patron to break off, apparently at least, the unpopular intimacy. The

people were right, to some extent, in denouncing Wagner, whose course

in Munich, as elsewhere, had been selfish and ungrateful, and in

blaming the king for indulging his individual tastes to the neglect

of his duties as a ruler; but the youth and inexperience of the latter

were a sufficient excuse for excess of enthusiasm, and reproach may

well be forgotten in astonishment and admiration at the capacity of

this mere boy to understand and feel those wonderful musical dramas

which were then almost universally laughed at or condemned, though

their gradual but steady rise in public appreciation seems now to

warrant their claim to be considered as "the music of the future."

In December, 1865, a little more than a year after his accession,

King Ludwig acknowledged the union of Italy under Victor Emmanuel--an

important step, which at once arrayed the Catholic Church against him

as its enemy. He also endeavored to effect a reconciliation between

Vienna and Berlin, but his mediation did not avail; nor could he

hinder the alliance of Bavaria with Austria in the war of 1866. But as

soon as peace was concluded he quitted the policy of his father, which

he had hitherto, for the most part, followed, and selected as members

of his cabinet men of liberal principles and progressive ideas,

calling to, its head Prince Hohenlohe, a known friend of Prussia and a

firm opposer of the Austrian alliance.

One of the first projects of the new ministry was to free the public

schools, as far as possible, from the influence of the clergy. These

and other liberal movements aroused the whole force of the

Ultramontane party, and a terrible strife ensued, resulting in

Hohenlohe's resignation, which the king was unwillingly obliged to

accept. Hohenlohe was succeeded by Count Bray, a man devoted to

feudalism and the Church, who had been minister under Ludwig I. and

Maximilian II. The clerical party were exultant in their triumph. They

saw that trouble was brewing between France and Prussia, and trusted

that Count Bray would be able to prevent any alliance between the

latter state and Bavaria. They would have preferred a coalition with

France and Austria against Prussia and the kingdom of Italy, with the

ultimate purpose of reinstating the pope as a temporal sovereign. To

this end they were willing to degrade Bavaria to a province of Rome,

and would gladly have dethroned the king if they could have done so;

their hatred of him having been increased in the mean time by his

public recognition of Dr. Döllinger's protest against the decree of

papal infallibility. But when the crisis came their hopes were

speedily frustrated by the king's prompt decision to stand by Prussia

in the contest. He at once declared his intention to Parliament, which

had until then appeared willing to grant only the supplies necessary

to maintain Bavaria in a state of armed neutrality. The decision was

the king's alone--"_My word is sacred_" was his principle of

action--but after he had taken the first step his ministers supported

him throughout the struggle with patriotic zeal. He immediately issued

a proclamation calling his people to arms against their hereditary

enemy, and his message, "_We South Germans are with you_" was the

first pledge of sympathy and assistance that cheered the king and the

citizens at Berlin.

King Ludwig's conduct in this matter is especially deserving of

praise, because his kingdom is of sufficient size and importance to

make its absorption into the empire a great sacrifice of individual

pride; particularly when it is remembered that Prussia, of which

Bavaria had long been jealous, was to be the leading power in the new

union of states, and Prussia's king the emperor. But from the time of

Ludwig's accession he had looked forward with hope to a consolidation

of the numerous states of Germany into one nation; and the

opportunity, though coming sooner than he or any one else had

anticipated, found him not unprepared for the change. When the storm

against Hohenlohe was at its height, he said, "Does that party really

think that the steps which have already been taken toward the unity of

Germany will be retracted? Then they do not know me. I have not read

Schiller in vain. I too can say, 'All the power, all the influence,

which belongs to me as a constitutional prince I will lay in the

scale of the idea of the unity of Germany.' I should greatly prefer to

devote myself to peaceful pursuits, to clear the way for my people to

elevate themselves through education and material prosperity, and to

help them open the noble treasure of ideas bequeathed to them by our

thinkers and poets; but when a foreign enemy is standing at Germany's

gates I hold it my duty not only to give my army, my lands and my

property for the public good, but to offer myself to the commander

in-chief as a common soldier of the united German empire." On another

occasion he said, "I acknowledge in my country only one party--that

of truly noble men, who, through extensive knowledge, pure thoughts

and useful deeds, serve the commonwealth, whether these be skillful

workmen, citizens, peasants, scholars, honest magistrates, who, like

myself, serve the people conscientiously, officers who are friends as

well as leaders of the soldiers, worthy priests of all confessions,

who are real physicians of souls, righteous judges, teachers of my

people, or noblemen who add to the distinction of title that of true

nobility of soul, and set a worthy example in all good things: all

these, and only these, are of my party."

And again: "I desire of my Creator not the satisfaction of gratified

ambition, but the joy of knowing that after my death it will be said

of me, 'Ludwig II. strove to be a true friend to his people, and he

succeeded in making them happier." And again: "It would gratify me

more to obtain a true solution of my country's social problems than to

become, by force of arms, ruler of all Europe; nor should I be willing

to incur the responsibility of a single life lost through my pursuit

of any selfish plan."

These quotations are sufficient to show the enlightened views of the

king in regard to his duties as a ruler; and his whole conduct since

his accession has proved his desire to free his subjects from the

chains of bigotry and superstition in which they have so long been

bound. His constant opposition to the machinations of the Jesuits,

his increasing neglect of the religious shows and ceremonies in which

Munich delights, and his open support of Dõllinger and the liberal

Catholics, indicate plainly enough that he is no slave of the Church

of which he is by birth and training a member; but his example and

influence cannot, as yet, effect much against the strong majority of

Ultramontanists in Parliament and the crowds of priests who still hold

spiritual sway over the greater portion of his people. One peculiar

hindrance to the success of any progressive measure in Bavaria lies in

the absurd regulation which makes every ex-cabinet minister a member

of a separate government council, the consent of which must be

obtained before any new royal or parliamentary decree can be put in

force; and as the majority of these ex-ministers are Ultramontanists

or otherwise behind the times, it will be seen that the progressive

party, though with the king at their head, are constantly thwarted

by this auxiliary force of the Jesuits and old fogies outside the

government.

With regard to the private life of the king, his secluded habits are

a source of general complaint. The Bavarians, and especially the

citizens of Munich, would like him to mix freely with his people in

the streets and at places of public resort, as Ludwig I. was in the

habit of doing, and to settle down with wife and children around

him, after the manner of good King Max; to head all their festive

processions, preside at the opening of their annual fairs, and lend

himself to legendary customs which have long lost their significance,

and to social gayeties in which he can find no pleasure. And because

he refuses to take his airings in the crowded streets, to head

the processions on Corpus Christi and St. John's Day, to wash the

disciples' feet on Holy Thursday, to preside at the Michaelmas

horse-races and puppet-shows, and to marry for the sake of increasing

the brilliancy of the court and perpetuating the Wittelsbach dynasty,

he is denounced alike by devotees and worldlings, who judge him, not

by what he does that is good and useful, but by what he does not do

to gratify them. Because he spends the greater part of the year in

retirement at his castles in the country, coming to Munich only for

the session of Parliament in the winter, he is accused of indifference

to the prosperity of his state and the welfare of his subjects.

But he himself says, "It is incumbent upon a prince to meditate upon

the duties of his calling, which he can surely do better when alone

with God and Nature than in the confusion of a court." His ministers

and all who have occasion to approach him in a business capacity

declare that at every such interview they are surprised at his

thorough knowledge of the subject under discussion, as also at his

keen insight into character and motives.

To an unprejudiced observer--say to an intelligent foreigner who

remains in Bavaria long enough, not only to hear all the gossip, but

to see and judge for himself as to the merits of the case--the

career of this young king is exceedingly interesting and worthy of

admiration. It is something, in these times of political intrigue and

diplomatic evasion, that a king can say, "My word is sacred," without

awakening in any mind a remembrance of broken faith and forgotten

obligations. It is something, amid the corruptions of a dissolute

capital and the temptations of a royal court, that the sovereign,

young, full of tender sentiment, and unprotected by the marriage tie,

lives on with virtue unimpeached; not even the bitterest enemy daring

to breathe a word against the purity of this modern Lohengrin. It is

something that a man born to the splendors of a throne should

prefer to these the simplicity of Nature, the solitude of woods

and mountains, the companionship of music that searches the soul's

sincerity, and of books that have no recognition of royalty in their

announcement of immortal and universal truths.

In the endless criticism of which the king is the subject attention is

often called, sometimes in pity, sometimes in blame, to the fact that

he has no intimate friend or friends. Those who make this reproach

forget that his station demands a certain degree of isolation, unless

he would lay himself open to the charge of favoritism, and the object

of his preference to the flatteries and manoeuvrings of the parasites

that infest a court. Of the men of his own age whose rank would

entitle them to associate with the king on terms of familiarity, there

is not one who has sufficient sympathy with his tastes and pursuits

to be chosen by him as a companion; and the tyranny of etiquette

and custom forbids him to seek out a congenial friend from among the

untitled scholars and thinkers who judge him tenderly and justly from

afar. Moreover, his early unfortunate essays in this direction may

well have taught him to be reserved and cautious in be-stowing his

confidence and love. The man whose splendid genius enthralled, and

still enthralls, the intellect of the king had not the moral qualities

to secure his esteem; the woman whose beauty once took his senses

captive he soon found to be unworthy of his heart; and disappointments

such as these are a lesson for a lifetime to a character such as his.

Fortunately, he has abundant resources within himself for the

entertainment of his self-chosen solitude. The education which was so

early interrupted by a summons to the throne has been continued with

zeal through the study of the best authors in various languages. He

always has some favorite work at hand for the edification of a chance

mood or unoccupied moment; and in his frequent short journeys, however

slight provision he may make for his wardrobe, a port-manteau well

filled with books is sure to accompany him. When in the country a good

portion of his time is spent on horseback. With a single attendant at

some distance behind him, he rides for hours, stopping occasionally at

some peasant's cottage or roadside inn to refresh himself with a glass

of water or a simple meal, treating his temporary entertainers the

while with an unreserved friendliness which has won him the devoted

affection of his lowly neighbors, and which he never displays within

the precincts of the court.

The king's favorite residence is Hohenschwangau, where he is building

a noble castle upon the site of a ruin which was originally a Roman

fortress and afterward a feudal stronghold. The new building is

modeled after the style of the Wartburg, and is composed of

various kinds of stone brought from different parts of Germany and

Switzerland, and selected for their beauty and durability. The work

has been in progress for about two years, and will probably require

ten or twelve years more to finish it, as the season for outdoor labor

in that mountainous region is necessarily short.. The surrounding

scenery is magnificent: lakes, mountains, gorges, waterfalls, gloomy

forests, sunny meadows, all that is grand and beautiful in Nature, are

here comprised within a single view.

The present castle stands on the spur of an adjacent hill, and

commands the same extensive prospect. Though of moderate size (too

small, indeed, to accommodate at the same time the king and the

queen-mother with their respective suites, for which reason it is

occupied by each only during the absence of the other), the appearance

of the castle is imposing, and its interior decorations render it

a most interesting point for the tourist, as well as a delightful

residence for its proprietors. The walls of all the principal

apartments are adorned with frescoes painted by some of the best

German artists, each room being devoted to a special subject. There is

the "Hall of the Swan-Knight," containing illustrations of that

most charming legend, the foundation of the world's best opera,

_Lohengrin_; the "Schwangau Chamber," with pictures concerning the

history of the locality; the "Bertha Chamber," containing the story of

the parents of Charlemagne; the "Ladies' Chamber," portraying the

life of German women in the Middle Ages, the principal figure being

a portrait of Agnes, wife of Otto von Wittelsbach, an ancestor of the

royal house; the "Hall of Heroes," containing illustrations of the

Vilkina Saga, Dietrich of Berne being supposed to have lived at

Hohenschwangau; the "Knights' Chamber," representing the knightly

customs of the Middle Ages; the "Oriental Chamber," with frescoes

recalling King Maximilian's travels in the East; and several other

rooms, in each of which is commemorated some striking point of German

history or some interesting record of national manners. The furniture

of all these apartments is rich and tasteful; and scattered here and

there are little indications of home-life which lend a new charm to

the stately abode. Thus, upon a table loaded with costly and beautiful

objects are two exquisite portraits, on porcelain, of the king and his

brother, suggesting at once the usual vicinity of their affectionate

mother; while the abundance of books in the king's private

sitting-room is a pleasant reminder of his studious habits. It is

curious to see how the swan, the device of this ancient property,

which was formerly called "Schwanstein", is represented in every

possible manner and material in the adornment of the castle. Swans

are pictured upon the armorial bearings at the entrance-gate; a bronze

swan spouts water from its uplifted beak in the garden fountain; while

below, upon the two lakes that enclose the park, groups of

living swans are floating about, as if to testify to the abiding

characteristics of the place. Within the building not only is the swan

a prominent figure in the frescoed story, but whichever way one turns

one sees a counterfeit presentment of the graceful bird. There is

Lohengrin in his enchanted boat impelled by his beloved swan, an

exquisite group in silver, and another like it in porcelain; swans are

carved upon the furniture, moulded upon the dishes, painted upon cups

and saucers, embroidered upon cushions and footstools: they serve as

ornaments to antique goblets, as covers to match-boxes, as handles to

vases. The paper-knife upon His Majesty's writing-table is carved

into the same likeness, and swans adorn the top of the pen-handle and

preside over the ink and sand bottles.

Besides the castle of Hohenschwangau, the king has a hunting-lodge

at Linderhof, which is being fitted up with great elegance in the

Renaissance style, and a palace on Lake Starnberg, where he spends

the greater part of his time, its nearness to Munich making it a

convenient residence.

As a consolation for the severities of winter and the utter lack

of beauty in the situation and surroundings of Munich, he has his

winter-garden, that mysterious enclosure at the top of the palace,

which is a perpetual irritant to the curiosity of the public, who

grudge to their ruler every token of that possession of his which

he seems to value above all the rest--his privacy. Now and then some

noted scholar or privileged acquaintance is invited to enter this

green retreat, so that its delights are not all unknown to the outside

world. The garden opens from the private apartments of the king, and

encloses a space of two hundred and thirty-four feet in length by

fifty (in one part ninety) feet in breadth, being, in fact, the upper

story of the west wing of the palace, with a raised and vaulted roof

of iron and glass. The landscape is arranged after the king's own

idea, and is entirely Oriental in vegetation and effect, the long

perspective of tropical luxuriance being closed by a distant view of

the Himalaya Mountains, so admirably executed that the illusion is

not dispelled until the beholder approaches very near to the wall upon

which it is painted. The garden is agreeably diversified by groups of

palms, plantains and other trees, by open lawns adorned with beds

of brilliant flowers, and by sheltered walks and secluded arbors. A

considerable space is occupied by a lake bordered with reeds, the home

of several swans, which float up and down in the dreamy silence: a

little way from the shore stands a small pavilion entirely hidden

in the dense shrubbery that surrounds it; and farther off a gorgeous

_kiosk_ raises its glittering cupolas and slender minarets above the

neighboring bushes and blossoming plants.

During the king's stay in Munich in the winter he takes but little

part in the gayeties of the season. He conforms, indeed, to the

customs of a court in giving the stated number of balls, dinners and

concerts; but it is easy to see that necessity, and not inclination,

prompts him to the task. There is plenty of work to occupy his mind

during the session of Parliament, and books enough to read and ponder

over in the solitude of his chamber; and so long as he is alert and

well prepared on every question of business to which his attention

is called, affable and polite to persons with whom he is brought into

official contact, gentle and generous to the poor and oppressed who

appeal to him in person--and no one can deny that he is all this--why

should he be blamed for preferring to spend his time as

A being breathing thoughtful breath,

instead of making himself a gazing-stock for the curious and a

companion of the gay and the foolish of his generation?

It may be that in the far-off future, long after the titles and

prerogatives of royalty shall have been done away with and wellnigh

forgotten, the virtues of this king, who is so poorly appreciated by

his contemporaries, will be commemorated in some beautiful legend,

like that of his favorite story of the Swan-Knight; since even now,

when that chaste hero appears in the dazzling purity of his enchanted

armor upon the Munich stage, one turns involuntarily to recognize his

counterpart in the solitary occupant of the royal box. E.E.

ON THE CHURCH STEPS.

CHAPTER X.

Lenox again, and bluebirds darting to and fro among the maples. I had

reached the hotel at midnight. Our train was late, detained on the

road, and though my thoughts drove instantly to the Sloman cottage,

I allowed the tardier coach-horses to set me down at the hotel. I had

not telegraphed from New York. I would give her no chance to withhold

herself from me, or to avoid me by running away. There was no time

for her, as yet, to have read of the ship's arrival. I would take her

unawares.

So, after the bountiful Nora, who presides over the comfort of her

favorites, had plied me with breakfast-cakes and milk and honey, I

sauntered down toward the Lebanon road. Yes, sauntered, for I felt

that a great crisis in my life was at hand, and at such times a

wonderful calmness, almost to lethargy, possesses me. I went slowly up

the hill. The church-clock was striking nine--calm, peaceful strokes.

There was no tremor in them, no warning of what was coming. The air

was very still, and I stopped a moment to watch the bluebirds before I

turned into the Lebanon road.

There was the little gray cottage, with its last year's vines about

it, a withered spray here and there waving feebly as the soft April

air caught it and tossed it to and fro. No sign of life about the

cottage--doors and windows tight shut and barred. Only the little gate

swung open, but that might have been the wind. I stepped up on the

porch. No sound save the echo of my steps and the knocking of my

heart. I rang the bell. It pealed violently, but there were no

answering sounds: nothing stirred.

I rang again, more gently, and waited, looking along the little path

to the gate. There was snow, the winter's snow, lingering about the

roots of the old elm, the one elm tree that overhung the cottage.

Last winter's snow lying there, and of the people who had lived in the

house, and made it warm and bright, not a footprint, not a trace!

Again I rang, and this time I heard footsteps coming round the corner

of the house. I sat down on the rustic bench by the door. If it had

been Bessie's self, I could not have stirred, I was so chilled, so

awed by the blank silence. A brown sun-bonnet, surmounting a tall,

gaunt figure, came in sight.

"What is it?" asked the owner of the sun-bonnet in a quick, sharp

voice that seemed the prelude to "Don't want any."

"Where are Mrs. Sloman and Miss Stewart? Are they not in Lenox?"

"Miss' Sloman, she's away to Minnarsoter: ben thar' all winter for her

health. She don't cal'late to be home afore June."

"And Miss Stewart?--is she with her?"

"Miss Stewart? I dunno," said the woman, with a strange look about the

corners of her mouth. "I dunno: I never see her; and the family was

all away afore I came here to take charge. They left the kitchen-end

open for me; and my sister-in-law--that's Hiram Splinter's wife--she

made all the 'rangements. But I _did_ hear," hesitating a moment, "as

how Bessie Stewart was away to Shaker Village; and some does say "--a

portentous pause and clearing of her throat--"that she's jined."

"_Joined_--what?" I asked, all in a mist of impatience and perplexity.

"Jined the Shakers."

"Nonsense!" I said, recovering my breath angrily. "Where is this

Hiram's wife? Let me see her."

"In the back lot--there where you see the yaller house where the

chimney's smoking. That's Hiram's house. He has charge of the Gold

property on the hill. Won't you come in and warm yourself by the fire

in the kitchen? I was away to the next neighbor's, and I was sure I

hear our bell a-ringin'. Did you hev' to ring long?"

But I was away, striding over the cabbage-patch and climbing the

worm-fence that shut in the estate of Hiram. Some wretched mistake:

the woman does not know what she's talking about. These Splinters!

they seem to have had some communication with Mrs. Sloman: they will

know.

Mrs. Splinter, a neat, bright-eyed woman of about twenty-five, opened

the door at my somewhat peremptory knock. I recollected her in a

moment as a familiar face--some laundress or auxiliary of the Sloman

family in some way; and she seemed to recognize me as well: "Why! it's

Mr. Munro! Walk in, sir, and sit down," dusting off a chair with her

apron as she spoke.

"Miss Stewart--where is she? _You_ know."

"Miss Stewart?" said the woman, sinking down into a chair and looking

greatly disturbed. "Miss Stewart's gone to live with the Shakers. My

husband drove her over with his team--her and her trunk."

"Why, where was her aunt? Did Mrs. Sloman know? Why isn't Miss Bessie

with her?"

"Miss' Sloman said all she could--_afterward_ I guess," said the

woman, wiping her eyes, "but 'twan't no use then. You see, Miss'

Sloman had jined a party that was goin' to Minnesota--while she was in

Philadelfy, that was--and Miss Stewart she wasn't goin'. She reckoned

she'd spend the winter here in the house. Miss' Sloman's maid--that's

Mary--was goin' with her to the West, and I was to hire my

sister-in-law to take charge of things here, so that Miss Bessie

could have her mind free-like to come and go. But afore ever Mary

Jane--that's my sister-in-law--could come over from Lee, where she was

livin' out, Miss Bessie comes up and opens the house. She stayed there

about a week, and she had lots of company while she was here. I think

she got tired. They was people that was just goin' to sail for Europe,

and as soon as they went she just shut up and told me to send for Mary

Jane to take care of things. So Mary Jane never see her, and perhaps

she giv' you a crooked answer, sir, if you was inquirin' of her over

to the cottage."

"Where's Hiram? where's your husband? Can I have his team this

morning?"

"I guess so," said the sympathetic Mrs. Splinter. "He'll show you the

very house he druv' her to."

Hiram was hunted for and found; and an hour later I was bowling

along the Lebanon road behind the bay team he was so proud of. I

had concluded to take him' with me, as he could identify places and

people, and I knew well what castles the Shaker houses are for the

world's people outside. Hiram was full of talk going over. He seemed

to have been bottling it up, and I was the first auditor for his

wrath. "I know 'm," he said, cracking his whip over his horses' heads.

"They be sharp at a bargain, they be. If they've contrived to get a

hold on Bessie Stewart, property and all, it'll go hard on 'em to give

her up."

"A _hold_ on Bessie!" What dreadful words! I bade him sharply hold his

tongue and mind his horses, but he went on muttering in an undertone,

"Yo'll see, yo'll see! You're druv' pretty hard, young man, I expect,

so I won't think nothing of your ha'sh words, and we'll get her out,

for all Elder Nebson."

So Hiram, looked out along the road from under his huge fur-cap, and

up hill and down. The miles shortened, until at last the fair houses

and barns of the Shaker village came in sight. A sleeping village, one

would have thought. Nobody in the road save one old man, who eyed us

suspiciously through the back of a chair he was carrying.

"It must be dinner-time, I think," said Hiram as he drove cautiously

along. Stopping at a house near the bridge: "Now this is the very

house. Just you go right up and knock at that 'ere door."

I knocked. In a twinkling the door was opened by a neat Shaker sister,

whose round, smiling face was flushed, as though she had just come

from cooking dinner. I stepped across the threshold: "Bessie

Stewart is here. Please say to her that a friend--a friend from

England--wishes to see her."

"Sure," said the motherly-faced woman, for she was sweet and motherly

in spite of her Shaker garb, "I'll go and see."

Smilingly she ushered me into a room at the left of the hall. "Take

seat, please;" and with a cheerful alacrity she departed, closing the

door gently behind her.

"Well," thought I, "this is pleasant: no bolts or bars here. I'm sure

of one friend at court."

I had leisure to observe the apartment--the neatly-scrubbed floor,

with one narrow cot bed against the wall, a tall bureau on which some

brown old books were lying, and the little dust-pan and dust-brush on

a brass nail in the corner. There was a brightly polished stove with

no fire in it, and some straight-backed chairs of yellow wood stood

round the room. An open door into a large, roomy closet showed various

garments of men's apparel hanging upon the wall. The plain thermometer

in the window casement seemed the one article of luxury or ornament

in the apartment. I believe I made my observations on all these things

aloud, concluding with, "Oh, Bessie! Bessie! you shall not stay here."

I know that I was startled enough by the apparition of a man standing

in the open closet door. He must have been within it at my entrance,

and had heard all I said.

He came forward, holding out his hand--very friendly apparently. Then,

requesting me to be seated, he drew out a chair from the wall and sat

down, tilting it back on two legs and leaning against the wall,

with his hands folded before him. Some commonplace remark about the

weather, which I answered, led to a rambling conversation, in which

he expressed the greatest curiosity as to worldly matters, and asked

several purely local questions about the city of New York. Perhaps his

ignorance was feigned. I do not know, but I found myself relating, _à

la_ Stanley-Livingstone, some of the current events of the day. His

face was quite intelligent, tanned with labor in the fields, and his

brown eyes were kind and soft, like those of some dumb animals. I note

his eyes here especially, as different in expression from those of

others of his sect.

Several times during the conversation I heard footsteps in the hall,

and darted from my seat, and finally, in my impatience, began to pace

the floor. Kindly as he looked, I did not wish to question the man

about Bessie. I would rely upon the beaming portress, whose "_Sure_"

was such an earnest of her good-will. Moreover, a feeling of contempt,

growing out of pity, was taking possession of me. This man, in what

did he differ from the Catholic priest save in the utter selfishness

of his creed? Beside the sordid accumulation of gain to which his

life was devoted the priest's mission among crowded alleys and

fever-stricken lanes seemed luminous and grand. A moral suicide, with

no redeeming feature. The barns bursting with fatness, the comfortable

houses, gain added to gain--to what end? I was beginning to give very

short answers indeed to his questions, and was already meditating a

foray through the rest of the house, when the door opened slowly and

a lady-abbess entered. She was stiff and stately, with the most formal

neckerchief folded precisely over her straitened bust, a clear-muslin

cap concealing her hair, and her face, stony, blue-eyed and cold--a

pale, frozen woman standing stately there.

"Bessie Stewart?" said I. "She is here--I know it. Do not detain her.

I must see her. Why all this delay?"

"Dost thou mean Sister Eliza?" she asked in chilling tones.

"No, nobody's sister--least of all a sister here--but the young lady

who came over here from Lenox two months ago--Bessie Stewart, Mrs.

Sloman's niece." (I knew that Mrs. Sloman was quite familiar with some

of the Shakeresses, and visited them at times.)

Very composedly the sister took a chair and folded her hands across

her outspread handkerchief before she spoke again. I noticed at this

moment that her dress was just the color of her eyes, a pale, stony

blue.

"Sister Eliza: it is the same," in measured accents. "She is not here:

she has gone--to Watervliet."

Can this be treachery? I thought, and is she still in the house? Will

they hide from her that I am here? But there was no fathoming the

woman's cold blue eyes.

"To Watervliet?" I inquired dismally. "How? when? how did she go?"

"She went in one of our wagons: Sister Leah and Brother Ephraim went

along."

"When will they return?"

"I cannot say."

All this time the man was leaning back against the wall, but uttered

not a word. A glance of triumph shot from the sister's eyes as I rose.

But she was mistaken if she thought I was going away. I stepped to the

window, and throwing it open called to Hiram, who was still sitting

in his wagon, chewing composedly a bit of straw. He leaped out in an

instant, and leaning out to him I rapidly repeated in an undertone the

previous conversation: "What would you do?"

"Ten chances to one it's a lie. Tell 'em you'll set there till you see

her. They can't shake us off that way."

I drew in my head. The pair still sat as before. "Well," said I, "as

I _must_ see her, and as you seem so uncertain about it, I will wait

here."

And again I took my seat. The sister's face flushed. I had meant no

rudeness in my tone, but she must have detected the suspicion in it.

She crimsoned to her temples, and said hastily, "It is impossible for

us to entertain strangers to-day. A brother is dying in the house:

we are all waiting for him to pass away from moment to moment. We can

submit to no intrusion."

Well, perhaps it was an intrusion. It was certainly their house if

it did hold my darling. I looked at her steadily: "Are you sure that

Bessie Stewart has gone away from here?"

"To Watervliet--yea," she answered composedly. "She left here last

week."

My skill at cross-examination was at fault. If that woman was lying,

she would be a premium witness. "I should be sorry, madam," I said,

recalling the world's etiquette, which I had half forgotten, "to

intrude upon you at this or any other time, but I cannot leave here in

doubt. Will you oblige me by stating the exact hour and day at which

Miss Stewart is expected to return from Watervliet, and the road

thither?"

She glanced across the room. Answering the look, the man spoke, for

the first time since she had entered: "The party, I believe, will be

home to-night."

"And she with them?"

"Yea, unless she has elected to remain."

"At what hour?"

"I cannot tell."

"By what road shall I meet her?"

"There are two roads: we generally use the river-road."

"To-night? I will go to meet her. By the river-road, you say?"

"Yea."

"And if I do not meet her?"

"If thou dost not meet her," said the lady-abbess, answering calmly,

"it will be because she is detained on the road."

I had to believe her, and yet I was very skeptical. As I walked out of

the door the man was at my heels. He followed me out on to the wooden

stoop and nodded to Hiram.

"Who is that, Hiram?" I whispered as he leaned across the back of a

horse, adjusting some leathern buckle.

"That?" said Hiram under his breath. "That's a deep 'un: that's Elder

Nebson."

Great was the dissatisfaction of the stout-hearted Splinter at my

retreat, as he called it, from the enemy's ground.

"I'd ha' liked nothin' better than to beat up them quarters. I thought

every minit' you'd be calling me, and was ready to go in." And he

clenched his fist in a way that showed unmistakably how he would

have "gone in" had he been summoned. By this time we were driving on

briskly toward the river-road. "You wa'n't smart, I reckon, to leave

that there house. It was your one chance, hevin' got in. Ten chances

to one she's hid away som'eres in one of them upper rooms," and he

pointed to a row of dormer-windows, "not knowin' nothin' of your bein'

there."

"Stop!" I said with one foot on the shafts. "You don't mean to say she

is shut up there?"

"Shet up? No: they be too smart for that. But there's plenty ways to

shet a young gal's eyes an' ears 'thout lockin' of her up. How'd she

know who was in this wagon, even if she seed it from her winders? To

be sure, I made myself conspicuous enough, a-whistlin' 'Tramp, tramp,'

and makin' the horses switch round a good deal. But, like enough, ef

she'd be down-spereted-like, she'd never go near the winder, but just

set there, a-stitchin' beads on velvet or a-plattin' them mats."

"Why should she work?" I asked, with my grasp still on the reins.

"Them all does," he answered, taking a fresh bite of the straw. "It's

the best cure for sorrow, they say. Or mebbe she's a-teachin' the

children. I see a powerful sight of children comin' along while you

was in there talkin', a-goin' to their school, and I tried to ask some

o' them about her. But the old sheep who was drivin' on 'em looked at

me like vinegar, and I thought I'd better shet up, or mebbe she'd give

the alarm that we was here with horses and wagon to carry her off."

I had a painful moment of indecision as Hiram paused in his narrative

and leisurely proceeded to evict a fly from the near horse's ear.

"I think we'll go on, Hiram," I said, jumping back to my seat again.

"Take the river-road."

Hiram had brought plentiful provision for his horses in a bag under

the seat. "Victualed for a march or a siege," he said as he dragged

out a tin kettle from the same receptacle when we drew up by the

roadside an hour after. "We're clear of them pryin' Shakers, and we'll

just rest a spell."

I could not demur, though my impatience was urging me on faster than

his hungry horses could go.

"I told Susan," he said, "to put me up a bit of pie and cheese--mebbe

we wouldn't be back afore night. Won't you hev' some?--there's a

plenty."

But I declined the luncheon, and while he munched away contentedly,

and while the horses crunched their corn, I got out and walked on,

telling Hiram to follow at his leisure. My heart beat fast as I espied

a wagon in the distance with one--yes, two--Shaker bonnets in it.

Bessie in masquerade! Perhaps so--it could not be the other: that

would be too horrible. But she was coming, surely coming, and the cold

prim sister had told the truth, after all.

The wagon came nearer. In it were two weather-beaten dames, neither of

whom could possibly be mistaken for Bessie in disguise; and the lank,

long-haired brother who was driving them looked ignorant as a child

of anything save the management of his horses. I hailed them, and the

wagon drew up at the side of the road.

It was the women who answered in shrill, piping voices: "Ben to

Watervliet? Nay, they'd ben driving round the country, selling garden

seeds."

"Did they know Bessie Stewart, who was staying in the Shaker village,

in the house by the bridge?"

"Sure, there had ben a stranger woman come there some time ago: they

could not tell--never heerd her name."

I was forced to let them drive on after I had exhausted every possible

inquiry, trusting that Hiram, who was close behind, would have keener

wit in questioning them, but Hiram, as it happened, did not come up

to them at all. They must have turned off into some farm-house lane

before they passed him. The afternoon wore on. It grew toward sunset,

and still we kept the river-road. There was no trace of the Shaker

wagon, and indeed the road was growing wild and lonely.

"I tell you what," said Hiram, stopping suddenly, "these beasts can't

go on for ever, and then turn round and come back again. I'll turn

here, and drive to the little tavern we passed about two mile back,

and stable 'em, and then you and me can watch the road."

It was but reasonable, and I had to assent, though to turn back

seemed an evil omen, and to carry me away from Bessie. The horses were

stabled, and I meanwhile paced the broad open sweep in front of the

tavern, across which the lights were shining. Hiram improved the

opportunity to eat a hearty supper, urging me to partake. But as I

declined, in my impatience, to take my eyes off the road, he brought

me out a bowl of some hot fluid and something on a plate, which I got

through with quickly enough, for the cool evening air had sharpened my

appetite. I rested the bowl on the broad bench beside the door, while

Hiram went backward and forward with the supplies.

"Now," said he as I finished at last, still keeping my eye upon the

road, "you go in and take a turn lyin' down: I'll watch the road. I'm

a-goin' to see this thing out."

But I was not ready to sleep yet; so, yielding to my injunction,

he went in, and I seated myself, wrapped in a buffalo robe from the

wagon. The night was damp and chill.

"Hedn't you better set at the window?" said the kind-hearted landlady,

bustling out. Hiram had evidently told her the story.

"Oh no, thank you;" for I was impatient of walls and tongues, and

wanted to be alone with my anxiety.

What madness was this in Bessie? She could not, oh she could not, have

thrown her life away! What grief and disquiet must have driven her

into this refuge! Poor little soul, scorched and racked by distrust

and doubt! if she could not trust me, whom should she trust?

The household noises ceased one by one; the clump of willows by the

river grew darker and darker; the stars came out and shone with that

magnetic brilliancy that fixes our gaze upon them, leading one to

speculate on their influence, and--

A hand on my shoulder: Hiram with a lantern turned full upon my face.

"'Most one o'clock," he said, rubbing his eyes sleepily. "Come to take

my turn. Have you seen nothing?"

"Nothing," I said, staggering to my feet, which felt like

lead--"nothing."

I did not confess it, but to this hour I cannot tell whether I had

been nodding for one minute or ten. I kept my own counsel as I turned

over the watch to Hiram, but a suspicion shot through me that perhaps

that wagon had gone by, after all, in the moment that I had been off

guard.

Hiram kept the watch faithfully till five that morning, when I too was

stirring. One or two teams had passed, but no Shaker wagon rattling

through the night. We breakfasted in the little room that overlooked

the road. Outside, at the pump, a lounging hostler, who had been

bribed to keep a sharp lookout for a Shaker wagon, whistled and waited

too.

"Tell you what," said Hiram, bolting a goodly rouleau of ham and eggs,

"I've got an idee. You and me might shilly-shally here on this road

all day, and what surety shall we hev' that they hevn't gone by the

other road. Old gal said there was two?"

"Yes, but the folks here say that the other is a wild mountain-road,

and not much used."

"Well, you see they comes down by the boat a piece, or they _may_ cut

across the river at Greenbush. They have queer ways. Now, mebbe they

_have_ come over that mountain-road in the night, while you and me

was a-watchin' this like ferrits. In that case she's safe and sound at

Shaker Village, not knowin' anything of your coming; and Elder Nebson

and that other is laughin' in their sleeves at us."

"Perhaps so."

"Now, this is my advice, but I'll do just as you say. 'Tain't no good

to lay around and watch that ere house _to day_. Ef we hedn't been in

such a white heat, we might just hev' hid round in the neighborhood

_there_ till she came along. But it's too late, for that now. Let's

you and me lay low till Sunday. She'll be sure to go to meetin' on

Sunday ef she's there, and you can quietly slip in and see if she is.

And to shut their eyes up, so that they won't suspect nothin', we'll

leave a message on one of your pasteboards that you're very sorry not

to hev' seen her, drefful sorry, but that you can't wait no longer,

and you are off. They'll think you're off for York: you've got York on

your cards, hevn't you?"

"Yes."

"You just come and stay to my house: we'll make you comfortable, and

there's only one day longer to wait. This is Friday, be'ent it? You'd

best not be seen around to the hotel, lest any of their spies be

about. They do a powerful sight o' drivin' round the country this time

o' year. And then, you see, ef on Sunday she isn't there, you can

go over to Watervliet, or we'll search them houses--whichever you

choose."

There seemed no help for it but to take Hiram's advice. We drove

homeward through the Shaker village, and drew up at the house again.

This time the door was opened by a bent, sharp little Creole, as

I took her to be: the beaming portress of the day before had been

relieved at her post.

"Nay, Bessie Stewart was not at home: she would go and inquire for me

when she was expected."

"No," I said carelessly, not wishing to repeat the scene of yesterday

and to present myself, a humiliated failure, before the two elders

again--"no: give her this card when she does come, and tell her I

could stay no longer."

I had not written any message on the card, for the message, indeed,

was not for Bessie, but for the others. She would interpret it that I

was in the neighborhood, anxious and waiting: she would understand.

"Home, then, Hiram," as I took my seat beside him. "We'll wait till

Sunday."

CHAPTER XI.

"You'd better eat sum'thin'," said Hiram over the breakfast-table on

Sunday morning. "Got a good long drive afore you, and mebbe a good

day's work besides. No? Well, then, Susan, you put the apple-brandy

into the basket, and some of them rusks, for I reckon we'll hev' work

with this young man afore night."

Susan, bless her good heart! wanted to go along, and as Hiram's

excitement was evidently at the highest pitch, he consented that she

should occupy the back seat of the wagon: "P'raps Miss Stewart'll feel

more comfortable about leavin' when she sees there's a woman along."

It was a rainy morning, and there were but few wagons on the road.

Arrived at the village, we encountered one little procession after

another of broadbrim straws and Shaker bonnets turning out of the

several houses as we drove past. They stepped along quickly, and

seemed to take no notice of us.

"Reckon we're the only visitors to-day," whispered Hiram as he stopped

at the horseblock in front of the meeting-house. "You know where you

hev' to set--on the left-hand side; and Susan, she goes to the right."

I followed Susan up the steps, and she hastened, as ordered, to the

right, while I took my seat on one of the back benches of the left,

against the wall. It was a barn-like structure, large, neat and

exquisitely chill. Two large stoves on either side possibly had fire

in them--an old man who looked like an ancient porter went to them

from time to time and put on coal--but the very walls reflected a

chill, blue glare. The roof was lofty and vaulted, and added to

the hollow coldness of the hall. The whole apartment was clean to

sanctity, and in its straitness and blank dreariness no unfit emblem

of the faith it embodied.

Around three sides of the hall, and facing the benches for visitors,

the Shaker fraternity were ranged. The hats and straight straw bonnets

hung decorously upon the wall over their heads: here and there a

sky-blue shawl or one of faded lilac hung beneath the headgear. Across

the wide apartment it was difficult to distinguish faces. I scanned

closely the sisterhood--old, withered faces most of them, with here

and there one young and blooming--but no Bessie as yet. Still, they

were coming in continually through the side door: she might yet

appear. I recognized my lady-abbess, who sat directly facing me, in a

seat of state apparently, and close to her, on the brethren's side of

the house, was Elder Nebson.

The services began. All rose, and sisters and brethren faced each

other and sang a hymn, with no accompaniment and no melody--a harsh

chant in wild, barbaric measure. Then, after a prayer, they entered

upon the peculiar method of their service. Round and round the room

they trooped in two large circles, sister following sister, brother

brother, keeping time with their hanging hands to the rhythm of the

hymn. Clustered in the centre was a little knot of men and women, the

high dignitaries, who seemed to lead the singing with their clapping

hands.

The circles passed each other and wove in and out, each preserving its

unbroken continuity. I looked for Elder Nebson: could it be that he

was joining in these gyrations? Yes, he was leading one of the

lines. But I noticed that his hands moved mechanically, not with the

spasmodic fervor of the rest, and that his eyes, instead of the dull,

heavy stare of his fellows, sought with faithful yet shy constancy the

women's ranks. And as the women filed past me, wringing their hands,

I scrutinized each face and figure--the sweet-faced portress, the

shrunken little creole ("A mulatto, she is," Hiram whispered--he had

taken his seat beside me--"and very powerful, they say, among 'em"),

and some fair young girls; two or three of these with blooming cheeks

bursting frankly through the stiff bordering of their caps. But I saw

not the face I sought.

"Them children! Ain't it awful?" muttered Hiram as a file of blue-coat

boys shambled past, with hair cut square across their foreheads and

bleached white with the sun. "Ain't got a grain of sense! Look at

'em!--all crowded clean out by the Shaker schools."

And surely they were a most unpromising little crowd. Waifs, snatched

probably from some New York whirlpool of iniquity, and wearing the

brute mark on their faces, which nothing in this school of their

transplanting tended to erase--a sodden little party, like stupid

young beasts of burden, uncouth and awkward.

As the girls came round again, and I had settled it in my mind that

there was certainly no Bessie in the room, I could watch them more

calmly. Eagerly as I sought her face, it was a relief, surely, that it

was not there. Pale to ghastliness, most of them, with high, sharpened

shoulders, and features set like those of a corpse, it was indeed

difficult to realize that these ascetic forms, these swaying devotees,

were women--women who might else have been wives and mothers. Some

of them wore in their hollow eyes an expression of ecstasy akin to

madness, and there was not a face there that was not saintly pure.

It was a strange union that assembled under one roof these nun-like

creatures, wasted and worn with their rigid lives, and the heavy,

brutish men, who shambled round the room like plough-horses. _Wicked_

eyes some of them had, mere slits through which a cunning and selfish

spirit looked out. Some faces there were of power, but in them the

disagreeable traits were even more strongly marked: the ignorant,

narrow foreheads were better, less responsible, it seemed.

The singing ended, there was a sermon from a high priest who stood out

imperious among his fellows. But this was not a sermon to the flock.

It was aimed at the scanty audience of strangers with words of

unblushing directness. How men and women may continue pure in the

constant hearing and repetition of such revolting arguments and

articles of faith is matter of serious question. The divine instincts

of maternity, the sweet attractions of human love, were thrown down

and stamped under foot in the mud of this man's mind; and at each

peroration, exhorting his hearers to shake off Satan, a strong

convulsive shiver ran through the assembly. "Bessie is certainly not

here: possibly she's still at Watervliet," I whispered to; Hiram as

the concluding hymn began. "But I'll have a chance at Elder Nebson and

that woman before they leave; the house."

The rain had ceased for some time, and as again the wild chant went

up from those harsh strained voices, a stray sunbeam, like a gleam of

good promise, shot across the floor. But what was this little figure

stealing in through a side-door and joining the circling throng?--a

figure in lilac gown, with the stiff muslin cap and folded

neckerchief. She entered at the farthest corner of the room, and I

watched her approach with beating heart. Something in the easy step

was familiar, and yet it could not be. She passed around with the

rest in the inner circle, and, leaning forward, I held my breath lest

indeed it might be she.

The circle opened, and again the long line of march around the room.

The lilac figure came nearer and nearer, and now I see her face. It is

Bessie!

With a cry I sprang up, but with a blow, a crash, a horrible darkness

swept over me like a wave, and I knew nothing.

When I came to myself I was lying on a bed in a room that was new to

me. A strong light, as of the setting sun, shone upon the whitewashed

wall. There was a little table, over which hung a looking-glass,

surmounted by two fans of turkey feathers. I stared feebly at the fans

for a while, and then closed my eyes again.

Where was I? I had a faint remembrance of jolting in a wagon, and of

pitying faces bent over me, but where was I now? Again I opened my

eyes, and noted the gay patchwork covering of the bed, and the green

paper curtain of the window in the golden wall--green, with a tall

yellow flower-pot on it, with sprawling roses of blue and red. Turning

with an effort toward the side whence all the brightness came, in a

moment two warm arms were round my neck, and a face that I could not

see was pressed close to mine.

"Oh, Charlie, Charlie! forgive, forgive me for being so bad!"

"Bessie," I answered dreamingly, and seemed to be drifting away again.

But a strong odor of pungent salts made my head tingle again, and

when I could open my eyes for the tears they rested on my darling's

face--my own darling in a soft white dress, kneeling by my bedside,

with both her arms round me. A vigorous patting of the pillow behind

me revealed Mrs. Splinter, tearful too: "He's come to now. Don't

bother him with talk, Miss Bessie. I'll fetch the tea."

And with motherly insistance she brought me a steaming bowl of

beef-tea, while I still lay, holding Bessie's hand, with a feeble

dawning that the vision was real.

"No," she said as Bessie put out her arm for the bowl, "you prop up

his head. I've got a steddyer hand: you'd just spill it all over his

go to-meetin' suit."

I looked down at myself. I was still dressed in the clothes that I

had worn--when was it? last week?--when I had started for the Shaker

meeting.

"How long?" I said feebly.

"Only this morning, you darling boy, it all happened; and here we are,

snug at Mrs. Splinter's, and Mary Jane is getting the cottage ready

for us as fast as ever she can."

How good that beef-tea was! Bessie knew well what would give it the

_sauce piquante_. "Ready for us!"

"Here's the doctor at last," said Hiram, putting his head in at the

door. "Why, hillo! are we awake?"

"The doctor! Dr. Wilder?" I said beamingly. How good of Bessie! how

thoughtful!

"Not Dr. Wilder, you dear old boy!" said Bessie, laughing and

blushing, "though I sha'n't scold you, Charlie, for that!" in a

whisper in my ear. "It's Dr. Bolster of Lee. Hiram has been riding all

over the country for him this afternoon."

"I'll go down to him," I said, preparing to rise.

"No you won't;" and Mrs. Splinter's strong arm, as well as Bessie's

soft hand, patted me down again.

Dr. Bolster pronounced, as well he might, that all danger was over.

The blow on my head--I must have struck it with force against the

projecting window-shelf as I sprang up--was enough to have stunned me;

but the doctor, I found, was inclined to theorize: "A sudden vertigo,

a dizziness: the Shaker hymns and dances have that effect sometimes

upon persons viewing them for the first time. Or perhaps the heat of

the room." He calmly fingered my pulse for a few seconds, with his

fat ticking watch in his other hand, and then retired to the bureau to

write a prescription, which I was indignantly prepared to repudiate.

But Bessie, in a delightful little pantomime, made signs to me to be

patient: we could throw it all out of the window afterward if need be.

"A soothing draught, and let him keep quiet for a day or so, will be

all that is required. I will call to-morrow if you would prefer it."

"We will send you a note, doctor, to-morrow morning: he seems so much

stronger already that perhaps it will not be necessary to make you

take such a long drive."

"Yes, yes, I'm very busy. You send me word whether to come or not."

And bustlingly the good doctor departed, with Mrs. Splinter

majestically descending to hold whispered conference with him at the

gate.

"Charlie, I _will_ send for Dr. Wilder if you are ready, for I'm never

going to leave you another minute as long as we live."

"I think," said I, laughing, "that I should like to stand up first on

my feet; that is, if I have any feet."

What a wonderful prop and support was Bessie! How skillfully she

helped me to step once, twice, across the floor! and when I sank down,

very tired, in the comfortable easy-chair by the window, she knelt on

the floor beside me and bathed my forehead with fragrant cologne, that

certainly did not come from Mrs. Splinter's tall bottle of lavender

compound on the bureau.

"Oh, my dear boy, I have _so_ much to say! Where shall I begin?"

"At the end," I said quietly. "Send for Dr. Wilder."

"But don't you want to hear what a naughty girl--"

"No, I want to hear nothing but 'I, Elizabeth, take thee--'"

"But I've been so very jealous, so suspicious and angry. _Don't_ you

want to hear how bad I am?"

"No," I said, closing the discussion after an old fashion of

the Sloman cottage, "not until we two walk together to the Ledge

to-morrow, my little wife and I."

"Where's a card--your card, Charlie? It would be more proper-like, as

Mrs. Splinter would say, for you to write it."

"I will try," I said, taking out a card-case from my breast-pocket.

As I drew it forth my hand touched a package, Fanny Meyrick's packet.

Shall I give it to her now? I hesitated. No, we'll be married first in

the calm faith that each has in the other to-day, needing no outward

assurance or written word.

I penciled feebly, with a very shaky hand, my request that the doctor

would call at Hiram Splinter's, at his earliest convenience that

evening, to perform the ceremony of marriage between his young friend,

Bessie Stewart, and the subscriber. Hiram's eldest son, a youth

of eight, was swinging on the gate under our window. To him Bessie

entrusted the card, with many injunctions to give it into no other

hands than the doctor's own.

In less time than we had anticipated, as we looked out of the window

at the last pink glow of the sunset, the urchin reappeared, walking

with great strides beside a spare little-figure, whom we recognized as

the worthy doctor himself.

"Good gracious! he _is_ in a hurry!" said Bessie, retiring hastily

from the window; "and we have not said a word to Mrs. Splinter yet!"

We had expected the little doctor would wait below until the

bridal-party should descend; but no, he came directly up stairs, and

walked into the room without prelude. He took Bessie in his arms with

fatherly tenderness: "Ah, you runaway! so you've come back at last?"

"Yes, doctor, and don't you let go of her until you have married her

fast to me."

"Ahem!" said the doctor, clearing his throat, "that is just what I

came to advise you about. Hiram told me this afternoon of the chase

you two had had, and of your illness this morning. Now, as it is half

over the village by this time that Bessie Stewart has been rescued

from the Shaker village by a chivalrous young gentleman, and as

everybody is wild with impatience to know the _dénoûment_, I want you

to come down quietly to the church this evening and be married after

evening service."

"To please everybody?" I said, in no very pleasant humor.

"I think it will be wisest, best; and I am sure this discreetest of

women," still holding Bessie's hand, "will agree with me. You need not

sit through the service. Hiram can bring you down after it has begun;

and you may sit in the vestry till the clerk calls you. I'll preach a

short sermon to-night," with a benignant chuckle.

He had his will. Some feeling that it would please Mrs. Sloman best,

the only person besides ourselves whom it concerned us to please,

settled it in Bessie's mind, although she anxiously inquired several

times before the doctor left if I felt equal to going to church.

Suppose I should faint on the way?

I was equal to it, for I took a long nap on the sofa in Mrs.

Splinter's parlor through the soft spring twilight, while Bessie held

what seemed to me interminable conferences with Mary Jane.

It was not a brilliant ceremony so far as the groom was concerned.

As we stood at the chancel-rail I am afraid that the congregation,

largely augmented, by this time, by late-comers--for the doctor had

spread the news through the village far and wide--thought me but a

very pale and quiet bridegroom.

But the bride's beauty made amends for all. Just the same soft white

dress of the afternoon--or was it one like it?--with no ornaments, no

bridal veil. I have always pitied men who have to plight their troth

to a moving mass of lace and tulle, weighed down with orange-blossoms

massive as lead. This was my own little wife as she would walk by my

side through life, dressed as she might be the next day and always.

But the next day it was the tartan cloak that she wore, by special

request, as we climbed the hill to the Ledge. It was spring

indeed--bluebirds in the air, and all the sky shone clear and warm.

"Let _me_ begin," said my wife as she took her old seat under

the sheltering pine. "You can't have anything to say, Charlie, in

comparison with me."

There was a short preliminary pause, and then she began.

CHAPTER XII.

"Well, after you wouldn't take me to Europe, you know--"

"You naughty girl!"

"No interruptions, sir. After you _couldn't_ take me to Europe I

felt very much hurt and wounded, and ready to catch at any straw of

suspicion. I ran away from you that night and left you in the parlor,

hoping that you would call me back, and yet longing to hide myself

from you too. You understand?"

"Yes, let us not dwell on that."

"Well, I believe I never thought once of Fanny Meyrick's going to

Europe too until she joined us on the road that day--you remember?--at

the washerwoman's gate."

"Yes; and do _you_ remember how Fidget and I barked at her with all

our hearts?"

"I was piqued then at the air of ownership Fanny seemed to assume in

you. She had just come to Lenox, I knew; she could know nothing of our

intimacy, our relations; and this seemed like the renewal of something

old--something that had been going on before. Had she any claim on

you? I wondered. And then, too, you were so provokingly reticent about

her whenever her name had been mentioned before."

"Was I? What a fool I was! But, Bessie dear, I could not say to even

you, then, that I believed Fanny Meyrick was in--cared a great deal

for me."

"I understand," said Bessie nodding. "We'll skip that, and take it for

granted. But you see _I_ couldn't take anything for granted but

just what I saw that day; and the little memorandum-book and Fanny's

reminiscences nearly killed me. I don't know how I sat through it all.

I tried to avoid you all the rest of the day. I wanted to think, and

to find out the truth from Fanny."

"I should think you _did_ avoid me pretty successfully, leaving me

to dine coldly at the hotel, and then driving all the afternoon till

train-time."

"It was in talking to Fanny that afternoon that I discovered how she

felt toward you. She has no concealment about her, not any, and

I could read her heart plainly enough. But then she hinted at her

father's treatment of you; thought he had discouraged you, rebuffed

you, and reasoned so that I fairly thought there might be truth in it,

_remembering it was before you knew me."_

"Listen one minute, Bessie, till I explain that. It's my belief,

and always was, that that shrewd old fellow, Henry Meyrick, saw very

clearly how matters were all along--saw how the impetuous Miss Fanny

was--"

"_Falling in love_: don't pause for a 'more tenderer word,' Charlie.

Sam Weller couldn't find any."

"Well, falling in love, if you _will_ say it--and that it was

decidedly a difficult situation for me. I remember so well that night

on the piazza, when Fanny clung about me like a mermaid, he bade her

sharply go and change her dripping garments, and what Fanny calls

'a decidedly queer' expression came into his face. He could not say

anything, poor old chap! and he always behaved with great courtesy to

me. I am sure he divined that I was a most unimpassioned actor in that

high-comedy plunge into the Hudson."

"Very well: I believe it, I'm sure, but, you see, how could I know

then what was or was not true? Then it was that I resolved to give you

leave--or rather give her leave to try. I had written my note in the

morning, saying _no_ finally to the Europe plan, and I scrawled across

it, in lead-pencil, while Fanny stood at her horse's head, those ugly

words, you remember?"

"Yes," I said: "'Go to Europe with Fanny Meyrick, and come up to

Lenox, both of you, when you return.'"

"Then, after that, my one idea was to get away from Lenox. The place

was hateful to me, and you were writing those pathetic letters

about being married, and state-rooms, and all. It only made me more

wretched, for I thought you were the more urgent now that you had been

lacking before. I hurried aunt off to Philadelphia, and in New York

she hurried me. She would not wait, though I did want to, and I was

so disappointed at the hotel! But I thought there was a fate in it

to give Fanny Meyrick her chance, poor thing! and so I wrote that

good-bye note without an address."

"But I found you, for all, thanks to Dr. R----!"

"Yes, and when you came that night I was so happy. I put away all

fear: I had to remind myself, actually, all the time, of what I

owed to Fanny, until you told me you had changed your passage to

the Algeria, and that gave me strength to be angry. Oh, my dear,

I'm afraid you'll have a very bad wife. Of course the minute you had

sailed I began to be horribly jealous, and then I got a letter by the

pilot that made me worse."

"But," said I, "you got my letters from the other side. Didn't that

assure you that you might have faith in me?"

"But I would not receive them. Aunt Sloman has them all, done up

and labeled for you, doubtless. She, it seems--had you talked her

over?--thought I ought to have gone with you, and fretted because she

was keeping me. Then I couldn't bear it another day. It was just after

you had sailed, and I had cut out the ship-list to send you; and I had

worked myself up to believe you would go back to Fanny Meyrick if

you had the chance. I told Aunt Sloman that it was all over between

us--that you might continue to write to me, but I begged that she

would keep all your letters in a box until I should ask her for them."

"But I wrote letters to her, too, asking what had become of you."

"She went to Minnesota, you know, early in February."

"And why didn't you go with her?"

"She scolded me dreadfully because I would not. But she was so well,

and she had her maid and a pleasant party of Philadelphia friends; and

I--well, I didn't want to put all those hundreds of miles between me

and the sea."

"And was Shaker Village so near, then, to the sea?"

"Oh, Charlie," hiding her face on my shoulder, "that was cowardice in

me. You know I meant to keep the cottage open and live there. It

was the saddest place in all the world, but still I wanted to be

there--alone. But I found I could not be alone; and the last

people who came drove me nearly wild--those R----s, Fanny Meyrick's

friends--and they talked about her and about you, so that I could bear

it no longer. I wanted to hide myself from all the world. I knew I

could be quiet at the Shaker village. I had often driven over there

with Aunt Sloman: indeed, Sophia--that's the one you saw--is a great

friend of Aunt Maria's."

"So the lady-abbess confessed, did she?" I asked with some curiosity.

"Yes: she said you were rudely inquisitive; but she excused you as

unfamiliar with Shaker ways."

"And were you really at Watervliet?"

"Yes, but don't be in a hurry: we'll come to that presently. Sophia

gave me a pretty little room opening out of hers, and they all treated

me with great kindness, if they _did_ call me Eliza."

"And did you," I asked with some impatience, remembering Hiram's

description--"did you sew beads on velvet and plait straw for mats?"

"Nonsense! I did whatever I pleased. I was parlor-boarder, as they

say in the schools. But I did learn something, sir, from that dear old

sister Martha. You saw _her_?"

"The motherly body who invited me in?"

"Yes: isn't she a dear? I took lessons from her in all sorts of

cookery: you shall see, Charlie, I've profited by being a Shakeress."

"Yes, my darling, but did you--you didn't go to church?"

"Only once," she said, with a shiver that made her all the dearer,

"and they preached such dreary stuff that I told Sophia I would never

go again."

"But did you really wear that dress I saw you in?"

"For that once only. You see, I was at Watervliet when you came. If

you had only gone straight there, dear goose! instead of dodging in

the road, you would have found me. I had grown a little tired of the

monotony of the village, and was glad to join the party starting for

Niskayuna, it was such a glorious drive across the mountain. I longed

for you all the time."

"Pretty little Shakeress! But why did they put us on such a false

track?"

"Oh, we had expected to reach home that night, but one of the horses

was lame, and we did not start as soon as we had planned. We came

back on Saturday afternoon--Saturday afternoon, and this is Monday

morning!", leaning back dreamily, and looking across the blue distance

to the far-off hills. "Then I got your card, and they told me about

you, and I knew, for all the message, that you'd be back on Sunday

morning. But how could I tell then that Fanny Meyrick would not be

with you?"

"Bessie!" and my hand tightened on hers.

"Oh, Charlie, you don't know what it is to be jealous. Of course I

did know that--no, I didn't, either, though I must have been _sure_

underneath that day. For it was more in fun than anything else, after

I knew you were in the meeting-house--"

"How did you know?"

"I saw you drive up--you and Hiram and Mrs. Hiram."

"You didn't think, then, that it was Mrs. Charles?"

"So I stole into Sophia's room, and put on one of her dresses. She is

tall too, but it did not fit very well."

"I should think not," I answered, looking down admiringly at her.

"In fact," laughing, "I took quite a time pinning myself into it and

getting the neckerchief folded prim. I waited till after the sermon,

and then I knew by the singing that it was the last hymn, so I darted

in. I don't know what they thought--that I was suddenly converted, I

suppose, and they would probably have given thanks over me as a brand

snatched from the burning. Did I do the dance well? I didn't want to

put them out."

"My darling, it was a dreadful masquerade. Did you want to punish me

to the end?"

"I was punished myself, Charlie, when you fell. Oh dear! don't let's

talk about the dreadful thing any more. But I think you would have

forgiven Elder Nebson if you had seen how tenderly he lifted you into

the wagon. There, now: where are we going to live in New York, and

what have we got to live on besides my little income?"

"Income! I had forgotten you had any."

"Ask Judge Hubbard if I haven't. You'll see."

"But, my dear," said I gravely, drawing forth the packet from my

breast, "I, too, have my story to tell. I cannot call it a confession,

either; rather it is the story of somebody else--Hallo! who's broken

the seal?" For on shipboard I had beguiled the time by writing a sort

of journal to accompany Fanny's letter, and had placed all together in

a thick white envelope, addressing it, in legal parlance, "To whom it

may concern."

"_I_ did," said Bessie faintly, burying her face on my arm. "It fell

out of your pocket when they carried you up stairs; and I read it,

every word, twice over, before you came to yourself."

"You little witch! And I thought you were marrying me out of pure

faith in me, and not of sight or knowledge."

"It was faith, the highest faith," said Bessie proudly, and looking

into my eyes with her old saucy dash, "to know, to feel sure, that

that sealed paper concerned nobody but me."

And so she has ever since maintained.

SARAH C. HALLOWELL.

A STRANGE LAND AND A PECULIAR PEOPLE.

A nodule of amygdaloid, a coarse pebble enveloped in a whitish

semi-crystalline paste, lies on the table before me. I know that a

blow of the hammer will reveal the beauties of its crystal interior,

but I do not crush it. It is more to me as it is--more than a letter

plucked from the stone pages of time. Coarse and plain, it is an index

to a chapter of life. In the occupations of a busy existence we forget

how much we owe to the sweet emotional nature which, by mere chance

association, retains the dearer part of the past fixed in memory, just

as the graceful volutes of a fossil shell are preserved in the coarse

matrix of a stony paste. In this way the nodule connects itself with

my emotional life, and recalls the incidents of this sketch.

We were journeying over the mountains in the autumn of 1869. Our camp

was pitched in a valley of the ascending ridges of the Cumberland

range, on the south-east border of Kentucky. At this point the

interior valley forms the letter J, the road following the bend, and

ascending at the foot of the perpendicular.

It is nearly an hour since sunset, but the twilight still lingers in

softened radiance, mellowing the mountain-scenery. The camp-wagons

are drawn up on a low pebbly shelf at the foot of the hills, and the

kindled fire has set a great carbuncle in the standing pool. A spring

branch oozes out of the rocky turf, and flows down to meet a shallow

river fretting over shoals. The road we have followed hangs like

a rope-ladder from the top of the hills, sagging down in the

irregularities till it reaches the river-bed, where it flies apart in

strands of sand. The twilight leans upon the opposite ridge, painting

its undulations in inconceivably delicate shades of subdued color.

Although the night is coming on, the clear-obscure of that dusk, like

a limpid pool, reveals all beneath. A road ascending the southern hill

cuts through a loamy crust a yellow line, which creeps upward, winding

in and out, till nothing is seen of it but a break in the trees set

clear against the sky. No art of engineer wrought these graceful

bends: it is a wild mountain-pass, followed by the unwieldy buffalo in

search of pasturage. Beyond, the mountain rises again precipitously, a

ragged tree clinging here and there to the craggy shelves. Around and

through the foliage, like a ribbon, the road winds to the top. A blue

vapor covers it and the hills melting softly in the distance. At the

base of the hills a little river winds and bends to the west through

a low fertile bottom, the stem of the J, which is perhaps a mile in

width. It turns again, its course marked by a growth of low water-oaks

and beeches, following the irregular fold in the hills which has been

described.

Leaning against the bluffs hard by the camp is a low white cottage,

with its paddock and pinfold, and the cattle are coming up, with bells

toning irregularly as they feed and loiter on the way. The supper-horn

sends forth a hoarse but mellow fugue in swells and cadences from the

farm-house. Over all this sweet rural scene of mountain, valley, river

and farm, and over the picturesque camp, with stock, tent and wagons,

now brightened by the grace of a young girl, the twilight lingers like

love over a home. As I listen and look a soft voice from the carriage

at my side says, "Is the ground damp? May I get out?"

I turn to my little prisoner, and as the mingled lights cross her

features I see that her wide, dark-gray eyes are swimming in tears.

"Why, what is it?" I ask.

"Nothing: everything is so sweet and tranquil. I was wondering if our

new home would be like this--not the hills and valleys, you know, but

so quiet and homelike."

So homelike! With that vague yearning, we, like so many Southerners

of the period, were wagoning from old homesteads, a thousand miles of

travel, to a resting-place.

"It will be like home if you are there," I think as I assist her to

alight--the burden daily growing lighter in my arms and heavier on my

heart--but I say nothing.

Pretty soon she is at her usual relaxation, looking for shells, ivy

berries and roots of wild vines to adorn that never-attainable home.

The kindly, generous twilight, so unlike the swift shrift of the

Florida levels, still lingers; and presently, amid bits of syenite,

volcanic tuff and scoria, she has found this nodule of amygdaloid.

It differs from the fossil shells and alluvial pebbles she is used to

find, and she is curious about it.

I tell the story of the watershed of the Ohio as well as I can--how

it was the delta of a great river, fed by the surfage of a continent

lying south--eastwardly in the Atlantic; of the luxuriant vegetation

that sprang up as in the cypress-swamps of her old home in Louisiana,

passing, layer by layer, into peat, to be baked and pressed into

bituminous coal, that slops over the flared edges of the basin

in Pennsylvania, like sugar in the kettles, and is then burnt to

anthracite. I promise her that in some dawn on the culminating peak,

when the hills below loom up, their tops just visible like islands in

a sea of dusk, I will show her a natural photograph of that old-world

delta, with the fog breaking on the lower cliffs like the surf of a

ghostly sea. She listens as to a fairy tale, and then I tell her of

the stellar crystals concealed in the rough crust of the amygdaloid.

She puts it away, and says I shall break it for her when we get home.

We have traveled a long way, by different paths, since then, but it

has never been broken--never will be broken now.

In addition to the geological and botanical curiosities the mountains

afford, my companion had been moved alternately to tears and smiles by

the scenes and people we met--their quaint speech and patient poverty.

We passed eleven deserted homesteads in one day. Sometimes a lean cur

yelped forlorn welcome: at one a poor cow lowed at the broken paddock

and dairy. We passed a poor man with five little children--the eldest

ten or twelve, the youngest four or five--their little stock on a

small donkey, footing their way over the hills across Tennessee into

Georgia. It was so pitiful to see the poor little babes-in-the-wood on

that forlorn journey; and yet they were so brave, and the poor fellow

cheered them and praised them, as well he might. Another miserable

picture was at the white cottage near our camp. The lawn showed

evidences of an old taste in rare flowers and vines, now choked with

weeds. I knocked, and a slovenly negress opened the door and revealed

the sordid interior--an unspread bed; a foul table, sickly with the

smell of half-eaten food and unwashed dishes; the central figure a

poor, helpless old man sitting on a stool, I asked the negress for

her master: she answered rudely that she had no master, and would have

slammed the door in my face. Why tell the story of a life surrounded

by taste and womanly adornments, followed by a childless, wifeless old

age? The poor, wizened old creature was rotting in life on that

low stool among his former dependants, their support and scorn. The

Emancipation Proclamation did not reach him. But one power could break

his bonds and restore the fallen son and the buried wife--the great

liberator, Death.

The natives of this region are characterized by marked peculiarities

of the anatomical frame. The elongation of the bones, the contour

of the facial angle, the relative proportion or disproportion of the

extremities, the loose muscular attachment of the ligatures, and the

harsh features were exemplified in the notable instance of the late

President Lincoln. A like individuality appears in their idiom. It

lacks the Doric breadth of the Virginian of the other slope, and is

equally removed from the soft vowels and liquid intonation of the

southern plain. It has verbal and phraseological peculiarities of its

own. Bantering a Tennessee wife on her choice, she replied with a toss

and a sparkle, "I-uns couldn't get shet of un less'n I-uns married

un." "Have you'uns seed any stray shoats?" asked a passer:

"I-uns's uses about here." "Critter" means an animal--"cretur,"

a fellow-creature. "Longsweet-'nin'" and "short sweet'nin'" are

respectively syrup and sugar. The use of the indefinite substantive

pronoun _un_ (the French _on_), modified by the personals, used

demonstratively, and of "done" and "gwine" as auxiliaries, is peculiar

to the mountains, as well on the Wabash and Alleghany, I am told, as

in Tennessee. The practice of dipping--by which is meant not baptism,

but chewing snuff--prevails to a like extent.

In farming they believe in the influence of the moon on all

vegetation, and in pork-butchering and curing the same luminary is

consulted. Leguminous plants must be set out in the light of the

moon--tuberous, including potatoes, in the dark of that satellite. It

is supposed to _govern_ the weather by its dip, not _indicate_ it by

its appearance. The cup or crescent atilt is a wet moon--i.e., the

month will be rainy. A change of the moon forebodes a change of the

weather, and no meteorological statistics can shake their confidence

in the superstition. They, of course, believe in the water-wizard

and his forked wand; and their faith is extended to the discovery

of mineral veins. While writing this I see the statement in a public

journal that Richard Flannery of Cumberland county (Kentucky) uses an

oval ball, of some material known only to himself, which he suspends

between the forks of a short switch. As he walks, holding this

extended, the indicator announces the metal by arbitrary vibrations.

As his investigations are said to be attended with success, possibly

the oval ball is highly magnetized, or contains a lode-stone whose

delicate suspension is affected by the current magnetism, metallic

veins being usually a magnetic centre. Any mass of soft iron in the

position of the dipping-needle is sensibly magnetic, and a solution

of continuity is thus indicated by the vibrations of the delicately

poised instrument. Flaws in iron are detected with absolute certainty

by this method. More probably, however, the whole procedure is pure,

unadulterated humbug. In all such cases the failures are unrecorded,

while the successes are noted, wondered at and published. By shooting

arrows all day, even a blind man may hit the mark sometimes.

During this journey it was a habit with me to relate to my invalid

companion any fact or incident of the day's travel. She came to expect

this, and would add incidents and observations of her own. In this

way I was led to compile the following little narrative of feminine

constancy and courage during the late war.

It begins with two boys and a girl, generically divided into brother

and sister and their companion, living on the divide-range of

mountains between Kentucky and Tennessee. The people raised hogs,

which were fattened on the mast of the range, while a few weeks'

feeding on corn and slops in the fall gave the meat the desired

firmness and flavor. They cultivated a few acres of corn, tobacco

and potatoes, and had a kitchen-garden for "short sass" and "long

sass"--leguminous and tuberous plants. Apples are called "sour sass."

The chief local currency was red-fox scalps, for which the State

of Kentucky paid a reward: the people did not think of raising such

vermin for the peltry, as the shrewder speculator of a New England

State did. They sold venison and bear-meat at five cents a pound

to the lame trader at Jimtown, who wagoned it as far as Columbia,

Kentucky, and sold it for seventy-five cents. They went to the log

church in the woods on Sundays, and believed that Christ was God in

the flesh, with other old doctrines now rapidly becoming heretical

in the enlightened churches of the East. Living contentedly in this

simple way, neither rich nor poor, the lads grew up, nutting, fishing,

hunting together, and the companion naturally looked forward to the

day when he would sell enough peltry and meat to buy a huge watch like

a silver biscuit, such as the schoolmaster wore, make a clearing and

cabin in the wild hills, and buy his one suit of store clothes, in

which to wed the pretty sister of his friend.

Then came the war. Although it divided the two friends, the old

kindness kept their difference from flaming forth in the vendetta

fashion peculiar to the region. It was a great deal that these two

young fellows did not believe that military morality required them to

shoot each other on sight. Yet, on reconsideration, I will not be

so sure of their opinion on this point. Perhaps they thought that,

morally and patriotically, they ought to do this, and were conscious

of weakness and failure of duty in omitting to do it. Perhaps the old

good-will survived for the girl's sake; and if so, I do not think the

Union was the worse preserved on that account.

The young lover went into the ranks of Wolford's regiment of loyal

mountaineers, and rose--slowly at first, more rapidly as his square

sense and upright character became known.

The girl, in her retirement, heard of her lover's advancement with

pride and fear. She distrusted her worth, and found the hard menial

duties of life more irksome than before. Not that she shrank from

labor, but she feared its unfitting her for the refinement required by

her lover's new social position. She had few examples to teach her

the small proprieties of small minds, but a native delicacy helped her

more than she was conscious of. She read her Bible a great deal, and

used to wonder if Mary and "the other Mary" were ladies. She thought

Peter was probably an East Tennesseean, or like one, for when he

denied his Lord they said he did not talk like the others. It seemed

hard that to say "we-uns" and "you-uns," as she habitually did, though

she tried not, and to use the simple phrases of her childhood, should

be thought coarse or wrong. Such matters were puzzles to her which she

could not solve. She got an old thumbed Butler's _Grammar_ and tried

hard to correct the vocables of her truant tongue. I am afraid she

made poor progress. She had a way of defying that intolerable tyrant,

the nominative singular, and put all her verbs in the plural, under an

impression, not without example, that it was elegant language. She had

enough hard work to do, poor girl! to have been quit of these mental

troubles. Her brother was away, her parents were old, and all the

irksome duties of farm-house and garden fell upon her. She had to hunt

the wild shoats on the range, and to herd them; to drive up the cows,

and milk them; to churn and make the butter and cheese. She tapped

the sugar trees and watched the kettles, and made the maple syrup and

sugar; she tended the poultry, ploughed and hoed the corn field and

garden, besides doing the house-work. Her old parents could help but

little, for the "rheumatiz," which attacks age in the mountains, had

cramped and knotted their limbs, and they were fit for nothing except

in fine dry weather. Surely, life was hard with her, without

her anxieties about her lover's constancy and her own defects.

Letter-writing was a labor not to be thought of. She tried it, and got

as far as "I am quite well, and I hope these few lines will find you

the same," and there stopped. She ascribed the difficulty to her own

mental and clerical defects, but I think it lay quite as much in the

nature of the relation. How was she to express confidence when she

distrusted? how express distrust when her maidenly promptings told her

it was an indelicate solicitation? She could say Brindle had gone dry

and the blind mare had foaled, or that crops were good; but what was

that to say when her heart was thirsting and drying up? She blotted

the paper and her eyes and her hands, but she could not write a line.

She was a sensible girl, and gave it up, leaving her love to grow its

own growth. The tree had been planted in good ground, and watered: it

must grow of itself.

By and by military operations brought her lover into the old

neighborhood. I cannot say he put on no affectations with his new

rank, that he did not air his shoulder-straps a taste too much; but

the manly nature was too loyal to sin from mere vanity. He seemed

natural, easy, pleased with her, and urged a speedy wedding.

We may guess how the Lassie--we must give her a name, and that will

do--worshiped her King Cophetua in shoulder-straps. Had he not stooped

from his well-won, honorable height, the serene azure of his blue

uniform, to sue for her? In all the humility of her pure loving heart

she poured out her thankfulness to the Giver of all good for this

supreme blessing of his love.

In the midst of this peace and content her brother appeared with a

flag of truce. He was hailed as a prosperous prodigal, for he too

was a lad of metal, but he brought one with him that made poor Lassie

start and tremble. It was a lady, young and beautiful, clad in deep

mourning. Although sad and retiring, there was that dangerous charm

about her which men are lured by, and which women dread--a subtle

influence of look and gesture and tone that sets the pulses mad. She

was going for the remains of her husband, and told a pathetic story,

but only too well. She used always the same language, cried at the

same places, and seemed altogether too perfect in her part for it

to be entirely natural. So, at least, Lassie thought, even while

reproaching herself for being hard on a sister in affliction. Yet she

could not escape the bitterness of the thought that the widow, Mrs.

G----, was "a real lady"--that ideal rival she had been so long

dreading in her lover's absence; and now that he had come, the rival

had also come.

Her brother dropped a hint or two about the lady: Mrs. G---- had the

"shads," "vodles" of bank-stock and niggers, and she paid well for

small service. If King Cophetua could get leave to escort her to

head-quarters, Mrs. G---- would foot the bills and do the handsome

thing. It was hard such a woman should have to go on such a sad

business alone.

What could his sister say? She had herself put off the wedding a

month: she wanted to get her ample store of butter, eggs and

poultry to the trader at Jimtown, or, better still, to the brigade

head-quarters at Bean's Station. With her own earnings she could then

buy such simple muslins for her wedding-dress as became her and would

not shame her lover. She wished she had married him, as he had urged,

in her old calico gown. If he had asked her now, if he had pressed a

little, she would have yielded; but he did not. He seemed to accept

the proprieties and woman's will as unalterable. In fact, he did

follow Mrs. G----'s motions with only too lively an admiration.

Perhaps he did not know himself what his feelings were--what this new

fever in his pulses meant. Besides the calm, holy connubial love there

is a wild animal passion that tears through moral creeds and laws.

Once, Lassie saw her brother give him a half-angry stare, that passed

into a laugh of cool scorn. "Take care of Mrs. G----," he said to King

Cophetua. "You will get bit there if you don't look out."

How the sister would have pressed that warning had she dared! Innocent

as her lover might be, she believed that Mrs. G---- saw the growing

passion and encouraged it. But there was nothing to take hold of.

There was nothing bold, forward or inviting in her manner. If a lady

has long lashes, must she never droop them lest she be charged with

coquetry? May not a flush spring as naturally from shy reserve as from

immodesty?

Lassie's lover did take charge of this dangerous siren to escort her

to the head-quarters at Louisville. But just before starting he came

to Lassie with a certain eagerness, as one who is going into battle

might, and assured her, again and again, of his faith. Did he do this

to assure her or himself? I think the last.

How weary the month was! She occupied herself as well as she could

with her sales and purchases, making a very good trade. The brigade

had been at Bean's Station long enough to eat up all the delicacies to

be found there, so that the little maid, who was a sharp marketer, got

fabulous prices. She made up her simple wedding furniture, gave her

mother a new gown and underwear, and pleased her old father with a

handsome jean suit, the labor of her own nimble fingers. All that

belonged to her would appear well on that day, as became them and her.

At any other time she would have followed up that thrifty market at

Bean's Station. She would have huckstered around the neighborhood, and

made a little income while it lasted; but now she had no heart for it.

Her lover's leave was out, yet his regimental associates knew nothing

about him.

A week after the day set for her marriage her brother came again with

the flag of truce. He too was vexed--not so much at Cophetua's absence

as at not meeting the widow, whom he had been sent to escort to the

Confederate lines. But he treated his sister's jealous suspicions

with a dash of scorn: "There was nothing of that kind, but if Cophetua

would fool with a loaded gun, he must expect to be hurt. If ever there

was a hair-trigger, it was Mrs. G----."

"Who is she?" asked his sister eagerly. "Tell me: you say there is

something strange, dangerous about her, and I can see it. Who is she?"

"Humph!" said her brother. "She is a lady, and that is enough. If she

is dangerous, keep out of her way."

This only deepened the mystery. But she had no time to think. Her

brother left in the morning. In the afternoon the colonel of her

lover's regiment came to see her with a very grave face. The young

man had been arrested for dealing with the enemy, harboring spies and

furnishing information of the disposition and number of the Federal

forces. "If we could get at the true story of his connection with that

woman," said the colonel, "I am satisfied he has only been indiscreet,

not treacherous. He is one of my best, most trusted officers, and his

arrest is a blot on the regiment. If he will tell anybody, he will

tell you. Can you go to Louisville at once?"

Yes, at once. The traveling-dress, made up for so different an

occasion, was donned, and under escort she went, by a hundred miles of

horseback ride, to the nearest railway station. There was no tarrying

by the way: the colonel's influence provided relays. On the evening of

the third day she was with her lover.

It was as the colonel had supposed: the woman had got her lover in her

toils, and he had been imprudent. He had every reason for believing

that her story of her husband's remains was false. She was a dealer in

contraband goods: this much he knew. Other officers, of higher rank,

knew as much, and corresponded with her. If they chose to wink at it,

was he, a subordinate, to interfere? She had trusted him, depended on

him, and he had a feeling that it would be disloyal to her confidence

to betray her, to pry into what she concealed, and expose what his

superiors seemed to know. But after she was gone the story leaked out:

she was not only a smuggler, but a very dangerous spy. Some one must

be the scapegoat, and who so fit as the poor, friendless Tennesseean

who had escorted her to head-quarters and acted for her in personal

matters?

That was his story, but what a poor story to tell to a court-martial!

What was she to do? Poor, simple child of the woods! what did she know

of the wheels within wheels, and the rings of political influence

by which a superior authority was to be invoked? She knew nothing of

these things, and there was no one to tell her. She thought of but one

plan: her brother could find that woman. She would seek her out--she

would appeal to her.

We need not follow her on that return journey and her visit to the

Confederate camp. Fortunately, the Confederates were nearer than

she supposed. She came upon their pickets, and was taken into the

commanding officer's presence. Her brother was sent for, and when he

came she told him she was looking for his friend, Mrs. G----.

"Looking for her!" said her brother. "Why, that is what we moved out

this way for! She is in camp now. We brought her and her luggage in

last night."

She eagerly entreated to be taken to her, and was carried to a

pavilion, or marquee, a little apart from the officers' quarters.

Mrs. G---- came in richly but simply dressed, attended by a portly,

handsome, but rather dull-looking officer.

"Why, Lassie!" said Mrs. G---- in surprise. "So you have come to see

me? Here are the remains of my poor dear," she added with a little

laugh, presenting the gentleman. "Do you think he is worth all the

trouble I took to get him?"

"Ha! much pleased! Devilish proper girl!" said the man with a stupid

blush, justifying the stolidity of his good looks.

"But where is your _preux chevalier_, Captain Cophetua? I declare, I

almost fell in love with him myself. Frank here is quite jealous."

"Oh, Mrs. G----," broke out the poor girl, "you have killed him! They

are going to try him and hang him for helping you to spy."

"Nonsense!" said the lady with a little start. "The poor fellow did

nothing but what, as a gentleman, he was compelled to do. But how can

I help you?"

"Save him," said Lassie. "You have your wealth, your wit, your

husband: I have but him!" and she sank down in tears.

"Stupid," said the lady, turning sharply on her husband, "tell me what

to do? Don't you see we must not let them hang the poor fellow?"

"Of course not," said the big man dryly. "Just countermand the order

of execution. No doubt the Yankees will obey: I would."

"Of course you would: a precious life you would lead if you did not,"

said his wife, who evidently commanded that squad. "Never mind: there

is more sense in what you said than I expected of you--Jane," to the

smart maid who attended on her, "pen, ink, paper and my portfolio."

Opening the last, she took out a bundle of letters, and, running them

rapidly over as a gambler does his cards, she selected one. "This,"

she said to Lassie, "is a note from General ----. It is written

without the slightest suspicion of my character as a spy; but you will

see it involves him far more dangerously than your friend. He cannot

well explain it away. Keep the letter. I will write to him that you

have it to deliver over in return for his kind assistance in effecting

the release of your friend. Don't fear: I ask him to do nothing he

ought not to do without asking, and you give him a letter that would

be misconstrued if it fell into other hands."

Armed with these instructions and the letters, Lassie returned home,

passed on to Louisville, and delivered her message. The general

promptly interfered, thanking her for calling his attention to the

matter. His influence, and a more exact understanding of the means and

appliances of the artful widow in obtaining information, effected her

lover's acquittal and restoration to his former position.

"I owe her my life and good name," said the tall Tennesseean, taking

Baby No. 2 from her arms. "I-uns ain't wuth such a gal."

"No," say I drily. "What did you take him for?" to her. Then I get the

answer before quoted. But my companion, with a truer perception, went

quietly up and kissed her Tennessee sister, a little to the surprise

of both, I think, but they seemed touched by the silent little tribute

more than by any words.

I have spoken of the character of the hostilities in that "debatable

land." War is a bad thing always, but when it gets into a simple

neighborhood, and teaches the right and duty of killing one's

friends and relatives, it becomes demoniac. Down about Knoxville they

practiced a better method. There it was the old game of "Beggar

your Neighbor," and they denounced and "confiscated" each other

industriously. Up in the poor hills they could only kill and burn,

and rob the stable and smoke-house. We were shown the scene of one

of these neighborhood vengeances. It is a low house at the side of

a ravine, down whose steep slope the beech forest steps persistently

erect, as if distrusting gravitation. Thirty Confederates had gathered

in that house at a country-side frolic, and the fiddle sang deep in

the night. The mountain girls are very pretty, having dark, opalescent

eyes, with a touch of gold in them at a side glance, slight, rather

too fragile figures, and the singular purity of complexion peculiar to

high lands.

The moon went down, and the music of the dance, the shuffle of feet on

the puncheon floor, died away into that deep murmurous chant, the hymn

of Nature in the forest. The falling water, sleeping in the dam or

toiling all day at the mill, gurgles like the tinkling of castanets.

Every vine and little leaf is a harp-string; every tiny blade of grass

flutes its singly inaudible treble; the rustling leaves, chirping

cricket, piping batrachian, the tuneful hum of insects that sleep

by day and wake by night, mingle and flow in the general harmony of

sound. The reeds and weeds and trunks of trees, like the great and

lesser pipes of an organ, thunder a low bass. The melancholy hoot

of the owl and the mellow complaint of the whippoorwill join in the

solemn diapason of the forest, filling the solitudes with grand,

stately marches. There are no sounds of Nature or art so true in

harmony as this ceaseless murmur of the American woods. So accordant

is it with the solemn majesty of form and color that the observer

fails to separate and distinguish it as an isolated part in the grand

order of Nature. He has felt an indescribable awe in the presence of

serene night and unbounded shadow, but to divide and distinguish

its constituent causes were as vain as in the contour and color of a

single tree to note the varied influence of rock, soil and river.

Over the little farm-house in the ravine in the fall of 1863 there

fell with the sinking moon these solemn dirges of the great dark

woods. The stars brightened their crowns till _Via Lactea_ shone a

highway of silver dust or as the shadow of that primeval river rolling

across the blue champaign of heaven. The depths of repose that follow

the enjoyment of the young irrigated their limbs, filling the sensuous

nerves and arteries with a delicious narcotism--a deep, quiet,

healthful sleep, lulled by the chant of the serene mother-forest.

Hush! A light step, like a blown leaf: the loose wooden latch rises at

the touch of a familiar hand; familiar feet, that have trodden every

inch of that poor log floor, lead the way; and then all at once, like

a bundle of Chinese crackers, intermingled with shrieks and groans and

deep, vehement curses, the rapid reports of pistols fill the chambers.

The beds, the floors, the walls, the doors are splashed with blood,

and the chambers are cumbered with dead and dying men in dreadful

agony. Happy those who passed quietly from the sweet sleep of Nature

to the deeper sleep of death! Of thirty young men in the flush of

youth, not one escaped. Six Federal scouts had threaded their way

since sunset from the Federal lines to do this horrible work. Oh,

Captain Jack, swart warrior of the Modocs! must we hang you for

defending your lava-bed home in your own treacherous native way, when

we, to preserve an arbitrary political relation, murder sleeping men

in their beds?

Let me close with an incident of that great game of war in which the

watershed of the Ohio was the gambler's last stake.

The Confederacy was a failure in '62, held together by external

pressure of hostile armies. It converted civil office into bomb-proofs

for the unworthy by exempting State and Federal officials; it

discouraged agriculture by levying on the corn and bacon of the small

farmers, while the cotton and sugar of the rich planter were jealously

protected; it discouraged enlistment by exempting from military

service every man who owned twenty negroes, one hundred head of

cattle, five hundred sheep--in brief, all who could afford to serve;

it discouraged trade by monopolies and tariffs. But for the ubiquitous

Jew it would have died in 1862-'63, as a man dies from stagnation of

the blood. It was the rich man's war and the poor man's fight.

This suicidal policy had its effect. Cut off from all markets, the

farmer planted only for family use. At the close of the war the people

of Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas had to be fed by the government.

The farmers in 1864 refused to feed the Southern army. Seventy

thousand men deserted east of the Mississippi between October 1, 1864,

and February 3, 1865. They were not recalled: the government could not

feed them. The Confederacy was starved out by its own people--rather

by its own hideous misgovernment, for the people were loyal to the

cause.

One fact was apparent as early as 1863: the South would not feed the

armies--the North must. That plan, so far as the Atlantic coast States

were involved, was foiled at Gettysburg. The only resource left was in

the West, the watershed of the Ohio, which Sherman was wrenching out

of General Johnston's fingers. In a military point of view, the great

Confederate strategist was right: he was conducting the campaign on

the principle Lee so admirably adopted in Virginia. But President

Davis had more than a military question to solve. If he could not

seize the granaries of the watershed, the Confederacy would die of

inanition.

That was what caused the change of commanders in Georgia, and the

desperate invasion that blew to pieces at Nashville; and it introduces

a little scouting incident upon which the event of that campaign

may have partially turned. General Hood was in camp at Jonesborough:

Forrest and Wheeler were detached to destroy Sherman's single thread

of supplies. Prisoners pretended to have been on half rations, and the

sanguine opinion at head-quarters was that Sherman was on the grand

retreat. That able strategist had disappeared, enveloping himself in

impenetrable vidette swarms of cavalry. He had pocketed one hundred

thousand men in the Georgia hills, and no one could find them; at

least, General Hood could not.

But others were not sanguine about Sherman's falling back. General

Jackson selected a major, a trusted scout, with twenty-five men, with

instructions to find Sherman. Again and again the scout and his little

band tried to pierce that impenetrable cloud, and could not. Then he

tried another plan. He snapped up a Federal squad, clothed a select

part of his little band in their uniform, and sent the others back

with the prisoners. Then he plunged boldly into the cloud, a squad

of Federals, bummers, pioneers. Does the reader reflect upon the

fine fibre of the material requisite for such an exploit? It is not

strength, courage or tactical cunning that is most wanted, but that

most difficult art, to be able to put off your own nature and put on

another's--to play a part, not as the actor, who struts his hour in

tinsel and mouths his speeches as no mortal man ever walked or talked

in real life, but as one who stakes his life upon a word, an accent;

requiring subtlety of analytic sense and quickness of thought.

Polyglot as was the speech of the Federal forces, suspicion, started

by that test, would run rapidly to results. Then there was the danger

of collision with the regiment whose uniform they had assumed. Swift,

constant motion was required. They swept to the head of the column,

and, to be brief, the first Federal pontoon thrown across the

Chattahoochee was laid with the assistance of these spies. The leader

threw himself on the bank and counted the regiments by their insignia

as they passed, until he saw the linen duster and the glittering staff

of the great commander himself as they clattered over the bridge. Then

to Campbellton, hard by, where their horses were rendezvoused, and

whip and spur to Jonesborough.

A council of war was sitting when the scout arrived. He was hurried

into its presence, and told his story with laconic, military

precision. Sherman's whole force was across the Chattahoochee and

marching on Jonesborough, twenty miles away.

"I have sure information to the contrary," said the commanding

general, singularly deceived by a strong conviction, enforced by

scouts who depended on rumor for authority. "It is some feint to cover

the general movement."

"I counted the flags, guidons, regimental insignia--such force

of cavalry, artillery, infantry," giving the numbers. "I saw and

recognized General Sherman," said the scout briefly.

His report was not, even then, credited, but, as a precaution, a

brigade of cavalry, with his battalion in the van, was sent out to

beat up the enemy. A short distance beyond Flint River they struck

the Federal line, which attacked at once, without feeling--a sure

indication of strength. The battalion was hurled back on the brigade,

the brigade rushed across Flint River, and back into the infantry

line, now throwing up tardy entrenchments at Jonesborough. The rest

is historical. It was but one of the rash throws of the dice for

that great stake, the watershed of the Ohio, and helps to show the

principles of military action by which it was lost.

WILL WALLACE HARNEY.

SIMILITUDE.

FROM GOETHE.

On every mountain-crest

Is rest:

In every vale beneath,

No breath

Stirs in the quietude:

The little birds are silent in the wood.

Soon, patient, weary breast,

Thou too wilt rest.

EMMA LAZAROS.

OUR HOME IN THE TYROL.

CHAPTER XI.

One great feature of the Hof has hitherto been passed over in

silence--the other lodgers; for, truth to say, there happened to be a

large family of tourists, who, following in the wake of their parents

and grandparents before them, strenuously adhered year after year to

the peaceful old Hof as their summer residence. _Schwalben_ by name,

they had English and American cousins, the swallows and martins: they

pursued a yearly routine of spending the winter months with other

connexions in Algeria or the Levant, then, dividing into groups,

returned to their various mountain or pastoral homes in cooler, more

verdant lands. Thus, on the second Wednesday in the month of May one

family always arrived at the old castle of Neuhaus, giving a sentiment

to the forsaken ruin which it could not otherwise possess, and about

the same week a number of their cousins and distant connexions took up

their quarters at the Hof.

[Illustration: SCHLOSS SCHWALBEN.]

The swallows in the Tyrol pass for holy birds. There is a tradition

that their forefathers helped the Lord Almighty to build the

firmament, but how and in what manner popular tradition does not tell

us. Being blessed by God and dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the simple

peasant often leaves his doors and windows open to attract such

valued inmates, seeing that peace and happiness enter with them, and

lightning never strikes the roof where swallows build. Should they

forsake a house in the course of the summer, it is a sign of coining

misfortune. He who kills a swallow will lose father or mother.

A firm belief in the goodness of the swallows made Kathi honor and

welcome the familiar visitants. "They were no greedy guests," she

said, "for they always arrived when the bins of meal and winter

provisions were empty, and in the autumn, as soon as they were filled

again, they were off without bite or bit."

Many an old deserted room in the high-pitched roof was given over to

these inoffensive, man-loving birds. Hundreds of nests, some in good

condition, others deserted and out of repair, clung to old beams,

rafters and wainscots. A steady sound of fluttering and juvenile

chirping issued through the closed doors, contrasting with the silence

of the long stone corridor, whilst parent birds whirled gracefully in

and out through the dusty open windows, or poised themselves on the

warm shingles of the roof. The grandest, most comfortable quarters

were afforded in a large unused chamber occupying the front gable;

and, curiously enough, either in reality or fancy, we could not help

observing that whilst the various members of the community lived

fraternally together, there still seemed to be a distinction between

the swallows who dwelt in these spacious quarters and those who lived

in humbler lodgings behind. You might imagine that the dwellers in

front had become rich through trade, for they suffered no more from

the perpetual booming of the great house-clock above their heads, or

from the ever-moving pendulum which pulsated like a living thing in

their midst, than a manufacturer from the constant sound of his busy

steam-engines and rattling machinery. This swallow domain soon became

known as Castle Clock-Tower, and the chief inmates as the Herr and

Frau von Schwalbe and family, whilst, oddly enough, if it was our

daily pleasure to watch them, they showed an equal curiosity and

interest in us.

I do not know whether they considered that the fly-papers in our

sitting-room might be thwarting the designs of Providence on their

behalf, but we had hardly begun using them for the destruction of the

flies, when Herr von Schwalbe flew down from his castle through the

open window, apparently sent as a deputy to remonstrate with us on

this reckless waste of their legitimate game. He fluttered about,

glancing at the dead bodies strewn on the floor; then, taking his post

on the top of a picture hanging on the wall, remained several hours,

drawing his own deductions, but always too timid to raise a complaint.

In vain we tried to encourage him, to induce him to leave his lofty

position: the lonely visitant remained timidly stationary, so that

night came on before he ventured his flight.

Although Herr von Schwalbe might not approve of our unscrupulous

destruction of flies, he must have reported us a well-meaning family,

seeing that his wife ever afterward treated us with the greatest

confidence. She was an elegant lady, with the most approved Grecian

bend. She gave a kettle-drum once to her friends and relations at the

unseasonable hour of four o'clock in the morning, but in all other

cases observed her character of a wise, prudent little matron. Day

by day she conducted her happy family to a horizontal pole suitably

fastened to the upper gallery, where she cultivated their intellects,

and, assisted by her devoted husband, gave them flying and singing

lessons, each vocal attempt being rewarded by a liberal supply of

flies.

We likewise became interested in a couple of redstarts, who, waxing

bold, would tap at the casement, bidding us come and admire their

young in the nest under the portico. This was during our first visit:

on our second we found some dire misfortune had befallen the mother,

the children and the nest. The Hofbauer feared some servant must

have destroyed them. The poor little father remained attached to the

melancholy spot, and, refusing to be comforted because his dear ones

were not, flew round perpetually with a worm in his bill. In his

despair he would drop it untouched with piteous laments, until, as if

his small instinct had become crazed, he would go in search of a fresh

dainty morsel, and the sad scene was enacted over again. Poor forlorn

bird! Like the swallows, the redstarts are dedicated to the Virgin:

such high patronage, however, in this case availed nothing.

Neither did Anton's crossbill, which dwelt in the stube, have a much

happier fate. Although its master was very fond of it and tended it

well, it had, like others of its race, to live in a very small prison

suspended but a short way from the centre of the dark paneled ceiling.

Thus, in the winter between our two visits it died, suffocated by the

hot air of the overheated, ill-ventilated stube. Many poor pet birds

of this species are thus killed, the victims of ignorance; for when

a crossbill becomes sickly from its dark, hot, confined quarters, the

peasant does not wish to cure it, believing that this holy bird, which

tried to free the Lord from the cross, so sympathizes with redeemed

humanity that whenever illness or epidemic threatens the household the

devoted creature itself immediately takes the disease and dies, the

family escaping unharmed.

It would be wearisome to enumerate all the different features and

dispositions of the farm-yard inhabitants. Let us rather pass on to

Moro. Perhaps it was no pleasant surprise to some of us when the Hof

bauer having made the purchase of a house-dog, it proved to be none

other than a large, handsome rusty-black hound which had once sprung

out of a house near a crossing of the new railway, trying to attack

my father, who had to defend himself with his stick against the

disagreeable customer, until a voice from the house made the dog

instantly and quietly shrink away. The Hofbauer expressed his regret.

He, knowing nothing of the circumstances, had bought the animal out

of good-nature, as his master, an Italian and the overseer of the

railway, removing to a great distance, was forced to part with it. He

was anything but a savage dog, proving, on the contrary, easily cowed;

so that the fact of his ever having made such a sally soon surprised

us. Whether he missed the occupation of looking after the work-people

and guarding the line, or whether he only understood dialectical

Italian, certain it is that he proved a most inert, taciturn dog. He

would wander about for weeks in listless despondency, doing nothing

for his living, and showing no intelligence except in the way of

hiding bones. Although really young, his extreme slowness and apathy

conveyed the idea of an old dog. He crept sluggishly along in search

of some sunny nook where he might snooze in his melancholy. Now, it

fell to Moidel's duty to feed this silent, heavy dog, whereupon he,

rising gradually out of his secret woes, became her constant docile

companion, following her seriously and silently like a shadow, and

looking gravely mortified when she refused his attendance at church.

He disliked the least approach to a liberty, and, showing no interest

in what passed around him, was regarded by the family rather as a

pensioner than an active, useful member of the community.

With E----'s arrival, however, a strange though gradual change came

over Moro. He seemed from the first to perceive the strong sympathy

which she possessed for all dumb creatures; and had he been the

spellbound mortal of the fairy tale the transformation could hardly

have been more remarkable. As he felt he was no longer unappreciated

or misunderstood, he began to divide his attentions between Moidel

and his new friend. He became lively and active, condescending to

take walks in any direction but Bruneck--a place which, for some

inscrutable reason, he persistently avoided. He took to opening his

huge mouth and uttering a sonorous bark; unfurled his tail, which,

losing its stiffness, wagged incessantly; whilst, developing his

liveliness still more, he actually took to committing flying leaps

over a five-barred gate, and running wildly backward and forward in

the most ludicrous manner in front of the house whenever he perceived

his favorite E---- or some of her friends watching him.

Autumn had stepped in with the month of September. The harvest

was carried, and, according to an old custom, the village held a

thanksgiving service before the sowing of the seed-corn began; and,

whilst all were generous to their relations, none showed greater

hospitality than the worthy Hofbauer, who expected not only all his

own connexions, but also those of his dead wife, to share in the

annual jubilee.

Arduous were now the labors of the womankind preparatory to the feast.

Nanni No. I and Nanni No. 2 of the establishment might be met carrying

pounds and pounds of fresh meat into the cellar. In the stube sat

Kathi, seated on one of the wooden settees which surrounded the room,

her good old face bent silently over a paste board placed on one of

the square tables at which the large family took their meals. This was

more convenient than in the _gewölbe_, or huge pantry, which was

half buried in provender: besides, Kathi thought, it struck damp.

But Moidel might be found there, with a quiet smile on her dear ruddy

face, whilst her healthy bare brown arm moved backward and forward

with marvelous agility in the beating of eggs. Let us step into the

gewölbe, Kathi's domain proper. It is a marvelous place. Look at the

gayly-painted chests of the lowest decorative style of art, choking

with flour and buckwheat-meal; look at the racks full of heavy, flinty

household bread; at the pyramid of oblong bladder-like pastry, called

_krapfen_, which covers the table; at the smoked tongues, pig-cheeks,

feet and bologna sausage hanging from the ceiling. Light and air are

admitted by a large open window, but the atmosphere is so impregnated

with the odor of cummin (the favorite spice of the Tyrol, found in

bread, in dishes of vegetables, in puddings and pastry) that any sense

of great freshness is excluded. Rudely-made presses contain lint and

linen for accidents or sprains, whilst endless lotions and remedies

are carefully preserved in a long range of little drawers--cloves,

ginger, dried hyssop, fennel, anis and sage, all excellent remedies

for keeping the cold out of the stomach, to say nothing of a discreet

bottle of schnapps for the same purpose. There is many another herb,

dried by the careful Kathi between the two Lady Days, Mary's ascension

and Mary's birthday, which may usefully be employed for man or

beast--mullein, a very amulet against every kind of cough and

sore-throat; plantain, wormwood, red and white mugwort; nor are the

scrapings of hartshorn bought from a mountain huntsman forgotten. At

this moment, however, no one is dreaming for an instant of being ill:

that might happen after, but must not precede the feast.

Kathi and Moidel, experienced cooks and housewives, work steadily on,

without feeling the least anxiety for the success of their stupendous

efforts. They are only amazed that we should be surprised at the

quantity of their work--that they can remain, in fact, so cool in

the midst of their hundred and one boilings, singeings, choppings

and fryings. Kathi certainly wipes the perspiration off her brow, but

Moidel cannot even allow herself leisure for the act. The dinner

would not be in time if they stopped to enter the chapel, even for

Rosenkranz. So all the womankind repeat their Hail Marys hurrying

backward and forward. Then Moidel retires to snatch a few hours

of rest, wakes with a start, and is again alert at midnight, when,

attended, rather than aided, by two maids in waking stupefaction,

the baking, boiling and steaming receive a continuous impetus, Kathi

reappearing at four for the last triumphant efforts.

In good time the Hofbauer and Anton are equipped in their gala attire

for church, Moidel and the maids, in spite of their nocturnal labors,

following them briskly; so that they have not only said their prayers

and endeavored to understand the sermon, but actually joined in a

procession before the guests arrive. The sweet notes of a processional

hymn still float on the silent, balmy air as the sound of advancing

wheels is heard. Then several one-horse gigs are seen approaching, and

the geese hiss drowsily at the happy-faced _bauers_ and _bauerins_,

and their flocks of healthy, chubby children stuffed in before and

behind; and so they drive carefully into the large yard, where Onkel

Johann, acting as hostler, proudly though bashfully receives them.

There is a sober gayety and rejoicing about the elders, a suppressed

merriment about the youngsters. They do not expect much waiting upon

before the feast. They know that a strong but silent friendship exists

between them all and their host--that they are ready to help each

other in any possible emergency without making a fuss about it. So the

Hofbauer can walk back leisurely from church, and Kathi can attend to

her onerous duties in the kitchen, without a single visitor feeling

slighted.

Soon the crowd of simple guests is seated at table in the large

sitting-room, which we have vacated for the occasion. The Hofbauer

stands at a side-table and carves, and Anton in his long white apron

and bib waits as serving-man. Onkel Johann, however, sits at table.

The aunt and Moidel are busy dishing below: they will have their share

of good things when they go to the return feasts. Of pickings

and leavings there are none: it would be an insult to send away a

half-emptied plate; and for the same reason no dish is left untouched,

though it is a banquet that might even satiate a work-house. Soup,

sausage, roast veal, baked apples and stewed prunes; stewed liver,

fried liver, millet pudding; boiled beef with horseradish and

beet-root; hung beef; cabbage dished with tongue and pork; noodles;

and then a second soup to wash down what has gone before, but

followed by more substantial in the form of liver-cake, in which that

ingredient has been baked with bread-crumbs, eggs, onions and raisins.

Then come batter dumplings, one sort of _knödel_ sprinkled with

poppy-seeds, roast beef with salad, and finally coffee.

There is little talking; only a clatter of plates, dishes, knives and

forks as the honest guests deliberately but persistently vanquish each

stage of the feast.

After coffee, "the mother's own sister" is called aside by Kathi, in

order that she, for her own and the dear dead Hofbauerin's sake

(of whom, bless her! in Kathi's eyes she is the very image), may be

privately presented to us, the foreign Herrschaft. A comely, compact

little figure, with delicate features, small hands and feet, and a

pair of dove-like eyes.

Wishing to be polite, she says it is _gar curios_ that any of the

Herrschaft should understand German. Immediately she fears this

implies ignorance on our part, and adds an apology: "But certainly

such Herrschaft who are so up in things of heaven and earth would know

German."

Then she waits with a sense of relief for one of us to speak. At this

moment, however, a bevy of bright, cheerful little peasant-girls,

who have been hovering in the distance, taking courage, approach and

cluster in a ring around her. She shows by her face that she fears

this is a liberty, but is nevertheless relieved by their supporting

her. We ask their names, and she goes off into a string of Madels,

Lisies, Nannies, who all smile spontaneously, and have not only to set

her right as to their ages, but, to their infinite astonishment, as to

their relationship to herself.

"Why, mother, I am your daughter!" says one little girl reproachfully.

"Why, aunt, my mother is dead, you know!" adds another, pulling at her

sleeve and whispering this correction. Then the whole group burst into

a shy titter.

The good soul stands calmly this battery of juvenile reproaches: "Ho,

are not you all my children? Have I not brought you all through the

measles, knitted the stockings for all your feet, until I taught you

to knit for yourselves? Souls and bodies, you are all dear to me: I

treat you all alike."

She looks so lovingly on them that they are not quite sure whether

they have done right or wrong in correcting her. So they stand a dumb,

admiring circle, whilst she adds:

"If the Herrschaft ever could get as far as Pfalzen, where I and the

children live, they would find no great big house like the Hof, but

plenty of small, snug farms amidst corn-fields, in any one of which

the Hof-Herrschaft would be made welcome, but more especially in mine.

It is not so very far. See from the window! There, over Sankt Jörgen

and over the woods rises our tall spire with two other spires; only

these are quite a long way from each other, though they are all

mixed-like at a distance, just as I mix up the young people. The

Herrschaft will not forget the name--Pfalzen?"

Having brought out this invitation with a great effort, she now

plunges into a sea of fears as to the liberty she has taken. So one of

the Herrschaft, rashly coming to her assistance, assured her it would

be impossible for her at least to forget the name of Pfalzen. Somebody

had told her of a certain tailor of Pfalzen who, within memory of man,

returning from a wedding at Percha, and having passed St. George on

his homeward way at eight o'clock of the evening, suddenly saw the

road divide before him. This made him stop in astonishment, and before

he could decide which way to take it had grown dark. Then he became

sore afraid, especially when he espied a group of ladies dressed

in white, who came up to him, and, addressing him in playful tones,

encompassed and stopped him. He, however, could not stand this, and

speaking in a loud tone he reproached them, for, though they were

ladies, he soon saw by their rude looks that they meant him mischief.

Then they began abusing and tormenting him, until he laid himself down

on the ground with his face to the earth. Now the spell seemed broken,

for, though the spiteful women remained, they were restrained from

hurting him; and with the first sound of the morning Angelus these

white ladies, who were nothing but tormenting spirits, fled, and he,

rising up, went on his way home.

"Herr Je!" said the gentle little woman, "could it have been the Hof

Moidel who told you _that_? Or could you have heard it at Percha?

or by the fire some winter evening? But you have never been in these

parts in winter. The tailor, you see, must have found the wedding-wine

too strong."

"Barbara the sewing-woman--" began a young voice, which immediately

collapsed, the speaker retreating with great impetuosity behind her

mother or aunt, whichever it might be.

Then each little member of the maidenly circle looked very odd, and

their good relative uttered hurriedly but mildly, "Oh, it's nothing.

How could you, Lisi? Behave yourselves, children!"

However, an explanation of the sewing-woman Barbara being pleaded for

on our part, the good woman nervously continued: "It is only a foolish

story. Only that the sewing-woman Barbara was sweet on Weaver Thomas,

and he could not abide her. 'I would rather,' he told her, 'be a beast

in the stall than be your wedded husband.' The sewing-woman said he

should rue the day he thus insulted her. And sure enough, from that

time he could neither eat nor drink, growing poor and thin in the

body. Everybody said, 'Sewing-woman Barbara has struck him with the

evil eye.' I am not sure but that his teeth chattered, which they say

is a sign. A miller urged him to have the letters I.N.R.I. stitched

into his clothes (it is a wonderful preservative on corn-bins and

stable doors against the evil eye), but Weaver Thomas replied he was

sick of stitching. Yet what is to become of the man? Not a drop of

wine does he touch now but it flies to his head--not a kreuzer of his

hard-earned money does he put into his pocket but it oozes away like

water. Ah, it is an ugly story! I wish there were no such fearsome,

boggy things. The world would be better without them."

By this time a fat lad had ventured up, and stood gaping behind the

maidens. He was not of Pfalzen, but the girls spoke to him as a cousin

of the house. In spite of their encouragement, he merely gaped and

stared, without answering a word. The pleasures of the table had, in

fact, brought him into a state of speechless discomfort. It was not of

wine that he had partaken, though it had freely circulated, to judge

by the great empty gallon bottles, but he had stuck loyally to the

principles laid down and acted on by his elders, of doing full justice

to the dishes. Feeling now, therefore, exceedingly the worse for his

praiseworthy exertions, he remained leaning disconsolately with his

back against the wall long after the church-bells had struck up a

merry clang, vigorously calling the Hofbauer, his men-servants and

maid-servants and the strangers who were within his gates, to church.

Good Kathi, however, whilst clearing away the empty glasses, looked

compassionately upon him as on one of her fattening chickens in danger

of pip, and patiently inveigled him to a cozy nook down stairs, where

his heavy breathing and steady snorts kept time to her monotonous

dish-washing. On he slept during prayers, during the hour spent at the

Blauen Bock, when the Hofbauer treated the priest and his guests on

this auspicious thanksgiving-day. He woke up, however, to do his duty

like a man "with a mouthful of supper" whilst the horses were being

put into the gigs. Then, in a state of heavy, speechless resignation,

he was conveyed to his seat between a bauer and his wife, which,

though a tight fit in the morning, had strangely become tighter, and

where, circumstances thus pinning his arms to his side, and with his

aching head upon his breast in the most uncomfortable of attitudes,

the poor fat boy was jolted away in the twilight.

The other relations, all weightier mortals, more or less, than when

they arrived, were packed and squeezed into their creaking vehicles;

the very small vacuums remaining on or under the seats, to say nothing

of broad laps, being filled with krapfen. You would indeed have

supposed that the Hof were one great patent krapfen manufactory,

with the sole right of making, baking by steam and selling these

indigestible, leathery, yet brittle puffs so dear to the Tyrolese

palate, had not the figures of men, women and children, humble guests

at more modest dwellings, been seen filing along the highway or

crossing the moorland slopes, each bearing a light but bulging bundle

of krapfen tied up in a gay blue, crimson or yellow handkerchief.

It was indeed a krapfen dispensation. A piled-up offering stood in the

little oratory employed as a store-room by us; the cock crowed and

the hens clucked for their share of the Herrschaft's krapfen under

the parlor windows in the early morning; the men- and maid-servants

hurried buoyantly into town to sell their krapfen perquisites to less

favored mortals; the pedestrian bricklayer and carpenter, respectable

men with money stored away in their broad belts--portions of that

great army of Tyrolese who, possessing neither trade nor manufactures

in their native land, are forced in an ant-like manner to stray into

Bavaria and Austria until they can return laden with their

winter store, since the mere fattening of cattle cannot support a

nation,--these respectable but footsore men, wending their way from

Steiermark, were received with a hearty welcome and krapfen; and the

wandering family, who were not at all respectable, but were treated

with some distrust and more commiseration--the traveling tinker,

his dark-eyed, dark-skinned wife and saucy, grimy children, who were

barred and bolted with their barrow, their rags and their kettles in

the barn that night as in a traveler's rest--ate with marvelous relish

their bountiful-gleanings of this great krapfen harvest.

* * * * *