LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE.

VIII.

[Pg 113]Not the least delightful of Sir Robert's qualities was his capacity for enjoying most things that came in his way, and finding some interest in all. When Mr. Ketchum joined him in the library, where he was jotting down "the sobriquets of the American States and cities," and told him of the Niagara plan, his ruddy visage beamed with pleasure.

"A delightful idea. Capital," he said. "I suppose I can read up a bit about it before we start, and not go there with my eyes shut. Ni-a-ga-rah,—monstrously soft and pretty name. Isn't there something on your shelves that would give me the information I want? But we can come to that presently. Just now I want to find out, if I can, how these nicknames came to be given. They must have originated in some great popular movement, eh? I thought I saw my way, as, for example, the 'Empire State' and the 'Crescent City' and some others, but this 'Sucker State,' now, and 'Buckeye' business,—what may that mean in plain English?"

Mr. Ketchum shed what light he could on these interesting questions, and Sir Robert thoughtfully ran his hands through his side-whiskers, while, with an apologetic "One moment, I beg," or "Very odd, very; that must go down verbatim," he entered the gist of Mr. Ketchum's queer remarks in his note-book.

On the following morning he rose with Niagara in his soul. He had more questions to ask at the breakfast-table than anybody could answer, and was eager to be off. Mr. Ketchum, who had that week made no less than fifty thousand dollars by a lucky investment, was in high spirits. Captain Kendall, who had been allowed to join the party, was vastly pleased by the prospect of another week in Ethel's society. Mrs. Sykes was tired of Fairfield, and longed to be "on the move" again, as she frankly said. So that, altogether, it was a merry company that finally set off.

The very first view of "the ocean unbound" increased their pleasure to enthusiasm. Mrs. Sykes, without reservation, admitted that it was "a grand spot," and felt as though she were giving the place a certificate when she added, "Quite up to the mark." She was out on the Suspension Bridge, making a sketch, as soon as she could get there; she took one from every other spot about the place; and when tired of her pencil, she stalked about with her hammer, chipping off bits of rock that promised geological interest. But she found her greatest amusement in the brides that "infested the place" (to quote from her letter to her sister [Pg 114]Caroline), indulged in much satirical comment on them, and, choosing one foolish young rustic who was there as her text, wrote in her diary, "American brides like to go from the altar to some large hotel, where they can display their finery, wear their wedding-dresses every evening, and attract as much attention as possible. The national passion for display makes them delight in anything that renders them conspicuous, no matter how vulgar that display may be. If one must have a fools' paradise, generally known as a honeymoon, this is about as pleasant a place as any other for it; and, as there are several runaway couples stopping here, and the place is just on the border, this is doubtless the American Gretna Green, where silly women and temporarily-infatuated men can marry in haste, to repent at leisure."

Mr. Heathcote gave his camera enough to do, as may be imagined. He and Sir Robert traced the Niagara River from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, and photographed it at every turn, made careful estimates of its length, breadth, depth, the flow of currents, scale of descent to the mile, wear of precipice, and time necessary for the river to retire from the falls business altogether and meander tranquilly along on a level like other rivers. They arrayed themselves in oil-skin suits and spent an unconscionable time at the back of the Horseshoe Fall, roaring out observations about it that were rarely heard, owing to the deafening din, and had more than one narrow escape from tumbling into the water in these expeditions. They carefully bottled some of it, which they afterward carefully sealed with red wax and duly labelled, intending to add it to a collection of similar phials which Sir Robert had made of famous waters in many countries. They went over the mills and factories in the neighborhood, and Sir Robert had long confabs with the managers, of whom he asked permission to "jot down" the interesting facts developed in the course of their conversations, surprising them by his knowledge of mechanics and the subjects in hand.

"Man alive! what do you want with those?" said he to one of them, a keen-faced young fellow, who was showing him the boiler-fires. He pointed with his stick as he spoke, and rattled it briskly about the brick-work by way of accompaniment as he went on: "Such a waste of force, of money! downright stupidity! You don't want it. You don't need it, any more than you need an hydraulic machine tacked to the back of your trains. You have got water enough running past your very door to—"

"I've told that old fool Glass that a thousand times," broke in the young man; "but if he wants to try and warm and light the world with a gas-stove when the sun is up I guess it's no business of mine, though it does rile me to see the power thrown away and good coal wasted. If I had the capital, here's what I'd do. Here."

Seizing Sir Robert's stick, the enthusiast drew a fondly-loved ideal mill in the coal-dust at his feet, while Sir Robert looked and listened, differed, suggested, with keen interest, and Mr. Heathcote gave but haughty and ignorant attention to the talk that followed.

"Yes, that's the way of it; but Glass has lived all his life with his head in a bag, and he can't see it. I am surprised to see you take an interest in it. Ever worked at it?" said the man in conclusion.

"A little," said Sir Robert affably, who could truthfully have said as much of anything. "Who is this Glass?"

"Oh, he's the man that owns all this; the stupidest owl that ever lived. I wish he could catch on like you. I'd like very well to work with you," was the reply.

"A bumptious fellow, that," commented Mr. Heathcote when they left. "He'd 'like to work with you,' indeed!"

"A fellow with ideas. I'd like to work with him," replied his uncle; "though he isn't burdened with respect for his employers."

Miss Noel meanwhile tied on her large straw hat, took her cane, basket, trowel, tin box, and, followed by Parsons [Pg 115]with her sketching-apparatus, went off to hunt plants or wash in sketches, a most blissfully occupied and preoccupied old lady.

To Mr. Ketchum's great amusement, Miss Noel, Mrs. Sykes, and Mr. Heathcote all arrived at a particular spot within a few moments of each other one morning, all alike prepared and determined to get the view it commanded.

Miss Noel had said to Job en route, "Do you think that I shall be able to get a fly and drive about the country a bit? I should so like it. Are they to be had there?"

And he had replied, "You will have some difficulty in not taking 'a fly' there, I guess. The hackmen would rather drive your dead body around town for nothing than let you enjoy the luxury of walking about unmolested. But I will see to all that."

Accordingly, a carriage had been placed at their disposal, and they had taken some charming drives, in the course of which Parsons, occupying the box on one occasion, was seen to be peering very curiously about her.

"A great pity, is it not, Parsons, that we can't see all this in the autumn, when the thickets of scarlet and gold are said to be so very beautiful?" said Miss Noel, addressing her affably.

"Yes, mem," agreed Parsons. "And, if you please, mem, where are the estates of the gentry, as I 'ave been lookin' for ever since we came hover?"

"Not in this part," replied Miss Noel. "The red Indians were here not very long since. You should really get a pin-cushion of their descendants, those mild, dirty creatures that work in bark and beads. Buy of one that has been baptized: one shouldn't encourage them to remain heathens, you know. Your friends in England will like to see something made by them; and they were once very powerful and spread all over the country as far as—as—I really forget where; but I know they were very wild and dreadful, and lived in wigwams, and wore moccasins."

"Oh, indeed, mem!" responded Parsons, impressed by the extent of her mistress's information.

"A wigwam is three upright poles, such as the gypsies use for their kettles, thatched with the leaves of the palm and the plantain," Miss Noel went on. "Dear me! It is very odd! I certainly remember to have read that; but perhaps I am getting back to the Southern Americans again, which does so vex Robert. I wonder if one couldn't see a wigwam for one's self? It can't be plantain, after all: there is none growing about here."

She asked Mabel about this that evening, and the latter told her husband how Miss Noel was always mixing up the two continents.

"I don't despair, Mabel. They will find this potato-patch of ours after a while," he said good-humoredly.

But he was less amiable when Mrs. Sykes said at dinner next day, "I should like to try your maize. Quite simply boiled, and eaten with butter and salt, I am told it is quite good, really. I have heard that the Duke of Slumborough thought it excellent."

"You don't say so! I am so glad to hear it! I shall make it generally known as far as I can. Such things encourage us to go on trying to make a nation of ourselves. It would have paralyzed all growth and development in this country for twenty years if he had thought it 'nasty,'" said Job. "Foreigners can't be too particular how they express their opinions about us. Over and over again we have come within an ace of putting up the shutters and confessing that it was no use pretending that we could go on independently having a country of our own, with distinct institutions, peculiarities, customs, manners, and even productions. It would be so much better and easier to turn ourselves over to a syndicate of distinguished foreigners who would govern us properly,—stamp out ice-water and hot rolls from the first, as unlawful and not agreeing with the Constitution, give us cool summers, prevent children from teething hard, make it a penal offence to talk through the nose, and put a bunch of Bourbons in [Pg 116]the White House, with a divine right to all the canvas-back ducks in the country. There are so many kings out of business now that they could easily give us a bankrupt one to put on our trade dollar, or something really sweet in emperors who have seen better days. And a standing army of a hundred thousand men, all drum-majors, in gorgeous uniforms, helmets, feathers, gold lace, would certainly scare the Mexicans into caniptious and unconditional surrender. The more I think of it, the more delightful it seems. It is mere stupid obstinacy our people keeping up this farce of self-government, when anybody can see that it is a perfect failure, and that the country has no future whatever."

"Oh, you talk in that way; but I don't think you would really like it," said Mrs. Sykes. "Americans seem to think that they know everything: they are above taking any hints from the Old World, and get as angry as possible with me when I point out a few of the more glaring defects that strike me."

"I am surprised at that. Our great complaint is that we can't get any advice from Europeans. If we only had a little, even, we might in time loom up as a fifth-rate power. But no: they leave us over here in this wilderness without one word of counsel or criticism, or so much as a suggestion, and they ought not to be surprised that we are going to the dogs. What else can they expect?" said Mr. Ketchum.

"Husband, dear, you were very sharp with my cousin to-day, and it was not like you to show temper,—at least, not temper exactly, but vexation," said Mabel to him afterward in mild rebuke. "She has told me that you quite detest the English, so that she wonders you should have married me. And I said that you were far too intelligent and just to cherish wrong feelings toward any people, much less my people."

"Well, if she represented England I should drop England quietly over the rapids some day when I could no longer stand her infernal patronizing, impertinent airs, and rid the world of a nuisance," said Mr. Ketchum, with energy. "Excuse my warmth, but that woman would poison a prairie for me. Fortunately, I happen to know that she only represents a class which neither Church nor State there has the authority to shoot, yet, and I am not going to cry down white wool because there are black sheep. Look at Sir Robert, and Miss Noel, and all the rest of them, how different they are."

Captain Kendall certainly found Niagara delightful, for, owing to the absorption of the party in their different pursuits, he was able to see more of Ethel than he had ever done. He was so different from the men she had known that he was a continual study to her. Instead of the studied indifference, shy avoidance, shy advances, culminating in a blunt and straightforward declaration of "intentions," which she would have thought natural in an admirer, followed by transparent, honest delight in the event of acceptance, or manly submission to the inevitable in the event of rejection, Captain Kendall had surprised her by liking her immediately, or at least by showing that he did, and seeking her persistently, without any pretence of concealment. He talked to her of politics, of social questions in the broadest sense, of books, scientific discoveries, his travels, and the travels of others. He read whole volumes of poetry to her. He discoursed by the hour on the manly character, its faults, merits, peculiarities, and possibilities, and then contrasted it with the womanly one, trait for trait, and it seemed to her that women had never been praised so eloquently, enthusiastically, copiously. At no time was he in the least choked by his feelings or at a loss for a fresh word or sentiment. Such romance, such ideality, such universality, as it were, she had never met. When his admiration was most unbridled it seemed to be offered to her as the representative of a sex entirely perfect and lovely. Everything in heaven and earth, apparently, ministered to his passion and made him talk all around the beloved subject with a [Pg 117]wealth of simile and suggestion that she had never dreamed of. But, if he gave full expression to his agitated feelings in these ways, he was extremely delicate, respectful, reserved, in others. He wrapped up his heart in so many napkins, indeed, that, being a practical woman not extraordinarily gifted in the matter of imagination, she frequently lost sight of it altogether, and she sometimes failed to follow him in a broad road of sentiment that (like the Western ones which Longfellow has described) narrowed and narrowed until it disappeared, a mere thread, up a tree. If he looked long, after one of these flights, at her sweet English face to see what impression he had made, he was often forced to see that it was not the one he had meant to make at all.

"Is anything amiss?" she asked once, in her cool, level tone, fixing upon him her sincerely honest eyes. "Are there blacks on my nose?" Although she had distinctly refused him at Kalsing, as became a girl destitute of vanity and coquetry and attached to some one else, she had not found him the less fluent, omnipresent, persuasive, at Niagara. It was diverting to see them seated side by side on Goat Island, he waving his hand toward the blue sky, apostrophizing the water, the foliage, the clouds, and what not, in prose and verse, quite content if he but got a quiet glance and assenting word now and then, she listening demurely in a state of protestant satisfaction, her fair hair very dazzling in the sunshine, an unvarying apple-blossom tint in her calm face, her fingers tatting industriously not to waste the time outright. It was very agreeable in a way, she told herself, but something must really be done to get rid of the man. And so, one morning when they chanced to be alone, and he was being unusually ethereal and beautiful in his remarks, telling her that, as Byron had said, she would be "the morning star of memory" for him, she broke in squarely, "That is all very nice; very pretty, I am sure. But I do hope you quite understand that I have not the least idea of marrying you. There is no use in going on like this, you know, and you would have a right to reproach me if I kept silent and led you to think that I was being won over by your fine speeches. You see, you don't really want a star at all. You want a wife; though military men, as a rule, are better off single. I do thank you heartily for liking me for myself, and all that, and I shall always remember the kind things you have done, and our acquaintance, but you must put me quite out of your head as a wife. I should not suit you at all. You would have to leave the American service, and I should hate feeling I had tied you down, and I couldn't contribute a penny toward the household expenses, and, altogether, we are much better apart. It would not answer at all. So, thank you again for the honor you have conferred upon me, and be—be rather more—like other people, won't you, for the future? Auntie fancies that I am encouraging you, and is getting very vexed about it. Perhaps you had better go away? Yes, that would be best, I think."

Thus solicited, Captain Kendall went away, taking a mournfully-eloquent farewell of Ethel, which she thought final; but in this she was mistaken.

Our party did not linger long after this. Sir Robert met a titled acquaintance, who inflamed his mind so much about Manitoba that he decided to go to Canada at once, taking Miss Noel, Ethel, and Mr. Heathcote; Mrs. Sykes had taken up on her first arrival with some New York people, who asked her to visit them in the central part of the State,—which disposed of her; Mabel was secretly longing to get back to her "American child," as Mrs. Sykes called little Jared Ponsonby; and they separated, with the understanding that they should meet again before the English guests left the country, and with a warm liking for each other, the Sykes not being represented in the pleasant covenants of friendship formed.

"I am glad that we have not to bid Ketchum good-by here," said Sir Robert. "Such a hearty, genial fellow! And how kind he has been to us! [Pg 118]His hospitality is the true one; not merely so much food and drink and moneyed outlay for some social or selfish end, but the entertainment of friends because they are friends, with every possible care for their pleasure and comfort, and the most unselfish willingness to do anything that can contribute to either. I am afraid he would not find many such hosts as himself with us. We entertain more than the Americans, but I do not think we have as much of the real spirit of hospitality as a nation. The relation between host and guest is less personal, there is little sense of obligation, or rather sacredness, on either side, and the convenience, interest, or amusement of the Amphitryon is more apt to be considered, as a general thing, than the pleasure of the guest: at least this has been growing more and more the case in the last twenty years, as our society has broken away from old traditions and levelled all its barriers, to the detriment of our social graces, not to speak of our morals and manners. As for that charmingly gentle, sweet woman Mrs. Ketchum, it is my opinion that we are not likely to improve on that type of Englishwoman. A modest, simple, religious creature, a thorough gentlewoman, and a devoted wife and mother. My cousin Guy Rathbone is engaged to a specimen of a new variety,—one of the 'emancipated,' forsooth; a woman who has a betting-book instead of a Bible and plays cards all day Sunday. He tells me that she is wonderfully clever, and that it is all he can do to keep her from running about the kingdom delivering lectures on Agnosticism; as if one wanted one's wife to be a trapesing, atheistical Punch-and-Judy! And the fellow seemed actually pleased and flattered. He told me that she had 'an astonishing grasp of such subjects' and was 'attracting a great deal of attention.' And I told him that if I had a wife who attracted attention in such ways I would lock her up until she came to her senses and the public had forgotten her want of modesty and discretion. This ought to be called the Age of Fireworks. The craze for notoriety is penetrating our very almshouses, and every toothless old mumbler of ninety wants to get himself palmed off as a centenarian in the papers and have a lot of stuff printed about him."

"I see what you mean, Robert," said Miss Noel, "and it certainly cannot be wholesome for women to thirst for excitement, and one would think a lady would shrink from being conspicuous in any way; but things are very much changed, as you say. And I agree with you in your estimate of the Ketchums. She is a sweet young thing, and I heartily like him. Only think! his last act was to send a great basket of fine fruits up to my room, and quite an armful of railway-novels for the journey. Such beautiful thought for our comfort as they have shown!"

"He is rather a good sort in some ways, but a very ignorant man. I showed him some of my specimens the other day, and he thought them granitic, when they were really Silurian mica schist of some kind," put in Mrs. Sykes, who never could bear unqualified praise. "Still, on the whole, the Americans are less ignorant than might have been expected."

"I consider Mr. Ketchum a most kind, gentlemanly, sociable, clever man," said Miss Noel, with an emphatic nod of her head to each adjective, "geology or no geology. And I must say that it is very ungrateful of you to speak of him so sneeringly always."

Sir Robert only waited to write the usual batch of letters, including a last appeal to the editor of the "Columbia Eagle" to know whether he intended to apologize for and publicly retract a certain article, and asking "whether it was possible that any considerable or respectable portion of the Americans could be so arbitrary, illiberal, and exclusive as to wish to exclude the English from America." This done, he left for Canada with his relatives. With his stay there we have nothing to do. It consumed six weeks of exhaustive travel and study of Canadian conditions and resources, resulting ultimately in the [Pg 119]conclusion that Manitoba was not the place he was looking for. The ladies, who had been left in Montreal, were then taken for a short tour through the country, which they all enjoyed, after which Sir Robert asked Miss Noel whether she would be willing to take Ethel back to Niagara and wait there a fortnight, or perhaps a little longer, while he and Mr. Heathcote came back by way of New England and from there went down into Maryland and Virginia, where, according to "a member of the Canadian Parliament," lands were to be had for a song.

"A fortnight? I could spend a twelve-month there," exclaimed she. "Had it not been that I was ashamed to insist upon being let off this journey, I should have stopped there as it was."

To Niagara the aunt and niece and Parsons went, as agreed, and there they found Mr. Bates wandering languidly about the place in chronic discontent with everything for not being something else. He had burned a good deal of incense on Ethel's shrine when she was at Kalsing, and now hailed their advent with some approach to enthusiasm, and attached himself to their suite, vice Captain Kendall, retired. He liked to be seen with them, thought the views from the Canadian side were "deucedly fine," was cruelly affected by the advertisements in the neighborhood, which he denounced as "dreadfully American," trickled out much feeble criticism of and acid comment on his surroundings, gave utterance to fervent wishes that he was "abrard," and in his own unpleasant way gave Ethel to understand that she might make a fellow-countryman happy by becoming Mrs. Samuel Bates if she liked to avail herself of a golden opportunity. "I would live in England, you know. I am really far more at home there than here," said the expatriated suitor. "I have been taken for an Englishman as often as three times in one week, do you know. Curious, isn't it? I ought to be down in Kent now, visiting Lady Simpson, a great friend of mine, who has asked me there again and again. You would like her if you knew her. She is quite the great lady down there."

"A foolish little man, and evidently a great snob, or else rather daft upon some points," Ethel reported to her aunt. "And such a dull, discontented creature, with all his money!" Ethel had some trials of her own just then, and it was no great felicity to listen to Mr. Bates's endless complaints, nor could she spare much sympathy for the sufferings of the exile of Tecumseh, with his rose-leaf sensibilities, inanities, absurdities.

Meanwhile, the young gentleman who was indirectly responsible for many a sad thought of two charming girls that we know of—and who shall say how many more?—was enjoying as much happiness as ever fell to any man in the capacity of ardent sportsman. He had joined the duke and his party at St. Louis, and from there they had gone "well away from anywhere," as he said in describing his adventures to Mr. Heathcote. He had at last reached the ideal spot of all his wildest imaginations and most cherished hopes,—"the wild part,"—really the great prairies, about two hundred miles west of the Mississippi and east of the Rockies. The dream of his life was being fulfilled. He related, in a style not conspicuous for literary merit, but very well suited to the simple annals of the rich, how, having first procured guides, tents, ambulances, camp-equipage, they had pushed on briskly to a military fort, where, having made friends with "a pleasant, gentlemanly set of fellows," the commanding officer, "a friendly old buffer," had courteously given them an escort to protect them from "those dirty, treacherous brutes, the Indians." Not a joy was wanting in this crowning bliss. The guide was "a wonderful chap named Big-Foot Williams, so called by the Indians, good all around from knocking over a rabbit to tackling a grizzly," with an amazing knowledge of woodcraft, "a nose like a bloodhound, an eye as cool as a toad's." No special mention was made of his ear; but the first time he [Pg 120]got off his horse and applied it to the earth, listening for the tramp of distant hoofs in a hushed silence, one bosom could hardly hold all the rapture that filled Mr. Ramsay's figurative cup up to the brim. And the tales he told of savageness long drawn out were as dew to the parched herb, greedily absorbed at every pore. A portrait of "Black Eagle," a noted chief, was given when they got among the Indians,—"a great hulking slugger of a savage, awfully interesting, long, reaching step, magnificent muscles, snake eye, could thrash us all in turn if he liked. The best of the lot."

Even the noble red man was not insensible to the charms of this graceful, handsome young athlete who smiled at them perpetually and said, "Amigo! amigo!" at short intervals,—a phrase suggested by the redoubtable Williams and varied occasionally by a prefix of his own, "Muchee amigo!" The way in which he tested the elasticity of their bows, inspected their guns, the game they had killed, the other natural objects about them, aroused a certain sympathy, perhaps. At any rate, they were soon teaching him their mode of using the most picturesquely murderous of all weapons, and Black Eagle offered, through the interpreter, to give him a mustang and a fine wolf-skin. The pony was declined, the skin accepted, a quid pro quo being bestowed on the chief in the shape of one of Mr. Ramsay's breech-loaders, a gift that made the snake eyes glitter. But what earthly return can be made for some friendly offices? Could a thousand guns be considered as an adequate payment for the delirious thrill that Mr. Ramsay felt when he shot an arrow straight through the neck of a big buffalo, and, wheeling, galloped madly away, like the hero of one of his favorite stories? Was not the duke, who "knew a thing or two about shooting" and had hunted the noble bison in Lithuania, almost as much delighted as though he had done it himself? Is it any wonder that these intoxicating pleasures were all-sufficient for the time to Mr. Ramsay? Perhaps Thekla would have been forgotten by her Max, and Romeo would never have sighed and died for love of Juliet, if those interesting lovers had ceased from wooing and gone a-hunting of the buffalo instead. Not the most deadly and cruel pangs of the most unfortunate attachment could have taken away all the zest from such an occupation, provided they had had what the Mexican journals call the "corazon de los sportsmans." Youth, strength, courage, skill, exercised in a vagabondage that has all the nomadic charm without any of its drawbacks, are apt to sponge the old figures off the slate of life, leaving a teary smear, perhaps, to show where they have been, and room for fresh problems. At night over the camp-fire Mr. Ramsay gave a few pensive thoughts to the girl who regularly put two handkerchiefs under her pillow to receive the tears that welled out copiously when she was at last alone and unobserved after a day of virtuous hypocrisy. Poor child! The pain was very real, and the tears were bitter and salty enough, though they were to be dried in due time. If he had known of them, perhaps he might have kept awake a little longer; but when he wasn't sleepy he was hungry, and when he wasn't hungry he was tired, and when he wasn't tired he was too actively employed to think of anything but the business in hand. Happily, at five-and-twenty it is perfectly possible to postpone being miserable until a more convenient season; and, though he would have denied it emphatically afterward, he certainly thought only occasionally of Bijou at this period, and of Ethel not at all.

Miss Noel heard very regularly from Mrs. Sykes all this while; and that energetic traveller had not been idle. She had made her new friends "take her about tremendously," she said. She had seen all the large towns in that part of the country, and thought them "very ugly and monotonously commonplace, but prosperous-looking,—like the inhabitants." The scenery she had found "far too uninteresting to repay the bother of sketching it." But she had [Pg 121]made a few pictures of "the views most cracked up in the White Mountains,"—where she had been,—"a sort of second-hand Switzerland of a place; really nothing after the Himalayas, but made a great fuss over by the Americans." She described with withering scorn a drive she took there.

"We came suddenly one day upon a party in a kind of Cheap-Jack van," she wrote,—"gayly-dressed people, tricked off in smart finery, and larking like a lot of Ramsgate tradesmen on the public road. One of the impudent creatures made a trumpet of his great ugly fist and spelt out the name of the hotel at which they were stopping, and then put his hand to his ear, as if to listen for the response. Expecting me to tell them anything about myself! But I flatter myself that I was a match for them. I just got out my umbrella and shot it up in their very faces as we passed, in a way not to be mistaken. And—would you believe it?—the rude wretches called out, 'The shower is over now! and 'What's the price of starch?' and roared with laughing." A highly-colored description of "a visit to a great Dissenting stronghold, Marbury Park," followed: "I was immensely curious to see one of these characteristic national exhibitions of hysteria, ignorance, superstition, and immorality, called a 'camp-meeting.' to which the Americans of all classes flock annually by the thousands, so I quite insisted upon being taken to one, though my friends would have got out of it if they could. I fancy they were very ashamed of it; and they had need to be. I will not attempt to describe it in detail here,—you will hear what I have said of it in my diary,—but a more glaringly vulgar, intensely American performance you can't fancy. I have made a number of sketches of the grounds, the tents and tent-life, with the people bathing and dressing and all that in the most exposed manner; of the pavilion, where the roaring and ranting is done; and of the great revivalist who was holding forth when I got there, and who had got such a red face and seemed so excited that it is my belief he was regularly screwed, though my friends denied it, of course. With such a preacher, you can 'realize,' as they say, what the people were like. A regular Derby-day crowd having a religious saturnalia,—that is what it is. It would not be allowed at home, I am sure. Disgusting! One can't wonder at the state of society in America when one sees what their religion is. An unpleasant incident occurred to me while sketching in the pavilion, that shows what I have often pointed out to you,—the radicalism and odious impertinence of this people. I was just putting the finishing-touches to my picture of the Rev. (?) 'Galusha Wickers' (the revivalist: such names as these Americans have!), when I heard a voice behind me saying, 'Lor! Why, that's splendid! perfectly splendid! Well, I declare, you've got him to a t. Lemmy see.' And, if you please, a hand was thrust over my shoulder and the sketch seized, without so much as a 'By your leave.' Can you fancy a more unwarrantable, insufferable liberty? But they are all alike over here. I turned about, and saw a woman who was examining the reverend revivalist with much satisfaction. 'Well, you have got him, to be sure,' she said, returning my angry glance with one of admiration, and quite unabashed. 'What'll you take for it? I've sat under him for five years; and for taking texteses from one end of the Bible to the other, and leading in prayer, and filling the mourners' bench in five minutes, I will say he hasn't got his equal in the universe. He's got a towering intellect, I tell you. I'll give you fifty cents for this, if you'll color it up nice for me and throw in a frame.' Of course I took the picture away from the brazen creature and told her what I thought of her conduct. 'Well, you air techy,' she said, and walked off leisurely." Before closing her letter, Mrs. Sykes remarked of her hostess, "Quite good for nothing physically, and absurdly romantic. She has been abroad a good deal, and bores me dreadfully with her European reminiscences. She is always talking in a foolish, rapturous [Pg 122]sort of way about 'dear Melrose,' or 'noble Tintern Abbey,' or 'enchanting Warwick Castle;' and she has read simply libraries of books about England, and puts me through a sort of examination about dozens of places and events, as though I could carry all England about in my head. I really know less of it than of most other countries: there is nothing to be got by running about it. If one knew every foot of it, everybody would think it a matter of course; but to be able to talk of Siam and the Fiji Islands, Cambodia and Alaska, and the like, is really an advantage in society. One gets the name of being a great traveller, and all that, and is asked about tremendously and taken up to a wonderful extent. I know a man that didn't wish to go to the trouble and expense of rambling all over the world, and wanted the reputation of having done it, so he went into lodgings at intervals near the British Museum and got all the books that were to be had about a particular country, and, having read them, would come back to the West End and give out that he had been there. It answered beautifully for a while, and he was by way of being asked to become a Fellow of the Royal Geographical, and was thought quite an authority and wonderfully clever; but somehow he got found out, which must have been a nuisance and spoiled everything. I can see that these people consider it quite an honor to have me visit them, all because of my having been around the world, I dare say. And of course I have let them see that I know who is who and what is what. They are imploring me to stay on; but I told them yesterday that it wouldn't suit my book at all to stay over two weeks longer, when I had seen all there was to see. That young Ramsay seems to be enjoying himself out there among those nasty savages; and, as hunting is about the only thing he is fit for, he had best stay out there altogether."

The unwritten history of Mrs. Sykes's visit to Marbury Park would have been more interesting than the account she gave. She took with her a camp-chair, which she placed in any and every spot that suited her or commanded the pictorial situations which she wished to make her own permanently. To the horror and surprise of her friends, she plumped it down immediately in front of Mr. Wickers (after marching past an immense congregation), and, wholly unembarrassed by her conspicuous position, settled herself comfortably, took out her block and pencil, and proceeded to jot down that worthy's features line upon line, as though he had been a newly-imported animal at the "Zoo" on exhibition, paying no attention to the precept upon precept he was trying to impress upon his audience.

She walked all over the place repeatedly, went poking and prying into such tents as she chanced to find empty, nor considered this an essential requisite to the conferring of this honor. When less sociably inclined, she established herself outside, close at hand, and in this way made those valuable observations and spirited drawings which subsequently enriched her diary and delighted a discerning British public. But this is anticipating. When she tired of New York, she wrote to Sir Robert that she wished to give as much time as possible to the Mormons, and would leave at once for Salt Lake City, where she would busy herself in laying bare the domestic system as it really existed, and hold herself in readiness to join the party again when they should arrive there en route to the Yosemite.

Sir Robert, being an heroic creature, felt that he could bear this temporary separation with fortitude, and, being about to start for Boston when he got the news, forthwith threw himself upon the New England States in a frenzied search for all the information to be had about them,—their exact geographical position, by whom discovered, when settled, climate, productions, population, principal towns and rivers. He studied three maps of the region as he rattled along in the south-bound train, and devoted the rest of the time to getting an outline of its history: so that his nephew found him but an indifferent companion.

[Pg 123]"I suppose there are authorized maps and charts, geographical, hydrographical, and topographical, issued by the government, and to be seen at the libraries. I must get a look at them at once. These are amateur productions, the work of irresponsible men, contradicting each other in important particulars as to the relative positions of places, and inaccurate in many respects, as I find by comparison," he said, emerging from a prolonged study of his authorities. "You don't seem to take much interest in all this. You should be at the pains to inform yourself upon every possible point in connection with this country, or any other in which you may find yourself; else why travel at all?"

Mr. Heathcote, not having his uncle's thirst for information, was reading a French novel at the time, and did not attempt to defend his position, knowing it probably to be indefensible.

Before getting to Boston the air turned very chill, and a fine, penetrating rain set in that for a while disturbed the student of American history with visions of rheumatism. "God bless my soul! I shall be laid by the heels here for weeks. Damp is the one thing that I can't stand up against. And I have not left my coat out!" he exclaimed, tugging anxiously at his side-whiskers and annoyed to find how dependent he had grown on his valet. "What shall I do? Ah! I have an idea. Damp. What resists it and is practically water-proof? Newspapers!" With this he stood up, seized the "Times" supplement, made a hole in the middle of the central fold, and put it over his head. "Now I have improvised a South-American serape" he observed, in a tone that betrayed the pleasure it gave him to exercise his ingenuity. He then took two other sheets and successively wrapped them around his legs, after the fashion in vogue among gardeners intent upon protecting valuable plants from the rigors of winter. This done, he smoothed down the serape, which showed a volatile tendency to blow up a good deal, and, with a brief comment to the effect that "oilskin or india-rubber could not be better," and no staring about him to observe the effect of his action on the passengers, replaced his hat, sat down, picked up his book again, readjusted his eye-glasses, and went on with the episode he had been reading aloud to his nephew, who, mildly bored by King Philip's war, was mildly amused by the spectacle the baronet presented, and surprised to see that their fellow-travellers thought it an excellent joke. A loud "Haw! haw!" and many convulsive titters testified their appreciation of the absurd contrast between Sir Robert's highly-respectable head, his grave, absorbed air, and the remarkable way in which he was finished off below the ears; but he read on and on, in his round, agreeable voice, unconscious of the effect he was producing, until the train came to the final stop, when Mr. Porter and a very dignified, rigid style of friend came into the car to look for him.

"My dear Porter, I am delighted to see you, and I shall be with you in one moment. I shall then have ceased to be a grub and have become a most beautiful butterfly, ready to fly away home with you as soon as ever you like," he called out in greeting, and in a twinkling had torn off his wrappers, and stood there a revealed acquaintance, carefully collecting his "traps," and beaming cheerfully even upon the friend, who had not come to a pantomime and showed that he disapproved of harlequins in private life.

Mr. Porter, however, was all cordiality, and very speedily transferred his guests to his own house in the vicinity of Boston.

The season was not the one for gaining a fair idea of the society of the city and neighborhood; but if all the people who were away at the sea-side and the mountains were half as charming as those left behind and invited by Mr. Porter, to meet his friends, it is certain that Sir Robert lost a great deal. On the other hand, it is equally certain that if they had been at home Sir Robert would most likely be there now, and this chronicle of his travels would end [Pg 124]here. As it was, he found something novel and agreeable at every step, a fresh interest every hour of his stay. He began at the beginning, and promptly found out what kind of soil the city was built on, went on to consider such questions as drainage, elevation, water-supply, wharves, quays, bridges, and worked up to libraries, museums, public and private collections of pictures, and what not. He ordered three pictures of Boston artists,—two autumnal scenes, and an interior, a negro cabin, with an hilarious sable group variously employed, called "Christmas in the Quarters." Then the questions of fisheries, maritime traffic, coast and harbor defences, light-houses, the ship-building interests, life-saving associations, and railway systems, pressed for investigation, to say nothing of the mills and manufactories, wages of operatives, trades-unions, trade problems, and all the pros and cons of free trade versus protective tariff. Over these he pondered and pored until all hours every night; and the diary had now to be girt about with two stout rubber bands to keep it from scattering instructive leaflets about promiscuously and prematurely. And by day there were sites literary, historical, or generally interesting to be visited, engagements with many friends to keep, endless occupations apparently.

There was so much to see and do that the place was delightful to him, and he certainly made himself vastly agreeable in return to such of its inhabitants as came in his way.

"I have added to my circle some very valuable acquaintances, whom I shall hope to retain as friends," he wrote to England, "notably a medical man who confirms my germ-propagation theory of the 'vomito,' which is now raging in the Southern part of the States (I had it, you remember, on the west coast of Africa, and studied it in the Barbadoes),—an exceptionally clever man, and, like all such men, inclined to be eccentric. I think I was never more surprised than to come upon him the other day in a side-street, where he was positively having his boots polished in public by a ragged gamin who offered to 'shine' me for a 'dime.' He behaved sensibly about it,—betrayed no embarrassment, though he must have felt excessively annoyed, made no apologies, and only remarked that he had been out in the country, and did not wish to be taken for a miller in the town.

"I was led to believe before coming here that I should not be able to tell that Boston was not an English town. It did not so impress me on a surface-view, but it was not long before I recognized that the warp and woof of the social fabric is that of our looms, though the pattern is a little different,—a good sort of stuff, I think, warranted to wash and wear. The variation, such as it is, tried by what I call my differential nationometer, gives to the place its own peculiar, delightful quality." The rigid gentleman, who was a great deal at the Porters', was rather inclined to insist upon the great purity and beauty of his English, to which he repeatedly invited attention, and, as Mr. Ramsay would have said, "went in for" certain philological refinements which Sir Robert had never heard before, and thoroughly disliked. But as there are more Scotchmen in London than in Edinburgh, and better oranges can be bought for less money in New York than in New Orleans, so it may be that if you want to find really superior English you must leave England altogether,—abandon it to its defective but firmly-rooted patois, and seek in more classic shades for the well—spring of Saxon undefiled. But Sir Robert was not inclined to do this. There were limits to his liberality and spirit of investigation. When the rigid gentleman instanced certain words to which he gave a pronunciation that made them bear small resemblance to the same words as spoken by any class of people laboring under the disadvantage of having been born and bred in England, Sir Robert got impatient, and testily dismissed the subject with, "Oh, come, now! I can stand a good deal, but I can't stand being told that we don't know how to speak English in England." Something, however, must [Pg 125]be pardoned to a foreigner. If Sir Robert would not consent to set Emerson a little higher than the angels, as some other Bostonians could have wished, and had never so much as heard of Thoreau and other American celebrities not wholly insignificant, he had an immense admiration for Longfellow, and could spout "Hiawatha" or "Evangeline" with the best, associated Hawthorne with something besides his own hedges in the month of May, and was eager to be taken out to Beverly Farms, that he might "do himself the honor to call upon" the wisest, wittiest, least-dreaded, and best-loved of Autocrats. When the day fixed for his departure came, he was still revelling in what the Historical Society of Massachusetts had to show him, and actually stayed over a day that he might see the finest collection of cacti in the country, and at last tore himself away with much difficulty and lively regrets, carrying with him a collection of Indian curiosities given him by Mr. Porter, whom he considered to have behaved "most handsomely" in making him such a present. "I can't rob you outright, my dear fellow. I feel a cut-purse, almost, when I think of taking all these valuable and deeply-interesting objects illustrative of the life and civilization of the aborigines," he said. "Give me duplicates, if you will be so generous, but nothing unique, I insist." He finally accepted one gem in the collection,—a towering structure of feathers that formed "a most delightful head-dress, quite irresistibly fascinating," tried it on before a mirror that gave back faithfully the comical reflection, and incidentally delivered a lecture on the head-ornaments of many savage and civilized nations of every age, though not at all in the style of the famous Mr. Barlow.

Mr. Heathcote at least was not sorry to find that they were, as he said. "booked for Baltimore." The image of the beautiful Miss Bascombe had not been effaced. Perhaps he had photographed it by some private process on his heart with the lover's camera, which takes rather idealized but very charming pictures, some of which never fade. At all events, there it was, very distinct and very lovely, and always hung on the line in his mental picture-gallery. It was positively with trepidation that he presented himself before her very soon after his arrival; and an undeniable blush "mantled" his cheek—if a blush can be said with any propriety to mantle the male cheek—- when he marched into the drawing-room, where she was doing a dainty bit of embroidery, and with much simplicity and directness said, "You said I might come, you know, and I have come; and I begged of Ethel to come too, but she could not leave my aunt," before he had so much as shaken hands. Of course no well-regulated and well-bred young woman—and Miss Bascombe was both—ever permits herself to remember any man until she is engaged to him; but she need not forget one that has impressed her agreeably. Miss Bascombe had not forgotten the handsome Englishman she had met at Jenny De Witt's, nor the little lecture she had given him on the duties of brothers to sisters, and it did not strike her that his inaugural address was at all eccentric or mysterious. He had been told what he ought to do; he had tried to do it, as was quite right and proper. He deserved some reward. And he got it,—though only as an encouragement to abstract virtue, of course. The young lady was pleased to be friendly, gracious, charming. Her mother came in presently, was equally friendly and gracious, and almost as charming. Her father came home to dinner, and was friendly too, and hearty, and very hospitable. Her brothers were friendliest of all. He knew quite well that he had no claim on them, that he had not saved the life of any member of the family or laid them under any sort of obligation, individually or collectively, and no reception could have seemed more special and dangerously cordial, yet no anxieties oppressed, no fears distracted him. The weight of excessive eligibility suddenly slipped off him, like the albatross from the neck of the Ancient [Pg 126]Mariner, leaving him a thankful and a happy man, and in a week he had established himself firmly at the Bascombes', declined to accompany his uncle to Virginia, and definitely settled in his own mind that he would take the step matrimonial,—the step from the sublime to—well, not always the ridiculous. With this resolution he naturally thought that the greatest obstacle to success had been removed; but he was soon disillusionized. He had already come to see that American girls were very much in the habit of being gracious to everybody, and saying pretty and pleasant things, with no thought of an hereafter; also that they did not live with St. George's, Hanover Square, or its American equivalent, Trinity Church, New York, stamped on the mental retina. Miss Bascombe was "very nice" to him, he told himself, but she was quite as nice to a dozen other men. She was uniformly kind, courteous, agreeable, to every one who came to the house. Her cordiality to him meant nothing whatever. Yes, he was quite free,—free as air; he saw that plainly, and perversely longed to assume the fetters he had so long and so skilfully avoided. What was the use of having serious intentions when not the slightest notice was taken of the most compromising behavior? It was true that he was perfectly at liberty to see more of Edith than an Englishman ever does of any woman not related to him, and to say and do a thousand things any one of which at home would have necessitated a proposal or instant flight. But no importance whatever seemed to be attached to them here, and he was utterly at a loss how to make his seriousness felt. Yet it was quite clear that if there was to be any wooing done, he would have to do it,—go every step of the way himself, with no assistance from Miss Bascombe. "How on earth am I to show her that I care for her?" he thought. "Other men send her dozens of bouquets, and box after box of expensive sweets, and loads of books, and music without end, and they come to see her continually, and take her about everywhere, and are entirely devoted to her. I wonder what fellows over here do when they are serious? How do they make themselves understood when they go on in this way habitually? It is a most extraordinary state of affairs! And neither party seems to feel in the least compromised by it. There is that fellow Clinch, who fairly lives at the Bascombes', and when I asked her if she was engaged to him she said, 'Engaged to George Clinch? What an idea! No. What put that in your head? He is a nice fellow, and I like him immensely, but there's nothing of that sort between us. What made you think there was? And when I explained, she said, 'Oh, that's nothing! He is just as nice to lots of other girls.' And when I suggested to him that he was attached to her, he said, 'Edith Bascombe? Oh, no! She is a great friend of mine, and a charming girl, but I have never thought of that, nor has she. I go there a good deal, but I have never paid her any marked attention.' No marked attention, indeed! Nothing seems to mean anything here: it is worse than being in England, where everything means something. No, it isn't, either. I vow that when I am at the Clintons' in Surrey I scarcely dare offer the girls so much as a muffin, and if I ask the carroty one, Beatrice, the simplest question, she blushes and stammers as if I were proposing out of hand. But what am I to do? I can't sing and take to serenading Edith on moonlit nights with a guitar and a blue ribbon around my neck. I can't push her into the river that I may pull her out again. I dare say there is nothing for it but to adopt the American method,—enter with about fifty others for a sort of sentimental steeple-chase, elbow or knock every other fellow out of the way in the running, work awfully hard to please the girl, and get in by half a length, if one wins at all. There is no feeling sure of her until one is coming back from the altar, evidently."

Some of his conversations with Edith were certainly anything but encouraging. At other times he felt morally sure that [Pg 127]she shared that derangement of the bivalvular organ technically defined as "a muscular viscus which is the primary instrument of the blood's motion," whose worst pains are said to be worth more than the greatest pleasures. He was very much in earnest, and entirely straightforward, There were no balancing indecisions now, but the most downright affirmation of preference. His little speeches were not veiled in rosy clouds of metaphor and poetry and distant allusions, like Captain Kendall's, nor did they flow out in an unfailing stream of romantic eloquence, like that gifted warrior's. They were so honest and so clumsy, indeed, that Edith could not help laughing at them merrily sometimes, to his great discomfiture, consisting as they did chiefly of such statements as, "You know that I am most awfully fond of you. I was tremendously hard hit from the first. If you don't believe me, you can ask Ramsay. I told him all about it. You aren't in the least like any other girl that I have ever known, except Mrs. De Witt a little. I suppose you know that I would have married her at the dropping of a hat if I could have done so. But that is all over now. I care an awful lot for you now, and shall be quite frightfully cut up if you won't have anything to say to me,—I shall, really. I have got quite wrapped up in you, upon my word. And I shall be intensely glad and proud if you will consent to be my wife."

When Edith failed to take such speeches as these seriously, poor Mr. Heathcote was quite beside himself, and, in reply to her bantering accusations as to his being "a great flirt" and not "really meaning one word that he said," opposed either burly negation or a deeply-vexed silence. They looked at so many things differently that they found a piquant interest in discussing every subject that came up.

"There go May Dunbar and Fred Beach," she said to him one Sunday as they were coming home from church. "Isn't he handsome? They have been engaged three years. Did you ever hear of such constancy?"

"Do you call that constancy? Why, if a fellow can't wait three years for a lovely girl like that, he must be a poor stick. Why, my uncle Montgomery was engaged to his wife seventeen years, while he went out to India and shook the pagoda-tree, after which he came back, paid all his father's debts, and they married and went into the house they had picked out before he sailed," said Mr. Heathcote.

"Good gracious! what a time! I hope the poor things were happy at last. Were they?" asked Edith.

"H-m—pretty well. He is a rather fiery, tyrannical old party. She doesn't get her own way to hurt," he replied.

"I have heard that Englishwomen give way to the men in everything and are always, voluntarily or involuntarily, sacrificed to them. It must be so bad for both," said Edith sweetly.

"Oh, you go in for woman's rights and that sort of thing, I suppose," he said, in a tone of annoyance.

"Indeed I don't do anything of the kind," replied she, with warmth. "If I did, I should be aping the men when I wasn't sneering at them. But I respect your sex most when they most deserve to be respected, and I don't see anything to admire in a selfish, tyrannical man that is always imposing his will, opinions, and wishes upon the ladies of his household and expects to be the first consideration from the cradle to the grave because he happens to be a man."

"But he is the head of his house. He ought to get his own way, if anybody does, and, if he is not a coward, he will, too," said Mr. Heathcote rather hotly. "Would you have a man a molly-coddle, tied to his wife's apron-string, and not daring to call his soul his own?"

"Not at all," replied Edith. "It is the cowards that are the tyrants. 'The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the daring,' as our American poet says. And women have souls of their own, except in the East. Why shouldn't they be the first consideration and do as they please, pray? They are the weaker, the more delicate and daintily bred. If [Pg 128]there is any pampering and spoiling to be done, they should be the objects of it. And as to rights, there is no divine right of way given to man, that I know of. I don't believe in that sort of thing at all. Of course no reasonable woman wants or expects everybody to kootoo before her and everything to give way to her."

"And no gentleman fails to show a proper respect for his wife's wishes and comfort, not to mention her happiness," said Mr. Heathcote. "But of course that sort of thing is only to be found in America. Englishmen are all selfish, and tyrants, and domestic monsters, I know."

"I didn't say anything of the kind," replied Edith quickly, her cheeks pink with excitement. "I don't know anything about Englishmen or the domestic system of England, and I never expect to. But, if what I have heard is true, it is a system that tends to make men mortally selfish; and selfish people, whether they are men or women, and whether they know it or not, are all monsters. But I apologize for my remarks, and, as I am not interested in the subject in the least, we will talk of something else, if you please."

This very feminine conclusion, delivered loftily and with sudden reserve, left Mr. Heathcote in anything but an agreeable frame of mind, and for an hour or two made him doubt the wisdom of international marriages; but this mood passed away, and he remained a fixture at the maison Bascombe, where the very postman came to know him and generously sympathized with the malady from which he was suffering. Nor was this the only house in which he was made very welcome. Baltimore is one of many American cities that suffer from the vague but painful accusation of being "provincial;" but, admitting this dreadful charge, it has social, gastronomic, and other charms of its own that ought to compensate for the absence of that doubtful good, cosmopolitanism. Mr. Heathcote certainly found no fault with it, and did not miss the population, pauperism, or other institutions of Paris, London, or Vienna. On the contrary, he took very kindly to the pretty place, and heartily liked the people. There was nothing oppressive or ostentatious in the attentions he received, but just the cordiality, grace, and charm of an old-established society of most refined traditions, perfect savoir-vivre, and chronic hospitality.

"You are making a Baltimorean of me, you are so awfully kind to me," he would say, pronouncing the a in Bal as he would have done in sal; but the truth was that he had become primarily a Bascomite and only very incidentally a Baltimorean. The city counts hundreds of such converts every year. He was so happy and entirely content that he would have quite forgotten what it was to be bored just at this period but for certain individuals,—a boastful, disagreeable Irishman, who fastened upon him apparently for no other reason than that he might abuse England at great length and talk of his own valor, accomplishments, and "paddygree" (as he very properly called the record that established his connection with Brian Boroo and Irish kings generally), and a lady who seemed to take the most astounding, unquenchable interest in the English nobility, as more than one lady had seemed to him to do, to his great annoyance.

"I don't know a bit about them, I assure you," he said to her; "but I have the 'Peerage.' If you would like to see that, I will send it you with pleasure."

This only diverted her conversation into a different but equally distasteful channel,—the great distinction and antiquity of her own family. It really seemed as though she had a dread of Mr. Heathcote's leaving the country with some wrong impression on this important subject and was determined that he should be put in possession of all the information she had or imagined herself to have about it. She talked to him about it so much that the poor man was at incredible pains to keep out of her way.

"I don't care a brass copper about [Pg 129]her," he complained to Edith; "and if the family has been producing women like her as long as she says, and is going on at it, all I can say is that it is a pity they have lasted this long, and the sooner they die out the better. What do I care about her family, pray? I never heard as much about family in all my life, I give you my word, as I have done since I came to America. The stories told me are something wonderful,—all about the two brothers that left England, and all that, you know. They seem all to have come away in pairs, like the animals in the ark. I said to one fellow that was beginning with those two brothers, 'Couldn't you make it three, don't you think?' And you'll not believe me, but I speak quite without exaggeration, when I say that one woman out in Raising assured me gravely that she was descended from the houses of York and Lancaster!"

"She didn't!" exclaimed Edith. "That is, if she did, she must have been crazy; and I won't have you going back to England and giving false impressions of us by repeating such stories. Promise me that you will never repeat it there."

"Oh, that's all right," he replied soothingly. "It's an extreme case, I grant, and I'll say no more about it if it vexes you, but it is a true tale all the same. Howe was her name, I remember; and I felt like saying,—I'll eat my hand if I understand Howe this can possibly be,'—that's in the Bab Ballads,—but I didn't."

Sir Robert had small opportunity of making acquaintance with Baltimore. He was very eager to get down into Virginia, and stayed there but two days. On the second of these he attended a gentleman's dinner-party, the annual mile-stone of a military society composed of men who had worn the gray and marked the well-known tendency of tempus to fugit in this agreeable fashion. Their ex-enemies of the blue were also there, but not in the original overwhelming numbers, and the battle was now to one party, now to the other, the race to the best raconteur, rivers of champagne flowed instead of brave blood, and the smoke of cannon was exchanged for that of Havanas. Sir Robert's face beamed more and more brightly as the evening wore on, and reminiscences, anecdotes, stories, jests, songs, were fluently and cleverly poured out in rapid succession by the hilarious company. The fun was at its height, when he suddenly leaned forward with his body at an insinuating angle and smilingly addressed an officer opposite: "You must really let me say that I have been delighted by all that I have heard here to-night, and appreciate the compliment you have paid me in permitting me to join you. And now I am going to ask a great favor. Could you, would you, give me some idea of 'the rebel yell,' as it was called? We heard so much about that. I am most curious to hear it. It is always spoken of as perfectly terrifying, almost unearthly."

The gentleman whom he addressed looked down the table and rapped to call attention to what he had to say: "Boys, this English gentleman is asking whether we can't give him some idea of what the rebel yell is like. What do you say? If our Federal friends are afraid, they can get under the table, where they will be perfectly safe, and a good deal more comfortable than they used to be behind trees or in baggage-wagons," he called out.

A hearty laugh followed, and, their blood having got bubbles in it by this time, a general assenting murmur was heard.

The next instant a shriek, sky-rending, blood-curdling, savage beyond description, went up,—a truly terrific yell in peace, and enough to create a panic, one would think, in the Old Guard in time of war.

"Thank you, thank you. I am entirely satisfied" said Sir Robert, in a comically rueful tone, as soon as he could say anything for the uproar. "I never imagined anything like it, never. Where did you get it? Who invented it? Is it an adaptation of some war-cry of the North American Indians? It sounds like what one would fancy their cries [Pg 130]might be, doesn't it? It has got all the beasts of the forest in it; and I confess that I for one, would have fled before it and stayed in the wagons as long as there was the slightest danger of hearing it. By Jove! it must have been heard in Boston when given in Virginia. It is curious how very ancient the practice of—"

But the company heard no more of curious practices, for their yell had been heard, if not in Boston, in a far more remarkable quarter,—namely, by the police, who now rushed in, prepared to club, arrest, and carry off any and all disorderly and dreadful disturbers of the peace.

If Sir Robert had been in any danger of being murdered, all experience goes to show that no policeman could have been found before the following morning, and then only in the remotest part of the city. As he was merely being wined, dined, and amused, quite a formidable body of these devoted but easily-misled guardians of respectability and innocence poured into the room, where at first they could see nothing for the smoke. Matters were explained, they were invited to "take something" before they went, and took it, and, quite placated, filed out into the passage again, and from thence into the street.

Sir Robert sat up late that night, or rather began early on the following day, to copy the stories he had most relished into the diary, and do what justice he could to "the rebel yell," and, having added an admirably discriminating chapter on "the present political situation in the States," concluded with, "How striking is the good sense, the good feeling, that both the conquerors and the conquered have shown, on the whole! In other countries, how often has a war far less bloody and protracted left in its wake evils far greater than the original one, in guerilla warfare, murders, ceaseless revolt, and smouldering hatred lasting for centuries on one side, and centuries of tyranny, oppression, executions, confiscations, on the other! A brave and fine race this, not made of the stuff that goes to keep up vendettas, shoot landlords, blow up rulers, assassinate enemies. They can fight as well as any, and they have shown that they can forgive better than most,—taken together, true manliness. It may be that they are influenced by a consideration which is said to be always present to an American,—'Will it pay?' and of course so practical a people as this see that anarchy doesn't pay; but I would rather attribute their conduct to nobler, more generous motives, and in doing this seem to myself to be doing them no more than justice."

F.C. BAYLOR.

[TO BE CONCLUDED.]

In spotless procession the days moved along until that morning on which Adam dreamed his dream. He waked up trembling with joy and feeling the tears run down his face. His watch ticked like the beating of a pulse under his pillow, and he kept time to its rhythm with whispered words no human ear would ever hear him utter with such rapture.

He had dreamed of breasting oceans and groping through darkness after his wife until he was ready to die. Then, while he lay helpless, she came to him and lifted him up in her arms. There was perfect and unearthly union between them. His happiness became awful. He woke up shaken by it as by a hand of infinite power.

Instead of turning toward her, he was still. Such experiences cannot be told. The tongue falters and words limp when we try to repeat them to the one beloved. A divine shame keeps us silent. Perhaps the glory of that perfect love puts a halo around our common thoughts and actions for days afterward, but no man or woman can fitly say, "I was in heaven with you, my other soul, and the gladness was so mighty that I cried helplessly long after I woke."

Adam kept his sleeve across his eyes. He had risked his life in many an adventure without changing a pulse-beat, but now he was an infant in the grasp of emotion.

When at last he cast a furtive glance at Eva's cot, she was not there. She often slipped out in the early morning to drench herself with dew. Once he had discovered her stooping on the sand, washing soiled clothes in the lake. She clapped and rubbed the garments between soap and her little fists. The sun was just coming up in the far northeast. Shapes of mist gyrated slowly upward in the distance, and all the morning birds were rushing about, full of eager business. Eva stopped her humming song when she saw him, and laughed over her unusual employment. The first time she ever washed clothes in her life she wanted to have Magog for her tub and accomplish the labor on a vast and princess-like scale. Adam helped her spread the wet things on bushes, and they both marvelled at the bleached dazzle which the sun gave to those garments.

He did not move from the cot, hoping awhile that she might come in, dew-footed, and yet kiss him. That clear shining of the face which one sometimes observes in pure-minded devotees, or in young mothers over their firstborn, gave him a look of nobility in the pallid shadow of the tent.

He thought of all their days on the island, and, incidentally, of Louis Satanette's frequent comings. The Frenchman [Pg 142]was a beautiful, versatile fellow. He sailed a boat, he swam, he fished knowingly, he sang like an angel, leaning his head back against a tree to let the moonlight touch up his ivory face and silky moustache and eyebrows. He had firm, marble-white fingers, nicely veined, on which reckless exposure to sun and wind had no effect, and the kindliest blue eyes that ever beamed equal esteem upon man and woman. Sometimes this Satanette came in a blue-flannel suit, the collar turned well back from the throat, and in a broad straw hat wound with pink and white tarlatan. He looked like a flower,—if any flower ever expressed along with its beauty the powerful nerve of manliness.

Frequently he sailed out from Magog House and stayed all night on the island, slinging his own hammock between trees. Then he and Adam rose early and trolled for lunge in deep water under the cliff. In the afternoon they all plunged into the lake, Eva swimming like a cardinal-flower afloat. Adam was careful to keep near her, and finally to help her into the boat, where she sat with her scarlet bathing-dress shining in the sun and her drenched hair curling in an arch around her face.

All these days flashed before Adam while he put a slow foot out on the tent-rug.

There was nobody about the camp when he had made his morning toilet and unclosed the tent-flaps, so he built a fire in the stove, hung the bedding to sun, and set out the cots. A blueness which was not humid filtered itself through the air everywhere, and fold upon fold of it seemed rising from invisible censers on the mainland.

Eva hailed him from the lake. She came rowing across the sun's track. The water was fresh and blue, glittering like millions of alternately dull and burnished scales.

Adam drew the boat in and lifted her out, more tenderly but with more reticence than usual.

"You don't know where I have been, laddie," exclaimed Eva. "Look at all the fern and broken bushes in the boat; and I have my pocket sagged down with gold-streaked quartz. I went around to the other side of the island, where the counterfeiters' hole is, to look into it while the morning sun on the lake threw a reflection."

"There's nothing wonderful to be seen there."

"How will we know that? The rocks sound hollow all about, and there may be a great cavern full of counterfeiters' relics. Oh, Adam, I saw Louis Satanette's sail!"

"He comes early this morn."

"I think he has been camping by himself over on the lake-shore. He says we'll explore the counterfeiters' hole, and let us go directly after breakfast."

"What is it worth the exploring?" said Adam. "Four rocks set on end, and you crawl in on your hands and knees, look at the dark, and back out again. It's but a burrow, and ends against the hill's heart of rock. I've to row across yonder for the eggs and butter and milk."

The smoke rising from different points on the mainland kept sifting and sifting until at high noon the air was pearl-gray. As if there was not enough shadow betwixt him and the sun, Adam sat in his boat at the foot of the cliff, where brown glooms never rose quite off the water. He looked down until sight could pierce no farther, and, though a fish or two glided in beautiful curves beneath his eye, he had no hook dropped in as his excuse for loitering.

The eggs and butter and milk for which he had rowed across the lake were covered with green leaves under one of the boat-benches.

Straight above him, mass on mass, rose those protruding ribs of the earth, the rocks. He lay back in the boat's stern and gazed at their summit of pinetrees and ferns. Bunches of gigantic ferns sprouted from every crevice, and not a leaf of the array but was worth half a lifetime's study. Yet Adam's eye wandered aimlessly over it all, as if it gave him no pleasure. Nor did he seem to wish that a little figure would [Pg 143]bend from the summit, half swallowed in greenness and made a vegetable mermaid from the waist downward, to call to him. He was so haggard the freckles stood in bold relief upon his face and neck.

The hiss of a boat and the sound of row-locks failed to move him from his listless attitude. He did, however, turn his eyes and set his jaws in the direction of the passing oarsman. Louis Satanette was all in white flannel, and flush-faced like a cream-pink rose with pleasant exhilaration. He held his oars poised and let his boat run slowly past Adam.

"What have you the matter?" he exclaimed, with sincere anxiety.

"Oh, it's naught," said Adam. "I'm just weary, weary."

"You have been gone a very, very long time," said Louis, using the double Canadian adjective. "Mrs. Macgregor is on the lookout."

Adam thought of her when she was not on the lookout. He also thought of her tidying things about the camp in the morning, and singing as he pulled from the bay. Perhaps she was on another sort of lookout then.

"I'll go in presently," he muttered.

"Beg pardon?" said Louis Satanette, bending forward, and giving the upward inflection to that graceful Canadian phrase which asks a repetition while implying that the fault is with the hearer.

"I said I'd go in presently. There's no hurry."

"Allow me to take you in," said Louis. "You have approached too close to the altars of the sylvan gods, and their sacrificial smoke has overcome you. Don't you see it rising everywhere from the woods?"

"The sylvan gods are none of my clan," remarked Adam, shifting his position impatiently, "and it's little I know of them. There's a graat dail of ignorance consailed aboot my pairson."

Louis Satanette laughed with enjoyment:

"Well, au revoir. I will put up my sail when I turn the points. It will be a long run up the lakes, with this haze hanging and not wind enough to lift it."

"Good-day to ye," responded Adam. "We'll likely shift camp before you're this way."

"In so short a time?" exclaimed Louis.

"In so lang a time. I'm soul-sick of it. It's lone; it's heavy. The fine's too great for the pleasure of the feight. Look, now,—there were two rough laddies up Glazka way, in my country, and they came to fists aboot a sweethairt, the fools. But when they are stripped and ready, one hits the table wi's hond, and says he, 'Ay, Georgie, I'm wullin' to feight ye, but wha's goin' to pay the fine?'"

Louis Satanette laughed again, but as if he did not know just what was meant."

"It's a cautious mon, is the Scotchmon," said Adam, "but no' so slow, after all."

"Oh, never slow!" said Louis. "Very, very fast indeed, to leave this paradise in the midst of the summer."

"'Farewell to lovely Loch Achray,'" sighed Adam:

"Where shall we find, in any land,
So lone a lake, so sweet a strand?"

Louis made a sign of adieu and dipped his oars.

"It's only au revoir," said he, shooting past. "Be very, very far from parting with Magog too early."

"'So lone a lake, so sweet a strand,'" repeated Adam, dropping his head back against the stern.

He did not move while the sound of the other's oars died away behind him. He did not move while the afternoon shadows spread far over the water.

The long Canadian twilight advanced stage by stage. First, all Magog flushed, as if a repetition of the old miracle had turned it to wine. Then innumerable night-hawks uttered their four musical notes in endless succession, upon the heights, down in the woods, from the mainland mountain. The north star became discernible almost overhead. Then, with slow and irregular strokes, Adam [Pg 144]pulled away from the cliff, and brought his keel to grate the sand in front of his tent.

Eva was sitting there on a rock, huddling a shawl around her.

"Oh, Adam Macgregor!" she began, in a low voice, "and do you condescend to bring your wraith back to me at last?"

"It's nothing but my wraith," said Adam, lifting his eggs and butter and milk, and stepping from the boat. "The mon in me died aboot noon."

Eva walked along by his side to the cool-box, where he deposited his load.

"What is the matter with you, laddie, that you look and talk so strangely?"

"Oh, naught," said Adam, turning and facing her. "I but saw you kissing Louis Satanette on the hill to-day."

The changes which passed over her face were half concealed by the twilight. She was grieved, indignant, and frightened, but over all other expressions lurked the mischievous mirth of a bad child.

"I meant to tell you about it," she said.

"Hearken," said Adam, with a fierce stare. "I've stayed out on the lake all day, and I'm quiet. At first I wasn't. But when he came by I gave him nothing but a good word."

"I wish you'd scolded him instead of me," said Eva, propping her back against the table and puckering her lips.

"He did naught," said Adam, "but what any man would do that got lave. It's you that gave him lave that are to blame."

"Don't be so serious about a little thing," put forth Eva. "We just walked over to the counterfeiters' hole, and coming back we picked strawberries, and he teased me like a girl, and caught hold of me and kissed me. We've been such good friends in camp. I think it's this easy, wild life made me do it."

"She'll blame the very sky over her instead of taking blame to herself," ground out Adam from between his jaws. "I sat in me boat below and saw you arch your head and look at him ways that I remember. My God! why did you make this woman so false, and yet so sweet that a mon canna help loving her in spite o' his teeth?"

"Because I'd die if folks didn't love me," burst out Eva, with a sob. "And if men can't help loving me, what do you blame me for?"

"What right have you to breathe such a word when you're married to me?"

"But I'm not used to being married yet," pleaded Eva. "And I forgot, this once."

"It's once and for all," said Adam, "You'll never be to me what you were before. Is it the English-Canadian way to bring up women to kiss every comer?"

"I didn't kiss anybody but Louis Satanette," maintained Eva, "and I didn't really want to kiss him"

"Never mind," said Adam. "Don't trouble your butterfly soul about it." And he turned away and walked toward the tent.

"I'll not love you if you say such awful things to me," she flashed after him.

"Ye can't take the breeks off a Hielandman," he replied, facing about, "Ye never loved me. Not as I loved you. And it's no loss I've met, if I could but think it."

"Oh, Adam!" Now she ran forward and caught him around the waist. "Don't be so hard with me. I know I am very bad, but I didn't mean to be."

Some faint perception of that coarse fibre within her was breaking with horror through her face. She held to his hands after he had separated her from his person and held her off.

"All that you do still has its effect on me," said the man, gazing sternly at her. "I love ye; but I despise myself for loving ye. This morn I adored ye with reverence; this night you're as a bit o' that earth."

Eva let go his hands and sat down on the ground. As he made his preparations [Pg 145]in the tent he could not help seeing with compassion how abjectly her figure drooped. All its flexible proud lines, were suddenly gone. She was dazed by his treatment and by the light in which he put her trifling. She sat motionless until Adam came out with one of the cots in his arms.

"I'm to sleep upon the hill in the pine woods to-night," said he. "Go into the tent, and I'll fasten the flaps. You shan't be scared by anything."

"Let me get in the boat and leave the island, if you can't breathe the same air with me," said Eva. staggering up.

"No, I can't breathe the same air with ye to-night, but ye'll go into the tent," said Adam, with authority.

"I'll not stay there," she rebelled. "I'll follow you. You don't know what may be on this island."

"There can be nothing worse than what I've seen," said Adam; "and that's done all the hairm it can do."

"Oh, Adam, are we both crazy?" the small creature burst out, weeping as if her heart would break. "Don't go away and leave me so. I am not real bad in my heart, I know I am not; and if you would be a little patient with me and help me, I shall get over my silly ways. There is something in me, you can depend upon, if I did do that foolish thing. And my mother didn't live long enough to train me, Adam; remember that. Won't you please kiss me? My heart is breaking."

He put down the cot and took her by the shoulders, trembling as he did so from head to foot:

"My wife, I belaive what you say. I'd give all the days remaining to me if I could strain ye against my breast with the feeling I had this morn. But there comes that sight. I never shall see the hill again, I never shall see a spot of this island again, without seeing your mouth kissing another man. Go into the tent. God knows I'd die before hairm should come to you. But not to-night can I stay beside you. Or kiss you."

He carried her into the tent and put her on her bed. She had made all the night-preparations herself, placing the pillows on both cots and turning back the sun-sweetened blankets.

Adam left her sobbing, buttoned the tent-flaps outside, and placed a barricade of kettles and pans which could not be touched without disturbing him on the hill. Then, taking up his own bed, he marched off through the ferns, edging his burden among dense boughs as he ascended.

When he had made the joints of his couch creak with many uneasy turnings, had clinched at leaves, and started up to return to the tent, only to check himself in the act as often as he started, he lost consciousness in uneasy dreams rather than fell asleep.

He was smothering, and yet could not open his lips to gasp for a breath of air. Then he was drowning: he gulped in vast sheets of water upon his lungs. An alarm sounded from Eva's barricade. He heard the pans and kettles clanging and her own voice in screams which pierced him, yet he could not move. A nightmare of heat enveloped him; the smothering element pouring upon his lungs was not water, but smoke; and he knew if no effort of will could move his body to her rescue he must be perishing himself.

After these brief sensations his existence was as blank as the empty void outside the worlds, until his ears began to throb like drums, and he felt water, like the tears he had shed in the morning, running all over his face. Eva held him in her arms, and alternately kissed his head and drenched it from the lake.

Moreover, he was in the boat, outside the bay, and their island glowed like a furnace before his dazzled eyes.

Those pine woods where he had gone to sleep were roaring up toward heaven in a column of fire. The tent was burning, all its interior illuminated until every object showed its minutest lines. He thought he saw some of Eva's dark hairs in an upturned hair-brush on the wash-stand.

Fire ran along the cliff-edge and dropped hissing brands into the lake. [Pg 146]Old moss logs and pine-trees dry as tinder sent out sickening heat. The light ran like a flash up the tree over their stove, and in an instant its crown was wavering with flames. The grass itself caught here and there, and in whatever direction the eye turned, new fires as instantaneously sprang out to meet it.

Stumps blazed up like lighted altars, or like huge gas-jets suddenly turned on. Adam saw one log lying endwise downhill, one side of which was crumbling into coals of fierce and tremulous heat, while from the other side still sprung unsinged a delicate tuft of ferns.

The smoke was driving straight upward in a quivering current, and in Lake Magog's depths another island seemed to be on fire.

Sublime as the sight was, all these details impressed themselves on the man in an instant, and he turned his face directly up toward the woman.

"Darling, your face looks blistered," said Adam.

"It feels blistered," replied Eva. "I'll put some water on it, now that you've caught your breath again. I thought I could not get you out from those burning trees."

"But you dragged me down the hill?"

"Yes, and then dipped you in the lake and pushed off with you in the boat. I don't know how I did it. But here we are together."

Adam bathed her face carefully himself, and held her tight in his arms. The unspeakable love of which he had dreamed, and the heat of the burning island, seemed welding them together without other sign than the fact.

Not a word was sighed out for forgiveness on either side. They held each other and floated back into the lake. Adam took an oar and occasionally paddled, without wholly releasing his hold of Eva.

"Don't you remember our fish's nest?" she whispered beside his neck. "I wonder if the slim little silver thing is swimming around over the gravel hollow, frightened by all this glare? I hope those overhanging bushes won't catch fire and drop coals on her; for she's a silly thing,—she might not want to dart out in deep water and lose her unhatched family."

Adam smiled into his wife's eyes. He was quite singed, but did not know it.

"Ay, burn," he spoke out exultantly, apostrophizing the island. "Burn up our first home and all. It's worth it. We're the other side o' the world of fire now. We've passed through it, and are afloat on the sea of glass."

M. H. CATHERWOOD.

FLORENCE EARLE COATES.

THE PIONEERS OF THE SOUTHWEST.

CHARLOTTE FISKE BATES.

It is hard to dispel the halo which poetry and romance have thrown about the Scottish Highlander and see him simply as he appears in every-day life. And indeed, all fiction aside, there is in his history and character much that is most admirable and noble. On many a terrible battle-field his courage has been unsurpassed. His brave and tireless struggle for existence where both climate and soil are unfriendly is equally worthy of respect. Then, too, his sterling honesty and independence in speech and action and his high moral and religious qualities combine to make him a valuable citizen.

Such considerations account in part for the interest which has been excited in England by the claims of the Scottish crofters. There are, however, other reasons why so much attention has of late been given to their complaints. Their poverty and hardships have long been known in England. The reports made by the Emigration Commissioners in 1841 and by Sir John McNeil a few years later contain accounts of miserably small and unproductive holdings, of wretched hovels for dwellings, of lack of enterprise and interest in making improvements, of curtailment of pasture, of high rents and insecurity of tenure, very similar to those found on the pages of the report of the late Royal Commission. While in this interval the condition of the crofters has but slightly, if at all, improved, there has been a very considerable improvement in the condition of the middle and lower classes of the people in other parts of Scotland and in England. The masses of the people have better houses, better food and clothing, while with the development of the school system and the newspaper press general intelligence has greatly increased. The accounts of the poverty and wretchedness of the crofters now reach the public much more quickly and make a much deeper impression on all classes than they did forty years ago. While these small farmers are not numerous,—there are probably not more than four thousand families in need of relief,—many of their kinsmen elsewhere have acquired wealth and influence and have been able to plead their cause with good effect. In this country "The Scottish Land League" has issued in "The Cry of the Crofter" an eloquent plea for help to carry on the agitation to a successful issue.

Another reason for the increased attention that has lately been given to these claims is found in the rapidly-growing tendency to concede to the landlord fewer and fewer and to the tenant more and more rights in the land. The recent extension of the suffrage, giving votes to nearly two millions of agricultural and other laborers, leads politicians to go as far as possible in favoring new legislation in the interest of tenants and laborers. The crofters' case has therefore come to be of special interest as a part of the general land question which has of late received so much attention from the English press and Parliament, and which is pretty certain to be prominent for several years to come.

Those who are familiar only with the relations existing between landlord and tenant in this country are naturally surprised to find the crofter demanding that his landlord shall (1) give him the use of more land, (2) reduce his rent, (3) pay him on leaving his holding for all his improvements, and (4) not accept in his stead another tenant, even though the latter may be anxious to take the holding at a higher figure or turn him out for any other reason. In addition to all this, the crofters demand that the government shall advance them money to enable them to build suitable houses and improve and stock their farms. An American tenant who should make such demands would be considered insane. No [Pg 178]such view of the crofters' claims, however, is taken in England and Scotland.

What, then, are the grounds upon which these extensive claims are based? Why should the crofter claim a right to have his holding enlarged and to have the land at a lower rent than some one else may be willing to pay? The reasons are to be found partly in his history, traditions, and circumstances, and partly in the present tendency of the legislation and discussions relating to the ownership and occupation of land.

Under the old clan system, to which the crofter is accustomed to trace his claims, the land was owned by the chief and clansmen in common, and allotments and reallotments were made from time to time to individual clansmen, each of whom had a right to some portion of the land, while the commons were very extensive. Rent or service was paid to the chief, who had more or less control over the clan lands and often possessed an estate in severalty, with many personal dependants. In many cases the power of the chief was great and tyrannical, and many of the clansmen were in a somewhat servile condition; but the more influential clansmen seem sometimes to have retained permanent possession of their allotments. Long ago sub-letting became common, and hard services were often exacted of the sub-tenants, whose lot was frequently a most unhappy one. The modern cottar, as well as the squatter, had his representative in the dependant of the chief, or clansman, or in the outlaw or vagrant member of another clan who came to build his rude cabin wherever he could find a sheltered and unoccupied spot. No doubt many of the sub-tenants, even where they held originally by base and uncertain services and at the will of their superior, came in time, like the English copyholder, to have a generally-recognized right to the permanent possession of their holdings, while custom tended to fix the character and quantity of their services. The population was not numerous, and it was probably not difficult for every man to secure a plot of land of some sort.

The crofters of to-day have lost for the most part the traditions of the drawbacks and hardships of this ancient system, with its oppressive services, to which many of their ancestors were subject, and have commonly retained only the tradition of the right which every clansman had to some portion of the clan lands. In 1745 the clan organizations were abolished and the chiefs transformed into landlords and invested with the fee-simple of the land. But, while changes were gradually made on some estates in the direction of conformity to the English system, most of the old customary rights of the people continued to be recognized. The tenant was commonly allowed to occupy his holding from year to year without interruption. Money rent gradually took the place of service or rent in kind, but the amount exacted does not seem to have been often increased arbitrarily. The rights of common, which were often of great value, were respected.

The descendants and successors, however, of the old Scotch lairds did not always display the same regard for prescriptive rights and usages. In some cases the extravagance and bankruptcy of the old owners caused the titles to pass to Englishmen, while in others the inheritors of the estates were more and more inclined to insist upon their legal rights and to introduce in the management of their property rules similar to those in use in England. Early in the present century sheep-farming was found to be profitable, and many large areas of glen and mountain were cleared of the greater part of their population and converted into sheep-farms. Many of the mountainous parts of Scotland are of little use for agricultural purposes. Formerly the crofters used large tracts as summer pastures for their small herds of inferior stock. By and by the proprietors found that large droves of better breeds of sheep could be kept on these mountain-pastures. The crofters were too poor to undertake the management of the large sheep-farms into which it was apparently most profitable to divide these mountain-lands, and sheep-farmers from the south became [Pg 179]the tenants. By introducing sheep-farming on a large scale the landlords were able, they claimed, to use hundreds of thousands of acres which before were of comparatively little value. The large flocks of sheep could not, however, be kept without having the lower slopes of the mountains on which to winter. It was these slopes that the crofters commonly used for pasture, below which, in the straths and glens, were their holdings and dwellings. The ruins of cottages, or patches of green here and there where cottages stood, mark the sites of many little holdings from which the crofters and their families were turned out many years ago in order to make room for sheep-farms. The proprietors sometimes recognized the rights of these native tenants, and gave them new holdings in exchange for the old ones. The new crofts were often nearer the sea, where the land was less favorable for grazing and where the rights of common were less valuable, but the occupants had better opportunities for supplementing their incomes from the land by fishing and by gathering sea-weed for kelp, from which iodine was made. There were, however, great numbers who were not supplied with new crofts, but turned away from their old homes and left to shift for themselves. Some of these, too poor to go elsewhere, built rude huts wherever they could find a convenient spot, and thus increased the ranks of the squatters. Others were allowed to share the already too small holdings of their more fortunate brethren, while others, again, found their way to the lowlands and cities of the south or to America. The traditions of the hardships and sufferings endured by some of these evicted crofters are still kept alive in the prosperous homes of their children and grandchildren on this side of the Atlantic. The process of clearing off the crofters went on for many years. In 1849 Hugh Miller, in trying to arouse public sentiment against it, declared that, "while the law is banishing its tens for terms of seven and fourteen years,—the penalty of deep-dyed crimes,—irresponsible and infatuated power is banishing its thousands for no crime whatever."

Lately, owing to foreign competition and the deterioration of the land that has been used for many years as sheep-pastures, sheep-farming has become much less profitable than formerly, and many large tenants have in consequence given up their farms. The enthusiasm for deer-hunting has, however, increased with the increase of wealth and leisure among Englishmen, and immense tracts, amounting altogether to nearly two millions of acres, have been turned into deer-forests, yielding, as a rule, a slightly higher rent than was paid by the crofters and sheep-farmers. Much of this land is either unfit for agricultural purposes or could not at present be cultivated with profit. Some of it, however, is fertile, or well suited for grazing, and greatly coveted by the crofters. The deer and other game often destroy or injure the crops of the adjoining holdings, and thus add to the troubles of the occupants and increase their indignation at the land's being used to raise sheep and "vermin" instead of men. Most Americans have had intimations of this feeling through the accounts of the hostility that has been shown to our countryman, Mr. Winans, whose deer-forest is said to cover two hundred square miles. While evictions are much less common than they were two or three generations ago, there has all along been a disposition on the part of the proprietors to enclose in their sheep-farms and deer-forests lands that were formerly tilled or used as commons by the crofters and cottars. In comparison with the crofter of to-day the sub-tenant of a hundred years ago had, as a rule, more land for tillage, a far wider range of pasture for his stock, and "greater freedom in regard to the natural produce of the river and moor."

Many of the crofters belong to families which have lived on the same holdings for generations. It is a common experience everywhere that long-continued use begets and fosters the feeling of ownership. This is especially [Pg 180]true when, as in the crofter's case, there is so much in the history and traditions of the people and the property that tends to establish a right of possession. Besides, the crofter, or one of his ancestors, has in most cases built the house and made other improvements: sometimes he has reclaimed the land itself and changed a barren waste into a garden. The labor and money which he and his ancestors have expended in improving the place seem to him to give him an additional right to occupy it always. It is his holding and his home, the home of his fathers and of his family. While he may be unable to resist the power of his landlord, and may have no legal security for his rights and interests, he regards the curtailment of his privileges or the increase of his rent as unjust, and eviction as a terrible outrage. "The extermination of the Highlanders," says one of their kinsmen, "has been carried on for many years as systematically and persistently as that of the North-American Indians.... Who can withhold sympathy as whole families have turned to take a last look at the heavens red with their burning homes? The poor people shed no tears, for there was in their hearts that which stifled such signs of emotion: they were absorbed in despair. They were forced away from that which was dear to their hearts, and their patriotism was treated with contemptuous mockery.... There are various ways in which the crime of murder is perpetrated. There are killings which are effected by the unjust and cruel denying of lands to our fellow-creatures to enable them to obtain food and raiment."

The feeling of the crofters in regard to increase of rent and eviction is very similar to that of the Irish tenantry. Very recently Mr. Parnell uttered sentiments which both would accept as their own. "I trust," he said, "that when any individual feels disposed to violate the divine commandment by taking, under such circumstances, that which does not belong to him, he will feel within him the promptings of patriotism and religion, and that he will turn away from the temptation. Let him remember that he is doing a great injustice to his country and his class,—that though he may perhaps benefit materially for a while, yet that ill-gotten gains will not prosper." Where crofters have been evicted, or have had their privileges curtailed or their rent raised, they and their descendants do not soon forget the grievance. Claims have recently been made for lands which the crofters have not occupied for two or three generations.

The Scotch landlords are not, as a rule, cruel or unjust. On the contrary, some of them are exceedingly kind and generous to their tenants, and have spent large sums of money in making improvements which add greatly to the prosperity and comfort of those who live on their estates. Many of them recognize the right of their tenants to occupy their holdings without interruption so long as the rent is paid regularly. The natural tendency, however, to insist upon their legal rights and to make the most they can out of their estates has led to not a few cases of hardship and injustice. A few such instances in a community are talked over for years, and often seriously interfere with the contentment and industry of many families. The traditions and recollections of the many evictions which have occurred during this century have often caused the motives of the best landlords to be suspected and their most benevolent acts to be misunderstood by their tenants. The crofter system has been an extremely bad one in many respects. There cannot be much interest in making improvements where the tenant must build the houses, fences, stables, etc., but has no guarantee that he will not be turned out of his holding or have his rent so increased as practically to compel him to leave the place. The kindness and humanity of the landlords have in many instances mitigated the worst evils of the system; but, while human nature remains as it is, no matter how just and generous individual landlords may be, general prosperity and contentment are impossible [Pg 181]under the present arrangements. The discontent and discouragement caused by the action of the less kind and considerate landlords and agents frequently extend to crofters who have no just grounds of complaint, and troubles and hardships resulting from idleness or improvidence or other causes are often attributed to the injustice of the laws or the cruelty of the landlords.

The poverty of the crofter often renders his condition deplorable. His holding and right of common have been curtailed by the landlord, or he has sub-divided them among his sons or kinsmen, until it would be impossible for the produce of the soil to sustain the population, even if no rent whatever were charged. Some years ago he was able to increase his income by gathering sea-weed for kelp; but latterly, since iodine can be obtained more cheaply from other sources, the demand for this product has ceased. In some places the fishing is valuable, enabling him to supply his family with food for a part of the year, and bringing him money besides. He is, however, often too poor to provide the necessary boats and nets, while in many places the absence of good harbors and landings is a most serious drawback to the fishing industry. Sometimes he supplements his income by spending a few months of the year in the low country and obtaining work there. In most cases, however, a large part of his income must be derived from the land. If there were plenty of employment to be had, the little holding would do very well as a garden, and the stock which he could keep on the common would add greatly to his comfort. As things now are, he must look chiefly to the land both for his subsistence and his rent, and, with an unfruitful soil and an unfriendly climate, he is often on the verge of want.

Still more wretched is the condition of the cottars and squatters. The latter are in some places numerous and have taken up considerable portions of land formerly used as common, thus interfering with the rights of the crofters. They appropriate land and possess and pasture stock, but pay no rent, obey no control, and scarcely recognize any authority. The dwellings of this class and of some of the poorer crofters are wretched in the extreme. A single apartment, with walls of stone and mud, a floor of clay, a thatched roof, no windows, no chimney, one low door furnishing an entrance for the occupants and a means of ventilation and of escape for the smoke which rolls up black and thick from the peat fire, furniture of the rudest imaginable sort, the inhabitants—the human beings, the cows, the pigs, the sheep, and the poultry—all crowded together in the miserable and filthy hut, make up a picture which the most romantic and poetic associations can hardly render pleasing to one accustomed to the comforts and refinements of modern civilization. Of course many of the crofters live in greater comfort, and some of the cottages are by no means unattractive. But the Royal Commissioners say that the crofter's habitation is usually "of a character that would imply physical and moral degradation in the eyes of those who do not know how much decency, courtesy, virtue, and even refinement survive amidst the sordid surroundings of a Highland hovel." An Englishman who, on seeing these "sordid surroundings," was disposed to compare the social and moral condition of the people to "the barbarism of Egypt," was told that if he would ask one of the crofters, in Gaelic or English, "What is the chief end of man?" he would soon see the difference.

With such a history, such traditions, grievances, conditions, and hardships, it is not strange that the crofter should be ready to join an agitation that promised a remedy. Some of his grievances and claims have been so similar to those of the Irish tenant that the legislation which followed the violent agitation in Ireland has led him to hope for relief-measures similar to those enacted for the Irish tenantry. The Irish Land Act of 1870 recognized the tenant's right to the permanent possession of his holding and to his improvements, by providing that on being turned out by his [Pg 182]landlord he should have compensation for disturbance and for his improvements. It did not, however, secure him against the landlord's so increasing his rent as practically to appropriate his improvements and even force him to leave his holding without any compensation. The Land Act of 1881 secured his interests by establishing a court which should fix a fair rent, by giving him a right to compensation for disturbance and for his improvements, and by allowing him to sell his interests for the best price he can get for them. It also enabled him to borrow from the government, at a low rate of interest, three-fourths of the money necessary to purchase his landlord's interest in the holding. This legal recognition and guarantee of the Irish tenant's interests have led the crofter to hope that his claims, based on better grounds, may also be conceded.

The changes recently made in the land laws of England and Scotland, and the activity of the advocates of further and more radical changes, have increased this hope. Progressive English statesmen have long looked with disfavor upon entails and settlements, and there have been a number of enactments providing for cutting off entails and increasing the power of limited owners. The last and most important of these, the Settled Estates Act, passed in 1882, gives the tenant for life power to sell any portion of the estate except the family mansion, and thus thoroughly undermines the principle upon which primogeniture and entails are founded. Much land which has hitherto been so tied up that the limited owners were either unable or unwilling to develop it can now be sold and improved. New measures have been proposed to increase still further the power of limited owners and to make the sale and transfer of land easier and less expensive. Many able statesmen are advocates of these measures. Mr. Goschen in a recent speech at Edinburgh urged the need of a land-register by which transfers of land might be made almost as cheaply and easily as transfers of consols. By such an arrangement, it is held, many farmers of small capital will be enabled to buy their farms, and the land of the country will thus be dispersed among a much larger number of owners. There has also been a very marked tendency to enlarge the rights and the authority of the tenant farmer. The Agricultural Holdings Act of 1883 gives the tenant a right to compensation for temporary and, on certain conditions, for permanent improvements, and permits him in most cases, where he cannot have compensation, to remove fixtures or buildings which he has erected, contrary to the old doctrine that whatever is fixed to the soil becomes the property of the landlord. The landlord's power to distrain for rent is greatly reduced: formerly he could distrain for six years' rent, now he can distrain only for the rent of one year, and he is required to give the tenant twelve instead of six months' notice to quit. The tenant is therefore more secure than formerly in the possession of his farm and in spending money and labor in making improvements that will render it more productive. Other changes are proposed, which will give him still more rights, greater freedom in the management of the farm, and additional encouragement to adopt the best methods of farming and invest his labor and money in improvements. Many of the land reformers advocate the adoption of measures similar to those that have been enacted for Ireland. It has for some time been one of the declared purposes of the Farmers' Alliance to secure a system of judicial rents for the tenant farmers of England. An important conference lately held at Aberdeen and participated in by representatives of both the English and Scottish Farmers' Alliances adopted an outline of a land bill for England and Scotland, providing for the establishment of a land court, fixing fair rents, fuller compensation for improvements, and the free sale of the tenant's interests.

The wretched condition of the dwellings of the agricultural laborers in many parts of the country has attracted much attention, and plans for bettering [Pg 183]their condition have frequently been urged. Lately the interest in the subject has increased, prominent statesmen on both sides having espoused the cause. In view of the political power which the recent extension of the suffrage has given to the agricultural laborers, there is a general expectation that a measure will shortly be enacted requiring the owner or occupier of the farm to give each laborer a plot of ground "of a size that he and his family can cultivate without impairing his efficiency as a wage-earner," at a rent fixed by arbitration, and providing for a loan of money by the state for the erection of a proper dwelling. The provisions of the Irish Land Act and its amendment relating to laborers' cottages and allotments suggest the lines along which legislation for the improvement of laborers' dwellings in England and Scotland is likely to proceed.

Then there is the scheme for nationalizing the land, the state paying the present owners no compensation, or a very small amount, and assuming the chief functions now exercised by the landlords. No statesman has yet ventured to advocate this scheme, but it has called forth a great deal of discussion on the platform and in the newspapers and reviews, and has captivated most of those who are inclined to adopt socialistic theories of property. Mr. George himself has preached his favorite doctrine to the crofters, whose views of their own rights in the land have led them to look upon the plan with more favor than the English tenants. Others, too, who have plans to advocate for giving tenants and laborers greater rights have taken special pains to have their views presented to the crofters, since the claims of the latter against the landlords seem to rest upon so much stronger grounds than those of the English tenant.

The agitations for the reform of the land laws in Ireland and England, and the utterances of the advocates of the various plans for increasing the rights and privileges of the tenant, have led the crofters to dwell upon their grievances until they have become thoroughly aroused. They have in many cases refused to pay rent, have resisted eviction and driven away officers who attempted to serve writs, have offered violence to the persons or property of some of those who have ventured to take the crofts of evicted tenants, and in some instances have taken forcible possession of lands which they thought ought to be added to their crofts. The government found it necessary a short time ago to send gunboats with marines and extra police to some of the islands and districts to restore the authority of the law. The crofters and their friends are thoroughly organized, and seem likely to insist upon their claims with the persistency that is characteristic of their race. It is now generally conceded that some remedy must be provided for their grievances and hardships.

The remedy that has been most frequently suggested, the only one recommended by the Emigration Commissioners in 1841 and by Sir John McNeil in 1852, is emigration. The crofting system, it has often been urged, belongs to a bygone age; it survives only because of its remoteness from the centres of civilization and the ruggedness of the country; the implements used by the crofters are of the most primitive sort, while their agricultural methods are "slovenly and unskilful to the last degree." It is impossible for these small farmers, with their crude implements and methods, to compete with the large farmers, who have better land and use the most improved implements and methods. Besides, many of the crofters are, and their ancestors for many generations have been, "truly laborers, living chiefly by the wages of labor, and holding crofts and lots for which they pay rents, not from the produce of the land, but from wages." If they cannot find employment within convenient distance of their present homes, the best and kindest thing for them is to help them to go where there is a good demand for labor and better opportunities for earning a decent livelihood. To encourage them to stay on their little crofts, where they are frequently on the [Pg 184]verge of want, is unkind and very bad policy. One who has seen the wretched hovels in which some of these crofter families live, the small patches of unproductive land on which they try to subsist, the hardships which they sometimes suffer, and the lack of opportunities for bettering their condition in their native Highlands or islands, and who knows how much has been accomplished by the enterprise and energy of Highlanders in other parts of the world, can hardly help wishing that they might all be helped to emigrate to countries where their industry and economy would more certainly be rewarded, and where they would have a fairer prospect for success in the struggle for life and advancement. Many of them would undoubtedly be far better off if they could emigrate under favorable conditions. The descendants of many of those who were forced to leave their homes by "cruel and heartless Highland lairds," and who suffered terrible hardships in getting to this country and founding new homes, have now attained such wealth and influence as they could not possibly have acquired among their ancestral hills. The Royal Commissioners recommended that the state should aid those who may be willing to emigrate from certain islands and districts where the population is apparently too great for the means of subsistence.

The crofters are, however, strongly attached to their native hills and glens, and they claim that such laws can and ought to be enacted as will enable them to live in comfort where they are. The present, it is urged, is a particularly favorable time to establish prosperous small farmers in many parts of the Highlands where sheep-farming has proved a failure. The inhabitants of the coasts and islands are largely a seafaring people. There is quite as much Norse as Celtic blood in the veins of many of them, and the Norseman's love of the sea leads them naturally to fishing or navigation. The herring-fisheries, with liberal encouragement on the part of the government, might be made far more profitable to the fishermen and to the nation. Besides, the seafaring people of the Highlands and islands "constitute a natural basis for the naval defence of the country, a sort of defence which cannot be extemporized, and which in possible emergencies can hardly be overrated." At the present time they "contribute four thousand four hundred and thirty-one men to the Royal Naval Reserve,—a number equivalent to the crews of seven armored war-steamers of the first class." It is surely desirable to foster a population which has been a "nursery of good citizens and good workers for the whole empire," and of the best sailors and soldiers for the British navy and army. Public policy demands that every legitimate means be used to better the condition of the crofters and cottars, and to encourage them to remain in and develop the industries of their own country, instead of abandoning it to sheep and deer. Private interests must be made subordinate to the public good. Parliament may therefore interfere with the rights of landed property when the interests of the people and of the nation demand it, as they do in this case.

It was on some such grounds that the Royal Commissioners recommended that restrictions be placed upon the further extension of deer-forests, that the fishing interests should be aided by the government, that the proprietors should be required to restore to the crofters lands formerly used as common pastures, and to give them, under certain restrictions, the use of more land, enlarging their holdings, and that in certain cases they should be compelled to grant leases at rents fixed by arbitration, and to give compensation for improvements. The government is already helping the fishermen by constructing a new harbor and by improving means of communication and transportation, and proposes to greatly lighten taxation in the near future.

The bill which the late government introduced into Parliament does not undertake to provide for aid to those who may wish to emigrate, or for the compulsory restoration of common pasture, or for the enlargement of the holdings. [Pg 185]It does, however, propose to lend money on favorable terms for stocking and improving enlarged or new holdings. As a convention of landlords which was held at Aberdeen last January, and which represented a large amount of land, resolved to increase the size of crofters' holdings as suitable opportunities offered and when the tenants could profitably occupy and stock the same, the demand for more land seems likely to be conceded in many cases without compulsory legislation. The bill defines a crofter to be a tenant from year to year of a holding of which the rent is less than fifty pounds a year, and which is situated in a crofting-parish. Every such crofter is to have security of tenure so long as he pays his rent and complies with certain other conditions; his rent is to be fixed by an official valuer or by arbitration, if he and his landlord cannot agree in regard to it; he is to have compensation, on quitting his holding, for all his improvements which are suitable for the holding; and his heirs may inherit his interests, although he may not sell or assign them. Such propositions seem radical and calculated to interfere greatly with proprietary rights and the freedom of contract. They are, however, but little more than statements of the customs that already exist on some of the best estates. Just as the government by the Irish Land Law Act (1881) took up the Ulster tenant-right customs, gave them the force of law, and extended them to all Ireland, it is proposed by this bill to give the sanction of law to those customary rights which the crofters claim to have inherited from former generations, and which have long been conceded by some of the landlords.

Such a measure of relief will not make all the crofters contented and prosperous. It will, however, give them security against being turned out of their homes and against excessively high rents, and will encourage them to spend their labor and money in improving their holdings. If some assistance could be given to those who may wish to emigrate from overcrowded districts, and if the government would make liberal advances of money to promote the fishing industry, the prospect that the discontent and destitution would disappear would be much better. The relief proposed will, however, be thankfully received by many of the crofters and their friends.

DAVID BENNETT KING.

Since his own days at the university George Randall had always had a friend or two among the students who came after him. I remember how in my Freshman year I used to see Tom Wayward going up the stairs in the Academy of Music building to his office, and how I used to envy Billy Wylde when I met him arm in arm with George on one of the campus malls. It was occasionally whispered about that Randall's influence on these young men was not of the very best, and that he used to have a never-empty bottle of remarkably smooth whiskey in his closet, along with old letter-files and brief-books; and it is undoubtedly true that Perry Tomson and I used to consider George's friends as models in the manner of smoking a pipe, or ordering whiskey-and-soda at Bertrand's to give us an appetite for our mutton-chops or our bifteck aux pommes, and in the delightful self-sufficiency with which in the pleasant spring days they would cut recitations and loll on the grass smoking cigarettes right under the nose, almost, of the professor. But they are both married now, and [Pg 186]settled down to respectable conventional success; and Billy Wylde, as I happen to know, has repaid the money which George lent him wherewith to finish his education in Germany. The estimable matrons of Lincoln who made so much ado over George's ruining these young men,—who had such bright intellects and might have been expected to do something but for that dreadfully well read lawyer's awful influence,—these women do not consider it worth their while now, in the face of the facts as they have turned out, to remember their predictions, but confine themselves to making their dismal prophecies anew in regard to the three young fellows whom George has of late taken up. But then I remember how they went on about Perry Tomson and me in the early part of our Junior year, when we began to enjoy the favor of George's friendship; and if their miserable croaking never does any good, I fancy it will never work any very great harm: so one might as well let them croak in peace. In fact, one would more easily dam the waters of Niagara than stop them, and George, I know, doesn't care the cork of an empty beer-bottle what they say of him.

I have never tried to analyze the influence for good George had over us, or account for it in any way, nor do I care to. I have always considered his friendship for me as one of the pleasantest and most profitable experiences of my life in Lincoln. Perry and I were always more close and loving friends, and cared for George with a silent but abiding sense of gratitude in addition to the other sources of our affection for him, after he showed us the boyish foolishness of our quarrel about Lucretia Knowles. Of course I ought not to have grown angry at Perry's good-natured cynicism; for how could he have imagined that I cared for her? Though I sometimes think, even now, that Perry was indeed anxious lest I should fall in love with her, and wanted to ridicule me out of the notion, and I fear, in spite of his acquaintance, that he disapproves of our engagement. I wonder if he will ever get over his prejudice against women. The dear old fellow! if he would only consent to know Lucretia better I am sure he would.

One night in the winter before we graduated, Perry and I went with George to the Third House, which is a mock session of the legislature that the political wags of the State take advantage of to display their wit and quickness at repartee and ability to make artistic fools of themselves. If it happens to be a year for the election of a senator, as it was in this case, the different candidates are in turn made fun of and held up to ridicule or approval; and the chief issues of the time are handled without gloves in a way that is always amusing and often worth while in showing the ridiculous nature of some of them. The Third House is usually held on some evening during the first or second week of the session, and is opened by the Speaker calling the house to order with a thundering racket of the gavel—"made from the wood of trees grown on the prairies of the State"—and announcing the squatter governor. Since the State was a territory, this announcement, after due formalities, has been followed by the statement that, as the squatter governor is somewhat illiterate, his message will be read by his private secretary. After this personage has read his score or more pages of jokes, sarcastic allusions, and ridiculous recommendations, the discussion of the message takes place, during which any one who thinks of a bright remark may get up and fire it at the gallery; and many very lame attempts pass for good wit, and much private spite goes for harmless fooling.

George got us seats in the gallery next to old Billy Gait, the bald-headed bachelor, who owns half a dozen houses which he rents for fifty dollars a month each, and who lives on six hundred a year, investing the surplus of his income every now and then in another house. William, as usual, had a pretty girl at his elbow, and we heard him telling her how he could never get interested in George Eliot's novels, and how it beat [Pg 187]him to know why he ever wrote such tedious books. The young lady smiled over her fan at Randall, and said that she supposed Mr. Eliot had a great deal of spare time on his hands, but of course he had no business to employ it in writing tiresome novels.

George, who knew everybody, had a kindly greeting for all who were within its reach, even for the tired-looking little school-teacher, who had come out with her landlady's fifteen-year-old son as an escort and in a little while had settled down to quiet enjoyment of the squatter governor's message, approving with a quiet smile the grin that occasionally spread over Perry's good-humored face. As for me, I was made miserable from the start by seeing Lucretia Knowles in one of the best seats on the floor, with a conceited fool of a newspaper-correspondent at her side, whispering nonsense in her ear at such a rate that she did nothing but laugh and turn her pretty head back to speak with Mamie Jennings, her fidus Achates, and never once cast her eyes toward the gallery. She has said since that she knew I was there all the time, and that she didn't dare look at me, because I was such a frightful picture of jealousy, with my fingers in my hair and my elbow on the gallery railing, staring down on the floor as if I should like to drop a bomb and annihilate the entire lot. It is all very well to look back now and laugh and feel sorry for the curly-locked journalist, who is writing letters from Mexico and trying to get over the disappointment which the knowledge of our engagement gave him, but it was very little fun for me at the time.

I turned away a dozen times, and swore inwardly that I wouldn't look that way again, and after each resolve I would find my eyes glancing from one person to another in Lu's vicinity, until finally they would rest again on her. When I had declared for the thirteenth time that I wouldn't contemplate her heartless flirting, I noticed George bow to some one who had just come in at the gallery door. A young man from one of the western counties was making a satirical speech in favor of the woman's suffrage amendment, misquoting Tennyson's "Princess" and making the gallery shake with laughter, at the time; but I noticed George's face light up and his eyes sparkle with pleasure at the sight of the new-comer. She was a beautiful lady, over thirty, I should say, with the sweetest face, for a sad one, I had ever seen. Of course, in a certain way I like Lucretia's style of beauty better; but Mrs. Herbert was beautiful in a way, so far as the women I have ever seen are concerned, peculiar to herself. She was rather slender, and had a calm, graceful bearing that I somehow at once associated with purity and nobleness. She was quite simply dressed, and had on a small widow's bonnet, with the ribbons tied under her chin, while a charming little girl, whose hair curled obstinately over her forehead, had hold of her hand.

I was somewhat surprised—I will not say disappointed exactly—to see her lips break into a glad smile, though it made her face look all the lovelier and sweeter, in reply to George's greeting; and when she came toward us, as he beckoned her to do, every one immediately and gladly made room for her to pass. Perry and I gave our seats to Mrs. Herbert and her little girl; and I found myself speculating, as I leaned against one of the pillars, on the difference of expression in the eyes of the two, which were otherwise so much alike,—the same deep shade of brown, the same soft look, the same lashes, and yet what a vast difference when one thought of the combined effect of all these similar details. I spoke to Perry of it, and he good-naturedly poked fun at me, saying I was forever trying to see a romance or a history in people's eyes.

"Well, I suppose you will say she isn't even lovely," I exclaimed, with impatience.

"I'm no judge," he replied, with exasperating carelessness; "but a little too pale, I should say. I wish George hadn't introduced her to me."

"Why?"

"Oh, it made me feel cheap to have to back into old Billy Gait's bony legs [Pg 188]and try to bow and shake hands before everybody,—in the eyes of the assembled community, as Charley McWenn would say."

McWenn was the stupid block of a journalist,—for I do think him a stupid block, in spite of his cleverness,—and I realized then that I had forgotten for a moment all about Lucretia. I could not see her from my new position, so I amused myself by imagining how she was carrying on.

At last George and Mrs. Herbert rose up to go, and the former, as he asked our forgiveness for leaving us, told us to come to his office when we had enough of the Third House, and, if he wasn't there, to wait for him. "We'll go over to Bertrand's and have some oysters," he said, with his confidence-inspiring smile. I have always thought that if George had not had so pleasant a smile and such a soulful laugh we should never have been such friends.

We found him waiting for us at the foot of the Academy of Music stairs, with a cigar in his mouth and one for each of us in his hand, and we knew from experience that his case was filled with a reserve.

"It's a pleasant night, boys, isn't it?" he said, looking up at the stars (wonderfully bright they were in the clear, cold atmosphere) as we went, crunching the snow under our feet, along the deserted streets to the little back-entrance we knew of to Bertrand's.

"Yes," said Perry; "but you missed the best thing of the whole circus by leaving before Colonel Bouteille made his speech in favor of the prohibition amendment." And he gave a résumé of the colonel's laughable sophistry for George's benefit,—and for mine as well, for I had paid no attention to the old toper's remarks.

We could see the glimmer of lights behind the shutters of the faro-room over Sudden's saloon and hear the rattle of the ivory counters as we passed.

"Do you ever go up there?" asked George, interrupting Perry.

"Why, yes; sometimes," we answered.

"Play a little now and then? I suppose?"

"We don't like to loaf around such a place," said Perry rather grandly, considering our circumstances, "without putting down a few dollars."

"That's all right," said George; "but once or twice is enough, boys. After you have seen what the thing is like, keep away from the tiger. She is a greedy beast, and always hungry; and of course you can't think of sitting down at a poker-table with the professional players."

Direct advice was rather a new strain for Randall, and we were not surprised when he dropped it abruptly as we filed into a little private room at the restaurant.

"Yes, I fancy old Bouteille might have made a humorous speech," he said, after ordering the oysters. "Three?" he added, looking at me, "or four?"

"Quarts?" I asked in reply.

George nodded.

"Two, I should say."

"Oh, bother!" exclaimed Perry. "We should only have to trouble the waiter again."

So George ordered four bottles of beer.

"It's after ten o'clock, sir," said the waiter doubtfully. It is needless to say that he was a new one.

"That's the reason we came here," answered George, with a calm manner of assumption that dissipated the waiter's doubts while it evidently filled him with remorse. "Where's Auguste?"

"He's gone to bed, sir; but I guess 'twill be all right." And the waiter started to fetch the beer.

"I should think so," growled Perry.

"I suppose it is not good form to drink beer with oysters," I suggested mildly.

"I don't know, I'm sure," said George.

"I suppose not," said Perry; "they go so well together. I hope it isn't, at any rate: I like to do things that are bad form."

So I relapsed into silence, and my speculations about George's outbreak [Pg 189]against gambling, and Mrs. Herbert's beautiful face and sad eyes, and Lucretia Knowles's wicked light-heartedness.

When we had finished eating and had opened the last bottle of beer, I asked George, as he stopped his talk with Perry for a moment to relight his cigar, who Mrs. Herbert was.

"She is the noblest and most unfortunate woman in the world," he replied, "I will tell you her story some time, perhaps."

"Let us hear it now," I cried, looking at Perry with triumph.

"Yes, let us," said Perry, nothing to my surprise, for I knew his heart was in the right place, if his ways were a little rough and unimpressionable-like. "We have no recitations, no lectures, no anything, to-morrow, and there is no one else in the restaurant but the waiter, and he is asleep."

And, in fact, we could hear him snoring.

"No, I would rather not tell it here," George said simply; "but if you will come with me to the office you shall hear it." And when we had heard it we respected the feeling that had prompted him to consider even the walls of such a place as unfit listeners. To be sure, it was a very comfortable restaurant, where the waiters were always attentive and skilful and the mutton-chops irreproachable, and many a pleasant evening had we three had there over our cigars and Milwaukee, and sometimes a bottle or two of claret. But so had Tom Hagard, the faro-dealer, and Frank Sauter, who played poker over Sudden's, and Dick Bander, who got his money from Madame Blank because he happened to be a swashing slugger, and many another Tom, Dick, and Harry whose reputations were, to say the least, questionable. Of course we never associated with such characters, and plenty of estimable people besides ourselves frequented Bertrand's. The place was not in bad odor at all, but merely a little miscellaneous, and suited our plebeian fancies all the more on that account. If young fellows want to be really comfortable in life, we thought, and see a little at first hand just what sort of people make up the world, they must not be too particular. So we used to sit down at the next table to one where a gambler or a horse-jockey would perhaps be seated, or a man of worse fame, and order our humble repast with a quiet conscience and a strengthened determination never to become one among such people. We would even see the gay flutter of skirts sometimes, as the waiter entered one of the private rooms with an armful of dishes, and hear the chatter and laughter of the wearers.

We did not wonder, therefore, at George's preference for his own office, whose four walls had never looked down upon anything but innocent young fellows smoking and talking whatever harmless nonsense came into their heads, or playing chess or penny-ante, or upon his own generous thoughts and solitary contemplations, or hard work on some intricate lawsuit. So we aroused the sleeping waiter, and walked back to the Academy of Music building in silence.

"It is rather a long story," said George, when we had at last made ourselves comfortable, "and I have never told it before. I don't know why I should tell it now, but somehow I want to. I felt this evening after I left the Capitol that I would, and I asked leave of Mrs. Herbert while we were walking to her home together. I knew she would let me: I am the only friend, I suppose,—the only real friend, I mean, whom she trusts and treats as an intimate friend,—that she has in the world. I know I am the only person who knows the whole story of her sad life.

"When I was in the university," he slowly continued, holding his cigar in the gas-jet and turning it over and over between his fingers, with an evident air of collating his reminiscences, "Phil Kendall and I were great friends. I don't know how we ever came to be so: it was natural, I suppose, for us to like each other. I used to notice that he did not associate much with the other fellows; and yet he was the best runner and boxer in the [Pg 190]class. He was the only fellow in the university who could do the giant swing on the bar, and, though he had never taken lessons, it was next to impossible for any one but Wayland, the sub-professor in chemistry, to touch him with the foils. Somehow we were drawn together, and before long were hardly ever apart. We used to get out our Horace together, he with the pony and text and I with the lexicon, for he was too impatient to hunt up the words. I believe you study differently now."

"We still have the pony," said Perry.

"And we used to puzzle our heads together over Mechanics, for we didn't have election as you do, and take long walks, and play chess, and get up spreads in our room for nobody but us two. Not such elaborate affairs as are called spreads now, but I warrant you they were fully as much enjoyed. I fancy we were rather sentimental. We used to hold imaginary conversations in the person of some favorite characters in fiction; but we were very young and boyish."

Perry glanced at me sheepishly, but George went on without noticing:

"Phil's father lived here, and was proprietor of the only wholesale grocery-store the town then boasted of. He had been captain of a volunteer company in the war, and, I fancy, had a romance too. At any rate, his wife had been dead since Phil was a little fellow in knickerbockers; and not very long after her death a certain Mrs. Preston had sent a little girl, about a year older than Phil, with a dying charge to the captain to care for the friendless orphan for the sake of their early love. No one but Grace could ever get anything out of the old gentleman about her mother, and she never learned much. Mrs. Preston had been unhappy at least, and perhaps miserable, in her marriage. We always thought she had forsaken Mr. Kendall in their youth and made a hasty marriage; but never a word was uttered by him about Grace's father.

"I used to imagine Mr. Kendall cared more for his adopted daughter than for his son, from what I saw of them, and I was at the house a good deal with Phil. I am sure they were very affectionate; and it was only natural that the melancholy old man—that is the way he always struck me—should have loved the daughter of the woman who had deserted him and then turned toward him in her hour of supreme need. It showed that her trust and belief in him and his goodness had never really left her. And, besides, Grace was always so airy and light-hearted,—nothing could put her out of humor,—so kind and gentle, and as lovely as a flower. She is a splendid-looking woman yet, but one can have no idea of what she was in those days, from the sad-eyed Mrs. Herbert who smiles so rarely on any one but her little girl. Nannie is going to make much such a young lady as her mother was, but I don't believe she will ever be quite so beautiful.

"Well, I was not long in discovering that Phil was in love with his father's adopted daughter. I was never quite sure whether he knew it himself at the time or not, but I could see easily enough that she didn't dream of such a thing, nor the old captain either. They were so much like brother and sister it used to make me feel wofully sorry for Phil to see her throw her arms around his neck and kiss him for some little kindness or other that he was always doing her: the difference of mood in which the caress would be given from that in which Phil would receive it was somehow always painful to me. Phil would never offer to kiss her on his own account; and it is still a mystery to me why she never discovered how he felt toward her until he became jealous. The tenderness and gentle considerateness of his bearing were always so marked that to a less innocent and pure nature, I fancy, it would have been noticeable at once.

"When we were Juniors, Phil took her to a party one night, just after Easter. The captain was a scrupulous Churchman, and Grace was always by him in the pew. She had not been confirmed, however, and never said a word [Pg 191]to Phil and me about our persistency in staying away from church, though the captain used to lecture Phil quite soberly about it. This party was given at the house of one of the vestrymen, and they had refreshments, and, after the rector had gone home, dancing. They called it a sociable, and took up a collection for the ladies' aid society just after the cake and coffee and whipped cream had been served. There was where Grace first met George Herbert. He was a handsome young fellow, well educated, a graduate of some Eastern college, clever and talented, and his family in Rochester, New York, were considered very good people. He had come to Lincoln to take a place on the 'Gazette,' and every one thought him a young man of good parts and fair prospects.

"He made up to Grace from the start. They were laughing and talking together all the evening on a little sofa, just large enough for two, that stood in the bow-window. There was a little crowd of young people around the two most of the time, and she was saying bright things to them all, but never, I noticed, at the expense of young Herbert, who made most of his remarks so low that no one but Grace could hear them. She always smiled and often broke out into her musical laugh at what he said; and when Phil, who had been trapped into a game of whist with some old fogies, finally came back into the parlor and made his way to where Grace was having such a happy time, she even launched a shaft or two of her wit at him.

"I saw that the poor fellow was hurt: he turned away without answering, though, and, coming over to where I was, sat down and began looking at an album, trying hard all the time to hide his feelings. But in a moment Grace was hanging over his shoulder, oblivious of her surroundings, and lovingly begging his pardon if she had hurt him. I have sometimes thought that Phil then fully realized for the first time how he cared for her. The way in which her affection disregarded the presence of the crowd smote him, I imagine, with something like despair. I saw him turn pale and catch his breath, and I knew his laugh too well to be deceived, as Grace was, when he made light of her self-accusations and declared that than taking offence at her words nothing had been further from his thoughts. This was in a sense true, of course, for ordinarily he would have answered as light-heartedly almost as Grace herself; and it was only the feeling of jealousy, unconscious perhaps, at any rate irresistible, that gave her words undue—no, not that exactly, but unusual influence over his feelings.

"For a while Phil acted as considerately as ever, and made himself thoroughly agreeable to several young ladies, whereat Grace was highly pleased and soon took up again her mood of gayety. But when Phil brought her a plate and napkin and some things to eat, and found her and Herbert already served and with mock gravity breaking a piece of cake together on the stairs,—'they were only doing it,' Phil declared to me afterward, 'that they might touch each other's hands,'—he lost his head. He must have spoken very bitterly, else he would never have aroused Grace's anger. I don't know what he said, except that he complained about having come to such a thing as a church sociable, which he despised, and, inasmuch as he had done it for the sake of her enjoyment and pleasure, she might at least have shown him the same politeness she would have accorded to any of the insufferable prigs whom she seemed delighted to honor.

"Herbert started to reply, but Grace silenced him by a look, and said, 'We have been as brother and sister since childhood.' It was probably well for Herbert's handsome face that he did not enter into a discussion with Phil. They were both hot-tempered, and Phil had no scruples against asking him out of doors, and would have been as cool in his manner and as terrible in his strength as an iceberg.

"Grace led Phil away, and tried to tell him how she had not supposed he [Pg 192]would care; that she had imagined he would prefer to serve the young lady with whom he had been talking; how she had never known him to put such store by trivialities before; how 'at least we,' Phil told me, bitterly quoting her words, 'at least we ought to be sure of each other's hearts,' and did everything to pacify him. But he would listen to nothing, and, coming to me, asked me to walk home with Grace, as he was going away immediately. I imagined the trouble, and got him to admit that he and Grace had said unkind words to each other. But he would say nothing more about the matter till I found him in my room after it was all over, when he raved about Grace until near morning, and cursed the fate that had turned the bread of her kind affection for him into a stone. 'How can I ever hope to win her love when she thinks that way of me?' he would ask sorrowfully, after telling of some pure and loving freedom she had taken. I was full of pity for the miserable fellow, but I felt as if I ought to do all I could to discourage him. I was sure he was right; he never could hope to, and I thought the sooner he learned this, and to submit to it, the better it would be for him.

"I persuaded him not to leave the party in the height of his resentment, though, and he was so quiet before the dancing that I began to hope he would beg Grace's pardon and take her home repentantly and in peace. But he insisted on my going and offering to dance with her the first set in his place. She had already promised, she said, to dance it with Mr. Herbert, and it was in vain that I told her she must look upon me as acting for Phil, and advised her for his sake to excuse herself to Herbert and dance with either Phil or myself. 'If Phil should come and ask me himself on his knees I would not do it,' she declared, with superb grandeur, 'He has acted wrong, and imputed to me the worst motives for trivial things which I did unthinkingly even, and, heaven knows, without deliberate calculation.'

"I saw it was no use to talk with her, and that in her present mood even entreaty, to which she was usually so yielding, would be of no avail. I felt very helpless and miserable about it, but I could do nothing. I saw that Phil had made a grave mistake by accusing her of partiality for Herbert, and that her acquaintance with him might possibly be forced into a closer relation by Phil's jealousy. I kept away from him for a while, and almost made Miss Scrawney think I had fallen in love with her, in order to keep Phil from getting a word with me. At last, however, just as the music began, he pulled my sleeve and asked in a whisper if I wasn't going to take Grace out and dance with her.

"'She was already engaged,' I answered.

"'To whom?' said Phil. 'But there is no need to ask.' And at the moment, indeed, almost as if in answer to his question, Grace entered the room from the hall on Herbert's arm. I was afraid for an instant that Phil would make a scene. The veins on his forehead swelled, and he started forward as they passed within a few feet of where we were standing, Grace smiling and talking to Herbert, apparently as oblivious of us as if we had not been within a thousand miles of her; but he mastered the impulse, whatever it was, and I have often speculated as to whether it was to upbraid Grace or to strike Herbert.

"'Look at her, George,' he said, with a calmness that was belied by the look in his eyes. 'You wouldn't think that three hours ago she had never known him, would you? nor that we had lived in the same house since we were no higher than that. Her mother, I know, did her best to break my old man's heart, and I warrant you it was for some such worthless fool as that, who wasn't fit to black the dear old fellow's boots. Poor old dad! we shall be together in the boat: when I begin to handle hams and barrelled sugar we will write ourselves 'Kendall & Son' with a flourish.' And as we went up the stairs to get his coat and hat he told me to stay and offer to go home with Grace. [Pg 193]'It wouldn't do for me to leave her unless you do, George,' he said; 'but if she wants to go with Herbert, let her; but she shall not say I went away and left her without an escort.'

"I promised readily enough, and even hurried him away. There was no good in his staying; in fact, I thought it better that he should leave; and after he had gone I went to Grace. I managed the matter rather badly, but I suppose the most consummate tact on my part would not have changed things. I should have waited until I saw her alone, or until the party was breaking up; but I went directly I saw they had stopped dancing. She was leaning on the piano and letting Herbert fan her, and looking almost too beautiful for real life as she turned her face toward him, flushed with her exercise and beaming with excitement. There was something grand to me in the expression of individuality and proud insistence that had come to her so suddenly. It was no factitious strife of her nature against the dependence of her position as an adopted daughter, I knew, for she had never felt in the least but that she was perfectly free; it was no caprice or stubbornness; it was merely her womanly assertion of self and her unconscious protest against what she thought injustice. She would not have believed from any one but Phil himself that he was in love with her and jealous.

"'Phil has gone away,' I said bluntly, interrupting their talk. She looked at me for a moment and raised her eyebrows slightly.

"'Has he?' was all she asked.

"'Yes: he was feeling badly,' I went on. 'He asked me to walk home with you when you were ready to go. I thought I would tell you now, so you would not be at a loss in case you should want to leave before the party breaks up.'

"'You are very kind, I am sure, Mr. Kendall' (she usually called me George), 'but I shall not want to go for ever so long yet. It was needless for Phil to trouble you; he knew I should get home all right,—but it was like him. I am awfully sorry to keep you waiting: I know you are anxious to get back to your pipe and books.'

"Here Herbert said something with the appearance of speaking to us both; but she only could hear what it was. I, however, imagined readily enough.

"'Will you?' she answered him, in a pleased tone, and I fancied her smile was grateful. 'Mr. Herbert is going to stay and dance a while longer,' she went on, turning to me, 'and if he takes me home it will not seem as if I were troubling any one too much, and—'

"'Very well, Miss Preston,' I interrupted, making my best bow; 'as you like.' And when I saw the smile on Herbert's face I didn't wonder much at the way Phil had felt. 'Let me bid you good-night,' I said, bowing again, and started off.

"Grace followed me rapidly into the hall. 'Now, please don't you be angry too, George,' she said, laying her hand on my arm.

"'I am not angry,' I said.

"'Do you think it right, George,' she asked earnestly,—and there was a pleading look in her eyes,—'or manly to desert one's friends in trouble?'

"'I am doing the best I know how,' said I, 'to be true to my friend.'

"'Oh, George, I am so sorry!' Her voice trembled, and all her queenliness had gone. 'You must not go off this way. You don't blame me as Phil does, do you? Wait, I will get my things, and you shall walk home with me now. I will see Phil and tell him—'

"'He has gone to my room,' I said.

"'Well, I will wait till you bring him home. You must tell him I forgive him,—or no, tell him I am sorry and ask his forgiveness. Oh, George, we cannot be this way. Only think how sad it would make his father—and—' There were tears on her lashes, and her lips were trembling piteously. She put her hand to her throat and could not go on. God forgive me if I was wrong,—and I know I was,—but I couldn't help it then,—I asked, almost with a sneer, if she didn't dislike to slight her estimable friend Mr. Herbert's kindness; and [Pg 194]she turned away without a word, as if regretting, from my unworthiness, the emotion she had shown.

"I was in very nearly as bad a state as Phil for a while. I told him just how I had acted, and he was rather pleased than otherwise at my cruelty. We tried hard to make ourselves believe that Grace had deserved it, and to a certain extent succeeded.

"'She probably thought it was too high a price,' said Phil, 'when she saw both of us going off offended, and she concluded not to give it. But, then, it was just like her,' he added, in a kindlier spirit than the natural interpretation of his words seemed to indicate.

"It was a month before either of us went to the house. The old captain thought at first that we were going to the dogs, and, I think, kept up a kind of watch over our movements. He came in one morning, after he had concluded his suspicions were wrong, and made a sort of expiatory call. He tried to tell us how he had judged us too harshly, but couldn't quite bring himself to it, and, after a good many half-uttered remarks that did honor to the old gentleman's heart, if they didn't prove him a cool hand in such matters, he left us with an unspoken blessing and some homely, sound advice to do as we liked, so long as we were manly and honest.

"Within a week he was stricken with apoplexy on receiving news of some serious losses, and was taken home without speaking. He died the next morning just at sunrise, and Grace and Phil mingled their tears at his bedside. He tried in vain to speak to them, and the pleased light in his eyes as they took each other's hands and laid them, joined together, in his, was the only sign he gave of having known there had been a difference between them.

"Poor Grace! she was very miserable and lonely after that. Phil could never bear to be with her after he had spoken. Her true kindness and gentle, loving pity were misery to him. He made a noble effort to stay by and watch over her, but he was hardly fit to take care of himself. She never knew how small a share of what little was left of his father's money he took with him to the mountains, but she realized why he went without waiting for his degree, and sadly approved his resolution. She always kept the growing attachment between her and Herbert from grating on Phil as much as was in her power, but he could not help seeing it. Though he never said anything even to me, it was plain that he had a poor opinion of the young journalist; and Grace was very thankful to him for all he did and suffered.

"She must have felt very much alone in the world after Phil left, and the house certainly seemed empty and sad when I used to go there to see her. There was no one but Grace and the housekeeper and an old gentleman, a clerk in one of the State departments, to whom she had rented rooms, partly for the money and partly to have a man in the house. Herbert was with her whenever his work would permit, and there was some talk about their intimacy among people who, even if they had known her, were too base to have appreciated the fineness and truth and purity of Grace's nature.

"I couldn't blame her for marrying Herbert,—which she did the fall after I graduated. They certainly were very much in love, and Herbert had borne himself creditably in every way. No one could have foreseen that he would turn out so badly; and for a year or more after their marriage they were as happy as birds in May. Grace was never light-hearted, as when I first knew her,—no woman of worth and tenderness would have been,—but still she was happily and sweetly contented, completely bound up in her husband, thinking almost of nothing but him, and caring for nothing but his love.

"When I came back from the law-school, I went to see them as soon as I was settled. They had sold the house, and were living in a rented cottage out in East Lincoln. Nannie, their baby, was quite if not more than a year old then; and, though I had known that Grace would be a fond mother, I was [Pg 195]unprepared to see the way in which she seemed absolutely to worship the child. I immediately asked myself if it meant that she was not so happy with Herbert as she had been. I met him at tea, to which Grace insisted on my staying. His dress was as neat and as carefully arranged as ever, and he was cordial enough toward me; but he did not kiss Grace when he came in, and hardly looked at the baby. He laughed a good deal, and told several amusing incidents of his newspaper experience. I noticed that his old habit of looking at one's chin or cravat instead of at one's eyes when he spoke to one had grown upon him. He excused himself soon after tea on the ground of having to be at the office, and went away smoking a cigarette.

"Grace complained of the way in which his work kept him up nights. He was never home until after midnight, she said, and sometimes not before morning. She was afraid it was telling upon his health. 'You must come and see me often. George.' she said, as she gave me her hand at parting. 'I see very little of my husband now, and, if it were not for Nannie, I feel as if I should be almost unhappy. Then he would have to do some other work, though he likes journalism so well.' That was the nearest she ever came to complaining to me, though I soon knew that she had plenty of cause. She was not entirely deceived by Herbert's assertions and excuses. I learned before long, for I made a point of finding out, that he was never obliged to be at the office after nine o'clock, that he gambled and drank, and was looked on with unpleasant suspicions by his employers, so that he might at any time find himself without a position. He owned no property, and Grace's little patrimony had disappeared, even to the money they had received for the house, without leaving the slightest trace. Herbert's ill reputation was common property in the town, and he and Grace went nowhere together. She had even given up going to church, that she might be with him for a few hours on Sundays; and now and then if he took her for a walk and pushed the baby-carriage through the Capitol-grounds for an hour, she cared more for it than for a whole stack of Mr. Gittner's sermons. She had no friends at all, and but few acquaintances, and altogether had much to bear up under. Right nobly she did it, too; never a word of complaint to any one: I believe not even to herself would she admit that she was treated basely.

"They kept on in this way for a year after I opened my office. I heard from Phil now and then,—brief notes that he was alive and well,—and on the 11th of June, the date of the old captain's death, Grace always received a long letter from him, full of references to their childhood, but telling little of himself. Herbert's reputation became worse and worse, and he deserved all the evil that was said of him. The tradesmen refused him credit, and the carpets and furniture of their little cottage grew old and thread-bare and were not replaced. I have seen him play pool at Sudden's for half a day at a dollar a game, and perhaps lose his week's wages. He was hand in glove with the set that lurked about the 'club-room' over the saloon, and almost any night could be seen at the faro-table fingering his chips and checking off the cards on his tally-sheet. Nobody but strangers would sit down to a game of poker or casino with him: he had grown much too skilful. He was what they called a 'very smooth player:' though I never heard of his being openly accused of cheating.

"One of my first cases of consequence was to recover some money which had been paid to some sharpers by an innocent young fellow from the East for a worthless mine in Colorado. In connection with it I went to Denver. Charlie Wayland, a brother of the chemistry professor, happened to be on the same train. He owns the planing-mill down on Sixth Street now, you know; but he was a wild young fellow then, and knew everything that was going on. He intended to have a time, he said, while he was in Denver; that was what he was going for. He went with [Pg 196]me to the St. James, where I had written Phil to meet me, if he could come down from Boulder.

"Young Wayland had his time in the city, and I had finished my business and was going to start back and leave him to enjoy by himself his trip to Pike's Peak and the other sights of the State, considerably disappointed at not having seen Phil, when he came in on us as I was packing my grip-sack. He was rough and hardy as a bear, and had grown a tremendous black beard: his heavy hand closed over mine till my knuckles cracked. We were glad enough to see each other, and had plenty to talk about. Of course I stayed over another day, and Wayland put off his trip to Pike's Peak to keep us company, though we didn't care so much for his presence as he seemed to think we did. But he gave us a little dinner at Charpiot's, and I forgave his talkativeness for the sake of the champagne, until he became excited by drinking too much of it and began to talk about George Herbert. He was stating his system of morality, which was, in effect,—and Charlie had acted up to it pretty well,—that a fellow should go it when he was young, but when he was married he ought to settle down.

"'Now, I can't stand a fellow like that Herbert,' he said; and for all my kicks under the table he went on, 'It may be well enough for the French, but I say in this country it's a devilish shame. He is a young fellow in Lincoln, Mr. Kendall,—got a splendid wife, and a little baby, one of the nicest women in the world, and thinks the world of him, and he goes it with the boys as if he was one of 'em. He never goes home, though, unless he is sober enough to keep himself straight; but I've seen him bowling full many a time. Wine, women, and song, you know, and all that; it may be well enough for us young bloods, but in a fellow of his circumstances I say it's wrong, damn it! and he oughtn't to do it.'

"Now, I had told Phil that Grace was well and fairly happy. I had thought it but just to sink my opinion and give Grace's own account of herself and deliver her simple message without comment. 'Give Phil my love,' she had said as I left her the night before I came away.

"'And how does this Herbert's wife take all this?' asked Phil of Wayland.

"'Oh, she doesn't know all, I suppose. If she did, it would probably kill her. My brother's wife says that if it were not for her child she doesn't believe Mrs. Herbert would live very long, as it is.'

"'Her trouble is common talk, then?' observed Phil, sipping his wine and avoiding my eyes.

"'Why, yes, to a certain extent; though she doesn't parade it, by any means. In fact, she lives very much alone; no one ever sees her, hardly, but George here, who is an old friend, you know. Maybe you used to know her,' he added suddenly, coming to himself a little. 'Well, if you did,' he went on, as Phil did not answer, 'you wouldn't know her now, they say, for the lively, careless girl she was five or six years ago.' And then he began to talk about the condition of the Chinese in Denver, and how he had that morning seen one of them kicked off the sidewalk without having given the least provocation.

"Phil said nothing further about the Herberts all evening, but just before we separated for the night he asked me if I could let him have some money. I unsuspectingly thanked my stars that I could, and told him so.

"'Well, then,' he declared, 'I am going back to Lincoln with you to-morrow.' And, in spite of all I could say, he did. He had his beard shaved off, bought himself some civilized clothes, and made his appearance with me on the streets of Lincoln as naturally as if he had gone away but the day before. His life in the mountains had given him an air of decision, a certain quiet energy and determination which impressed one immediately with the sense of his being a man of strong character, with a powerful will under perfect control. I grew to have so much confidence in him that I thought his coming would somehow [Pg 197]be a benefit to Grace, though I could not see how; in fact, when I tried to reason about it, I told myself exactly the contrary. But Phil seemed to have such implicit confidence in himself, to be so self-sufficient and so ready for any emergency, and altogether such a perfect man of action, that he inspired belief and confidence in others.

"We met Herbert on our way up from the station: he was standing in front of the 'Gazette' office, laughing and talking with Sudden's barkeeper. He greeted Phil with cordiality, in spite of the latter's distant bearing, and told him Grace would be greatly pleased at his arrival.

"'I suppose she will be glad to see me,' said Phil, as we passed on. And she was glad, very glad, to see him, but she was far from being made happy by his coming. I sent a note out to her, and Phil and I followed shortly after. I did not watch their meeting,—I thought, somehow, that no one ought to see it,—but I knew he took her in his arms; and when she came out on the porch to bring me in there were tears in her eyes.

"We all sat and talked for a long while, Grace with her hand in Phil's and her eyes on his face, when she was not looking anxiously after my awkward attempts at caring for her baby; for of course Nannie had been brought out almost the first thing. I think, from the way in which she carefully avoided asking him his reasons for coming back, that she divined what they were. I imagined that she blamed me as being the prime cause; but there was nothing I could say to undeceive her. In fact, I thought it better for her to believe so than to know the truth.

"'She is miserably unhappy, George,' said Phil gloomily, as we walked away. 'But you were right not to tell me. I can do nothing to help her: I cannot even openly sympathize with her. It would have been better to have kept on thinking she was happy: there was a bitter kind of satisfaction to me in that, but still it was a satisfaction.'

"Nevertheless Phil did not go back to the mountains. He stayed on here for a month or more, dividing his time pretty equally between my office and Grace's little parlor. He very seldom met Herbert. Now and then they would be together at the cottage for half an hour, if Herbert happened to come home while he was there, and when they met on the street they would merely pass the time of day.

"One evening before going to supper I waited until after seven o'clock for Phil to come in, and just as I had given him up, and was starting away alone, he entered the office, looking pale as a ghost, and evidently in great distress of spirit.

"'For God's sake, Phil, what is the matter?' I exclaimed, as he sank upon the sofa and covered his face with his hands.

"'Go away, George: go away and leave me,' was all he said; then he got up and began walking violently up and down the room. At last he came near me and put his hand on my shoulder. 'I've killed her, George, I am afraid; At least I have killed him right before her eyes, and she may never get over it. I didn't mean to, George, you know that; but he came home drunk, and I had gone to bid Grace good-by,—for I had made up my mind, George, to leave to-morrow,—and he came in. We had been talking of father, and Grace was very sad and wretched, and there were tears in her eyes when she kissed me, just as he came in and saw us. She was frightened at his brutality, and clung to me in terror, when he began swearing in a torrent of passion and calling her the vilest of names. He struck at us with his cane. If he had struck me he might yet have been alive; but when I saw the great red welt on Grace's neck and heard her cry out, I was wild, George. For an instant, I believe, I could have stamped him into bits, and if it had been my last act on earth I could not have helped striking him.'

"While he spoke, Phil stood with his hand on my shoulder, looking into my eyes, as if he wanted me to judge him, [Pg 198]as if he would read in my very look whether I blamed him or not. I took his hand.

"'I thought you would understand,' he went on. 'I did not know I was going to kill him, but I think I tried to: I struck him with all my might, Grace threw herself between us and begged me not to hurt him after he had fallen down, and took hold of my arm as if to hold me. But when she saw the blood running from his temple, where he had struck it on the window-sill, and how still and motionless he lay, she tried to go to him, but could not for weakness and fainting. I carried her into Mrs. Stanley's, and have not seen her since, but the doctor says she is very ill. Herbert was dead when they went into the room after I told them what had happened; and I suppose I had better give myself up to the law.'

"You can have no idea how I felt to see my dearest friend in such a position. And poor Grace!—it was much worse for her. I thought with Phil that she might never survive the shock and misery of it all. But she did, and came out, weak and broken down as she was, to give her testimony at Phil's trial. We had no trouble in getting a jury to acquit him, and he went back to Colorado without bidding Grace good-by, although she would have seen him and was even anxious to do so. Some persons here, mostly women, pretended to think that there had been more cause for Herbert's jealousy than was generally supposed; but they belonged to the sanctimonious, hypocritical custom-worshippers. All really good people remembered what Herbert had been, and refused to see in him a martyr or even a wronged man.

"After that Grace supported herself by dress-making and teaching music; and some two years ago, when we heard that Phil had been killed by a mine's caving in, and that he had left a little fortune to her and Nannie, I, as his executor and her friend, induced her to take and use it,—which she did, with simplicity and thankfulness and with her heart full of pity and love for poor Phil. Yes, poor Phil! those five or six years must have been full of misery to him, and he was probably thankful when the end came. We never heard from him until after his death. There was a letter that came to me with the will, that had been written long before. None but they two know what was in it; and I, for one, do not want to inquire."

George sat for a long while in silence, looking at the glowing coals in the huge reservoir stove. Neither Perry nor I cared to interrupt his revery. At last he roused himself.

"Well, boys," he said, "it is late: I think we had better go. It is all over now, and life has gone on calmly for years. Other people have forgotten that there ever were such persons as Phil or Herbert."

When Perry and I reached our room we found it was almost three o'clock. George had walked with us to the door, and very little had been said between us. I took a cigarette and lay down on the bed. "Perry," I said, as he was lighting the gas.

"Sur to you," he answered, in a way he had of imitating a certain barkeeper of our acquaintance.

"What do you think of George?"

"You know what I think of him as well as I do."

"Yes; but I mean in connection with this that he has told us."

"I think he acted just like himself all the way through."

"Don't you think he has been in love with Mrs. Herbert from the first?"

"Am I in the habit of imagining such nonsense?"

"You may think it nonsense," I answered, with the quiet fervor of conviction, "but I am sure it is nothing but the real state of the case."

"Bosh!" exclaimed Perry, throwing his boots into a corner; and therewith the discussion closed.

About a week ago I had a letter from him, though, in which he recalled this circumstance and acknowledged that I had been in the right. "They are going to be married in the fall," he wrote. "I [Pg 199]hope they may be happy, and I suppose they will be; but I don't think Mrs. Herbert ought to marry him unless she loves him; and I am fearful that she only thinks to reward long years of faithful affection. George deserves more than that." This was a good deal for Perry to manage to say. He usually keeps as far away from such subjects as he well can,—which is partly the reason, I think, that his opinion thereon is not greatly to be trusted. As for me, I am sure George's wife will love him as much as he deserves,—though this is almost an infinite amount,—and that she has not been far from loving him from the beginning. I have bought a pair of vases to send them; and I expect that Miss Lucretia Knowles will say, when she learns how much they cost, that I was very extravagant. Not that Lu is close or stingy at all; but she has promised to wait until I have made a start in life, and is naturally impatient for me to get on as rapidly as possible.

FRANK PARKE.

MARY C. PECKHAM.

Last spring, or possibly it was early in June, I was walking, in company with an intelligent farmer, through a bit of heavy forest that bordered some fields of corn and wheat, when a golden, flame-like gleam from the midst of the last year's leaves and twigs on the ground at my feet attracted my sight. I stooped and picked up a large fragment of a flower of the Liriodendron Tulipifera which had been let fall by some foraging squirrel from the dark-green and fragrant top of the giant tree nearest us. Strange to say, my farmer friend, who owned the rich Indiana soil in which the tree grew, did not know, until I told him, that the "poplar," as he called the tulip-tree, bears flowers. For twenty years he had owned this farm, during which time he had cut down acres of forest for rails and lumber, without ever having discovered the gorgeous blossom which to me is the finest mass of form and color to be seen in our American woods. As I had a commission from an artist to procure a spray of these blooms for her, I at once began to search the tree-top with my eyes. The bole, or stem, rose sixty feet, tapering but slightly, to where some heavy and gnarled limbs put forth, their extremities lost in masses of peculiarly dark, rich foliage. At first I could distinguish no flowers, but at length here and there a suppressed glow of orange shot with a redder tinge showed through the dusky gloom of the leaves. Lo! there they were, hundreds of them, over three inches in diameter, bold, gaudy, rich, the best possible examples of nature's pristine exuberance of force and color. Two gray squirrels were frisking about among the highest sprays, and it was my good fortune that my friend carried on his shoulder a forty-four-calibre rifle; for, though it was death to the nimble little animals, it proved to be the instrument with which I procured my coveted flowers. It suggested the probability that, if bullets could fetch down squirrels from that tree-top, they might also serve to clip off and let fall some of the finest clusters or sprays of tulip. The experiment was tried, with excellent result. I made the little artist glad with some of the grandest specimens I have ever seen.

The tulip-tree is of such colossal size and it branches so high above ground that it is little wonder few persons, even of those most used to the woods, ever see [Pg 201]its bloom, which is commonly enveloped in a mass of large, dark leaves. These leaves are peculiarly outlined, having short lobes at the sides and a truncated end, while the stem is slender, long, and wire-like. The flower has six petals and three transparent sepals. In its centre rises a pale-green cone surrounded by from eighteen to thirty stamens. Sap-green, yellow of various shades, orange-vermilion, and vague traces of some inimitable scarlet, are the colors curiously blended together within and without the grand cup-shaped corolla. It is Edgar Fawcett who draws an exquisite poetic parallel between the oriole and the tulip,—albeit he evidently did not mean the flower of our Liriodendron, which is nearer the oriole colors. The association of the bird with the flower goes further than color, too; for the tulip-tree is a favorite haunt of the orioles. Audubon, in the plates of his great ornithological work, recognizes this by sketching the bird and some rather flat and weak tulip-sprays together on the same sheet. I have fancied that nature in some way favors this massing of colors by placing the food of certain birds where their plumage will show to best advantage on the one hand, or serve to render them invisible, on the other, while they are feeding. The golden-winged woodpecker, the downy woodpecker, the red-bellied woodpecker, and that grand bird the pileated woodpecker, all seem to prefer the tulip-tree for their nesting-place, pecking their holes into the rotten boughs, sometimes even piercing an outer rim of the fragrant green wood in order to reach a hollow place. I remember, when I was a boy, lying in a dark old wood in Kentucky and watching a pileated woodpecker at work on a dead tulip-bough that seemed to afford a great number of dainty morsels of food. There were streaks of hard wood through the rotten, and whenever his great horny beak struck one of these it would sound as loud and clear as the blow of a carpenter's hammer. This fine bird is almost extinct now, having totally disappeared from nine-tenths of the area of its former habitat. I never see a tulip-tree without recollecting the wild, strangely-hilarious cry of the Hylotomus pileatus; and I cannot help associating the giant bloom, its strength of form and vigor of color, with the scarlet crest and king-like bearing of the bird. The big trees of California excepted, our tulip-bearing Liriodendron is the largest growth of the North-American forests; for, while the plane-tree and the liquidambar-(sweet-gum) tree sometimes measure more in diameter near the ground, they are usually hollow, and consequently bulged there, while the tulip springs boldly out of the ground a solid shaft of clear, clean, and sweetly-fragrant wood, sixty or seventy feet of the bole being often entirely without limbs, with an average diameter of from three to five feet. I found a stump in Indiana nearly eight feet in diameter (measured three feet above the ground), and a tree in Clarke County, Kentucky, of about the same girth, tapering slowly to the first branch, fifty-eight feet from the root.

In nearly all the Western and Southern States the tulip is generally called poplar, and the lumber manufactured from it goes by the same name, while in the East it is known as white-wood. The bark is very thick and cork-like, exhaling an odor peculiarly pungent and agreeable; the buds and tender twigs in the spring have a taste entirely individual and unique, very pleasant to some persons, but quite repellent to others. Gray squirrels and the young of the fox-squirrel eat the buds and flowers as well as the cone-shaped fruit. Humming-birds and bumble-bees in the blossoming-time make a dreamy booming among the shadowy sprays. A saccharine, sticky substance, not unlike honey-dew, may often be found in the hollows of the immense petals, in search of which large black ants make pilgrimages from the root to the top of the largest tulip-trees, patiently toiling for two or three hours over the rough bark, among the bewildering wrinkles of which it is, a wonder how the way is kept with such unerring [Pg 202]certainty. I have calculated that in making such a journey the ant does what is equivalent to a man's pedestrian tour from New York City to the Adirondacks by the roughest route, and all for a smack of wild honey! But the ant makes his long excursion with neither alpenstock nor luncheon, and without sleeping or even resting on the way.

The tulip-tree grows best in warm loam in which there is a mixture of sand and vegetable mould superposed on clay and gravel. About its roots you may find the lady-slipper and the dog-tooth violet, each in its season. Its bark often bears the rarest lichens, and, near the ground, short green moss as soft and thick as velvet. The poison-ivy and the beautiful Virginia creeper like to clamber up the rough trunk, sometimes clothing the huge tree from foot to top in a mantle of brown feelers and glossy leaves. Seen at a distance, the tulip-tree and the black-walnut-tree look very much alike; but upon approaching them the superior symmetry and beauty of the former are at once discovered. The leaves of the walnut are gracefully arranged, but they admit too much light; while the tulip presents grand masses of dense foliage upheld by knotty, big-veined branches, the perfect embodiment of vigor.

In the days of bee-hunting in the West, I may safely say that a majority of bee-trees were tulips. I have found two of these wild Hyblas since I began my studies for this paper; but the trees have become so valuable that the bees are left unmolested with their humming and their honey. It seems that no more appropriate place for a nest of these wild nectar-brewers could be chosen than the hollow bough of a giant tulip,—a den whose door is curtained with leaves and washed round with odorous airs, where the superb flowers, with their wealth of golden pollen and racy sweets, blaze out from the cool shadows above and beneath. But the sly old 'coon, that miniature Bruin of our Western woods, is a great lover of honey, and not at all a respecter of the rights of wild bees. He is tireless in his efforts to reach every deposit of waxy comb and amber distillation within the range of his keen power of scent. The only honey that escapes him is that in a hollow too small for him to enter and too deep for his fore-paws to reach the bottom.

Poe, in his story of the Gold-Bug, falls into one of his characteristic errors of conscience. The purposes of his plot required that a very large and tall tree should be climbed, and, to be picturesque, a tulip was chosen. But, in order to give a truthful air to the story, the following minutely incorrect description is given: "In youth the tulip-tree, or Liriodendron Tulipiferum, the most magnificent of American foresters, has a trunk peculiarly smooth, and often rises to a great height without lateral branches; but in its riper age the bark becomes gnarled and uneven, while many short limbs make their appearance on the stem" The italics are mine, and the sentence italicized contains an unblushing libel upon the most beautiful of all trees. Short branches never "appear on the stems" of old tulip-trees. The bark, however, does grow rough and deeply seamed with age. I have seen pieces of it six inches thick, which, when cut, showed a fine grain with cloudy waves of rich brown color, not unlike the darkest mahogany. But Poe, no matter how unconscionable his methods of art, had the true artistic judgment, and he made the tulip-tree serve a picturesque turn in the building of his fascinating story; though one would have had more confidence in his descriptions of foliage if it had been May instead of November.

The growth of the tulip-tree, under favorable circumstances, is strong and rapid, and, when not crowded or shaded by older trees, it begins flowering when from eighteen to twenty-five years old. The blooming-season, according to the exigences of weather, begins from May 20 to June 10 in Indiana, and lasts about a week. The fruit following the flower is a cone an inch and a half long and nearly an inch in diameter at the base, of a greenish—yellow color, very pungent and odorous, and full of germs [Pg 203]like those of a pine-cone. The tree is easily grown from the seed. Its roots are long, flexible, and tough, and when young are pale yellow and of bitterish taste, but slightly flavored with the stronger tulip individuality which characterizes the juice and sap of the buds and the bark of the twigs. The leaves, as I have said, are dark and rich, but their shape and color are not the half of their beauty. There is a charm in their motion, be the wind ever so light, that is indescribable. The rustle they make is not "sad" or "uncertain," but cheerful and forceful. The garments of some young giantess, such as Baudelaire sings of, might make that rustling as she would run past one in a land of colossal persons and things.

I have been surprised to find so little about the tulip-tree in our literature. Our writers of prose and verse have not spared the magnolia of the South, which is far inferior, both tree and flower, to our gaudy, flaunting giantess of the West. Indeed, if I were an aesthete, and were looking about me for a flower typical of a robust and perfect sentiment of art, I should greedily seize upon the bloom of the tulip-tree. What a "craze" for tulip borders and screens, tulip wallpapers and tulip panel-carvings, I would set going in America! The colors, old gold, orange, vermilion, and green,—the forms, gentle curves and classical truncations, and all new and American, with a woodsy freshness and fragrance in them. The leaves and flowers of the tulip-tree are so simple and strong of outline that they need not be conventionalized for decorative purposes. During the process of growth the leaves often take on accidental shapes well suited to the variations required by the designer. A wise artist, going into the woods to educate himself up to the level of the tulip, could not fail to fill his sketch-books with studies of the birds that haunt the tree, and especially such brilliant ones as the red tanager, the five or six species of woodpecker, the orioles, and the yellow-throated warbler. The Japanese artists give us wonderful instances of the harmony between birds, flowers, and foliage; not direct instances, it is true, but rather suggested ones, from which large lessons might be learned by him who would carry the thought into our woods with him in the light of a pure and safely-educated taste. Take, for instance, the yellow-bellied woodpecker, with its red fore-top and throat, its black and white lines, and its bright eyes, together with its pale yellow shading of back and belly, and how well it would "work in" with the tulip-leaves and flowers! Even its bill and feet harmonize perfectly with the bark of the older twigs. So the golden-wing, the tanager, and the orioles would bear their colors harmoniously into any successful tulip design.

South of the Alleghany Mountains I have not found as fine specimens of this tree as I have in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. Everywhere the saw-mills are fast making sad havoc. The walnut and the tulip are soon to be no more as "trees with the trees in the forest." Those growing in the almost inaccessible "pockets" of the Kentucky and Tennessee mountains may linger for a half-century yet, but eventually all will be gone from wherever a man and a saw can reach them.

The oak of England and the pine of Norway are not more typical than the tulip-tree. The symmetry, vigor, and rich colors of our tree might represent the force, freedom, and beauty of our government and our social influences. If the American eagle is the bird of freedom, the tulip is the tree of liberty,—strong, fragrant, giant-flowered, flaunting, defiant, yet dignified and steadfast.

A very intelligent old man, who in his youth was a great bear- and panther-hunter, has often told me how the black bear and the tawny catamount used to choose the ample "forks" of the tulip-tree for their retreats when pursued by his dogs. The raccoon has superseded the larger game, and it was but a few weeks ago that I found one lying, like a striped, fluffy ball of fur, in a crotch ninety feet above ground. "Our white-wood" lumber has grown so valuable that no land-owner will allow the trees [Pg 204]to be cut by the hunter, and hence the old-fashioned 'coon-hunt has fallen among the things of the past, for it seems that the 'coon is quite wise enough to choose for the place of his indwelling the costliest tulip of the woods. I have already casually mentioned the fact that the tulip-tree's bloom is scarcely known to exist by even intelligent and well-informed Americans. Every one has heard of the mimosa, the dogwood, the red-bud, and the magnolia, but not of the tulip-bearing tree, with its incomparably bold, dashing, giantesque flower, once so common in the great woods of our Western and Middle States. I have not been able to formulate a good reason for this. Every one whose attention is called to the flower at once goes into raptures over its wild beauty and force of coloring, and wonders why poems have not been written about it and legends built upon it. It is a grander bloom than that which once, under the same name, nearly bankrupted kingdoms, though it cannot be kept in pots and greenhouses. Its colors are, like the idiosyncrasies of genius, as inimitable as they are fascinating and elusive. Audubon was something of an artist, but his tulip-blooms are utter failures. He could color an oriole, but not the corolla of this queen of the woods. The most sympathetic and experienced water-colorist will find himself at fault with those amber-rose, orange-vermilion blushes, and those tender cloudings of yellow and green. The stiff yet sensitive and fragile petals, the transparent sepals, with their watery shades and delicate washing of olive-green, the strong stamens and peculiarly marked central cone, are scarcely less difficult. All the colors elude and mock the eager artist. While the gamut of promising tints is being run, he looks, and, lo! the grand tulip has shrivelled and faded. Again and again a fresh spray is fetched in, but when the blooming-season is over he is still balked and dissatisfied. The wild, Diana-like purity and the half-savage, half-æsthetic grace have not wholly escaped him, but the color,—ah I there is the disappointment.

I have always nursed a fancy that there is something essential to perfect health in the bitters and sweets of buds and roots and gums and resins of the primeval woods. Why does the bird keep, even in old age, the same brilliancy of plumage and the same clearness of eye? Is it because it gets the elixir vitæ from the hidden reservoir of nature? Be this as it may, there are times when I sincerely long for a ball of liquidambar or a mouthful of pungent spring buds. The inner bark of the tulip-tree has the wildest of all wild tastes, a peculiarly grateful flavor when taken infinitesimally, something more savage than sassafras or spice-wood, and full of all manner of bitter hints and astringent threatenings: it has long been used as the very best appetizer for horses in the early spring, and it is equally good for man. The yellow-bellied woodpecker knows its value, taking it with head jauntily awry and quiet wing-tremblings of delight. The squirrels get the essence of it as they munch the pale leaf-buds, or later when they bite the cones out of the flowers. The humming-birds and wild bees are the favored ones, however, for they get the ultimate distillation of all the racy and fragrant elements from root to bloom.

The Indians knew the value of the tulip-tree as well as its beauty. Their most graceful pirogues were dug from its bole, and its odorous bark served to roof their rude houses. No boat I have ever tried runs so lightly as a well-made tulip pirogue, or dug-out, and nothing under heaven is so utterly crank and treacherous. Many an unpremeditated plunge into cold water has one caused me while out fishing or duck-shooting on the mountain-streams of North Georgia. If you dare stand up in one, the least waver from a perfect balance will send the sensitive, skittish thing a rod from under your feet, which of course leaves you standing on the water without the faith to keep you from going under; and usually it is your head that you are standing on. But, to return to our tree, I would like to see its merits as an ornamental and shade tree duly recognized. [Pg 205]If grown in the free air and sunlight, it forms a heavy and beautifully-shaped top, on a smooth, bright bole, and I think it might be forced to bloom about the fifteenth year. The flowers of young, thrifty trees that have been left standing in open fields are much larger, brighter, and more graceful than those of old gnarled forest-trees, but the finest blooms I ever saw were on a giant tulip in a thin wood of Indiana. A storm blew the tree down in the midst of its flowering, and I chanced to see it an hour later. The whole great top was yellow with the gaudy cups, each gleaming "like a flake of fire," as Dr. Holmes says of the oriole. Some of them were nearly four inches across. Last year a small tree, growing in a garden near where I write, bloomed for the first time. It was about twenty years old. Its flowers were paler and shallower than those gathered at the same time in the woods. It may be that transplanting, or any sort of forcing or cultivation, may cause the blooms to deteriorate in both shape and color, but I am sure that plenty of light and air is necessary to their best development.

In one way the tulip-tree is closely connected with the most picturesque and interesting period of American development. I mean the period of "hewed-log" houses. Here and there among the hills of Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas, there remains one of those low, heavy, lime-chinked structures, the best index of the first change from frontier-life, with all its dangers and hardships, to the peace and contentment of a broader liberty and an assured future. In fact, to my mind, a house of hewed tulip-logs, with liberal stone chimneys and heavy oaken doors, embowered in an old gnarled apple-and cherry-orchard, always suggests a sort of simple honesty and hospitality long since fallen into desuetude, but once the most marked characteristic of the American people. It is hard to imagine any meanness or illiberality being generated in such a house. Patriotism, domestic fidelity, and spotless honesty used to sit before those broad fireplaces wherein the hickory logs melted to snowy ashes. The men who hewed those logs "hewed to the line" in more ways than one. Their words, like the bullets from their flint-locked rifles, went straight to the point. The women, too, they of the "big wheel" and the "little wheel," who carded and spun and wove, though they may have been a trifle harsh and angular, were diamond-pure and the mothers of vigorous offspring.

I often wonder if there may not be a perfectly explainable connection between the decay or disappearance of the forests and the evaporation, so to speak, of man's rugged sincerity and earnestness. Why should not the simple ingredients that make up the worldly part of our souls and bodies be found in all their purity where nature's reservoir has never been disturbed or its contents tainted? Why may not the subtile force that develops the immense tulip-tree and clothes it with such a starry mantle have power also to invigorate and intensify the life of man? "I was rocked in a poplar trough," was the politician's boast a generation ago. Such a declaration might mean a great deal if the sturdy, towering strength of the tree out of which the trough was dug could have been absorbed by the embryo Congressman. The "oldest inhabitant" of every Western neighborhood recollects the "sugar-trough" used in the maple-sap-gathering season, ere the genuine "sugar-camp" had been abandoned. Young tulip-trees about fifteen inches in diameter were cut down and their boles sawed into lengths of three feet. These were split in two, and made into troughs by hollowing the faces and charring them over a fire. During the bright spring days of sugar-making the young Western mother would wrap her sturdy babe in its blanket and put it in a dry sugar-trough to sleep while she tended the boiling syrup. A man born sixty years ago in the region of tulip-trees and sugar-camps was probably cradled in a "poplar" trough; and there were those born who would now be sixty [Pg 206]years old if they had not in unwary infancy tumbled into the enormous rainwater-troughs with which every well-regulated house was furnished. I have seen one or two of these having a capacity of fifty barrels dug from a single tulip bole. In such a pitfall some budding Washington or Lincoln may have been whelmed without causing so much as a ripple on the surface of history.

But, turning to take leave of my stately and blooming Western beauty, I see that she is both a blonde and a brunette. She has all the dreamy, languid grace of the South combined with the verve and force of the North. She is dark and she is fair, with blushing cheeks and dewy lips, sound-hearted, strong, lofty, self-reliant, a true queen of the woods, more stately than Diana, and more vigorous than Maid Marian.

MAURICE THOMPSON.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A late magazine-article treating of one of America's illustrious dead—Daniel Webster—alluded to his well-known sombre moods, and the gentle suasion by which his accomplished wife was enabled to shorten their duration or dispel them entirely.

On an occasion well remembered, though the "chiel takin' notes" was but a simple child, I myself was present when the grim, moody reticence of the great orator converted fully twoscore ardent admirers into personal foes.

During the summer of 1837, Mr. Webster, in pursuit of a Presidential nomination, executed his famous tour through the Great West, at that time embracing only the States of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The first infant railway of the continent being yet in swaddling-clothes, the journey was accomplished by private conveyance, and the bumps and bruises stoically endured in probing bottomless pits of prairie-mud, diversified by joltings over rude log-ways and intrusive stumps, were but a part of the cruel price paid for a glittering prize which in the end vanished before the aspirant like fairy gold. At stations within reach of their personal influence, local politicians flew to the side of the brilliant statesman with the beautiful fidelity of steel to magnet: hence he was environed by a self-appointed escort of obsequious men, constantly changing as he progressed.

"Our member" spared neither whip nor spur, and joined the triumphal march at Chicago. Mr. Webster was then on the home-stretch, and it was shortly after this date that the incident I describe occurred. It was a time of wild Western speculation; towns and cities sprung into being as buoyantly as soap-bubbles, and often proved as perishing. Major Morse was president of a company which, perceiving a promising site for harbor and town on the shore of Michigan, where yet the Indian charmed the deer, secured a tract of land and proceeded to lay out an inviting town of—corner-lots. The major's family occupied temporarily a wide log house, with a rough "lean-to" of bright pine boards freshly cut at the mill below. Outside, the dwelling was merely a hut of primitive pattern nestling under the shade of a tall tree; inside, it presented a large room divided by curtains into cooking-and sleeping-apartments, surmounted by a stifling loft reached by the rungs of a permanent perpendicular ladder. Savory odors of wild fowl and venison daily drifted up the charred throat of its clay-daubed chimney, and by the same route, whenever the rolling smoke permitted, children sitting about [Pg 207]the hearth took observations of the clouds and heavenly bodies, according to the time of day. A narrow passage cut through the heart of the old logs led into the fragrant "lean-to," where against the wall rested a massive sideboard of dark mahogany, its top alight with glitter of glass and silver, its inmost recesses redolent of the creature comforts which the hospitality of the times demanded. Vases and meaner crockery overflowed everywhere with the gorgeousness of blossoms daily plucked from sandy slopes or the verge of the adjacent marsh. Bright carpeting kindly hid the splintered floor, and pictures did like service for the rough walls, while the whitest of muslin festooned the tiny windows.

On the morning of the Occasion, cheerful sunshine filtered through the quivering leaves of the big tree near the house, glorifying a late breakfast-table, around which the family were gathering, when horses driven in hot haste were reined up at the door. Stepping quickly forth, the major found his hand clasped by "our member," who begged the hospitalities of the house for the great Daniel Webster and suite, just at hand. Despite political differences, the desired welcome was heartily accorded, and with crucified appetites the family retired to give place to the unbidden guests, who filed into the room bandying compliments with their gay host. A kingly head, grandly set above powerful shoulders, easily marked the man in whom the interest of the hour centred. Strangely quiet amid the noisy group, he moved alone, nor waked responsive even to his host, until a brighter sally than usual provoked a grim kind of laughter. Then he suddenly aroused himself to new life, joining with a burst of humor in the pleasantries of the feast. The unexpected brightness of the cosy room was not lost on Mr. Webster, who, on entering, paused at the threshold and glanced around in an appreciative manner, while a deep, restful sigh escaped his weary soul. The dreary drive through the wilderness lent an added charm to the little oasis of civilized comfort thus encountered in the lonely backwoods of a Western quarter-section.

News of the distinguished arrival speedily flew among the laborers running the mill and constructing dwellings for the in-rushing population. Tom and Bill of the hammer, and Mike and Patsey of the spade, alike forsook their tools in order to witness the exit of a hero from the major's door. They even hoped to receive some expression of wisdom in golden words from lips used to the flow of stirring thought and burning eloquence. Lounging patiently under the trees, the expectant men listened to the clink and clatter of serving and the bursts of merriment within. At the conclusion of the breakfast and the subsequent chat, Mr. Webster asked for his hostess, to whom with great courtesy he expressed his sense of "the kindness extended to the stranger in a strange land," and, adieus being over, he approached the open door-way, and looked strangely annoyed at the sight of a double line of white-sleeved stalwart men who stood with bared heads awaiting his appearance. Then a great mood fell upon the man, with never a gentle soul at hand to charm it away. Not a feature stirred in recognition of the, voluntary homage rendered by the throng of humble men,—men controlling the ballots so ardently desired and sought. With hat pressed firmly over an ominously lowering brow, looking straight before him with cavernous, tired eyes which seemed to observe nothing whereon they rested, Webster walked through the hushed lines in grave stateliness. The crowd was only waiting for a spark of encouragement to shout itself hoarse in enthusiastic huzzahs. Eyes shone with suppressed excitement, and strong hearts swelled with pride in the towering man whose fame had surged like a tidal wave over the land. Yet with insolent deliberation he mounted the step and seated himself in the waiting carriage, giving no sign of having even noticed the flattering demonstration made in his honor. The smiles, nods, and hand-clasps expected of the chief were lavishly dispensed by [Pg 208]his mortified satellites, all of which availed not to smother the curses, loud and deep, splitting the summer air, as the wheels disappeared in the forest.

"Begorra, thin," bawled Patsey, "it's mesilf ut'll niver vote fur this big Yankee 'ristocrat, innehow. Ef he wuz a foine Irish jintleman, now, er even a r'yal prince av the blud, there'd be no sinse in his airs, bedad!"

Tom and Bill were less noisy in their just wrath, but it ran equally deep: "He belongs to the party. But when Daniel comes up for office—look out! We'll score a hard day's work against him, party or no party!"

The major rose to the occasion. Being a bit of a politician and an old-school Democrat, he could not resist the opportunity presented. With a humorous air he sprang to the nearest stump and improvised an electric little speech which sent the men back to labor, madder if not wiser voters.

With other living witnesses of the events narrated, often wondering over the strangeness of the scene of long ago, I am truly glad at the eleventh hour to find the solution of the problem in moods, rather than in a snobbish pride unbefitting the greatness of the man.

F.C.M.

A great deal has been said and written lately about feuds and lynch-law in the districts around the lower Mississippi. The reports of recent lynching there have probably been very much exaggerated; and it would certainly be unfair to form a positive opinion about the matter without a thorough knowledge of all the circumstances.

No one who visited that part of the country before the war could return to it now without noticing the higher degree of order and the numerous evidences of progress. But lynching law-breakers and resorting to the knife or pistol to settle private disputes were once ordinary occurrences there, and they were usually marked by a businesslike coolness which gave them a distinctive character.

In the winter of 1853-54 I was clerk of a steamer owned in Wheeling. The steamer was obliged to wait some time at Napoleon for a rise in the Arkansas River to enable it to pass over the bar at the confluence of that river with the Mississippi. Napoleon then had between three and four hundred inhabitants, and was considered the worst place on the Mississippi except Natchez-under-the-Hill. Some of the dwellings were of considerable size, and, judging from their exterior, were kept in good order. They were the residences of the few who belonged to the better class, and who, to a certain extent, exercised control over their less reputable townsmen.

We were treated very kindly by the citizens, and they declined any return for their hospitality. We soon noticed that we were never invited to visit any of them at their dwellings. At their places of business we were cordially welcomed, and they seemed to take a great deal of pleasure in giving us information and affording us any amusement in their power.

Having some canned oysters among our stores, we twice invited a number of our friends to an oyster-supper. Although our invitations included their families, none but male guests attended. This, together with the fact that we rarely saw any ladies on the street, seemed very strange to us; but we made no comments, for we discovered very soon after our arrival that it would not be prudent to ask questions about matters that did not concern us. At church one Sunday night we noticed that all the ladies present—composing nearly the whole of the congregation—were dressed in black, and many of them were in deep mourning. This gave us some idea as to the reason for their exclusiveness. Soon afterward a murder occurred almost within my own sight. Two friends were standing on the street and talking pleasantly to each other, when they were approached by a man whom they did not know. Suddenly a second man came close to the stranger, and, without saying a word, drew a [Pg 209]pistol and shot him dead. The murderer was instantly seized, bound, and placed in the jail.

The jail was a square pen about thirty feet high, built of hewn logs, without any opening except in the roof. This opening was only large enough to admit one person at a time, and was protected by a heavy door. The prisoner was forced by his captors to mount the roof by means of a ladder, and then was lowered with a rope to the ground inside. The rope was withdrawn, the door securely fastened, and he was caged, without any possible means of escape, to await the verdict and sentence of the jury summoned by "Judge Lynch."

The trial was very short. The facts were proven, and the verdict was that the murderer should be severely whipped and made to leave the town forthwith. The whipping was administered, and he left immediately afterward.

Of course there was a good deal of excitement over this matter, and all the male inhabitants collected to talk about it. The discussion extended to some similar cases of recent occurrence and soon gave rise to angry disputes. In a very short time pistols and knives were produced, invitations to fight were given, and it seemed that blood would soon be shed. By the interference, however, of some of the older and more influential citizens, quiet was restored, and no one was injured. We were afterward told that there was hardly a man in the crowd who had not lost a father, brother, or near male relative by knife or pistol, either in a supposed fair fight or by foul means.

At that time the hatred of negroes from "free States" was intense, while those from "slave States" were treated kindly and regarded merely as persons of an inferior race.

Some time before our arrival, a steamer belonging to Pittsburg had stopped at Napoleon, and the colored steward went on shore to buy provisions. While bargaining for them he became involved in a quarrel with a white man and struck him. He was instantly seized, and would no doubt have paid for his temerity with his life if some one in the crowd had not exclaimed, "A live nigger's worth twenty dead ones! Let's sell him!" This suggestion was adopted. In a very short time the unfortunate steward was bound, mounted on a swift horse, and hurried away toward the interior of the State. He was guarded by a party of mounted men, and in less than a week's time he was working on a plantation as a slave for life, with no prospect of communicating with his relatives or friends.

One morning the captain of the steamer and I saw a crowd collect, and on approaching it we found a debate going on as to what should be done with a large and well-dressed colored man, evidently under the influence of liquor, who was seated on the ground with his arms and legs bound. He had knocked one white man down and struck several others while they were attempting to secure him. The crowd was undecided whether to give him a good whipping for his offence or to send for his master (who lived on the other side of the river, in Mississippi) and let him inflict the punishment. Finally, the master was sent for. He soon appeared, and stated that he had given his "boy" permission to come over to Napoleon, and had also given him money to buy some things he wanted. He was "a good boy," and had never been in trouble before, and if the citizens of Napoleon would forgive him this time he, the master, would guarantee that the boy should never visit Napoleon again. The master also stated he would "stand drinks" for the whole crowd. This gave general satisfaction. The drinks were taken, and the master and his slave were enthusiastically escorted to their dug-out on the shore. Much hand-shaking took place, in which the "boy" participated, and many invitations were given to both to visit Napoleon again; after which they rowed contentedly to their home.

J.A.M.

In the latest English etymological dictionary, that by the Rev. W.W. [Pg 210]Skeat, we read under the word babe, "Instead of babe being formed from the infantine sound ba, it has been modified from maqui, probably by infantine influences. Baby is a diminutive form."

Maqui is Early Welsh for son, and those to whom Mr. Skeat's modified maqui seems absurd will be pleased to find its absurdity indicated, if not proved, by a Greek author of the sixth century.

The following passage in the seventy-sixth section of Damascius's "Life of Isidorus" has escaped the notice of English etymologists generally:

"Hermias had a son (the elder of his philosopher sons) by Ædesia, and one day, when the child was seven months old, Ædesia was playing with him, as mothers do, calling him bábion and paidíon, speaking in diminutives. But Hermias overheard her, and was vexed, and censured these childish diminutives, pronouncing an articulate reprimand.... Now the Syrians, and especially those who dwell in Damascus, call newborn children, and even those that have passed the period of childhood, bábia, from the goddess Babía, whom they worship."

What is bábion but the English baby, what bábia but the English babies? We can hardly suppose that our English words are derived from Syriac words in use fourteen centuries ago, or that the latter were "modified from maqui" by "infantine" or other influences. We are therefore driven to the conclusion that they were alike "formed from the infantine sound ba," unless we accept Damascius's derivation from Babía.

Unfortunately, we know no more concerning this goddess than did the learned John Selden, who, writing two hundred and twenty-odd years ago, "De Dis Syris," says, on page 296 of that work, "I cannot conjecture whether Babía, who seems to have been reverenced among the Syrians as goddess of childhood and youth, is identical with the Syrian Venus or not, and I do not remember to have met with any mention of this deity except in Damascius's Life of Isidorus."

Selden's memory was not at fault: the words bábion, bábia, and Babía occur only in the passage above quoted.

In the absence of other evidence than Damascius's own, we may well question whether he has not inverted the etymological relation between the goddess and the babies. Most divinities owe their names to the attributes or functions imputed to them by their worshippers. It seems, therefore, more probable that the Syrian protectress of babies owes her name to the bábia than that they were called bábia in her honor. If, however, we accept Damascius's theory of their relation, what forbids us to conjecture that the goddess's name was itself "formed from the infantine sound ba"? In any case, the little domestic scene between the priggish father and the dandling mother is amusing and instructive to parents as well as to etymologists.

S.E.T.

"The Russian Revolt: its Causes, Condition, and Prospects."
By Edmund Noble.
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

The internal condition of Russia, though a matter of more than speculative interest to its immediate neighbors, is not likely to become what that of France has so often been,—a European question. The institutions of other states will not be endangered by revolutionary proceedings in the dominions of the Czar, nor will any oppression exercised over his subjects be thought to justify foreign intervention. Even Polish insurrections never led to any more active measures on the part of the Western powers than delusive expressions of sympathy and equally vain remonstrances. In these days, not Warsaw, but St. Petersburg, is [Pg 211]the centre of disaffection, and the ramifications extend inland, their action stimulated, it may be, to some extent from external sources, but incapable of sending back any impulse in return. Nihilism, being based on the absence, real or supposed, of any political institutions worth preserving in Russia, cannot spread to the discontented populations of other countries. Even German socialism cannot borrow weapons or resources from a nation which has no large proletariat and whose industries are still in their infancy. In the nature of its government, the character of its people, and the problems it is called upon to solve, Russia stands, as she has always stood, alone, neither furnishing examples to other nations nor able, apparently, to copy those which other nations have set. The great peculiarity of the revolutionary movement is not simply that it does not proceed from the mass of the people,—which is a common case enough,—but that it runs counter to their instincts and their needs and rouses not their sympathy but their aversion. The peasants, who constitute four-fifths of the population, have no motive for seeking to overturn the government. Their material condition, since the abolition of serfdom, is superior to that of the Italian peasantry, who enjoy the fullest political rights. As members of the village communities, they hold possession and will ultimately obtain absolute ownership of more than half the soil of the country, excluding the domains of the state. In the same capacity they exercise a degree of local autonomy greater than that which is vested in the communes of France. They are separated from the other classes by differences of education, of habits, and of interests, while the autocracy that rules supreme over all is regarded by them as the protecting power that is to redress their grievances and fulfil all their aspirations. The discontent which has bred so many conspiracies, and which aims at nothing less than the subversion of the monarchy, is confined to a portion of the educated classes, and proceeds from causes that affect only those classes. Among them alone is there any perception of the wide and ever-increasing difference between the Russian system of government and that of every other European country, any craving for the exercise of political rights and the activity of political life, any experience of the restrictions imposed on thought and speech and the obstacles to the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and ideas, any consciousness that the corrupt, vexatious, and oppressive bureaucracy by which all affairs are administered is a direct outgrowth of unlimited and irresponsible power. Nor are they united in desiring to destroy, or even to modify, this system. Apart from those who find in it the means of satisfying their personal interests and ambitions, and the larger number in whom indolence and the love of ease stifle all thought and aspiration, there are many who believe, with reason, that the country is not ripe for the adoption of European institutions, that the foundations on which to construct them do not yet exist, and that any attempt to introduce them would lead only to calamitous results; while there is even a large party which contends that, far from needing them, Russia is happily situated in being exempt from the struggles and the storms, the wars of classes and of factions, that have attended the course of Western civilization, and in being left free to work out her own development by original and more peaceful methods. No doubt the great majority of thinking people feel the necessity for some large measures of reform and look forward to the establishment of a constitutional system and the gradual extension of political freedom to the mass of the nation. But there is no evidence that the revolutionary spirit has spread or excited sympathy in any such degree as its audacity, its resoluteness, and the terror created by its sinister achievements have seemed at times to indicate. The active members of the propaganda are almost exclusively young persons, living apart from their families, of scanty means and without conspicuous ability. They belong to the lower ranks of the nobility, the rising bourgeois class, and, above all, that large body of necessitous students, including many of the children of the ill-paid clergy, whom M. Leroy-Beaulieu styles the "intellectual proletariat." Classical studies, German metaphysics, and the scientific theories and discoveries of recent years have had much to do with the fermentation that has led to so many violent explosions, the universities have been the chief foci of agitation, and in the attempts to suppress it the government has laid itself open to the reproach of making war upon learning and seeking to stifle intellectual development.

Such is the view presented by recent [Pg 212]French and English writers who have made the condition of Russia a subject of minute investigation. Mr. Noble deals more in generalizations than in details, and sets forth a theory which it is difficult to reconcile with the facts and conclusions derived from other sources. According to him, Russia is, and has been from the first establishment of the imperial rule, in a state of chronic revolt. This revolt is "the protest of eighty millions of people against their continued employment as a barrier in the path of peaceful human progress and national development." "It is not the educated classes alone, but the masses,—peasant and artisan, land-owner and student,—of whose aspirations, at least, it may be said, as it was said of the earliest and freest Russians, 'Neminem ferant imperatorem.'" Before the rise of the empire "the Russians lived as freemen and happy." They "enjoyed what, in a political sense, we are fairly entitled to regard as the golden age of their national existence." The veché, or popular assembly, "was from a picturesque point of view the grandest, from an administrative point of view the simplest, and from a moral point of view the most equitable form of government ever devised by man." The autocracy, established by force, has encountered at all periods a steady, if passive, opposition, as exemplified in the Raskol, or separation of the "Old Believers" from the Orthodox Church, and in the resistance offered to the innovations of Peter the Great: "in the one as in the other case the popular revolt was against authority and all that it represented." It is admitted that "among the peasants the revolt must long remain in its passive stage.... Yet year by year, partly owing to educational processes, partly owing to propaganda, even the peasants are being won over to the growing battalions of discontent." The autocracy is "doomed." "The forces that undermine it are cumulative and relentless." Its "true policy is to spread its dissolution—after the manner of certain financial operations—over a number of years." "The method of the change is really not of importance. The vital matter is that the reform shall at once concede and practically apply the principle of popular self-government, granting at the same time the fullest rights of free speech and public assembly." Finally, "the Tsar and his advisers" are bidden to "beware," since "the spectacle of this frightfully unequal struggle ... is not lost upon Europe, or even upon America."

The horrible crudity, as we are fain to call it, of the notions thus rhetorically set forth must be obvious to every reader acquainted with the history of the rise and growth of states in general, however little attention he may have given to those of Russia in particular. The institutions of Russia differ fundamentally from those of other European states. But the difference lies in historical conditions and development, not in the principles underlying all human society. No people has ever had a permanent government of its own resting solely or chiefly on force. Wherever autocracy has acquired a firm footing, it has done so by suppressing anarchy, establishing order and authority, and securing national unity and independence. Nowhere has it fulfilled these conditions more completely than in Russia. It grew up when the country was lying prostrate under the Tartar domination, and it supplied the impulse and the means by which that yoke was thrown off. It absorbed petty principalities, extinguished their conflicting ambitions, and consolidated their resources; checked the migrations of a nomad population, and brought discordant races under a common rule; repelled invasions to which, in its earlier disintegrated condition, the nation must have succumbed, and built up an empire hardly less remarkable for its cohesion and its strength than for the vastness of its territory. In a word, it performed, more rapidly and thoroughly, the same work which was accomplished by monarchy between the eighth and the fifteenth century in Western Europe. If its methods were more analogous to those of Eastern despotisms than of European sovereignties, if its excesses were unrestrained and its power uncurbed, this is only saying that Russia, instead of sharing in the heritage of Roman civilization and in the mutual intercourse and common discipline through which the Western communities were developed, was cut off from association with its more fortunate kindred and subjected to influences from which they were, for the most part, exempt. To hold up the crude democracy and turbulent assemblies common in a primitive state of society as evidence that the Russian people possessed at an early period of its history a beautifully organized constitutional system; to contend that the most absolute monarchy in existence has maintained itself for centuries, [Pg 213]without encountering a single serious insurrection, in a nation whose distinguishing characteristic is its inability to endure a ruler; to treat the introduction of a totally different and far more complex system of government, the product elsewhere of elements that have no existence in Russia, and of long struggles supplemented by violent revolutions, as a thing that may be effected without danger or difficulty, the "method" being "really not of importance,"—all this strikes us as evincing a condition of mind that can only be regarded as a survival from the period when the theories and illusions of the eighteenth-century philosophes had not yet been dissipated by the French Revolution.

"A Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago:
A Narrative of Travel and Exploration from 1878 to 1883."
By Henry O. Forbes, F.R.G.S.
New York: Harper & Brothers.

Although a long succession of naturalists have done their best to familiarize readers with the islands of the Eastern Archipelago, Mr. Forbes's book is full not only of freshly-adjusted and classified facts, but of curious and valuable details of his own discoveries. Even the best-known islands of the group are so inexhaustible in every form of animal and vegetable life that much remains for the patient gleaner after Darwin and Wallace, who found here some of the most striking illustrations of their deductions and theories, It is well known that startling contrasts in the distribution of plants and animals are met with in these islands, even when they lie side by side; and in no other part of the world is the history of mutations of climate, of the law of migrations, and of the changes of sea and land, so open and palpable to the scientific observer. Mr. Forbes's object seems to have been to visit those islands which offer the most striking deviations from the more general type. His earlier explorations were made alone, but during the last eighteen months he was accompanied by a brave woman who came out from England to Batavia to be married to him at the close of 1881. It is painful to read of the deadly ordeals of climate and the excessive discomforts and privations to which this lady was exposed. Her diary, kept at Dilly during her husband's absence, while she was ill, utterly deserted, and in danger of a lonely and agonizing death, makes a singular contrast to the record of Miss Bird and others of her sex who seem to have triumphed over all the vicissitudes possible to women. To the general reader Mr. Forbes's travels in Java, Sumatra, and the Keeling Islands are far more satisfactory than in those less familiar, like Timor and Buru. In the light of the terrible events of 1883, everything connected with the islands lying on either side of the Straits of Sunda is of the highest interest. Those appalling disasters which swept away part of Sumatra and Java and altered the configuration of the whole volcanic group surrounding Krakatoa took place only a few weeks after Mr. and Mrs. Forbes sailed for home. This widespread destruction seemed to the inhabitants the culmination of a series of calamitous years of drought, wet, blight, bovine pestilence, and fever. It was Mr. Forbes's fortune to be in Java during these bad seasons, which, from combined causes, made it impossible for flowers to perfect themselves and fructify. This circumstance was, however, useful to the naturalist, offering him an opportunity for experiments in the fertilization of orchids and other plants. The account of the Dutch cinchona-plantations, which now furnish quinine of the best quality, is full of interest.

Mr. Forbes's visit to the Cocos-Keeling Islands, in the Indian Ocean, cannot be passed over. He was eager to visit a coral-reef, and this atoll, stocked and planted only by the flotsam and jetsam of the seas, the winds, and migrating birds, offers to the naturalist a most delightful study; for here, progressing almost under his eyes, are the phenomena which have made Bermuda and other coral groups. Little as the Keeling Islands seem to offer in the way of secure habitation, they have a population of some hundreds of people, presided over by their energetic proprietor, Mr. Ross, who has planted the atoll thickly with cocoanut palms. Gathering the nuts and expressing the oil is the chief industry of the inhabitants, who are all taught to work and support themselves in some useful way. No money is in circulation on the island: a system of exchange and barter with agents in Batavia for necessary products takes its place. This thriving little community has, however, terrible forces to contend against. Darwin recounts the effects of an earthquake which took place two years before his visit to the islands in 1836; a fierce cyclone brought ruin and devastation in [Pg 214]1862; and in 1876 a terrible experience of cyclone and earthquake almost swept away the whole settlement. This was followed by a most singular phenomenon. "About thirty-six hours after the cyclone," writes Mr. Forbes, "the water on the eastern side of the lagoon was observed to be rising up from below of a dark color. The color was of an inky hue, and its smell 'like that of rotten eggs.' ... Within twenty-four hours every fish, coral, and mollusc in the part impregnated with this discoloring substance—probably hydrosulphuric or carbonic acid died. So great was the number of fish thrown on the beach, that it took three weeks of hard work to bury them in a vast trench dug in the sand." Wherever this water touched the growing coral-reef, it was blighted and killed. Darwin saw similar "patches" of dead coral, and attributed them to some great fall of the tide which had left the insects exposed to the light of the sun. But it is probable that a similar submarine eruption had taken place after the earthquake which preceded his visit to the Keeling Islands in 1836.

"Birds in the Bush."
By Bradford Torrey.
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

We like the name of Mr. Torrey's book, which seems to carry with it a practical reversal of the proverb that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. For although in many ways it is a good and pleasant sign to note the increase of amateur naturalists among us, we yet feel a dread of an incursion of those lovers of classified collections, "each with its Latin label on," who believe that in gaining stuffed specimens they may best arrive at the charm and the mystery of that exquisite phenomenon which we call bird-life. Mr. Torrey has no puerile ambitions for birds in the hand, and a bird in the bush makes to his perception holy ground, where he takes the shoes from off his feet and watches and waits, feeling a delightful surprise in each piquant caprice of the little songster. He tells the story of his experiences and impressions simply and pleasantly, often utters a good thing without too much emphasis, and yet more often says true things, which is more difficult still. He is nowhere bookish, although he has read and can quote well if need be. He reminds one occasionally of Emerson, oftener of Thoreau, while his method is that of John Burroughs. His most careful studies are perhaps of the birds on Boston Common and about Boston, but he writes pleasantly and suggestively of those in the White Mountains. One likes to be reminded that there are still bobolinks in the world, for they have deserted many spots which they once favored. There used to be meadows full of rocks, in each crevice of which nodded a scarlet columbine, surrounded by grassy borders where wild strawberries grew thickly, with hedge-rows running riot with blackberry, sumach, and alder,—all reckless of utility and given over to lovely waste,—that were vocal on June mornings with bobolinks, but where in these times one might wait the whole day through and not hear a single note of the old refrain. Our author finds them plentiful, however, at North Conway, where, as he describes it, their "song dropped from above" while he sat perched on a fence-rail looking at the snow-crowned Mount Washington range.

"The Cruise of the Brooklyn.
A Journal of the principal events of a three years' cruise in
the U. S. Flag-Ship Brooklyn, in the South Atlantic Station,
extending south of the Equator from Cape Horn east to the limits
in the Indian Ocean on the seventieth meridian of east
longitude. Descriptions of places in South America, Africa, and
Madagascar, with details of the peculiar customs and industries
of their inhabitants. The cruises of the other vessels of the
American squadron, from November, 1881, to November, 1884."
By W.H. Beehler, Lieut. U. S. Navy.
Illustrated.
Press of J.B. Lippincott Co. Philadelphia. 1885.

The copious information given on the title-page leaves little to be supplied in regard to the subject-matter of this volume. The same thoroughness is displayed in the narrative and descriptions, as well of the incidents of the voyage and the details of shipboard life as of the history, productions, and scenery of the various places visited. They include, of course, no events or operations such as belong to the annals of naval enterprise or maritime discovery, but, besides the ordinary phases of service on foreign stations,—the interchange of courtesies with the authorities, the routine of duty and discipline, and the scarcely less regular round of amusements and festivities,—we have interesting episodes, such as an account of the observations of the transit of Venus at Santa Cruz, in Patagonia, the "Brooklyn" having been detailed to take charge of the expedition sent out under Messrs. Very and Wheeler. A visit to some of the ports of Madagascar soon after the bombardment of Hovas [Pg 215]gives occasion for a readable relation of the internal revolutions and the transactions with European powers that have given a pretext, if such it can be called, for the French claim to exercise a protectorate over a portion of the island, the enforcement of which will require, in our author's opinion, "an army of at least fifty thousand men." Cape Town was a place of stay for several weeks on both the outward and the homeward voyage, and in this connection the history of the South African states and colonies, including the English wars and imbroglios with the Boers and the Zulus, is given in detail; while the necessity for touching at St. Helena furnished an opportunity for repeating the tale of Napoleon's captivity, with particulars preserved among "the traditions of the old inhabitants, not generally known."

It will be seen that Lieutenant Beehler made good use both of the means of observation and of the leisure for study afforded by the "cruise." He writes agreeably, and seems to have been careful in regard to the sources from which he has gathered information. The book is beautifully printed, and the illustrations are faithful but artistic renderings of photographic views.

"At the Red Glove."
New York: Harper & Brothers.

"Upon a Cast."
By Charlotte Dunning.
New York: Harper & Brothers.

"Down the Ravine."
By Charles Egbert Craddock.
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

"By Shore and Sedge."
By Bret Harte.
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

"At Love's Extremes."
By Maurice Thompson.
New York: Cassell & Co.

Although the scene of "At the Red Glove" is laid in Berne, it is a typical French story of French people with French ideas and characteristics, and it is French as well in the symmetry of its arrangements and effects and its admirable technique. In point of fact, Berne is a city where a German dialect is spoken, but among the lively groups of bourgeois who carry on this effective little drama a prettier and politer language is in vogue. Madame Carouge, whose personality is the pivot upon which the story revolves, is a native of southern France, and is the proprietor of the Hôtel Beauregard. Her husband, who married her as a mere child and carried her away from a life of poverty and neglect, has died before the opening of the story and bequeathed all his property to his young and handsome wife. "Ah, but I do not owe him much," the beautiful woman said: "he has wasted my youth. I am eight-and-twenty, and I have not yet begun to live." Thus Madame Carouge as a widow sets out to realize the dreams she has dreamed in the dull apathetic days of her long bondage. Although she is bent on love and happiness, she is yet sensible and discreet, and manages the Hôtel Beauregard with skill and tact, while secluding herself from common eyes. Destiny, however, as if eager at last to work in her favor, throws in her way a handsome young Swiss, Rudolf Engemann by name, a bank-clerk, with whom she falls deeply in love. Everything is progressing to Madame's content, when a little convent-girl, Marie Peyrolles, comes to Berne to live with her old aunt, a glove-seller, whose sign in the Spitalgasse gives the name to the story. It would be a difficult matter to find a prettier piece of comedy than that which ensues upon Marie's advent. It is all simple, spontaneous, and, on the part of the actors, entirely serious, yet the effect is delightfully humorous. Berne, with its quaint arcaded streets, its Alpine views, and its suburban resorts, makes a capital background, and gives the group free play to meet with all sorts of picturesque opportunities. The story is told without any straining after climaxes, but with many felicitous touches that enhance the effect of every picture and incident. In scene, characters, and plot, "At the Red Glove" offers a brilliant opportunity to the dramatist, and one is tempted to think that the story must have been originally conceived and planned with reference to the stage.

"Upon a Cast" is also a very amusing little story, and turns on the experiences of a couple of ladies who, with a longing for a quiet life,

settle on the North River in a town which, though called Newbroek, might easily be identified as Poughkeepsie. Little counting upon this niche outside the world becoming a centre of interest or a theatre of events, the necessity of presenting their credentials to the social magnates of the place does not occur to these ladies,—one the widow of a Prussian officer, and the other her niece, who have returned to America after a long residence abroad. They prefer to [Pg 216]remain, as it were, incognito; and, pried; into as the seclusion of the new-comers is by all the curious, this reticence soon causes misconstructions and scandals. The petty gossip, the solemnities of self-importance, and the Phariseeism of a country neighborhood are very well portrayed, and, we fear, without any especial exaggeration. The story is told with unflagging spirit, and shows quick perceptions and a lively feeling for situations. Carol Lester's friendship for Oliver Floyd while she is ignorant of the existence of his wife is a flaw in the pleasantness; but "Upon a Cast" is well worthy of a high place in the list of summer novels.

Although "Down the Ravine" belongs to the category of books for young people, the story is too true to life in characters and incidents, and too artistically handled, not to find appreciative readers of all ages. In fact, we are inclined to discover in the book stronger indications of the author's powers as a novelist than in anything she has hitherto published. "Where the Battle was Fought," in spite of all its fine scenes, had not the same sustained interest nor the same spontaneity. The plot of the present story is excellent, and the characters act and react on each other in a simple and natural way. The youthful Diceys, with the faithful, loyal Birt at their head, are a capital study; and from first to last the author has nowhere erred in truth or failed in humor.

Taking into consideration the ease with which Mr. Bret Harte won his laurels, and the belief which all his early admirers shared that here at last was the great American novelist, who was to hold a distinctive place in the world's literature, he has perhaps not fulfilled expectations nor answered the demands upon his powers. The very individuality of his work, its characteristic bias, has been, in point of fact, a hinderance and an impediment. The unexpectedness of his first stories, the enchanted surprise, like that of a new and delicious vintage or a wonderful undiscovered chord in music,—these effects are not easily made to recur with undiminished strength and charm. However, one may generally find some bubbles of the old delightful elixir in Mr. Harte's stories, and in this little group of them, regathered, we believe, from English magazines, each is interesting in its way, and each true to the author's typical idea, which is to discover to his readers some heroic quality in unheroic human beings which transforms their whole lives before our eyes.

Mr. Thompson on his title-page announces himself as the author of two novels, "A Tallahassee Girl" and "His Second Campaign," both of which we read with pleasure, and this impression led us to turn hopefully to a third by the same hand. "At Love's Extremes" does not, however, take our fancy. If the author undertook to discuss a complex problem seriously, he has failed to make it clear or vital to the reader; and if the various episodes of Colonel Reynolds's life are to be passed over as mere slight deviations from the commonplace, we can only say that we consider them too unpleasant and abhorrent to good taste to be imposed upon us so lightly. There are also points of the story which seem to mock the good sense of the reader. Has the author considered the state of mind of a young widow who has heard that her husband has been murdered in a street-brawl in Texas, who has mourned him for years, and then, after yielding to the solicitations of a new suitor and promising to marry him, learns from his own lips that it was his hand (although the act was one of self-defence) which sent her husband to his tragic death? Mr. Thompson seems to violate the sanctities and the proprieties of womanhood in allowing the widow, after a faint interval of shock, to pass over this fact as unimportant. This situation has, of course, its famous precedent in the scene in which Gloster wooes and wins the Lady Anne beside her murdered husband's bier; but that is tragedy, and we moderns are, besides, more squeamish than the people of those mediæval times. In this story the situation becomes more logical, even if more absurd, after the return of the husband who was supposed to have been murdered. With a good deal of effort to show powerful feeling, the characters in the book are all automatons, who say and do nothing with real thought or real passion. The vernacular of the mountaineers seems to have been carefully studied, and is so thoroughly outlandish and so devoid of fine expressions that we are inclined to believe it more accurate than the poetic and musical dialects which it is the fashion to impose upon our credulity. But it must be confessed that, with only his own rude and pointless patois in which to express himself, the Southern cracker becomes painfully devoid of interest, to say nothing of charm.