However, all Americans in Europe are not of this class, although it

includes the majority. There is a comparatively small number who are as

much impressed with the perfection of everything American as the most

ardent patriotism could desire. These people go to Europe cased in a

triple armor of self-assertion, prepared to poohpooh everything and

everybody that may come under their notice, and above all to vindicate

under all circumstances their independence as free-born American

citizens by giving the world around them the benefit of their opinions

upon all topics both in and out of season. They stand before a

_chef-d'oeuvre_ of some old master and declare in a loud, aggressive

voice that they see nothing whatever to admire in it, that the

bystanders may know that the judgment of centuries will not weigh with

_them_. They inquire with grim facetiousness, and terrific emphasis on

the pronominal adjectives, "Is _this_ what the people in this part of

the world call a steamboat?" "Do they call that duckpond a lake?" "Is

that stream what they call a river?" And so on, in a perpetual attitude

of protest against everything not so large as their steamboats, their

lakes, their rivers. When this genus of Americans abroad comes together

with the other genus--with the people who think the most wretched daub

that hangs in the most obscure corner of a European gallery, labelled

with prudent indefiniteness "of the school of ----," better far than the

most conscientious work by the most gifted of American artists--and a

discussion arises, as it is sure to do, on the relative merits of Europe

and America, then indeed does Greek meet Greek, and, both starting from

equally false premises and with equally false views, the cross-purposes,

the rabid comparing of things between which no comparison is possible,

the amount of absurd nonsense spoken on either side, and the profound

disdain of one for the other, furnish a great deal of amusement to

Europeans, but make an American who has any self-respect suffer no small

amount of mortification.

There is but one ground upon which these two classes of Americans meet

in common, and that is in their respect for titles, coronets and

coats-of-arms. It is useless to deny the immense impressiveness which

this sort of thing has for the average American. Of course, if he be of

the aggressive sort he will scout the very idea of any such imputation,

one of the favorite jokes of his tasteful stock in trade being precisely

to express sovereign contempt for anything and everything smacking of

nobility, and to weigh its advantages against the chink of his own

dollars and find it wanting. But this does not in the least alter the

matter. The people who inveigh the most fiercely against the pretensions

of blue blood are generally, the world over, the ones who are devoured

by the most ardent retrospective ambitions for grandfathers and

grandmothers; and the Americans who cry out loudest against the hollow

vanity of the European aristocracy are generally those who have

genealogical trees and coats-of-arms of authenticity more or less

questionable hanging in their back parlor, and think themselves a step

removed from those among their neighbors who boast of no such property.

It may not be pleasant for us to acknowledge to ourselves that our

countrymen abroad are cankered with toadyism and are frightful snobs;

but so it is, nevertheless. The fact is very visible, veil it as we may.

The American who has not had it forced upon his attention in innumerable

ways--by the undisguised _empressement_ of those among his compatriots

who frankly spend their whole time running after persons with titles,

entertaining them and fawning upon them in every possible manner, no

more than by the intensely American Americans who profess supreme

disregard for all precedence and distinctions established by society,

and yet never fail to let you know, quite accidentally, that Count This,

Baron That and Marquis the Other are their very particular friends--has

had an exceptional experience indeed.

This manner of disposing of all Americans abroad by putting them into

one of these two categories may seem somewhat sweeping, and it will be

objected that there are hundreds of our countrymen in Europe who could

never come under the head of either. Granted. These hundreds undoubtedly

exist: they are made up of people of superior mind and intelligence, of

people of superior culture, of people who occupy that exceptional social

position which, either through associations of hereditary ease,

refinement, wealth and elegance, or by contact with "the best" of

everything from childhood up, confers on those who belong to it very

much the same outward gloss the world over. But it is never among such

exceptions that the distinctive characteristics of a nation are to be

sought. These are to be looked for in the great mass of the people. Now,

the great mass of Americans who go abroad are people of average minds,

average education, average positions; and that, thus taken as a mass,

they are lamentably lacking both in good taste and dignity, every one

must admit who is in any degree familiar with the American colonies in

the cities of Europe where our countrymen congregate.

I should perhaps say, to express myself more accurately, "where our

countrywomen congregate;" for, after all, the true representatives of

America in Europe are the American women. Nine-tenths of all the

American colonies consist of mothers who, having left their liege lords

to their stocks and merchandise, have come abroad "for the education of

their children"--an exceedingly elastic as well as convenient formula,

which somehow always makes one think of charity that "covereth a

multitude of sins." Occasionally--once in three or four years

perhaps--the husband leaves his stocks or merchandise for a brief space

of time, crosses the Atlantic and remains with his family a month or

two. Occasionally also he fails to appear altogether. I am not very sure

but that this last course is the one that foreigners expect him to

pursue, and that when he deviates from it it is not rather a surprise to

them. Europeans, I fancy, are somewhat apt to look upon the American

husband as a myth. At all events, it seems to take the experience of

Thomas in many instances to convince them of his material existence.

The American who is content to have his wife and children leave him for

an indefinite period ranging anywhere from one year to ten years, and

during that time enjoy the advantages of life and travel in Europe,

while he himself remains at home absorbed in his business, is a species

of the genus _Homo_ that Europeans are at a loss to comprehend. Being so

rarely seen in the flesh, he necessarily occupies but a secondary

position in their estimation: indeed, I think all American men, those of

the class named no more than those that are more frequently seen abroad,

such as doctors, clergymen, consuls, etc., may be said--some exception

being made for the "leisure class" possessed of four-in-hands and so on,

and an unlimited supply of the world's goods--to be considered by

Europeans of no great significance, socially speaking. It is madame and

mesdemoiselles who are all-important. Monsieur is thought a worthy

person, with some excellent qualities, such as freedom from

uncomfortable jealousies and suspicions, and both capacity and

willingness for furnishing remittances, but a person rather destitute of

polish--invaluable from a domestic point of view, from any other

somewhat uninteresting. But madame and mesdemoiselles have every

possible tribute paid to their charms: their beauty, their wit, their

dash and sparkle, their independence, receive as large a share of

admiration as the most insatiable among them could desire.

It must be owned that the American spirit, tempered by European

education or influences, makes a very delightful compound. And it is

astonishing to mark how soon the toning process does its work--how soon

the most objectionable American girl of the sort known as "fast," or

even "loud," softens into a very charming creature who makes the

admiration bestowed upon her by European men quite comprehensible.

That this admiration is returned is perhaps not less comprehensible.

American women, as a mass, are better educated than American men, and

are particularly their superiors so far as outward grace and polish and

the general amenities of life are concerned. These qualities, in which

their countrymen are deficient, and the blander manners which accompany

them, they are apt to find well developed in European men, whatever

other virtues or faults may be theirs; and when to this fact is added

the spice of novelty, the strong liking that American girls manifest for

foreigners, and which has been the cause of putting so many American

youths in anything but a benedictory frame of mind, is easily accounted

for, and the marriages which so frequently take place between our girls

and European men may be explained, even on other grounds than the common

exchange of money on one side and title on the other.

Be the motive of these marriages either mutual interest or mutual

inclination, in neither case does the generally-accepted theory that

they are never happy bear the test of application. So far as my

knowledge goes, the common experience is quite the reverse. The number

of matches between American girls and Europeans that turn out badly is

small compared to the number of those that are perfectly satisfactory.

It is astonishing to see how many of our girls, who have been brought up

in the belief of the American woman's prerogative of absolute supremacy

in the domestic circle, when they are thus married change and seem quite

content to relinquish not a few of their ideas of perfectly untrammelled

independence, and to take that more subordinate position in matrimony

which European life and customs allot to women. It is still more

astonishing to see how contentedly and cheerfully they do so when

marrying men, as they often do, whose equals in every point, were they

their own countrymen, they would consider decidedly bad _partis_--men

with no advantages of any description, without either position, career

or any visible means of livelihood, often passably destitute of

education and character as well. How they contrive to be satisfied with

their bargain in this case is a puzzle, but satisfied they are.

Marriages of this sort, where the man has absolutely nothing to offer

beyond the charms of his more or less blandly persuasive person, excite

no surprise abroad. That a penniless male fortune-hunter should marry a

girl with wealth is considered in Europe at the present day not only

just, proper and quite as it should be, but rather _comme il faut_ than

otherwise. Let the case be reversed, and a man of fortune permit himself

the caprice of marrying a portionless girl, and society cries out in

horror against the mesalliance.

American women in Europe have two chief aims and occupations. The first

is to obtain an _entree_ into the society of the country in which they

are residing, and to identify themselves with that society: the second

is to revile one another.

So far as the first aim is concerned, it is certainly most laudable,

taken in one sense: the persons who can live in the midst of a people

without endeavoring to gain an insight into its character and its

customs must be possessed of an exceptionally oyster-like organization

indeed. But the majority of American women seek foreign society on other

grounds than this--chiefly from that tendency to ape everything European

and to decry everything American to which I have already alluded as

being characteristic of us as a nation. England and the English are the

principal models chosen for imitation. It is marvellous to notice the

fondness of American women abroad for the English accent and manner of

speech and way of thinking; how enthusiastically they attend all the

meets in Rome; how plaintively they tell one if one happens to have

arrived quite recently from home, "Really, there is no riding across

country in _your_ America, you know." In the cities of the Continent

that have large English and American colonies they attend the English

church in preference to their own. I believe it is considered more

exclusive to do so, and better form. In this mania for all things

English we are not alone. John Bull happens to be the fashion of the day

quite as much on the continent of Europe as in America, and has quite as

many devoted worshippers there as among us.

Naturally, one of the chief reasons why American women have so great a

liking for European society is to be found in the fact of the far more

important position that married ladies occupy in that society than they

do with us. For a woman who feels that she has still attractions which

should not be buried in obscurity, but who has found that since her

marriage she has, to all intents and purposes, been "laid upon the

shelf," it is a very delightful experience to see herself once more the

object of solicitous attention, considered as one of the brilliant

central ornaments of a ballroom, not as one of its indispensable

wall-decorations. The experience seems to be so particularly pleasant to

the majority of American women, indeed, that they show the greatest

disinclination to sharing it one with the other--a disinclination made

manifest by that habit of reviling each other which I mentioned as the

second great aim and occupation of our countrywomen abroad. That there

should be very little kindness and fellow-feeling, and a great deal of

envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness among their members, is

characteristic of all foreign colonies in every country; but none

certainly can, in this respect, surpass the American colonies in Europe,

at least in so far as their feminine representatives are concerned. The

extent to which these ladies carry their backbiting and slandering, and

the abnormal growth which their jealousy of one another attains, fill

the masculine mind with amazement.

A lady of a certain age who had lived in Europe twenty years, and who,

in addition to being a person of great clearness and robustness of

judgment, held a position, as a widow with a comfortable competency,

which made her verdict unassailable by any suspicion of its being an

interested one, spoke to me once on this subject. "In all my experience

of American life in Europe," she said, "I may safely state that I have

never met more than half a dozen American women who had anything but

ill-natured remarks to make of one another. No American woman need hope,

live as she may, do as she may, say what she may, to escape criticism

at the hands of her countrywomen. The mildest manner in which they will

treat her in conversation will be to say that she is 'nobody,' 'never

goes anywhere,' etc., and thus dismiss her. In every other case it is,

'Mrs. A----? Oh yes, such a charming person! Perhaps just a little bit

inclined to put on airs, but then--Oh, a very nice little woman. I don't

suppose she has ever really been accustomed to much, you know. They say

her mother was a dressmaker, but of course one never knows how true

these things may be. She does make frantic efforts to get into society

here: it is quite amusing. I think the Von Z----s have rather taken her

up. She has plenty of money to spend, oh yes. I can't see how her

husband can afford to let her live in the style she does abroad, but

then that is _his_ affair. She entertains all these people, and of

course they go to her house because she can give them some

amusement.'--'Mrs. B----? Do I know anything about her? Well, I think I

do. Nice? Oh, I do not know that there is anything to be said against

her. To be sure, in Paris people _did_ say some rather ugly things.

There was a Count L----. And I heard from a very reliable source that

she was not on exactly good terms with her husband. So, having

daughters, you know, I was obliged to be prudent and rather to shun her

than otherwise. Without wishing to be ill-natured I feel inclined to

advise you to do the same: I think you will find it quite as well to do

so.'--'Mrs. C----? Oh, my dear, such a coarse, common, vulgar creature!

She was never received in any sort of good society in New York. Her

husband made money one fine day, and she has come abroad and is trying

to impose upon people here. She is perfectly ignorant--no education

whatever. And the daughters are horribly _mauvais genre_.'--'Mrs. D----?

I should call her an undesirable acquaintance. Not but what she is a

very nice sort of person--in her way--but she does make up so

frightfully, and she looks so fast. Always has a crowd of officers

dangling about her. Her husband is a stick. They _do_ say that when his

relatives came abroad last winter they would not call upon him. They

were completely incensed at the way in which he permits his wife to

carry on.'--'Mrs. E----? Pray, who is Mrs. E----? and where does she get

the money to live as she does? I knew her a few years ago, when she had

a thousand a year to live on, she and both her children. And now, the

toilettes she makes! And, some people say, the debts! And, really, I

don't see how it can be otherwise, knowing, as I do, that all the

members of her family are as poor as church mice. Her husband committed

suicide, you know.--No! did you never hear that? Oh yes: he was mixed up

in some rather shady transactions in business, and put an end to himself

in that way.'--'Mrs. F----? Oh yes, I remember. An old thing, with a

grown-up son, who dresses as if she were fifteen. Dreadfully affected,

and _so_ silly! Moreover, Mrs. I---- lived in the same house with her in

Dresden--had the apartment above hers--and she told me the servants said

that Mrs. F---- was always in some difficulty with tradespeople.'--'Miss

G----? Is it possible you have never heard about her? Why, she ran away

with a footman, or something of the kind. Was brought back before she

had reached the station, I believe; but you can imagine the scandal! All

the girls in that family are rather queer, which, considering the stock

they come from, is really not very strange,' etc. etc. etc."

In view of these facts, and of many more of the same nature, when one

sees the people who come back from Europe after an absence of a year or

two unable to speak their own language fluently, because they have heard

and spoken nothing but German or French or Italian during that time, and

who cannot stand the climate because they are not used to it; when one

sees the young ladies who return home unable to take any interest in

American life, and who shut themselves away from its society, which to

them is most unpolished and vapid, because they have had a European

education; when one sees the hundred follies which a glimpse of Europe

will put into the heads of people whom before one had had every reason

to think sensible enough,--one feels inclined to ask one's self the

question, Are we to conclude that European life is demoralizing to

Americans? Are we to conclude that the innumerable advantages that such

a life confers--the wider view and broader knowledge of things, the

softening influences gained by contact with a riper civilization, the

aesthetic tastes developed by acquaintance with older and more perfect

art--are to count as nothing, are to be outweighed by the disadvantages

of the same life?

Certainly, out of a hundred Americans who go abroad ninety-nine return

with what they have lost in narrowness of experience completely offset

by what they have gained in pretentious affectation. So far from being

improved in any way are they that their well-wishers are inclined to

think it would have been far better had they never gone at all.

I do not wish to draw the ultimate conclusion from all this that it

would be better for Americans were their periodical exodus to Europe to

cease. Far from it. That cultivated Americans, and Americans

particularly of a more reflective than active mind, should find the

relative ease, culture and simplicity of European life more congenial to

them than the restless, high-pressure life of America, is quite natural.

And if there are no interests or ties to make their presence in their

own country imperatively necessary, it is certainly a matter of option

with them where they take up their abode. There is no law, human or

divine, to bind a person to live in one certain spot when the

surroundings are uncongenial to him, and when no private duty fetters

him to it, for the simple reason that he has chanced to be born there.

Every one is certainly at liberty to seek the centre that best suits him

and answers to his needs. Again, there are numbers of persons who with

moderate means can live according to their taste in Europe when it would

be impossible for them to do so in America on the same amount. There are

a thousand small gratifications that people can afford themselves on a

small income abroad, a thousand small pleasures in life from which in

our country they would be hopelessly debarred; and that they should be

debarred from them when escape is possible, and not only possible but

most simple and easy, would indeed be hard.

But why cannot Americans indulge this preference for life in Europe, why

can they not avail themselves of the choice if it is open to them, and

yet remember that they _are_ Americans, and that no circumstance can

absolve them from a sacred obligation to show respect for their native

country, and to stand as its citizens on their own dignity? Men and

women may be conscious of faults and weaknesses in their parents, but

they are not expected to expose these weaknesses on that account:

instinctive delicacy in any one but a churl would keep him from

acknowledging any such failings to his own heart. And a similar feeling

should teach us, even if our sympathies were not with our own country,

to treat it in word and deed with respect. Until we do learn to show

this respect before Europeans we must still resign ourselves to the

imputation, if they wish to make it, of crudeness, of being still sadly

in want of refining.

ALAIN GORE.

GLIMPSES OF PORTUGAL AND THE PORTUGUESE.

[Illustration: Sketch Map of NORTH SPAIN and PORTUGAL.]

The mere name of Spain calls up at once a string of flashing, barbaric

pictures--Moorish magnificence and Christian chivalry, bull-fights,

boleros, serenades, tattered pride and cruel pleasure. All these things

go to form that piquant whole, half Eastern, half European, which is the

Spain of our imaginations. Our associations with the western part of the

Peninsula are, on the other hand, vague and incomplete. Vasco da Gama,

the earthquake of Lisbon, port wine and Portuguese plums are the

Lusitanian products most readily called to mind. After them would come

perhaps the names of Magellan, of Prince Henry the Navigator and of the

ill-fated Don Sebastian. One poet of the country, Camoens, is as often

referred to as Tasso or Ariosto. Those whose memories go back to the

European events of 1830 and thereabouts may recall the Portuguese civil

wars, the woes of Dona Maria and the dark infamy of Don Miguel. And more

recently have we not heard of the Portuguese _Guide to English

Conversation_ and relished its delicious discoveries in our language?

All these items do not, however, present a very vivid or finished

picture of the country: like the words in a dictionary, they are a

trifle disconnected.

Portugal was the first station of Childe Harold's pilgrimage, but it

holds no place in the ordinary European tour of to-day. It does not

connect with any of the main lines of travel in such a manner as to

beguile the tourist insensibly over its border: a deliberate start must

be made by steamer from England in order to reach Lisbon from the north.

Another and probably stronger reason for our neglect of its scenery is

that it is not talked of. We go to Europe to see places and follow up

associations with which fame has already made us familiar, and, though

Portugal has had a great past of which the records are still extant, it

has not been brought to our notice by art.

The two nations living side by side on the Peninsula, though originally

of the same stock and subjected to the same influences, present more

points of difference than of likeness. Their early history is the same.

Hispania and Lusitania both fell successively under the dominion of the

Romans and of the Moors, and were modified to a considerable extent by

the civilization of each. Moorish influence was predominant in

Spain--Portugal retained more deeply the Roman stamp. This is easily

seen in the literature of the two countries. Spanish ballads and plays

show the Eastern delight in hyperbole, the Eastern fertility of

invention: Portuguese literature is completely classic in spirit,

avoiding all exaggeration, all offences against taste, and confining

itself to classic forms, such as the pastoral, the epic and the sonnet.

Many Moorish customs survive in Portugal to this day, but they have not

become so closely assimilated there as in Spain to the character of the

people. The cruelty which has always marked the Spanish race is no part

of the Portuguese national character, which is conspicuous rather for

the "gentler-sexed humanity." True, the bull-fight, that barbarous

legacy of the Moors, still lingers among the Portuguese, but the sport

is pursued with no such wanton intoxication of cruelty as in the country

with which its name is now associated. On the other hand, the Roman

tradition has been preserved in Portugal more perfectly than in Italy

itself: in the "fairest of Roman colonies," as it was once called, there

will be found manners and customs which bring up more vividly the life

portrayed by the classic poets than any existing among the peasants of

modern Italy.

[Illustration: ANCIENT HOUSE IN OPORTO.]

Both Rome and Arabia stood sponsors for the land they thus endowed. The

name _Portugal_ is compounded of the Latin _portus_, a "port," and the

Arabic _calaeh_, a "castle" or "fortress." The first of these names was

originally given to the town which still retains it--Oporto--one of the

oldest of Portugal, and at one time its capital.

The history of Portugal, when it separates from that of Spain, is the

history of a single stupendous achievement. A small nation raising

itself in a short time to the power of a great empire, reaching a height

which to gain was incredible, to keep impossible, and at the first

relaxation of effort suddenly falling with a disastrous crash,--that is

the drama of Portugal's greatness. There was no gradual rise or decline:

it mounted and fell. There is a tradition that the first king of

Portugal, Affonso Henriquez, was crowned on the battlefield with a burst

of enthusiasm on the part of the soldiers whom he was leading against

the Saracens, and that on the same day he opened his reign by the

glorious victory of Ourique. Less than half a century previously the

country had been given as a fief to a young knight, Count Henry of

Burgundy, on his marriage with a daughter of the king of Castile. The

Moors were overrunning it on the one hand, Castile was eying it

jealously on the other, yet Affonso Henriquez made it an independent and

permanent kingdom. This prince slaughtered Saracens and carried off

honors on the field as fast as the Cid, but his deeds were not embalmed

in an epic destined to become a storehouse of poetry for all the world.

His chronicler did not come till about four centuries later, and then

nearer and vaster achievements than those of Affonso Henriquez lay

ready to his pen. At the birth of Camoens, in 1525, Portugal had gained

her greatest conquests, and, if the shadows were already falling across

her power, she had still great men who were making heroic efforts to

retain it. Vasco da Gama had died within the year. Albuquerque, the hero

of the _Lusiado_, the noblest and most far-sighted mind in an age of

great men, had been dead ten years. Camoens, like the Greek dramatists,

was soldier as well as poet: he was not alone the singer of past

adventures--he was the reporter of what took place under his own eyes.

His epic was already finished before the defeat of Don Sebastian in the

battle of Alcazar put an end to the glory it celebrated, and in dying

shortly after the poet is said to have breathed a prayer of thanksgiving

at being spared the pain of surviving his country.

[Illustration: CHAPEL NEAR GUIMARAENS.]

The period of Portuguese supremacy lasted then, altogether, less than a

century. There is an irresistible temptation to ponder over what results

were lost by its sudden downfall, and to seek therein some explanation

of the strange fact that Portugal alone among the southern nations of

Europe has never had a national art. There was a moment when the

foundations for it seemed to be laid: it was the period at which early

Spanish art was putting forth its first efforts, while that of Italy was

in its prime. Under Emanuel the Fortunate and his successor Portugal was

rich and powerful. Its intellect and ambition had been stimulated by the

achievements of its great navigators. There was an awakening of interest

in art and letters. A school of poets had arisen of which Camoens was to

be the crown. The court, mindful of the duties of patronage, was

building new churches and convents and decorating the old ones with

religious pictures, and in Portugal religious feeling has always been

peculiarly strong. Many of these pictures are still preserved. They are

not, however, of a high order of merit, and it is not even certain that

they are the work of native artists, some authorities inclining to the

belief that they were done by inferior Flemish painters visiting the

country, and are therefore the lees of the Flemish school, not the

flower of a national one. Universal belief among the Portuguese

attributes them to Gran Vasco, a master whose very existence is

mythical, and who if he had lived several lives could not have painted

all the works of various styles which are ascribed to him. That the

artistic sense was not lacking in the Portuguese people is abundantly

shown in their architecture, in their repousse-work of the fifteenth

century and the carvings in wood and stone. The church and convent at

Belem, the work of this period, are ornamented by Gothic stone-work of

exquisite richness and fertility of invention. The church is unfinished,

like the epoch it commemorates. To an age of activity and conquest

succeeded one of gloom and depression. The last of the kings whom the

nation had leaned on, while it supported them so loyally, had fallen at

Alcazar, and in the struggle which ensued for the succession Portugal

fell an easy prey to the strongest claimant. Philip II. strengthened his

claim to the vacant throne by sending an army of twenty thousand men

into the country under the command of the duke of Alva, and the other

heirs were too weak or too divided to oppose him. The discoveries and

conquests made by Portugal had laid the foundations of riches and power

for other nations: her own immediate benefit from them was over. The

period of prosperous repose which may be expected to follow one of great

national activity was denied to her. When the house of Braganza

recovered its rights, the impulse to creative art was extinct.

[Illustration: CLOISTERS OF BELEM CONVENT.]

Though it was as a maritime power that Portugal rose to its greatest

height, it has been from time immemorial an agricultural nation, and the

mass of its people are engaged in tilling the soil. They are a cheerful,

industrious race, who, far from meriting Lord Byron's contemptuous

epithet of "Lusitanian boors," are gifted with a natural courtesy and

refinement of manner. A New-England farmer would be tempted to follow

the poet's example and regard them with contempt: weighed in his

balance, they would certainly be found wanting. There is no

public-school system in operation, and the Portuguese farmer is not

likely to be able to read or sign his name. But the want of literature

is not felt in a Southern country, where social intercourse is far more

cultivated than in our own rural districts. It is not by reading the

newspapers, but by talking matters over with his neighbor, that the

Portuguese farmer obtains his sound and intelligent views on the

politics of his country. He is a great talker, taking a keen interest in

all that goes on, enjoying a joke thoroughly and addressing his comrade

with all the ceremonies and distinctions of a language which contains

half a dozen different forms of address. The illiterate peasant is no

whit behind the man of culture in the purity of his Portuguese. In no

country in Europe is the language kept freer from dialect, and this

notwithstanding the fact that it is one of involved grammatical forms.

In France the use of the imperfect subjunctive is given up by the lower

classes and by foreigners, but in Portugal the peasant has still deeper

subtleties of speech at the end of his tongue. Add to this that he has a

vocabulary of abuse before which the Spaniard or the California

mule-driver would be silenced, and you have the extent of his linguistic

accomplishments. This profane eloquence was an art imparted no doubt by

the Moors. The refinements of syntax come from the Latin, to which

Portuguese bears more affinity in form than any other modern language.

From the Romans the Lusitanian received his first lessons in

agriculture--lessons which have never been entirely superseded. His

plough was given him by the Romans, and he has not yet seen fit to alter

the pattern. The ox-cart used in town and country for all purposes of

draught is another relic preserved intact. Its wheels of solid wood are

fastened to the axle, which revolves with them, this revolution being

accompanied by a chorus of inharmonious shrieks and creaks and wails

which to the foreign and prejudiced nerve is simply agonizing. Its

master hears it with a different ear: he finds it rather cheerful than

otherwise, good to enliven the oxen, to dispel the silence of lonely

places and to frighten away wolves and bogies, of which enemies he has a

childish awe. Instead, therefore, of pouring oil upon this discord, he

applies lemon-juice to aggravate the sound! The cart pleases the eye of

the stranger more than his ear. When in the vintage season the upright

poles forming its sides are bound together by a wickerwork of vine

branches with their large leaves, and the inside is heaped with purple

grapes, it is a goodly sight, and one which Alma-Tadema might paint as a

Roman vintage, for it is doubtless a counterfeit presentment of the

grape-laden wains which moved in the season of vintage over the

Campagna. The results in both cases were the same, for the _vinho

verde_, a harsh but refreshing wine, made and drunk by the

country-people, is made in the same way and is probably identical with

that wherewith the Latin farmer slaked his thirst. The recipe may have

descended through Lusus, the companion of Bacchus, whom tradition names

as the father of the Lusitanian. Be that as it may, the Portuguese is

still favored of the wine-god. Wine flows for him even more freely than

water, which gift of Nature has to be dug for and sought far and wide.

He drinks the ruby liquid at home and carries it afield: he even shares

it with his horse, who sinks his nose, nothing loth, in its inviting

depths, and neither man nor beast shows any ill effects from this

indulgence.

[Illustration: A MADEIRA FISHERMAN.]

It is in the north-western corner of the country, in the Minho

province, that the highest rural prosperity is to be met with. This

little province, scarcely as large as the State of Delaware, but with

more than four times its population, has successfully solved the problem

of affording labor and sustenance in nearly equal shares to a large

number of inhabitants. Bonanza-farming is unheard of there. The high

perfection of its culture, which gives the whole province the trim,

thriving air of a well-kept garden, comes from individual labor minutely

bestowed on small surfaces. No mowing-, threshing- or other machines are

used. Instead of labor-saving, there is labor cheerfully expended--in

the place of the patent mower, a patient toiler (often of the fair sex),

armed with a short, curved reaping-hook. The very water, which flows

plentifully in fountains and channels, comes not direct from heaven

without the aid of man. It is coaxed down from the hills in tedious

miles of aqueduct or forced up from a great depth by a rustic

water-wheel worked by oxen, and is then distributed over the land.

Except for its aridity, the climate is kind to the small farmer: there

is no long inactivity forced upon him by a cold winter. A constant

succession of crops may be raised, and all through the year he works

cheerfully and industriously, finding his ten acres enough and his

curious broad hoe dexterously wielded the equivalent of shovel and

pickaxe. If ignorant of our inventions, he is intimately acquainted with

some American products. If a Yankee were to walk into a Portuguese

farm-house and surprise the family at dinner, he would be sure to see on

the table two articles which, however oddly served, would be in their

essentials familiar to him--Indian meal and salt codfish. Indian corn

has long been cultivated as the principal grain: it is mixed with rye to

make the bread in every-day use. The Newfoundland cod, under the name of

_bacalhau_, has crept far into the affections of the nation, its lack of

succulence being atoned for by a rich infusion of olive oil, so that the

native beef, cheap and good as it is, has no chance in comparison.

Altogether, the Portuguese peasant with his wine, his oil and his

bacalhau fares better than most of his class. At Christmas-tide he

stakes his digestion on _rebanadas_, a Moorish invention--nothing less

than ambrosial flapjacks made by soaking huge slices of wheaten bread in

new milk, frying them in olive oil and then spreading them lavishly with

honey.

The Portuguese can be industrious, but all work and no play is a scheme

of life which would ill accord with his social, pleasure-loving

temperament. With a wisdom rare in his day and generation, and an energy

unparalleled among Southern races, he manages to combine the two. After

rising at dawn and working from twelve to fifteen hours, he does not sit

down and fall asleep, but slings a guitar over his shoulder and is off

to the nearest threshing-floor to dance a _bolero_. His dancing is not

the more graceful for coming after hours of field-labor, but it lacks

neither activity nor picturesqueness: above all, it is the outcome of

light-heartedness and enjoyment in capering. The night air, soft yet

cool, is refreshing after the intense heat of the day: the too sudden

lowering of temperature at sundown which makes the evenings unhealthy in

many Southern countries is not experienced in Portugal. Every peasant

has his guitar, for a love of music is widely diffused, and some of them

not only sing but improvise. In the province of the Minho it is not

uncommon at these gatherings for a match of improvisation to be held

between two rustic bards. One takes his guitar, and in a slow, drawling

recitative sings a simple quatrain, which the other at once caps with a

second in rhyme and rhythm matching the first. Verse follows verse in

steady succession, and the singer who hesitates is lost: his rival

rushes in with a tide of rhyme which carries all before it. In such

primitive pleasures the shepherds of the Virgilian eclogue indulged.

As the life of the peasant, so is that of his wife or sweetheart. She

shares in the work, guiding the oxen, cutting grass, even working on the

road with hoe and basket. "Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound."

Like Wordsworth's reaper, she sings as she works, and the day's labor

over is ready to join in the bolero. On fete-days she is arrayed in all

the magnificence of her peasant ornaments, worth, if her family is

well-to-do, a hundred dollars or more--gold pendants in her ears, large

gold chains of some antique Moorish design falling in a triple row over

her gay bodice. The men wear long hooded cloaks of brown homespun, which

they sometimes retain for convenience after the rest of the

peasant-dress has been thrown aside for the regulation coat and

trousers. There is no tendency to eccentricity in the national costume

of Portugal, but the Portuguese colony of Madeira have invented a

singular head-gear in a tiny skull-cap surmounted by a steeple of

tightly-wound cloth, which serves as a handle to lift it by. Like the

German student's cap, it requires practice to make it adhere at the

required angle. This is a bit of coxcombry which has no match in the

simple, unaffected vanity of the Portuguese.

[Illustration: COUNTRY-HOUSE IN PORTUGAL.]

The country is left during the greater part of the year to the exclusive

occupancy of the peasantry, the town atmosphere being more congenial in

the long run to the social gentry of Portugal. The wealthy class in

Lisbon have their villas at Cintra, in which paradise of Nature and art,

with its wonderful ensemble of precipices and palaces, forest and garden

scenes, they can enjoy mountains without forsaking society. Many Oporto

families own country-houses in the Minho, and rusticate there very

pleasantly for a month or two in early fall. The gentlemen have large

shooting-parties, conducted on widely-different principles from those so

unswervingly adhered to by Trollope's indefatigable sporting character,

Mr. Reginald Dobbs. In a Portuguese shooting the number of men and dogs

is often totally disproportionate to that of the game, and a single

partridge may find itself the centre of an alarming volley from a dozen

or more guns. The enjoyment is not measured, however, by the success.

There is a great deal of talking and laughing, and no discontent with

the day's sport is exhibited even if there be little to show for the

skill and patience expended. There is further occupation in

superintending vintage and harvest, while the orange-groves and

luxuriant gardens offer plenty of resources for exercise or idleness.

Plant-life in Portugal is singularly varied even for so warm a country.

To the native orange, olive and other trees of Southern Europe have been

added many exotics. The large magnolia of our Southern States, the

Japanese camellia and the Australian gum tree have made themselves at

home there, and grow as if their roots were in their native soil.

Geraniums and heliotrope, which we confine easily in flower-pots, assume

a different aspect in the public gardens of Lisbon, where the former is

seen in flaming trees and hedges twenty or thirty feet high, and the

latter distributes its fragrance while covering the high walls with its

spreading arms.

The grapes from which port-wine is made are all grown within the narrow

compass of a mountain-valley about twenty-seven miles long by five or

six wide, where the conditions of soil and climate most favorable to

wine-culture--including a large degree of both heat and cold--are found

in perfection. Owing to its elevation the frosts in this district are

tolerably severe, while in summer the sun looks steadily down with his

hot glance into the valley till its vine-clad sides are permeated by

heat. The grapes ripened there are of peculiar richness and strength.

The trade is all in the hands of a certain number of English merchants

at Oporto, who buy the grapes as they hang of the native farmers and

have the wine made under their own supervision. The wine-making is

conducted in much the same manner as in other countries, a certain

quantity of spirits being added to arrest decay and ensure its

preservation. All wine has passed through the first stage of decay,

fermentation, and is liable at any time to continue the course. It may

be made with little or no alcohol if it is to be drunk within the year:

to ensure a longer lease of life some antiseptic is necessary. Port is,

from its richness, peculiarly liable to decay, and will stand

fortification better than sherry, which being a light wine is less in

need of it and more apt to be over-fortified. The area in which port is

produced being so small, there can be no material difference in the

produce of different vineyards, but some slight superiorities of soil or

aspect have given the Vesuvio, the Raida and a few other wines a special

reputation.

The history of port is a somewhat curious one. It is associated closely

with the old English gentleman of a bygone generation, a staunch and

bigoted being who despised French wines as he abhorred the French

nation, and agreed with Doctor Johnson that claret was for boys, port

for men. The vintage of 1820 was a remarkable one in Portugal. The port

made in that season was of a peculiar strength and sweetness, in color

nearly black. The old English gentleman would acknowledge no other as

genuine, and, as Nature positively refused to repeat the experiment, the

practice of dyeing port with dried elderberries and increasing the

infusion of brandy to impart strength and flavor was resorted to. It was

successful for some time, but after a while the secret oozed out, and

the public began to receive the garnet-hued liquid again into favor, and

to find, with Douglas Jerrold, that it preferred the old port to the

_elder_. The elderberry is not sufficiently common in Portugal to make

the continuation of this process popular with wine-makers. At present

port is tolerably free from adulteration, though its casks and those of

an inferior red wine of Spain after voyaging to England sometimes find

their contents a little mixed.

Oporto is the seat of the wine-trade, and its huge warehouses are filled

with stores of port ripening to a good old age, when the garnet will be

exchanged for a dark umber tint. A handsome, thriving city is Oporto,

mounting in terraces up the slope of a steep hill. A fine quay runs the

length of the town along the Douro, and here the active life of Oporto

is mainly concentrated. Any stranger watching this stir of movement and

color will be struck by the prominent position which women fill in the

busy crowd. The men do not absorb all branches of labor. Besides the

water-carriers, market-women and fruit-vendors there may be seen

straight, stalwart lasses acting as portresses to convey loads to and

from the boats which are fastened to the river-wall. Many of the

servants and other laborers through Portugal come from Galicia, the

inhabitants of that Spanish province enjoying a reputation for honesty

and faithful service combined with stupidity.

[Illustration: QUAY AT OPORTO--THE QUEEN'S STAIRS.]

A sad contrast to the fertility of the Minho is presented by the

country opposite Lisbon and the adjoining province of Alemtejo. This

Portuguese _campagna_ was in Roman days a fertile plain covered with

golden wheat-fields. Now it is a barren, melancholy waste, producing

only ruins. It is in and about this region that the most important Roman

remains in the country are to be found. The soil in the neighborhood of

Evora is rich in coins and other relics, and Evora has, besides its

great aqueduct, the massive pillars of a temple to Diana, which, sad to

say, was once put to ignoble use as a slaughter-house. The ruins of

Troia have escaped desecration, if they have not obtained the care and

study which they merit. Lying on a low tongue of land which projects

into the bay of Setubal, the city of Troia is buried, not in Pompeian

lava, but in deep mounds of sand, accumulated there by the winds and

waves. A tremendous storm in 1814 washed away a part of this sand and

revealed something of its treasure, but it was not till 1850 that the

hint was followed up by antiquaries and a regular digging made. A large

Roman house was uncovered, together with a vast debris of marble

columns, mosaic pavements, baths, urns, and other appurtenances of Roman

existence. The excavations have been far from thorough; the peninsular

Troy still awaits its Schliemann. The name Troia was probably bestowed

by Portuguese antiquaries of the Renaissance period, who mention it thus

in their writings. According to Roman records, the city flourished about

300 A.D. as Cetobriga.

[Illustration: Sketch Map of SETUBAL and RUINS OF TROIA.]

We must return to the Minho province--still the most representative

section of Portugal--for monuments of Portuguese antiquity. Guimaraens

is the oldest town of purely native growth, and is closely associated

with the life of Affonso Henriquez. The massive castle in which he was

born, and the church which witnessed the christening of the first king

of Portugal, are still standing: the old walls of the town date back to

the time of the hero; and not far off is the field where he fought the

battle which gained him his independence at eighteen. Within a few miles

of Guimaraens is Braga, celebrated for centuries as a stronghold of the

Church. Its Gothic cathedral is of grand proportions, containing a

triple nave, and belongs to the thirteenth century. The church treasures

shut up in its sanctuary are among the richest in the Peninsula.

Portugal presents the curious spectacle of a country in which the

customs of antiquity have lasted as long as its monuments. In a certain

way the former are the more impressive. As some little familiar trait

will sometimes give a fresher insight into a great man than the more

important facts of his biography, so the ploughing, harvesting and

singing of a Portuguese peasant, with their bucolic simplicity, bring

the life of the ancients a little nearer to us than the sight of their

great aqueducts and columns. But the nineteenth century is striking the

death-blow of the bucolic very fast, the world over, and Portugal is

awake and bestirring herself--not the less effectively that she is

making no noise about it. Nevertheless, she is becoming better known.

Mr. Oswald Crawfurd, the English consul at Oporto, who has lived in

Portugal for many years, is writing about it from the best point of

view, half within, half without. His book of travels published under the

pseudonym of Latouche, and a volume entitled _Portugal, Old and New_,

recently issued under his own name, throw a strong, clear light upon the

country and its inhabitants. Another sympathetic and entertaining

traveller is Lady Jackson, the author of _Fair Lusitania_.

[Illustration: CHURCH PLATE IN BRAGA CATHEDRAL.]

The Portugal of Mr. Crawfurd and Lady Jackson is a different land from

that which Southey, Byron and other English celebrities visited at the

beginning of this century: it is not the same which Wordsworth's

daughter, Mrs. Quillinan, travelled through on horseback in 1837, making

light of inconveniences and looking at everything with kind, frank eyes.

Lisbon is no longer a beautiful casket filled with dirt and filth, but a

clean, bright and active city, and Portugal is no longer a sleeping

land, but a well-governed country, which will probably be hindered by

its small natural proportions, but not by any sluggishness or incapacity

of its people, from taking a high place among European nations.

A GRAVEYARD IDYL.

In the summer of 187-, when young Doctor Putnam was recovering from an

attack of typhoid fever, he used to take short walks in the suburbs of

the little provincial town where he lived. He was still weak enough to

need a cane, and had to sit down now and then to rest. His favorite

haunt was an old-fashioned cemetery lying at the western edge of the

alluvial terrace on which the town is built. The steep hillside abuts

boldly on the salt marsh. One of the cemetery-paths runs along the brink

of the hill; and here, on a wooden bench under a clump of red cedars,

Putnam would sit for hours enjoying the listless mood of convalescence.

Where the will remains passive, the mind, like an idle weathercock,

turns to every puff of suggestion, and the senses, born new from

sickness, have the freshness and delicacy of a child's. It soothed his

eye to follow lazily the undulations of the creek, lying like the folds

of a blue silk ribbon on the flat ground of the marsh below. He watched

the ebbing tide suck down the water from the even lines of trenches that

sluiced the meadows till the black mud at their bottom glistened in the

sun. The opposite hills were dark with the heavy foliage of July. In the

distance a sail or two speckled the flashing waters of the bay, and the

lighthouse beyond bounded the southern horizon.

It was a quiet, shady old cemetery, not much disturbed by funerals. Only

at rare intervals a fresh heap of earth and a slab of clean marble

intruded with their tale of a new and clamorous grief among the sunken

mounds and weatherstained tombstones of the ancient sleepers for whom

the tears had long been dried. Now and then a mourner came to put

flowers on a grave; now and then one of the two or three laborers who

kept the walks and shrubberies in order would come along the path by

Putnam's bench, trundling a squeaking wheelbarrow; sometimes a nurse

with a baby-carriage found her way in. But generally the only sounds to

break the quiet were the songs of birds, the rumble of a wagon over the

spile bridge across the creek and the whetting of scythes in the

water-meadows, where the mowers, in boots up to their waists, went

shearing the oozy plain and stacking up the salt hay.

One afternoon Putnam was in his accustomed seat, whistling softly to

himself and cutting his initials into the edge of the bench. The air was

breathless, and the sunshine lay so hot on the marshes that it seemed to

draw up in a visible steam a briny incense which mingled with the spicy

smell of the red cedars. Absorbed in reverie, he failed to notice how

the scattered clouds that had been passing across the sky all the

afternoon were being gradually reinforced by big fluffy cumuli rolling

up from the north, until a rumble overhead and the rustle of a shower in

the trees aroused him.

In the centre of the grounds was an ancient summer-house standing amidst

a maze of flower-beds intersected by gravel-walks. This was the nearest

shelter, and, as the rain began to patter smartly, Putnam pocketed his

knife, turned up his coat-collar and ran for it. Arrived at the

garden-house, he found there a group of three persons, driven to harbor

from different parts of the cemetery. The shower increased to a storm,

the lattices were lashed by the rain and a steady stream poured from the

eaves. The althaea and snowberry bushes in the flower-pots, and even the

stunted box-edges along the paths, swayed in the wind. It grew quite

dark in the summer-house, shaded by two or three old hemlocks, and it

was only by the lightning-flashes that Putnam could make out the

features of the little company of refugees. They stood in the middle of

the building, to avoid the sheets of rain blown in at the doors in

gusts, huddling around a pump that was raised on a narrow stone

platform--not unlike the daughters of Priam clustered about the great

altar in the penetralia: Praecipites atra ceu tempestate columbae.

They consisted of a young girl, an elderly woman with a trowel and

watering-pot, and a workman in overalls, who carried a spade and had

perhaps been interrupted in digging a grave. The platform around the

pump hardly gave standing room for a fourth. Putnam accordingly took his

seat on a tool-chest near one of the entrances, and, while the soft

spray blew through the lattices over his face and clothes, he watched

the effect of the lightning-flashes on the tossing, dripping trees of

the cemetery-grounds.

Soon a shout was heard and down one of the gravel-walks, now a miniature

river, rushed a Newfoundland dog, followed by a second man in overalls.

Both reached shelter soaked and lively. The dog distributed the contents

of his fur over our party by the pump, nosed inquiringly about, and then

subsided into a corner. Second laborer exchanged a few words with first

laborer, and melted into the general silence. The slight flurry caused

by their arrival was only momentary, while outside the storm rose higher

and inside it grew still darker. Now and then some one said something in

a low tone, addressed rather to himself than to the others, and lost in

the noise of the thunder and rain.

But in spite of the silence there seemed to grow up out of the situation

a feeling of intimacy between the members of the little community in the

summer-house. The need of shelter--one of the primitive needs of

humanity--had brought them naturally together and shut them up "in a

tumultuous privacy of storm." In a few minutes, when the shower should

leave off, their paths would again diverge, but for the time being they

were inmates and held a household relation to one another.

And so it came to pass that when it began to grow lighter and the rain

stopped, and the sun glanced out again on the reeking earth and

saturated foliage, conversation grew general.

"Gracious sakes!" said the woman with the trowel and watering-pot as

she glanced along the winding canals that led out from the

summer-house--"jest see the water in them walks!"

"Gol! 'tis awful!" murmured the Irishman with the spade. "There'll be a

fut of water in the grave, and the ould mon to be buried the morning!"

"Ah, they had a right to put off the funeral," said the other workman,

"and not be giving the poor corp his death of cold."

"'Tis warrum enough there where the ould mon's gone, but 'tis cold

working for a poor lad like mesilf in the bottom of a wet grave. Gol!

'tis like a dreen." With that he shouldered his spade and waded

reluctantly away.

Second laborer paused to light his dhudeen, and then disappeared in the

opposite direction, his Newfoundland taking quite naturally to the

deepest puddles in their course.

"Hath this fellow no feeling of his business?" asked Putnam, rising and

sauntering up to the pump. The question was meant more for the younger

than the elder of the two women, but the former paid no heed to it, and

the latter, by way of answer, merely glanced at him suspiciously and

said "H'm!" She was unlocking the tool-chest on which he had been

sitting, and now raised the lid, stowed away her trowel and

watering-pot, locked the chest again and put the key in her pocket, with

the remark, "I guess I hain't got any more use for a sprinkle-pot

to-day."

"It is rather _de trop_," said Putnam.

The old woman looked at him still more distrustfully, and then, drawing

up her skirts, showed to his great astonishment a pair of india-rubber

boots, in which she stumped away through the water and the mud, leaving

in the latter colossal tracks which speedily became as pond-holes in the

shallower bed of the stream. The younger woman stood at the door,

gathering her dress about her ankles and gazing irresolutely at these

frightful _vestigia_ which gauged all too accurately the depth of the

mud and the surface-water above it.

"They look like the fossil bird-tracks in the Connecticut Valley

sandstone," said Putnam, following the direction of her eyes.

These were very large and black. She turned them slowly on the speaker,

a tallish young fellow with a face expressive chiefly of a good-natured

audacity and an alertness for whatever in the way of amusement might

come within range. Her look rested on him indifferently, and then turned

back to the wet gravel.

Putnam studied for a moment the back of her head and her figure, which

was girlishly slender and clad in gray. "How extraordinary," he resumed,

"that she should happen to have rubber boots on!"

"She keeps them in the tool-chest. The cemetery-man gives her a key,"

she replied after a pause, and as if reluctantly. Her voice was very low

and she had the air of talking to herself.

"Isn't that a rather queer place for a wardrobe? I wonder if she keeps

anything else there besides the boots and the trowel and the

'sprinkle-pot'?"

"I believe she has an umbrella and some flower-seeds."

"Now, if she only had a Swedish cooking-box and a patent camp-lounge,"

said Putnam laughing, "she could keep house here in regular style."

"She spends a great deal of time here: her children are all here, she

told me."

"Well, it's an odd taste to live in a burying-ground, but one might do

worse perhaps. There's nothing like getting accustomed gradually to what

you've got to come to. And then if one must select a cemetery for a

residence, this isn't a bad choice. Have you noticed what quaint old

ways they have about it? At sunset the sexton rings a big bell that

hangs in the arch over the gateway: he told me he had done it every day

for twenty years. It's not done, I believe, on the principle of firing a

sunset gun, but to let people walking in the grounds know the gate is to

be shut. There's a high stone wall, you know, and somebody might get

shut in all night. Think of having to spend the night here!"

"I have spent the night here often," she answered, again in an absent

voice and as if murmuring to herself.

"_You_ have?" exclaimed Putnam. "Oh, you slept in the tool-chest, I

suppose, on the old lady's shake-down."

She was silent, and he began to have a weird suspicion that she had

spoken in earnest. "This is getting interesting," he said to himself;

and then aloud, "You must have seen queer sights. Of course, when the

clock struck twelve all the ghosts popped out and sat on their

respective tombstones. The ghosts in this cemetery must be awfully old

fellows. It doesn't look as if they had buried any one here for a

hundred and thirty-five years. I've often thought it would be a good

idea to inscribe _Complet_ over the gate, as they do on a Paris

omnibus."

"You speak very lightly of the dead," said the young girl in a tone of

displeasure and looking directly at him.

Putnam felt badly snubbed. He was about to attempt an explanation, but

her manner indicated that she considered the conversation at an end. She

gathered up her skirts and prepared to leave the summer-house. The water

had soaked away somewhat into the gravel.

"Excuse me," said Putnam, advancing desperately and touching his hat,

"but I notice that your shoes are thin and the ground is still very wet.

I'm going right over to High street, and if I can send you a carriage or

anything--"

"Thank you, no: I sha'n't need it;" and she stepped off hastily down the

walk.

Putnam looked after her till a winding of the path took her out of

sight, and then started slowly homeward. "What the deuce could she

mean," he pondered as he walked along, "about spending the night in the

cemetery? Can she--no she can't--be the gatekeeper's daughter and live

in the gate-house? Anyway, she's mighty pretty."

His mother and his maiden aunt, who with himself made up the entire

household, received him with small scoldings and twitterings of anxiety.

They felt his wet clothes, prophesied a return of his fever and forced

him to go immediately to bed, where they administered hot drinks and

toast soaked in scalded milk. He lay awake a long time, somewhat

fatigued and excited. In his feeble condition and in the monotony which

his life had assumed of late the trifling experience of the afternoon

took on the full proportions of an adventure. He thought it over again

and again, but finally fell asleep and slept soundly. He awoke once,

just at dawn, and lay looking through his window at a rosy cloud which

reposed upon an infinite depth of sky, motionless as if sculptured

against the blue. A light morning wind stirred the curtains and the

scent of mignonette floated in from the dewy garden. He had that

confused sense of anticipation so common in moments between waking and

sleeping, when some new, pleasant thing has happened, or is to happen on

the morrow, which the memory is too drowsy to present distinctly. Of

this pleasant, indistinct promise that auroral cloud seemed somehow the

omen or symbol, and watching it he fell asleep again. When he next awoke

the sunlight of mid-forenoon was flooding the chamber, and he heard his

mother's voice below stairs as she sat at her sewing.

In the afternoon he started on his customary walk, and his feet led him

involuntarily to the cemetery. As he traversed the path along the edge

of the hill he saw in one of the grave-lots the heroine of his

yesterday's encounter, and a sudden light broke in on him: she was a

mourner. And yet how happened it that she wore no black? There was a

wooden railing round the enclosure, and within it a single mound and a

tombstone of fresh marble. A few cut flowers lay on the grave. She was

sitting in a low wicker chair, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes

fixed vacantly on the western hills. Putnam now took closer note of her

face. It was of a brown paleness. The air of hauteur given it by the

purity of the profile and the almost insolent stare of the large black

eyes was contradicted by the sweet, irresolute curves of the mouth. At

present her look expressed only a profound apathy. As he approached her

eyes turned toward him, but seemingly without recognition. Diffidence

was not among Tom Putnam's failings: he felt drawn by an unconquerable

sympathy and attraction to speak to her, even at the risk of intruding

upon the sacredness of her grief.

"Excuse me, miss," he began, stopping in front of her, "but I want to

apologize for what I said yesterday about--about the cemetery. It must

have seemed very heartless to you, but I didn't know that you were in

mourning when I spoke as I did."

"I have forgotten what you said," she answered.

"I am glad you have," said Putnam, rather fatuously. There seemed really

nothing further to say, but as he lingered for a moment before turning

away a perverse recollection surprised him, and he laughed out loud.

She cast a look of strong indignation at him, and rose to her feet.

"Oh, I ask your pardon a thousand times," he exclaimed reddening

violently. "Please don't think that I was laughing at anything to do

with you. The fact is that last idiotic speech of mine reminded me of

something that happened day before yesterday. I've been sick, and I met

a friend on the street who said, 'I'm glad you're better;' and I

answered, 'I'm glad that you're glad that I'm better;' and then he said,

'I'm glad that you're glad that I'm glad that you're better'--like the

House that Jack Built, you know--and it came over me all of a sudden

that the only way to continue our conversation gracefully would be for

you to say, 'I'm glad that you're glad that I've forgotten what you said

yesterday.'"

She had listened impatiently to this naive and somewhat incoherent

explanation, and she now said, "I wish you would go away. You see that I

am alone here and in trouble. I can't imagine what motive you can have

for annoying me in this way," her eyes filling with angry tears.

Putnam was too much pained by the vehemence of her language to attempt

any immediate reply. His first impulse was to bow and retire without

more words. But a pertinacity which formed one of his strongest though

perhaps least amiable traits countermanded his impulse, and he said

gravely, "Certainly, I will go at once, but in justice to myself I must

first assure you that I didn't mean to intrude upon you or annoy you in

any way."

She sank down into her chair and averted her face.

"You say," he continued, "that you are in trouble, and I beg you to

believe that I respect your affliction, and that when I spoke to you

just now it was simply to ask pardon for having hurt your feelings

yesterday, without meaning to, by my light mention of the dead. I've

been too near death's door myself lately to joke about it." He paused,

but she remained silent. "I'm going away now," he said softly. "Won't

you say that you excuse me, and that you haven't any hard feelings

toward me?"

"Yes, oh yes," she answered wearily: "I have no feelings. Please go

away."

Putnam raised his hat respectfully, and went off down the pathway. On

reaching the little gate-house he sat down to rest on a bench before the

door. The gatekeeper was standing on the threshold in his shirt-sleeves,

smoking a pipe. "A nice day after the rain, sir," he began.

"Yes, it is."

"Have you any folks here, sir?"

"No, no one. But I come here sometimes for a stroll."

"Yes, I've seen you about. Well, it's a nice, quiet place for a walk,

but the grounds ain't kep' up quite the shape they used to be: there

ain't so much occasion for it. Seems as though the buryin' business was

dull, like pretty much everything else now-a-days."

"Yes, that's so," replied Putnam absently.

The gatekeeper spat reflectively upon the centre of the doorstep, and

resumed: "There's some that comes here quite reg'lar, but they mostly

have folks here. There's old Mrs. Lyon comes very steady, and there's

young Miss Pinckney: she's one of the most reg'lar."

"Is that the young lady in gray, with black eyes?"

"That's she."

"Who is she in mourning for?"

"Well, she ain't exactly in mourning. I guess, from what they say, she

hain't got the money for black bunnets and dresses, poor gal! But it's

her brother that's buried here--last April. He was in the hospital

learning the doctor's business when he was took down."

"In the hospital? Was he from the South, do you know?"

"Well, that I can't say: like enough he was."

"Did you say that she is poor?"

"So they was telling me at the funeral. It was a mighty poor funeral

too--not more'n a couple of hacks. But you can't tell much from that,

with the fashions now-a-days: some of the richest folks buries private

like. You don't see no such funerals now as they had ten years back.

I've seen fifty kerridges to onst a-comin' in that gate," waving his

pipe impressively toward that piece of architecture, "and that was when

kerridge-hire was half again as high as it is now. She must have spent a

goodly sum in green-house flowers, though: fresh b[=o]quets 'most every

day she keeps a-fetchin'."

"Well, good-day," said Putnam, starting off.

"Good-day, sir."

Putnam had himself just completed his studies at the medical college

when attacked by fever, and he now recalled somewhat vaguely a student

of the name of Pinckney, and remembered to have heard that he was a

Southerner. The gatekeeper's story increased the interest which he was

beginning to feel in his new acquaintance, and he resolved to follow up

his inauspicious beginnings to a better issue. He knew that great

delicacy would be needed in making further approaches, and so decided to

keep out of her sight for a time. In the course of the next few days he

ascertained, by visits to the cemetery and talks with the keeper, that

she now seldom visited her brother's grave in the forenoon, although

during the first month after his death she had spent all her days and

some of her nights beside it.

"I hadn't the heart, sir, to turn her out at sundown, accordin' to the

regulations; so I'd leave the gate kinder half on the jar, and she'd

slip out when she had a mind to."

Putnam read the inscription on the tombstone, which ran as follows: "To

the Memory of Henry Pinckney. Born October 29th, 1852. Died April 27th,

187-;" and under this the text, "If thou have borne him hence, tell me

where thou hast laid him." He noticed with a sudden twinge of pity that

the flowers on the grave, though freshly picked every day, were

wild-flowers--mostly the common field varieties, with now and then a

rarer blossom from wood or swamp, and now and then a garden flower. He

gathered from this that the sister's purse was running low, and that she

spent her mornings in collecting flowers outside the city. His

imagination dwelt tenderly upon her slim, young figure and mourning face

passing through far-away fields and along the margins of lonely creeks

in search of some new bloom which grudging Nature might yield her for

her sorrowful needs. Meanwhile he determined that the shrine of her

devotion should not want richer offerings. There was a hot-house on the

way from his home to the cemetery, and he now stopped there occasionally

of a morning and bought a few roses to lay upon the mound. This

continued for a fortnight. He noticed that his offerings were left to

wither undisturbed, though the little bunches of field flowers were

daily renewed as before.

In spite of the funereal nature of his occupation his spirits in these

days were extraordinarily high. His life, so lately escaped from the

shadows of death, seemed to enjoy a rejuvenescence and to put forth

fresh blossoms in the summer air. As he sat under the cedars and

listened to the buzzing of the flies that frequented the shade, the

unending sound grew to be an assurance of earthly immortality. His new

lease of existence prolonged itself into a fee simple, and even in

presence of the monuments of decay his future, filled with bright hazy

dreams, melted softly into eternity. But one morning as he approached

the little grave-lot with his accustomed offerings he looked up and saw

the young girl standing before him. Her eyes were fixed on the flowers

in his hand. He colored guiltily and stood still, like a boy caught

robbing an orchard. She looked both surprised and embarrassed, but said

at once, "If you are the gentleman who has been putting flowers on my

brother's grave, I thank you for his sake, but--"

She paused, and he broke in: "I ought to explain, Miss Pinckney, that I

have a better right than you think, perhaps, to bring these flowers

here: I was a fellow-student with your brother in the medical school."

Her expression changed immediately. "Oh, did you know my brother?" she

asked eagerly.

He felt like a wretched hypocrite as he answered, "Yes, I knew him,

though not intimately exactly. But I took--I take--a very strong

interest in him."

"Every one loved Henry who knew him," she said, "but his class have all

been graduated and gone away, and he made few friends, because he was so

shy. No one comes near him now but me."

He was silent. She walked to the grave, and he followed, and they stood

there without speaking. It did not seem to occur to her to ask why he

had not mentioned her brother at their former interview. She was

evidently of an unsuspecting nature, or else all other impressions were

forgotten and absorbed in the one thought of her bereavement. After a

glance at her Putnam ventured to lay his roses reverently upon the

mound. She held in her hand a few wild-flowers just gathered. These she

kissed, and dropped them also on the grave. He understood the meaning of

her gesture and was deeply moved.

"Poor little, dull-colored things!" she said, looking down at them.

"They are a thousand times more beautiful than mine," he exclaimed

passionately. "I am ashamed of those heartless affairs: anybody can buy

them."

"Oh no: my brother was very fond of roses. Perhaps you remember his

taste for them?" she inquired innocently.

"I--I don't think he ever alluded to them. The atmosphere of the medical

college was not very aesthetic, you know."

"At first I used to bring green-house flowers," she continued, without

much heeding his answer, "but lately I haven't been able to afford them

except on Sundays. Sundays I bring white ones from the green-house."

She had seated herself in her wicker chair, and Putnam, after a moment's

hesitation, sat down on the low railing near her. He observed among the

wild plants that she had gathered the mottled leaves and waxy blossoms

of the pipsissewa and its cousin the shinleaf.

"You have been a long way to get some of those," he said: "that

pipsissewa grows in hemlock woods, and the nearest are several miles

from here."

"I don't know their names. I found them in a wood where I used to walk

sometimes with my brother. _He_ knew all their names. I went there very

early this morning, when the dew was on them."

"'Flowers that have on them the cold dews of the night are strewings

fittest for graves,'" said Putnam in an undertone.

Her face had assumed its usual absent expression, and she seemed busy

with some memory and unconscious of his presence. He recalled the latter

to her by rising and saying, "I will bid you good-morning now, but I

hope you will let me come and sit here sometimes if it doesn't disturb

you. I have been very sick myself lately: I was near dying of the

typhoid fever. I think it does me good to come here."

"Did you have the typhoid? My brother died of the typhoid."

"May I come sometimes?"

"You may come if you wish to visit Henry. But please don't bring any

more of those expensive flowers. I suppose it is selfish in me, but I

can't bear to have any of his friends do more for him than I can."

"I won't bring any more, of course, if it troubles you, and I thank you

very much for letting me come. Good-morning, Miss Pinckney." He bowed

and walked away.

Putnam availed himself discreetly of the permission given. He came

occasionally of an afternoon, and sat for an hour at a time. Usually she

said little. Her silence appeared to proceed not from reserve, but from

dejection. Sometimes she spoke of her brother. Putnam learned that he

had been her only near relative. Their parents had died in her

childhood, and she had come North with her brother when he entered the

medical school. From something that she once said Putnam inferred that

her brother had owned an annuity which died with him, and that she had

been left with little or nothing. They had few acquaintances in the

North, almost none in the city. An aunt in the South had offered her a

home, and she was going there in the fall. She looked forward with dread

to the time of her departure.

"It will be so cruel," she said, "to leave my poor boy all alone here

among strangers, and I never away from him before."

"Don't think of it now," he answered, "and when you are gone I will come

here often and see to everything."

Her bereavement had evidently benumbed all her faculties and left her

with a slight hold on life. She had no hopes or wishes for the future.

In alluding to her brother she confused her tenses, speaking of him

sometimes in the past, and sometimes in the present as of one still

alive. Putnam felt that in a girl of her age this mood was too unnatural

to last, and he reckoned not unreasonably on the reaction that must come

when her youth began again to assert its rights. He was now thoroughly

in love, and as he sat watching her beautiful abstracted face he found

it hard to keep back some expression of tenderness. Often, too, it was

difficult for him to tone down his spirits to the proper pitch of

respectful sympathy with her grief. His existence was golden with

new-found life and hope: into the shadow that covered hers he could not

enter. He could only endeavor to draw her out into the sunshine once

more.

One day the two were sitting, as usual, in silence or speaking but

rarely. It was a day in the very core of summer, and the life of Nature

was at its flood. The shadows of the trees rested so heavy and

motionless on the grass that they appeared to sink into it and weigh it

down like palpable substances.

"I feel," said Putnam suddenly, "as though I should live for ever."

"Did you ever doubt it?" she asked.

"Oh, I mean here--_ici bas_--in the body. I can't conceive of death or

of a spiritual existence on such a day as this."

"There is nothing here to live for," she said wearily. Presently she

added, "This hot glare makes me sick: I wish those men would stop

hammering on the bridge. I wish I could die and get away into the dark."

Putnam paused before replying. He had never heard her speak so

impatiently. Was the revulsion coming? Was she growing tired of sorrow?

After a minute he said, "Ah, you don't know what it is to be a

convalescent and lie for months in a darkened room listening to the

hand-organ man and the scissors-grinder, and the fellow that goes

through the street hallooing 'Cash paid for rags!' It's like having a

new body to get the use of your limbs again and come out into the

sunshine."

"Were you very sick?" she inquired with some show of interest.

He remembered with some mortification that he had told her so once or

twice before. She had apparently forgotten it. "Yes, I nearly died."

"Were you glad to recover?"

"Well, I can't remember that I had any feelings in particular when I

first struck the up-track. It was hard work fighting for life, and I

don't think I cared much one way or the other. But when I got well

enough to sit up it began to grow interesting. I used to sit at the

window in a very infantile frame of mind and watch everything that went

by. It wasn't a very rowdy life, as the prisoner in solitary confinement

said to Dickens. We live in a back street, where there's not much

passing. The advent of the baker's cart used to be the chief excitement.

It was painted red and yellow, and he baked very nice leaf-cookies. My

mother would hang a napkin in the door-knocker when she wanted him to

stop; and as I couldn't see the knocker from my window, I used to make

bets with Dummy as to whether the wagon would stop or not."

"Your mother is living, then?"

"Yes: my father died when I was a boy."

She asked no further questions, but a few minutes after rose and said,

"I think I will go now. Good-evening."

He had never before outstayed her. He looked at his watch and found that

it was only half-past four.

"I hope," he began anxiously, "that you are not feeling sick: you spoke

just now of being oppressed by the heat. Excuse me for staying so long."

"Oh no," she answered, "I'm not sick. I reckon I need a little rest.

Good-evening."

Putnam lingered after she was gone. He found his way to his old bench

under the cedars and sat there for a while. He had not occupied this

seat since his first meeting with Miss Pinckney in the summer-house, and

the initials which he had whittled on its edge impressed him as

belonging to some bygone stage of his history. This was the first time

that she had questioned him about himself. His sympathy had won her

confidence, but she had treated him hitherto in an impersonal way, as

something tributary to her brother's memory, like the tombstone or the

flowers on his grave. The suspicion that he was seeking her for her own

sake had not, so far as Putnam could discover, ever entered her

thoughts.

But in the course of their next few interviews there came a change in

her behavior. The simplicity and unconsciousness of her sorrow had

become complicated with some other feeling. He caught her looking at him

narrowly once or twice, and when he looked hard at her there was visible

in her manner a soft agitation--something which in a girl of more

sanguine complexion might have been interpreted as a blush. She

sometimes suffered herself to be coaxed a little way into talking of

things remote from the subject of her sorrow. Occasionally she

questioned Putnam shyly about himself, and he needed but slight

encouragement to wax confidential. She listened quietly to his

experiences, and even smiled now and then at something that he said. His

heart beat high with triumph: he fancied that he was leading her slowly

up out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

But the upward path was a steep one. She had many sudden relapses and

changes of mood. Putnam divined that she felt her grief loosening its

tight hold on her and slipping away, and that she clung to it as a

consecrated thing with a morbid fear of losing it altogether. There were

days when her demeanor betokened a passionate self-reproach, as though

she accused herself secretly of wronging her brother and profaning his

tomb in allowing more cheerful thoughts to blunt the edge of her

bereavement. He remarked also that her eyes were often red from weeping.

There sometimes mingled with her remorse a plain resentment toward

himself. At such times she would hardly speak to him, and the slightest

gayety or even cheerfulness on his part was received as downright

heartlessness. He made a practice, therefore, of withdrawing at once

whenever he found her in this frame of mind.

One day they had been sitting long together. She had appeared unusually

content, but had spoken little. The struggle in her heart had perhaps

worn itself out for the present, and she had yielded to the warm current

of life and hope which was bearing her back into the sunshine. Suddenly

the elderly woman who had formed one of the company in the summer-house

on the day of the thunderstorm passed along the walk with her trowel and

watering-pot. She nodded to Miss Pinckney, and then, pausing opposite

the pair, glanced sharply from one to the other, smiled significantly

and passed on. This trifling incident aroused Putnam's companion from

her reverie: she looked at him with a troubled expression and said, "Do

you think you ought to come here so much?"

"Why not?"

"I don't know. How well did you know my brother Henry?"

"If I didn't know him so very intimately when he was living, I feel that

I know him well now from all that you have told me about him. And, if

you will pardon my saying so, I feel that I know his sister a little

too, and have some title to her acquaintance."

"You have been very kind, and I am grateful for it, but perhaps you

ought not to come so much."

"I'm sorry if I have come too much," rejoined Putnam bitterly, "but I

shall not come much more. I am going away soon. The doctor says I am not

getting along fast enough and must have change of air. He has ordered me

to the mountains."

There was silence for a few minutes. He was looking moodily down at the

turf, pulling a blade of grass now and then, biting it and throwing it

away.

"I thank you very much for your sympathy and kindness," she said at

length, rising from her chair; "and I hope you will recover very fast in

the mountains. Good-bye."

She extended her hand, which Putnam took and held. It was trembling

perceptibly. "Wait a moment," he said. "Before I go I should like to

show some little mark of respect to your brother's memory. Won't you

meet me at the green-house to-morrow morning--say about nine

o'clock--and select a few flowers? They will be your flowers, you

know--your offering."

"Yes," she answered, "I will; and I thank you again for him."

The next morning at the appointed hour Putnam descended the steps into

the green-house. The gardener had just watered the plants. A rich steam

exhaled from the earth and clouded all the glass, and the moist air was

heavy with the breath of heliotropes and roses. A number of butterflies

were flying about, and at the end of a many-colored perspective of

leaves and blossoms Putnam saw Miss Pinckney hovering around a

collection of tropical orchids. The gardener had passed on into an

adjoining hot-house, and no sound broke the quiet but the dripping of

water in a tank of aquatic plants. The fans of the palms and the long

fronds of the tree-ferns hung as still as in some painting of an Indian

isle.

She greeted him with a smile and held out her hand to him. The beauty of

the morning and of the place had wrought in her a gentle intoxication,

and the mournful nature of her errand was for the moment forgotten.

"Isn't it delicious here?" she exclaimed: "I think I should like to live

in a green-house and grow like a plant."

"A little of that kind of thing would do you no end of good," he

replied--"a little concentrated sunshine and bright colors and the smell

of the fresh earth, you know. If you were my patient, I would make you

take a course of it. I'd say you wanted more vegetable tissue, and

prescribe a green-house for six months. I've no doubt this man here

would take you. A young-lady apprentice would be quite an attractive

feature. You could pull off dead leaves and strike graceful attitudes,

training up vines, like the gardener's daughter in Tennyson."

"What are those gorgeous things?" she asked, pointing to a row of

orchids hung on nails along the wall.

"Those are epiphytic orchids--air-plants, you know: they require no

earth for their roots: they live on the air."

"Like a chameleon?"

"Like a chameleon."

He took down from its nail one of the little wooden slabs, and showed

her the roots coiled about it, with the cluster of bulbs. The flower was

snow-white and shaped like a butterfly. The fringe of the lip was of a

delicate rose-pink, and at the base of it were two spots of rich maroon,

each with a central spot of the most vivid orange. Every color was as

pronounced as though it were the only one.

"What a daring combination!" she cried. "If a lady should dress in all

those colors she'd be thought vulgar, but somehow it doesn't seem vulgar

in a flower."

She turned the blossom over and looked at the under side of the petals.

"Those orange spots show right through the leaf," she went on, "as if

they were painted and the paint laid on thick."

"Do you know," said Putnam, "that what you've just said gives me a good

deal of encouragement?"

"Encouragement? How?"

"Well, it's the first really feminine thing--At least--no, I don't mean

that. But it makes me think that you are more like other girls."

His explanation was interrupted by the entrance of the gardener.

"Will you select some of those orchids, please--if you like them, that

is?" asked Putnam.

A shade passed over her face. "They are too gay for his--for Henry," she

answered.

"Try to tolerate a little brightness to-day," he pleaded in a low voice.

"You must dedicate this morning to me: it's the last, you know."

"I will take a few of them if you wish it, but not this one. I will take

that little white one and that large purple one."

The gardener reached down the varieties which she pointed out, and they

passed along the alley to select other flowers. She chose a number of

white roses, dark-shaded fuchsias and English violets, and then they

left the place. Her expression had grown thoughtful, though not

precisely sad. They walked slowly up the long shady street leading to

the cemetery.

"I am dropping some of the flowers," she said, stopping: "will you carry

these double fuchsias a minute, please, while I fasten the others?"

He took them and laughed. "Now, if this were in a novel," he said, "what

a neat opportunity for me to say, 'May I not _always_ carry your double

fuchsias?'"

She looked at him quickly, and her brown cheek blushed rosy red, but she

started on without making any reply and walked faster.

"She takes," he said to himself. But he saw the cemetery-gate at the end

of the street. "I must make this walk last longer," he thought.

Accordingly, he invented several cunning devices to prolong it, stopping

now and then to point out something worth noting in the handsome grounds

which lined the street. And so they sauntered along, she appearing to

have forgotten the speech which had embarrassed her, or at least she did

not resent it. They paused in front of a well-kept lawn, and he drew her

attention to the turf. "It's almost as dark as the evergreens," he said.

"Yes," she answered, "it's so green that it's almost blue."

"What do you suppose makes the bees gather round that croquet-stake so?"

"I reckon they take the bright colors on it for flowers," she answered,

with a certain quaintness of fancy which he had often remarked in her.

As they stood there leaning against the fence a party of school-girls

came along with their satchels and spelling-books. They giggled and

stared as they passed the fence, and one of them, a handsome,

long-legged, bold-faced thing, said aloud, "Oh my! Look at me and my

fancy beau a-takin' a walk!"

Putnam glanced at his companion, who colored nervously and looked away.

"Saucy little giglets!" he laughed. "Did you hear what she said?"

"Yes," almost inaudibly.

"I hope it didn't annoy you?"

"It was very rude," walking on.

"Well, I rather like naughty school-girls: they are amusing creatures.

When I was a very small boy I was sent to a girls' school, and I used to

study their ways. They always had crumbs in their apron-pockets; they

used to write on a slate, 'Tommy is a good boy,' and hold it up for me

to see when the teacher wasn't looking; they borrowed my geography at

recess and painted all the pictures vermilion and yellow." He paused,

but she said nothing, and he continued, talking against time, "There was

one piece of chewing-gum in that school which circulated from mouth to

mouth. It had been originally spruce gum, I believe, but it was

masticated beyond recognition: the parent tree wouldn't have known her

child. One day I found it hidden away on a window-sill behind the

shutter. It was flesh-colored and dented all over with the marks of

sharp little teeth. I kept that chewing-gum for a week, and the school

was like a cow that's lost her cud."

As Putnam completed these reminiscences they entered the cemetery-gate,

and the shadow of its arch seemed to fall across the young girl's soul.

The bashful color had faded from her cheek and the animation from her

eye. Her face wore a troubled expression: she walked slowly and looked

about at the gravestones.

Putnam stopped talking abruptly, but presently said, "You have not asked

me for your fuchsias."

She stood still and held out her hand for them.

"I thought you might be meaning to let me keep them," said Putnam. His

heart beat fast and his voice trembled as he continued: "Perhaps you

thought that what I said a while ago was said in joke, but I mean it in

real earnest."

"Mean what?" she asked faintly.

"Don't you know what I mean?" he said, coming nearer and taking her

hand. "Shall I tell you, darling?"

"Oh, please don't! Oh, I think I know. Not here--not now. Give me the

flowers," she said, disengaging her hand, "and I will put them on

Henry's grave."

He handed them to her and said, "I won't go on now if it troubles you;

but tell me first--I am going away to-morrow, and sha'n't be back till

October--shall I find you here then, and may I speak then?"

"I shall be here till winter."

"And may I speak then?"

"Yes."

"And will you listen?"

"Yes."

"Then I can wait."

They moved on again along the cemetery-walks. Putnam felt an exultation

that he could not suppress. In spite of her language, her face and the

tone of her voice had betrayed her. He knew that she cared for him. But

in the blindness of his joy he failed to notice an increasing agitation

in her manner, which foretold the approach of some painful crisis of

feeling. Her conflicting emotions, long pent up, were now in most

delicate equilibrium. The slightest shock might throw them out of

balance. Putnam's nature, though generous and at bottom sympathetic,

lacked the fineness of insight needed to interpret the situation. Like

many men of robust and heedless temperament, he was more used to bend

others' moods to his own than to enter fully into theirs. His way of

approaching the subject had been unfortunate, beginning as he had with a

jest. The sequel was destined to be still more unlucky.

They had reached a part of the cemetery which was not divided into lots,

but formed a sort of burial commons for the behoof of the poor. It was

used mainly by Germans, and the graves were principally those of

children. The headstones were wooden, painted white, with inscriptions

in black or gilt lettering. Humble edgings of white pebbles or shells,

partly embedded in the earth, bordered some of the graves: artificial

flowers, tinsel crosses, hearts and other such fantastic decorations lay

upon the mounds. Putnam's companion paused with an expression of pity

before one of these uncouth sepulchres, a little heap of turf which

covered the body of a "span-long babe."

"Now, isn't that _echt Deutsch_?" began Putnam, whom the gods had made

mad. "Is that glass affair let into the tombstone a looking-glass or a

portrait of the deceased--like that 'statoot of a deceased infant' that

Holmes tells about? Even our ancestral cherub and willow tree are better

than that, or even the inevitable sick lamb and broken lily."

"The people are poor," she murmured.

"They do the same sort of thing when they're rich. It's the national

_Geschmack_ to stick little tawdry fribbles all over the face of

Nature."

"Poor little baby!" she said gently.

"It's a rather old baby by this time," rejoined Putnam, pointing out the

date on the wooden slab--"Eighteen fifty-one: it would be older than I

now if it had kept on."

Her eyes fell upon the inscription, and she read it aloud. "Hier ruht in

Gott Heinrich Frantz, Geb. Mai 13, 1851. Gest. August 4, 1852. Wir

hoffen auf Wiedersehen." She repeated the last words softly over to

herself.

"Are those white things cobblestones, or what?" continued Putnam

perversely, indicating the border which quaintly encircled the little

mound. "As I live," he exclaimed, "they are door-knobs!" and he poked

one of them out of the ground with the end of his cane.

"Stop!" she cried vehemently: "how can you do that?"

He dropped his cane and looked at her in wonder. She burst into tears

and turned away. "You think I am a heartless brute?" he cried

remorsefully, hastening after her.

"Oh, go away, please--go away and leave me alone. I am going to my

brother: I want to be alone."

She hurried on, and he paused irresolute. "Miss Pinckney!" he called

after her, but she made no response. His instinct, now aroused too late,

told him that he had better leave her alone for the present. So he

picked up his walking-stick and turned reluctantly homeward. He cursed

himself mentally as he retraced the paths along which they had walked

together a few moments before. "I'm a fool," he said to himself: "I've

gone and upset it all. Couldn't I see that she was feeling badly? I

suppose I imagined that I was funny, and she thought I was an insensible

brute. This comes of giving way to my infernal high spirits." At the

same time a shade of resentment mingled with his self-reproaches. "Why

can't she be a little more cheerful and like other girls, and make some

allowance for a fellow?" he asked. "Her brother wasn't everybody else's

brother. It's downright morbid, this obstinate woe of hers. Other people

have lost friends and got over it."

On the morrow he was to start for the mountains. He visited the cemetery

in the morning, but Miss Pinckney was not there. He did not know her

address, nor could the gatekeeper inform him; and in the afternoon he

set out on his journey with many misgivings.

It was early October when Putnam returned to the city. He went at once

to the cemetery, but on reaching the grave his heart sank at the sight

of a bunch of withered flowers which must have lain many days upon the

mound. The blossoms were black and the stalks brittle and dry. "Can she

have changed her mind and gone South already?" he asked himself.

There was a new sexton in the gate-house, who could tell him nothing

about her. He wandered through the grounds, looking for the old woman

with the watering-pot, but the season had grown cold, and she had

probably ceased her gardening operations for the year. He continued his

walk beyond the marshes. The woods had grown rusty and the sandy

pastures outside the city were ringing with the incessant creak of

grasshoppers, which rose in clouds under his feet as he brushed through

the thin grass. The blue-curl and the life-everlasting distilled their

pungent aroma in the autumn sunshine. A feeling of change and

forlornness weighed upon his spirit. As with Thomas of Ercildoune, whom

the Queen of Faery carried away into Eildon Hill, the short period of

his absence seemed seven years long. An old English song came into his

head: