A Suburban Pastoral 
 

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A SUBURBAN 
 
 PASTORAL 
 
 ,/lnd Other Tales 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY A. BEERS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 1894 
 
 or THE " ~ 
 
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COPYRIGHT, 1894, 
 
 BY 
 HENRY HOLT & CO. 
 
 THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, 
 RAH\VAY, N. J. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. A SUBURBAN PASTORAL, i 
 
 II. A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM, . 33 
 
 III. A COMEDY OF ERRORS, ... 65 
 
 IV. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, . 119 
 V. SPLIT ZEPHYR, .... 149 
 
 VI. A GRAVEYARD IDYL, . . . 205 
 VII. EDRIC THE WILD AND THE WITCH 
 
 WIFE, 247 
 
 VIII. THE WINE-FLOWER, . . .257 
 
I. 
 
 A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 
 
A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 
 
 N their walks about Southwick it was 
 often agreed between Sproat and 
 Clitheroe that the one or the other of 
 them ought to have an uncle living 
 somewhere in the environs. But each insisted 
 that the duty of providing him lay with the other : 
 Clitheroe on the ground that he had come to 
 town several months the later and was therefore 
 a comparative stranger ; Sproat because, as he 
 maintained, Clitheroe carried about him nepotic 
 suggestions. 
 
 " You look like a man with lots of uncles," 
 said Sproat, "and I don t." 
 
 It must be acknowledged that the credit of 
 inventing this avuncular fable belonged to 
 Sproat. It happened of a windy March twilight, 
 when Clitheroe looked at his watch and said : 
 
 " Quarter of six. Come, we must be getting 
 back to the boarding house." 
 
 " Now," answered Sproat, who was balancing 
 dreamily on the top rail of a fence, " if you only 
 had an uncle somewhere out this way, with a 
 well-stocked sideboard and a lot of pretty 
 daughters ! Then we could fetch up at his 
 house and take dinner, and spend the evening 
 around the fire. And about G. M., when 
 
4 A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 
 
 we were good and sleepy, the old gentleman 
 would have the hired man hitch up and drive us 
 in. Wouldn t that be better than tramping 
 back to Mrs. Barker s cold meat and stewed 
 prunes? Why don t you have an uncle, 
 Clitheroe ? " 
 
 The pleasing fiction thus propounded soon 
 took on the proportions of a full-grown myth. 
 Fancy added detail to the picture of this imagi 
 nary uncle, until the idea of his life did sweetly 
 creep into their study of imagination ; and his 
 household, his generous mahogany, his stables, 
 hothouses, and wide verandas acquired a cer 
 tain defmiteness. At times they would pause 
 before the gate of some uncommonly inviting 
 villa, and exclaim: "What a place for an 
 uncle !" 
 
 In the absence of the real article they went 
 as far as to discuss the feasibility of creating an 
 artificial one. Adopting a hint from the cata 
 logue of the Neophogen University, they won 
 dered whether it might not be possible to hire 
 some " learned man who had failed in business," 
 rent a convenient country house, and set him up 
 as an uncle. His sole duty would be to dis 
 pense an open hospitality to his nephews, 
 from resources secretly provided by themselves. 
 But this scheme was too expensive to be seri 
 ously thought of. It remained a beautiful 
 dream. 
 
 The two friends had few acquaintances in 
 Southwick. They had come to the little city 
 not long before Sproat to take the position of 
 
A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 5 
 
 chemist in the dye works, Clitheroe as designer 
 of patterns to a carpet-weaving establishment. 
 Accident had brought them to the same board 
 ing house, and intimacy resulted from their 
 common fondness for walking an old-fashioned 
 exercise which they preferred to swinging clubs 
 and putting up dumb-bells in the Y. M. C. A. 
 gymnasium, or even to knocking a ball over a 
 net in the tennis court which Mrs. Barker s 
 boarders had laid out in the back yard. Except 
 on Sundays, however, business kept them too 
 close to permit of their straying very far afield. 
 Having only an hour or two free at the end of 
 the afternoon, they had to content themselves 
 usually with exploring the streets and outskirts 
 of the city. 
 
 There is one glory of the country and another 
 glory of the town, but there is a limbo or ragged 
 edge between which is without glory of any 
 kind. It is not yet town it is no longer coun 
 try. Hither are banished slaughter pens, 
 chemical and oil works, glue factories, soap 
 boilers, and other malodorous nuisances. Here 
 are railroad shops and roundhouses, sand lots, 
 German beer gardens, and tenement blocks. 
 Land, which was lately sold by the acre, is now 
 offered by the foot front ; and no piece of real 
 estate is quite sure whether it is still part of an 
 old field or has become a building lot. Rural 
 lanes and turnpikes have undergone metamor 
 phosis into " boulevards," where regulation 
 curbstones prophesy future sidewalks, and 
 thinly scattered lamp-posts foretell a coming 
 
6 A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 
 
 population. Far out on sandy plains the ear 
 is startled by the tinkle of horse-car bells; 
 and the eye descries this moving outpost of 
 civilization making its way along a track bor 
 dered with ragweed and daisies, conveying a 
 dejected driver and a solitary fare to some 
 remote destination a mile or two beyond city 
 limits. Here is a smart new corner grocery in 
 red brick, center of a growing trade, and deriv 
 ing its patronage from rows of little new wooden 
 houses, to whose front yards and turf borders 
 the lawn mower and the rubber hose have already 
 given a municipal smugness. The frequent 
 baby carriage and the swarms of children hang~ 
 ing upon the music of that suburban minstrel, 
 the organ grinder, justify the enterprise of the 
 grocer and the faith of the real estate specu 
 lator. On the opposite corner is a decayed 
 farmhouse, with its cow sheds and outbuild 
 ings. Perhaps a pile of milk cans decorates the 
 farmyard, and a half dozen cows still graze the 
 neighboring pasture. But more likely the cows 
 have disappeared, and pasture and orchard 
 where a few surviving apple trees stretch their 
 naked arms to heaven have passed into un- 
 fenced lots intersected by diagonal paths, short 
 cuts of tin-pailed mechanics; bediamonded in 
 the center by local ball nines, who play the 
 national game there on Saturdays (and eke, it is 
 to be feared, on Sundays) ; and browsed by the 
 goat cow of the suburb. 
 
 As they grew familiar with this outcast region, 
 our peripatetic philosophers found a picturesque- 
 
A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. J 
 
 ness in its peculiar scenery. At least Clitheroe 
 did, and secretly perhaps so did Sproat, al 
 though he professed insensibility and flouted 
 the rhapsodies of his companion, whom he ac 
 cused of Schwdrmerei and of getting points of 
 view from Mr. Howells " Suburban Sketches." 
 
 " Come, now, Clitheroe," he would say, 
 " there s an old hen-house with the sunset 
 shining through the laths ; and there s an 
 abandoned omnibus, and two or three red 
 cedars, and some ducks in a puddle in the fore 
 ground, and two niggers with a scoop-net going 
 across the middle distance. Can t you get up 
 some fluff about that ? Effet de soleil or some 
 thing ? Come, give us a frenzy ! " 
 
 Clitheroe said that he liked the new corner 
 grocery and the rows of fresh-painted Queen 
 Anne cottages, and even the wandering horse 
 car and empty boulevards. They were raw, 
 but they were signs of growth emblems of the 
 young, hopeful, expansive American spirit. At 
 the same time he enjoyed the pathos which at 
 tended the retreat of rural aristocracy before the 
 advance of urban democracy. There were, in 
 the circuit of their rambles, two or three man 
 sions of ancient gentility stranded high and 
 dry among squalid surroundings. One in par 
 ticular, which had once been a gentleman s 
 country seat and was now a tenement house 
 occupied by several Irish families, stood on a 
 hill which the new boulevard had cut through, 
 leaving a bank of red clay. Twenty feet over 
 head the gravel walk ended in air, with its 
 
3 A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 
 
 flanking box borders, whose bitter aroma re 
 called the past. The turf had slipped away 
 from the terraces ; the horse-chestnuts and 
 weeping willows were dead or dying; the snow- 
 berry and althaea shrubs lived a scraggly life ; 
 and behind the big wooden columns of the 
 portico, many-colored garments fluttered on a 
 clothes line. Yet with something of the air of 
 a Greek temple on its acropolis, or of a feudal 
 castle from its steep, the old house looked down 
 upon the intruding squalor : upon the line of 
 dump carts tilted up against the bank, where 
 Italian laborers were at work upon the new 
 reservoir ; upon the cinder heaps and rank 
 Jamestown-weeds and tomato-cans of the 
 neighboring lots ; upon the gang of hoodlums 
 lazily working the growler on the doorstep of a 
 contiguous shanty. 
 
 All these appreciations Sproat greeted with 
 scorn. Yet twice or thrice a week, between 
 four and five in the afternoon, he would present 
 himself at the door of his friend s room, walk 
 ing-stick in hand, and challenge him to a consti 
 tutional. 
 
 " Don t you want to rdder autour the pur 
 lieus a bit ? There s that obsolete toll-gate on 
 the Wellsville road we were going to visit 
 again the one you romanced about the other 
 day where we got the home-made root beer. 
 Or the blacksmith s shop, where you thought 
 you saw Vulcan kindling up the Cyclopean 
 forges. Cut work for an hour or so ; you ll do 
 it all the better this evening." 
 
A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 9 
 
 And Clitheroe would look up from his draw 
 ings and laugh, and presently reach for his hat 
 and stick, and the two would set off in search 
 of fresh discoveries. 
 
 Quite as often as not it happened that 
 Clitheroe, on his way home after business 
 hours, called for Sproat at the laboratory. 
 
 " Come," he would say, " you old dyer s hand. 
 Your nature is subdued to what it works in. 
 Come out into the light of things." 
 
 On one such occasion, when the April day 
 was declining toward a pale sunset, and the in 
 cessant ring of the hylas from ponds and wet 
 meadows brought that touch of melancholy 
 which sounds a minor note in the promise of 
 our belated springs, as they turned into the 
 street from the gate of the Excelsior Dye 
 Works, Sproat said : 
 
 "Are you particular about getting back at 
 six ? I feel like covering a little more ground 
 to-night. Suppose we cut the boardin - us and 
 get supper somewhere about eight o clock." 
 
 " All right," responded Clitheroe. " I m with 
 you. Which way is it ? " 
 
 " How s the Wellsville pike? " 
 
 A chestnut. You haven t the least origi 
 nality." 
 
 " No, but I have a thirst on me that I 
 wouldn t take five dollars for, and nothing but 
 Hiram s sassafras vintage can quench it." 
 
 " Very well ; the Wellsville pike be it, then. 
 I m weak to-night. I ve got the spring languor 
 and can t wrangle with a disputatious cuss." 
 
10 A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 
 
 Half an hour later they were at the little way 
 side house by the extinct toll gate : a spot 
 which always appealed to Sproat by its beer 
 and seed cakes, and to Clitheroe by its quaint- 
 ness. The frame of the gate still bestrode the 
 highway, a relic and survival which Clitheroe 
 compared with Temple Bar. Even the idle 
 gate had not been taken down, but was swung 
 open and lashed to the roadside post, remind 
 ing the traveler of an old hulk tied up to rot by 
 Lethe s wharf. A board with faded letters still 
 proclaimed the tariff for single and double 
 teams and parties on horseback. 
 
 " What a bully old anachronism it is ! " was 
 Clitheroe s comment. " I don t know why a 
 toll gate always makes me think of an elope 
 ment." 
 
 " No more do I," answered Sproat, " nor 
 why anything makes you think of anything. 
 Your law of association of ideas is morbidly 
 eccentric." 
 
 The cake and beer were administered unto 
 them by a lank but genial Yankee, with high 
 cheek bones and a goaty wisp of beard under 
 his chin, who was known to our perambulators 
 as Gosh-Darn-It, but whose baptismal name 
 and orphaned state were blazoned on a sign 
 board over the door : 
 
 Hiram, the widow s son, I hope, 
 Can furnish customers with soap 
 Such as can make a washing day 
 Pass off as pleasant e en as May 
 
A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. II 
 
 Leaving the toll-gate, they passed a region 
 of brick-kilns, and then a pond with a row of 
 ice-houses, whose high-pitched roofs Clitheroe 
 noted as an instance of early Gothic ; and whose 
 various tints of wood-color, grading from a 
 weather-beaten gray to a fresh pine yellow, 
 Sproat remarked as resembling the annual rings 
 in the trunk of a tree, and furnishing a grati 
 fying evidence of the yearly growth of the ice 
 trade. Beyond the ice-houses they crossed a 
 railroad cut, which had hitherto formed the 
 limit of their walks in this direction, and struck 
 into an unfamiliar country. 
 
 It was growing dusk when they stopped in 
 front of what seemed an old-fashioned country 
 residence, somewhat run down at the heels. 
 The house had a Southern look; at least so 
 thought Clitheroe, who had never been farther 
 south than Philadelphia. At any rate it was 
 low and rambling, only a story and a half high, 
 with many dormer windows, and a veranda 
 around three sides. Clitheroe also said that it 
 recalled to him he did not quite know why 
 some vague old lines which he went on to re 
 cite : 
 
 I walked upon the winding shore, 
 I gazed upon the ocean s foam, 
 I listened to the wild wind s roar, 
 And then oh, then ! I thought of home." 
 
 " Vague old lines ! " snorted Sproat. " You 
 made them up yourself, you dog, and now you 
 are getting them off on me without the shadow 
 
12 A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 
 
 of an excuse. You haven t even led the con 
 versation up to them. What has this house 
 got to do with ocean foam ? " 
 
 " The gateposts," pursued Clitheroe, " are a 
 trifle too pretentious, but I observe with appro 
 bation the circumstance that one of the stone 
 urns is ruinous." 
 
 A light or two began to glimmer in the 
 windows. 
 
 " How would that do for an uncle ? " asked 
 Sproat, 
 
 " Pretty well," answered Clitheroe doubtfully, 
 " It isn t quite my ideal. I had thought of the 
 uncle s establishment as having a rather more 
 modern and prosperous air rather more upper 
 works, for one thing cool, airy chambers for 
 the casual nephew. This, now, is picture- 
 squee as the Vulgarian Atrocity at Mrs, 
 Barker s would say but is it practical ? " 
 
 "But a quiet, inexpensive uncle " sug 
 gested Sproat. 
 
 " A little uncle for a cent " agreed Clitheroe. 
 
 " Or haply an aunt " 
 
 " The very place for an aunt ! " 
 
 "Come on," exclaimed Sproat, seizing the 
 other by the arm and starting toward the house ; 
 " something tells me that there is an uncle of 
 some kind in there, and I am going to see." 
 
 "I m in it," responded his friend, and arm in 
 arm they entered the gateway and advanced up 
 the weedy gravel walk. But presently it became 
 evident to Clitheroe that Sproat was going 
 through with the adventure in earnest, He 
 
A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 13 
 
 marched grimly and silently to the door with 
 out relaxing his hold upon his companion, who 
 began to have misgivings. For a moment the 
 thought even occurred to him that Sproat might 
 have put into practice their Utopian project of 
 hiring an uncle, thus preparing for Clitheroe 
 a pleasant little surprise. But this notion he 
 rejected as wild. Meanwhile Sproat, who had 
 been fumbling for the bell, had found it and 
 given it a pull, and a startling tintinnabulation 
 rang through the hall. 
 
 " What the devil ! "Clitheroe at last broke 
 silence, struggling to pull away his arm. 
 
 " Keep shady keep shady ! " remonstrated 
 Sproat, holding on firmly ; and suddenly the 
 door was thrown open, a flood of light streamed 
 out, and Sproat was saying to the housemaid : 
 
 " Are Mrs. Venable and the young ladies 
 in ? " 
 
 " Oh, my prophetic soul ! Your uncle ! " mur 
 mured Clitheroe as they entered. 
 
 " No my aunt. Keep shady, as aforesaid, 
 and don t get into a cast-iron perspiration." 
 
 The room into which they were ushered was 
 lighted only by the flicker of a wood fire. At 
 one side of this sat a tall, thin, elderly lady, 
 screening her eyes from the flame with a palm- 
 leaf fan ; at the other a somewhat dumpy 
 young woman, who rose as they entered. 
 
 " Aunt Henrietta," began Sproat, " I have 
 brought my friend, Mr. Clitheroe. Clitheroe, 
 my aunt, Mrs. Venable, and my cousin, Miss 
 Catherine Venable." 
 
14 A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 
 
 " I am very glad to see you, Mr. Clitheroe," 
 said the elder lady from her corner. " Excuse 
 my not rising, please ; I am something of an 
 invalid." 
 
 " Shall I have the lamp lighted ? " asked the 
 younger. " Can you make out to see any 
 thing? Don t stumble over my sewing-chair, 
 Frank." 
 
 " Oh, don t light the lamp ! " remonstrated 
 Clitheroe. " The firelight is so much pleas- 
 anter." 
 
 " We think so," said Mrs. Venable. " How 
 chilly these spring evenings are. Did you walk 
 all the way out ? " 
 
 " No," answered Sproat. " We came on a 
 pair of high-stepping, red-roan steeds. Hist ! 
 Dost not hear them even now snorting at the 
 portal ? " 
 
 " I suppose you are used to his nonsense, Mr. 
 Clitheroe ? " 
 
 " Perfectly, Mrs. Venable." 
 
 "You have a widow s fire, aunt," pursued her 
 nephew. " Permit me to brisk it up a bit with 
 the bellows. Women never know how to han 
 dle a fire." 
 
 " If it were not for this fire we should have 
 perished," rejoined his cousin. " We have been 
 in this house only a week, Mr. Clitheroe, and 
 we find everything out of repair, and especially 
 the furnace. Frank, that stove-man that you 
 sent out is a perfidious wretch. He said the 
 castings, or something, were cracked, and we 
 should have to have new ones ; and he took 
 
A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 15 
 
 them away day before yesterday and hasn t 
 appeared since." 
 
 " He will return, I know him well he would 
 not leave me here to die ! " chanted Sproat 
 operatically. " But where s Beatrice?" 
 
 " You seem to be in good spirits to-night," said 
 a voice at the door. " Do you do that often ? " 
 
 " Come in, little Treechy, come right in," 
 shouted Sproat. " Mr. Clitheroe, Miss Beatrice 
 Venable. Be seated, Beatrice." 
 
 The newcomer was far from meriting, in a 
 literal sense, the endearing diminutive which 
 her cousin had applied to her. She was a 
 rather ample young woman, who moved with a 
 certain languid grace, and spoke and laughed 
 in a voice whose deep contralto tones and de 
 liberate utterance suggested a rich physical en 
 dowment. Thus much was evident concerning 
 her, by the imperfect illumination in the room. 
 As she sat and talked, the firelight shining on 
 her eyes and touching here and there a skein of 
 hair, the salience of her cheek, or the rondure of 
 her chin, Clitheroe guessed, rather than saw, 
 that by daylight she would be a brown-skinned 
 girl, with tawny hair and eyes of some dark 
 color. She spoke with a slight drawl, putting 
 a heavy stress on certain words, and with a 
 sort of accent which was not definitely foreign, 
 but carried with it tropical, or at least exotic, 
 associations. Clitheroe once asked Sproat if 
 his cousin Beatrice had not lived at some time 
 in the East or West Indies. 
 
 " Beatrice ? Never," he assured him ; but 
 
16 A SUBURBAN PAS7VXAL. 
 
 added, with a laugh, " I don t wonder at your 
 question, though. She zs sort of sandalwoody 
 and tuberosy." 
 
 " Frank has been promising to bring you," 
 she said. " You know or do you know ? 
 that we are perfect strangers in Southwick if 
 you call this Southwick. How many miles is 
 it ? Anyway, it was very good of you to come 
 so far to see us." 
 
 " Oh, it was very noble of me," admitted 
 Clitheroe. 
 
 " You are a great walker, aren t you ? " in 
 quired the other sister. " Frank has told us 
 about your walks together and about the 
 uncle. We think it s so funny about the uncle." 
 
 " What uncle is that ? " inquired Sproat inno 
 cently. 
 
 " Mrs. Venable," cried Clitheroe, "the duplic 
 ity of that man is beyond belief. He never let 
 on to me that he had any bloodykin here or 
 anywhere else. He lured me out here in the 
 most unsuspecting frame of mind. He gave 
 our walk this direction as if it was merely acci 
 dental. And when he got me as far as the 
 gate he asked me if I didn t think this would 
 be a nice house for the uncle ; and then he 
 grabbed me and pulled me in before I could 
 offer any resistance." 
 
 All the ladies laughed, and Beatrice said in a 
 tragic tone : 
 
 " Mr. Clitheroe, we can never, never be an 
 uncle to you, but we will do our best to be 
 aunties." 
 
A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 17 
 
 At the end of the evening, when they took 
 leave, Mrs. Venable murmured her regrets that 
 they had so long a walk before them at night. 
 
 " It s only two miles to the horse cars," said 
 her nephew. 
 
 "It seems very long," she replied plaintively. 
 
 " That s because it s so long since you walked 
 any, Aunt Henrietta, that you ve lost all notion 
 of distances." 
 
 " I would offer to put you both up," said 
 Catherine briskly, " but we are all in chaos yet 
 and most of our furniture isn t even unpacked. 
 The next time you bring Mr. Clitheroe, Frank, 
 you must arrange to breakfast with us. I want 
 you to understand, Mr. Clitheroe, that I am the 
 business end of this manage " and she jingled 
 a bunch of keys in her pocket. "Hear that? 
 Mamma will be your literary aunty and Treech 
 your artistic aunty, and I will be your practical 
 aunty." 
 
 When Clitheroe had got Sproat out under the 
 stars he faced him and gazed long and steadily 
 into his eyes. Then they both broke into a vio 
 lent fit of laughter. 
 
 " If you ever put up such a job on me 
 again " he began. 
 
 " What s the matter ? Don t you like my 
 cousins ? " 
 
 " Oh, they are bully cousins, but " 
 
 " I call them rather nice girls for girls." 
 
 " Sproat, they are daisies." 
 
 " Oh, come, now, they are well enough. But 
 after all they re not an uncle." 
 
1 8 A SUBURBAN PASTO&At. 
 
 After this the young men s walks commonly 
 tended toward the Wellsville pike and the Yen- 
 able house. Clitheroe even became a some 
 what importunate walker, and Sproat grew, or 
 pretended to grow, a trifle bored by it. One 
 afternoon Clitheroe presented himself at the 
 usual hour at his friend s laboratory. 
 
 "Come on, you woaded savage; put down 
 that hydrochloric sulphate, or whatever it is; 
 take off your apron, wash your handy-pandies, 
 and let s go and interview Gosh-Darn-It." 
 
 " I know what that means," said Sproat as 
 he slowly placed a vial of some orange-colored 
 liquid on the shelves before him and turned 
 around. " Clith, this thing has got to stop. 
 You are getting to be a regular tramp. And 
 you are drinking yourself into the jim-jams on 
 Hiram s root beer." 
 
 " Well, are you coming ? " 
 
 " No ; go to the aunt, thou sluggard. I can t 
 leave here for two hours yet. I ve got some 
 reactions to watch." 
 
 "Who said anything about the aunt? I 
 said Hiram." 
 
 " Clitheroe "looking at him steadily 
 " which one is it ? " 
 
 " Oh, you be hanged ! " said Clitheroe, turn 
 ing red ; and he went out and slammed the 
 door behind him. 
 
 Nevertheless, a few evenings after this, the 
 two found themselves once more in Mrs. Ven- 
 able s parlor. It was June now and Clitheroe 
 had brought a handful of the Arethusa bulbosa, 
 
A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 19 
 
 which Catherine was arranging in a vase with 
 the spotty leaves of the adder s tongue and a 
 few sprays of mitchella. 
 
 " What lovely flowers ! " exclaimed Beatrice, 
 coming into the room. " They are orchids, 
 aren t they ? Where did you get them ? " 
 
 " This charming little plant in wet bogs, 
 north vide Gray grew in Shuttle Pond 
 Meadow, and a mighty wet bog it is. But 
 it s a splendid wild place to be right on the 
 edge of a city, and it s full of fine things. I ve 
 no doubt that the otter and the blue heron 
 haunt its recesses, though I ve never happened 
 to find them there." 
 
 " Oh, how fascinating ! Why can t I go 
 there? Is it far ?" 
 
 " It s a horrid malarial hole," put in Sproat, 
 "a collection of ditches surrounded by pig-pens 
 and slaughter-houses. The corporation ought 
 to drain it. Clitheroe goes wading around in 
 it and trying to persuade himself that it is like 
 the Maremma, or the Pontine marshes, or some 
 thing. He wants me to go walking there but 
 there are some things I won t do ; I hate 
 stenches." 
 
 " Frank hasn t the least imagination," said 
 his cousin. " I wish you d invite me to go 
 walking there, Mr. Clitheroe. What did you 
 call it ? Shuttle Meadow ? Such an original 
 name ! " 
 
 " Miss Venable, I shall be proud and happy 
 to introduce you to the wonders of the swamp 
 any day you say. You will appreciate it. It 
 
20 A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 
 
 has character. Its name is but an index to 
 its nature." 
 
 " Oh, come off ! " objected Sproat. " What 
 has Shuttle got to do with it ? Now if .it was 
 called Pest-house Sink or Frog Hole, or some 
 thing of the kind " 
 
 " And may I take my sketching things ? 
 I know there must be some delightful bits 
 there." 
 
 " Miss Venable, there are a dozen little land 
 scapes in the meadow, every one of them as 
 individual as if it was a hundred miles away 
 from the rest. Let me describe you a fore 
 ground effect that I noticed just this morn 
 ing " 
 
 " You may describe it to her, but hanged if 
 you shall to me," protested Sproat. " I ve seen 
 the place myself, and I won t listen to any stuff 
 about it. If you go with him, Treech, you d 
 better brace up in advance on twelve grains of 
 quinine and have yourself thoroughly fumigated 
 when you come home." 
 
 It was agreed, nevertheless, that Clitheroe 
 should call for Miss Venable on the following 
 afternoon and escort her to Shuttle Pond 
 Meadow. Sproat had arranged to spend the 
 night at his aunt s and walk into town in the 
 morning ; and after Clitheroe had taken leave, 
 he stood at the window, looking out at the dark 
 and whistling softly. Catherine had left the 
 room and Beatrice had taken up a piece of 
 sewing and was stitching slowly under the 
 lamp. 
 
A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 21 
 
 " A nice little fellow, Clith," he ventured at 
 length. 
 
 She made no reply. 
 
 " But he will phantasiren" he pursued. 
 
 " Isn t he a little ladylike ? " She spoke 
 with a lingering inflection, bending low over 
 her sewing. 
 
 " I shouldn t call him effeminate." 
 
 " Would you call him feminine ? " 
 
 " Well, he may have a dash of the ewig 
 weibliche, perhaps. But what would you call 
 him, now ? " facing about from the window. 
 
 " He is excitable, but he is awfully sweet." 
 
 " What an adjective ! " 
 
 " You wouldn t like to be called that, would 
 you? " 
 
 "Not by a woman that I cared for." 
 
 " Well, you are wrong. It s what a woman 
 likes best in a man." 
 
 " Is sweetness a masculine attribute ? I 
 thought women liked a man to be masculine." 
 
 " Yes, under some circumstances. Oh, you 
 can t understand you are not a woman." 
 
 " Well, anyway, Clith is a nice little fellow." 
 
 Shuttle Pond Meadow proved to be very 
 much as Sproat had described it ; but also, to 
 the eye of sentiment, something as Clitheroe 
 had described it. It was a bit of unclaimed 
 swamp, of perhaps two hundred acres, on the 
 limits of the town. There were soap-factories 
 and slaughter-houses on one side of it, which 
 used its sluggish waters for their drainage, and 
 where the mysterious process known as " render- 
 
22 A SUBURBAN PASTORAL 
 
 ing " annoyed the air. One or two mean little 
 streets abutted upon another side of it, their 
 shabby houses, mainly negro cabins, turning 
 toward it their back yards, a row of sloping 
 gravel heaps with tumble-down henneries and 
 rank thickets of burdock and stramonium. A 
 sandy road gave access to the penetralia of the 
 swamp, where, on a sort of island fringed with 
 pollard willows, a German family cultivated a 
 miniature truck-farm and defied malaria in an 
 old house littered about with pigsties and 
 wagon-sheds and the remains of an ancient 
 apple orchard. The original Shuttle Pond had 
 mostly percolated away, but the place was full 
 of stagnant ditches and pools of black bog 
 water greened over with frog-spittle and all 
 manner of iridescent scum. Clitheroe apolo 
 gized for these unlovely aspects, but Miss Ven- 
 able was in a gracious mood and made light of 
 them. She was bent upon the discovery of the 
 picturesque, and it was not long before she 
 found it. 
 
 Somewhere beyond the ancient orchard they 
 came upon a plank, bridging a kind of fosse or 
 moat through which a clear stream ran over 
 gravel. Crossing this, they found themselves 
 in a little green meadow, flat and square as a 
 table top. The willows, alders, button-bushes, 
 and other fluviatile shrubs which edged it, gave 
 the tiny landscape an isolation of its own. The 
 spongy ground was covered with the soft tufts 
 of the sphagnum, or peat moss, and the water 
 that soaked their shoes was warm as if heated 
 
A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 23 
 
 for the bath. Clitheroe explained that this was 
 the spot where he had found the arethusa, and 
 that later in the summer the white-fringed 
 orchis would abound among the moss. He 
 sought out a dry, firm area in the middle of the 
 meadow and here his companion, with many 
 exclamations of delight, selected a point of 
 view and got ready her sketching materials. 
 The only building in sight was the old farm 
 house, a gable of which peeped through the 
 orchard boughs. Clitheroe helped her pitch 
 her easel and adjust the portable camp stool. 
 Then he threw himself down on the grass and 
 watched her spread out her paper and select her 
 pencils. 
 
 " Is it permitted to talk to the man at the 
 wheel ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes, you may talk all you want, but please 
 don t look over my shoulder. It makes me 
 nervous." 
 
 " I can t imagine you being nervous. Still, 
 I ll control my curiosity till your picture is 
 finished." 
 
 " It may not be finished to-day ; there is so 
 much detail." 
 
 " Good ; then we ll have to come again." 
 
 " That would be lovely, but it may not be 
 necessary. I usually fill in detail from memory, 
 or invent it." 
 
 " So that it won t do me any good to delay you 
 by frivolous talk, in hopes of another sitting? " 
 
 " Not in the least ; besides, it doesn t delay 
 me to talk to me." 
 
2 4 A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 
 
 She drew at first rather slowly, pausing 
 often, and keeping up her share of the conver 
 sation. But presently she grew absorbed, 
 working with swift touches, and her answers 
 became laconic and finally irrelevant. So he 
 ceased talking and lay regarding her. She 
 took various graceful poses, sometimes poising 
 the pencil before her face, sometimes leaning 
 backward or sideways to examine her sketch 
 from a different vantage ground. Subtle and 
 altogether charming changes of expression 
 flitted across her face. Now her eyes were 
 raised and fixed on the scene that she was 
 transferring to her paper, now they drooped to 
 the easel. Her brows contracted thoughtfully, 
 then relaxed, and her lips parted. 
 
 After a short time she seemed to grow con 
 scious of the intentness of his gaze. She stole 
 sidelong glances at him, her touches grew hesi 
 tating, she moved uneasily in her seat, a pretty 
 confusion troubled her features, and once or 
 twice she flushed slightly. 
 
 " This is very slow for you," she said at last. 
 
 "It s regular lotus eating," he answered, 
 jumping up ; " but I see you can t work with 
 people looking on." 
 
 " Haven t you got a cigar or something pour 
 passer le temps? Or perhaps you could find 
 me another bunch of arethusa." 
 
 " I m afraid it s out of bloom ; but I ll tell 
 you what : do you like cress ? " 
 
 " What s cress ? " 
 
 " Water-cress." 
 
A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 25 
 
 " That peppery stuff that they garnish mut 
 ton chops with? No, I can t say that I do. 
 But mamma dotes on it. Does it grow wild ? " 
 
 " The wildest sort ! There used to be a 
 ditch here somewhere that was full of it. Shall 
 I relieve you of my hated presence for a few 
 minutes and go look for some ? " 
 
 " Do, like a good man." 
 
 So he wandered off and botanized about for 
 an hour or so, returning at intervals to ask after 
 the progress of the sketch and to deposit some 
 floral prize or other at the sketcher s feet. By 
 and by he found the cress, and called out : 
 
 " Here s stacks of it ! " 
 
 It was growing in a trench of clear, deepish 
 water, rooting itself in the sandy bottom under 
 the opposite bank. He threw himself down on 
 the edge of the meadow and reached out for it, 
 tearing it away by handfuls and nibbling the 
 pungent leaves. Before long Miss Venable 
 heard him utter an exclamation of dismay. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " she cried. 
 
 "I ve dropped my glasses in the water," he 
 returned, "and I can t find them again." 
 
 " You poor thing ! Shall I come and help 
 you ? " 
 
 * Oh, no. Go on with your drawing. The 
 water is a little roily, but it will settle soon and 
 then I can see the bottom." 
 
 A few minutes passed. 
 
 " Found them yet ? " she called. 
 
 " Not yet," he shouted back. " It s like a 
 blind man looking for his eyes." 
 
26 A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 
 
 "I will come and help you," she laughed. 
 " Why, there they are " as she arrived upon 
 the spot and pointed with her pencil. " Don t 
 you see them ? There, near the little clump of 
 weeds." 
 
 "I m afraid I don t," he answered, peering 
 into the stream. " You ve no idea how awfully 
 near-sighted I am. Sproat says I smell at a 
 book instead of reading it." 
 
 " I ll get them for you," she said, kneeling 
 clown upon the brink. 
 
 " No, don t. Let them go. They are out of 
 your reach, and you ll wet your dress." 
 
 " Will I, though ? " she replied. She unbut 
 toned the sleeve of her blouse at the wrist and 
 rolled it up to the shoulder ; then, lying at full 
 length on the bank, thrust her arm into the 
 water and fished up the missing glasses. 
 
 " Here, take them," she said, scrambling to 
 her feet; "you may be thankful they re not 
 broken." 
 
 " Thankful doesn t begin to express my feel 
 ings. But really you oughtn t to have done it. 
 I m afraid you have wet your sleeve after all." 
 
 She stood holding out her bare arm horizon 
 tally and, with her other hand, drew aside her 
 skirt to keep it from being dripped on. 
 
 " Will you lend me your handkerchief, Mr. 
 Clitheroe ? " 
 
 " Allow me," he rejoined, and, stepping to 
 her side, began to mop the glistening member 
 softly with his handkerchief. She glanced at 
 him sharply and made a motion as if to with" 
 
A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 27 
 
 draw it, but thought better of it and held it 
 still. The water-drops stood on it like beads of 
 dew on marble. His eye took note of one 
 string of them, which tapered down symmetric 
 ally from the bigness of a pea to the smallness 
 of a pin s head. The naked limb troubled him 
 with its whiteness and the silky fineness of the 
 skin. As his fingers touched the firm flesh, 
 they trembled with the excitement of a sudden 
 lawless impulse to close upon it, to caress its 
 curves, to carry it to his lips. 
 
 "There! "he said abruptly, conscious that 
 she was watching him demurely, and abashed 
 at his own secret temerity ; and stepping back 
 ward, he thrust the handkerchief into his pocket. 
 She lowered her arm and slowly drew down the 
 sleeve, saying nothing, but smiling an almost 
 imperceptible smile. Ce sour ire si fin si fin 
 what did it express ? A shade of irony, per 
 haps, or even of disappointment, of disdain? 
 What does a girl expect of a man ? A respect 
 so delicate that it never forgets the lady in the 
 woman ; or a passion so imperious that it does 
 quite the contrary ? He was teased by a doubt 
 whether he had gained or lost in her favor by 
 his resistance to an impulse which she must 
 have read in his eyes. 
 
 "Mercy ! " exclaimed Miss Venable, consult 
 ing a watch of the size of a silver dollar, which she 
 drew from her belt, " it s long after six and we 
 must go. But I must do a few strokes more on 
 that willow bush that is, if you can wait." 
 "Till doomsday," he answered. 
 
28 A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 
 
 It was growing dusk when they gathered up 
 the drawing implements and bunches of cress 
 and wild flowers and started homeward. They 
 came out of the meadows and turned down the 
 squalid little cross street which led to the 
 boulevard. In front of a liquor saloon, where 
 the gas was not yet lighted, lounged a group of 
 "corner-boys," ill-looking thugs with sallow 
 faces, bullet heads, big red ears, and blue mus 
 taches. They were making the summer twilight 
 hideous with curses. 
 
 " Tough of the evening horrible tough ! " 
 murmured Clitheroe to himself. 
 
 As Miss Venable and her escort drew near, 
 the group fell silent and stared at the pair. 
 Clitheroe, too, who had been carrying on an 
 animated conversation, stopped speaking. He 
 felt nervous and quickened his step ; but his 
 companion seemed unconscious of any reason 
 for haste. She went on talking in a slow, dis 
 tinct voice and without in the least accelerating 
 her pace. They had hardly passed the door 
 of the saloon when a fusillade of insults assailed 
 them from the rear. 
 
 " Get onto de dude wid de chippy." 
 
 " Hey, young feller, watcher doin wid me 
 sister ? " 
 
 " She aint none o your sister ; she s my best 
 gal. Aint ye, Susan ? " 
 
 A foul jest followed, and a burst of coarse 
 laughter. Even in the lessening light, Clitheroe 
 could see her cheek flush and her eyes sparkle 
 with anger. But she walked slower than ever, 
 
A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 29 
 
 as if scorning to retreat, though she had ceased 
 talking. 
 
 " Excuse me for subjecting you to this," he 
 said in a low voice. " I think we had better 
 walk as fast as we can." He was shaking with 
 rage and excitement, and he muttered an oath 
 under his breath. " It s the best way never to 
 notice such animals," he added. 
 
 " Oh, quite the best way," she replied. There 
 was a tremble in her speech, and it seemed to 
 him as if she fairly sauntered along beside him. 
 At that instant a missile of some sort struck 
 her in the cheek and fell into the bosom of her 
 dress. She stopped with an exclamation, and 
 brushed it off. It was a quid of tobacco. 
 Clitheroe clenched his fists and, facing about, 
 glared furiously through his glasses, then 
 turned and strode on with a feeling of utter 
 helplessness. This show of defiance was 
 greeted with derisive jeers, and their retreat was 
 followed with cat-calls, cock-crows, and shouts 
 of, " Give him a chaw, sissy." " Please dont- 
 cher lick me, Mr. Four-eyes ; I aint done noth 
 ing." " Oh, mamma ! " etc. 
 
 " I wish," said Miss Venable, coming to a 
 halt for an instant and then marching on again, 
 " I wish Frank or someone was here." 
 
 Clitheroe winced, as if she had struck him in 
 the face. 
 
 " Let me go back and pitch into that gang," 
 he said. 
 
 " Not on any account ; come on, let s get out 
 of this " and she began to walk rapidly. 
 
30 A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 
 
 " Sproat would, you think." 
 
 " Oh, but he is so big and strong and so 
 perfectly fearless. And then," phe added, in an 
 awkward endeavor to take the sting out of her 
 involuntary speech, " if there were two of you, 
 they wouldn t have dared." 
 
 They went swiftly on and were soon out of 
 reach of further annoyance. Not much was 
 spoken between them for a while, and when 
 their talk set back to indifferent topics, it was 
 with some constraint and manifest labor that it 
 was kept going. Clitheroe had got a hurt in 
 his self-respect, and was smarting with a sense 
 of unmerited shame. It had been one of those 
 junctures where the carefully spun fictions of 
 civilization are torn aside and the brutal facts 
 of human nature stand out in their nakedness : 
 the demand of the female upon the male for 
 protection ; her instinctive choice her absolute 
 need of strength and physical prowess. It was 
 a glimpse into primitive conditions, where the 
 woman falls to the strongest ; a vision of 
 pastures where bulls fight for sleek heifers, and 
 the victor takes the spoils. In some way he 
 had been unequal to the occasion and she had 
 made him feel it. And yet what could he have 
 done? Or what could Sproat have done, or 
 any gentleman or man, unless, indeed, a pro 
 fessional bruiser, or a policeman with billy and 
 revolver ? Should he have involved a lady in a 
 street brawl? Should he have asked her to 
 walk on, and have gone back himself to get 
 satisfaction from a gang of hoodlums, with the 
 
A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 3 1 
 
 sure result of being shockingly bullied, beaten, 
 perhaps killed ? Killing, he told himself 
 proudly, he would not greatly mind. He would 
 have gone to his death for the girl at his side in 
 any decent and gentlemanly way in battle or 
 wreck or fire. But an altercation with corner- 
 rowdies, possibly the police court next morning 
 with MissVenable on the witness-stand and 
 the newspapers, and the ironical condolences of 
 his friends no, the exigency did not seem to 
 call for heroism precisely. What is courage ? 
 Is it not often an accidental mastery of the 
 situation ? Or even, sometimes, nothing more 
 than obtuseness to ridicule ? 
 
 When Clitheroe left his charge at her door 
 that evening, he knew that the bud of promise 
 which had shyly put forth between them would 
 never unfold. There was no definite change in 
 her manner toward him thenceforth ; and when 
 they met again, as they continued often to do, 
 she was as gracious as ever. But there was a 
 subtle readjustment in their mutual attitude. 
 Tried in her balances coarse ones, he felt he 
 had been found wanting ; and she had mortified 
 the pride of his manliness. No man ever really 
 forgives a woman for thinking him a coward. 
 
 Many times the scene was re-enacted in his 
 dreams with fantastic variations. He heard 
 himself say to his companion : " Excuse me for 
 a minute ; go on to the end of the block, and I 
 will join you there." He felt himself, with a 
 sense of exultation and power, striking right 
 and, left among his insulters. Then curiously 
 
32 A SUBURBAN PASTORAL. 
 
 the point of view shifted and he saw the whole 
 scene with the eyes of a spectator. There was 
 a scuffle ; someone called out, " Cut the d d 
 jay ! " A man fell to the sidewalk and lay 
 still. A moment s pause, and then the gang 
 scattered and fled. A scream sounded through 
 his sleep, and the girl turned and ran back. In 
 the empty street and the fast-gathering dusk, she 
 knelt down by the fallen man and wrung her 
 hands, while his voice pronounced with diffi 
 culty the word Beatrice. 
 
 Awaking from such a dream, Clitheroe 
 would wonder whether melodrama is any more 
 essentially tragical than farce. 
 
II. 
 
 A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 
 
A MIDWINTER NIGHTS DREAM. 
 
 |HERE was coasting on Rood s Hill. 
 Ever since four o clock, when the 
 schools had let out, the homeward- 
 bound farmer, as he reached the top 
 of the opposite ridge, where the cutting wind 
 made him draw his old buffalo tighter about his 
 legs, had halted his sleigh for a moment to 
 watch the white slope over against him swarm 
 ing with little dark objects that moved swiftly 
 down and slowly up. Now it was dusk, and the 
 hill was invisible except as a black mass against 
 the western heaven. But still the continuous 
 rattle of the sleds down the steep incline was 
 heard, spreading into a long roar as they neared 
 the bottom, and echoing down the narrow, valley 
 to left and right. But when the lamp-posts in 
 the suburban streets began to show their paral 
 lel or radiating lines of yellow sparks, and the 
 keen wintry glitter of the stars responded from 
 the sky, the hill became deserted of all but a 
 few late lingerers. Now the school children 
 were entering their house doors, bringing in 
 with them a rush of cold air. With fingers 
 numb and red under their wet mittens, they 
 were taking off their rubber boots half full of 
 snow, and hanging their worsted tippets on the 
 
 35 
 
3^ A MIDWINTER NIGHTS DREAM. 
 
 hooks in the entry, while the soft lamplight 
 and the smell of oysters and buttered toast 
 came pleasantly to their sharpened senses 
 through the door of the warm supper room. 
 
 A few of the bigger boys returned to the 
 hill for an hour more of coasting after supper, 
 and did penance later for this prolonged enjoy 
 ment, with sleepy eyes and fingers, over the 
 slates which had to be filled with sums before 
 they could go to bed. The Gully Brook ran 
 through a culvert under the hill, and some of 
 the coasters were dragging tubs full of water 
 on their sleds up the almost precipitous sides, 
 and pouring it over the road, worn bare in 
 spots, to form a coating of ice. The wind had 
 gone down at sunset, and the air, though in 
 tensely cold, was so still that the chill was 
 hardly felt by anyone in active motion. 
 
 About eight o clock, when the schoolboys 
 " pig-stickers " had mostly disappeared from the 
 slide, a new party arrived and took noisy pos 
 session. This consisted of young men and 
 women, equipped with sleds of a substantial 
 size, convenient for coasting in pairs. Soon the 
 frosty quiet of the night was broken with femi 
 nine talk and laughter, the calling and shouting 
 of men s voices, and now and then merry 
 screams where some heavily laden sledge ran 
 off the track and, gently lifting its starboard 
 runner, dumped its freight pell-mell into the 
 powdery snow by the roadside. The double 
 ripper, the toboggan, and the bob-sled of a 
 more modern era slept as yet " in the bosom of 
 
A MIDWINTER NIGHTS DREAM. 37 
 
 their causes " ; but a plank fastened to two 
 sleds, fore and aft, and steered by a helmsman 
 with a quick eye and an adequate pair of boots, 
 carried some dozen souls and made a sufficient 
 ripper for the nonce. 
 
 It happened that, among the groups con 
 stantly descending and reascending, two couples 
 reached the top at the same moment. The first 
 pair were walking side by side, the young man 
 carrying the sled by its rope slung over his 
 shoulder. The second lady was seated on her 
 sled ; her swain had dragged her up the hill 
 and was panting slightly from the exertion. 
 
 " Is that the way you spoil your girl ? " said 
 the first man as he gained the starting point 
 and faced about. "You shouldn t do it, Wil- 
 mot ; you ll demoralize the others. There ll 
 be a strike as soon as they get onto the scheme." 
 
 " Well, now," answered Wilmot, " what do 
 you do to your girl to make her walk up ? " 
 
 " Make me walk up, indeed ! " said that, 
 young woman, with a toss of her fur-lined 
 hood. " I choose to walk up. John Brainard," 
 she cried, with a tragic gesture toward the 
 landscape in general, "wouldn t you be de 
 lighted to draw me up that hill if I asked you 
 to ? " 
 
 " Mr. Brainard," called out the occupant of 
 the other sled almost in the same breath, 
 "aren t you ashamed to put such notions into 
 Harvey s head ? He has been perfectly docile 
 till this minute, and he just loves to draw me." 
 
 " Brainard, let s swap girls," said Wilmot. 
 
38 A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 
 
 At this proposal there were shrieks and ex 
 clamations of, " We won t be swapped ! As if 
 we were horses ! Yes, or things ! " 
 
 " How much does yours weigh ? " inquired 
 Brainard, pondering the offer. 
 
 " How much do you weigh, Sue ? " asked 
 Wilmot, turning to his partner. 
 
 " Never mind," replied the lady addressed, 
 rising nimbly from the sled. " If I am too 
 heavy for you, and Carrie wants the pleasure of 
 walking up-hill with you instead of with Mr. 
 Brainard, I guess Mr. Brainard can pull me up 
 hill once or twice without hurting himself." 
 
 " Come along, then, Miss Gillespie," said 
 Wilmot, twitching his empty sled into position. 
 
 " Oh, 7 don t care," said Miss Gillespie, mov 
 ing slowly away from her first cavalier in Wil- 
 mot s direction. 
 
 The exchange was laughingly effected, and 
 Brainard, having seen his new partner comfort 
 ably seated, with her feet planted on the cross 
 bar, her knees drawn up to her chin, and her 
 skirts tucked closely around her, gave a short 
 run, shoving the sled before him, jumped on 
 behind, and away they sped down the slide. 
 The long plank " cruiser" was just making up 
 its load for a fresh trip, amid a profusion of 
 giggling and chatter, and Wilmot and Miss 
 Gillespie waited to see it launched and to fol 
 low down in its wake. When Brainard s sled 
 reached the bottom of the hill and came to a 
 stop his companion sprang to her feet. 
 
 " What ! Aren t you going to let me draw 
 
A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 39 
 
 you back ? " he asked. " I thought that was 
 part of my contract." 
 
 " No, indeed," she answered with spirit. 
 " Harvey proposed the swap and I took him 
 up on it, and I m not going to have you suffer 
 by the bargain. Come along." And she 
 started vigorously up the hill. 
 
 "But," insisted Brainard as he walked after 
 her, " you are a borrowed article, Miss Chantry, 
 and borrowed articles must be used with care 
 and returned in good condition. Besides, you 
 are not accustomed to walking up-hill, you 
 know. Wilmot has pampered you into effemi 
 nacy by a long course of injudicious indulgence." 
 
 "The idea!" she retorted. "I guess my 
 legs are as good as Carrie Gillespie s, up-hill 
 or down " and her laugh rang out hardily on 
 the crisp night air. 
 
 "So, then, I shan t have a chance to find out 
 how much you weigh, after all ? " 
 
 "Not unless I faint and you have to carry 
 me. But I ll bet anything that she makes 
 Harvey Wilmot draw her. I would, if I were 
 she. Now you just see." 
 
 And sure enough, on their second flight down 
 the hill, they passed Wilmot dragging his fair 
 burden upward. 
 
 " How do you like the exchange ? " he yelled 
 after them. 
 
 "Oh, lovely first rate," they shrieked back 
 in concert ; but only an inarticulate jumble of 
 syllables reached Wilmot s ear, broken by the 
 rush of the air and the rumble of the sled. 
 
40 A MIDWINTER NIGHTS DREAM. 
 
 This time Miss Chantry did not rise when 
 the sled stopped. They had run off the track 
 a little way and, reaching out her hand, she 
 broke a piece from the clean snow crust and 
 nibbled it pensively while she sat looking at 
 the stars. 
 
 " Confess that that climb has tired you," 
 said Brainard as he stood holding the sled rope. 
 
 " I m not the least tired," she replied, "but 
 the stopping of the sled gives me a kind of 
 drowsy feeling, like letting the old cat die in 
 a swing. The runners begin to go slower 
 and slower and slower, and finally they come 
 to a standstill so softly 
 
 Her voice died away with a diminuendo effect 
 to indicate the gradual cessation of the motion. 
 
 " I hate to shake off the sensation by stand 
 ing up," she added. 
 
 "Don t shake it off, then," he said. "Sit 
 still, and I ll draw you up. Or what do you 
 say to trying the other hill ? The grade is not 
 so steep, and I can pull you up it on a run." 
 
 " Very well," she acquiesced, " but don t 
 run. You ll break my repose." 
 
 A few of the party, deserting the main coast, 
 now somewhat crowded with sleds, had betaken 
 themselves to the opposite rise, which was 
 longer, though of gentler slope. These were 
 presumably sentimental couples who found 
 here a sort of side show or withdrawing room 
 whose comparative seclusion offered a better 
 opportunity for flirtation. 
 
 " Shall we try that again ? " asked Brainard 
 
A MID WINTER NIGHT S DREA M. 4 1 
 
 of his companion, when they had accomplished 
 their descent and paused in the intervale, "or 
 shall we go back to the first slide and see if 
 our old pards have got tired of each other and 
 want to swap back ? " 
 
 " Oh, let s try the new one once more," she 
 answered. " It isn t so swift, and doesn t take 
 my breath away so. Besides, it s so nice and 
 retired ; it seems like going out on the piazza. 
 at a dance and getting away from the fiddles 
 and gaslight. But you shan t drag me up 
 again, you poor beast of burden. Seared is, 
 of course, my heart, but hard though I may 
 seem, I am not quite adamant. Sometimes 
 I am almost human." 
 
 " Well," replied Brainard, " we ll compromise, 
 then, by your taking my arm." 
 
 " It s not at all necessary," she said, but she 
 took it notwithstanding, and they walked rather 
 slowly up the hill. At times her breathing was 
 a little short, and now and then, where the foot 
 ing was slippery or rough, her slender figure 
 swayed against him for support ; and as they 
 neared the hill-top, he even fancied a certain 
 caressing tone in her voice, and something 
 relaxed and confiding in the pressure of her 
 arm. On the way up they passed two or three 
 sleds going down, but they found the head of 
 the slide deserted. By day the eminence where 
 they stood commanded an extensive prospect 
 of hill and valley toward the east. But under 
 the stars all that could be seen was a dim 
 white stretch of rolling country broken by 
 
42 A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 
 
 mysterious shadows, and sown here and there 
 with the lights of suburban dwellings and of 
 scattered farmhouses beyond. Into this uncer 
 tain landscape, whose loneliness and peace con 
 trasted with the noisy mirth that they had left, 
 the pair gazed for a few moments in silence. 
 
 " What a lovely night it is ! " said the girl at 
 length. 
 
 " Yes," he replied, " it s a sin to go to bed on 
 such a night. It s a waste of life. Did you 
 ever try staying up all night out of doors ? " he 
 resumed after a pause. 
 
 " No, indeed," she answered, with a slight 
 laugh ; " I am too much of a sleepy head." 
 
 " I have often meant," he pursued in a tone 
 of reverie, " to take a whole night some time, 
 and spend it a la belle ttotle. Just think how 
 much we miss ! I would like to walk around 
 in the edges of woods and old pastures till the 
 moon set, and watch the changes of the shadows, 
 and listen to the crickets, and hear the sounds of 
 creatures that are abroad in the dark ; perhaps 
 see unknown stars that never rise till after mid 
 night." 
 
 " Yes, in summer," she admitted, " it might 
 be nice and wild." 
 
 " Or in winter either," he persisted. 
 " Wouldn t it be fine now, for instance this 
 very night to go on and on, over the hills 
 and far away, and see what strange country 
 we would come to ? " 
 
 " Yes," she answered, " if the night would 
 only last forever but it won t." 
 
A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 43 
 
 " Doesn t it seem to you," he went on, point 
 ing to the east, " as if some new world lay over 
 there, all full of promise and adventure, if we 
 only had the pluck to undertake it ? It does to 
 me," 
 
 " What shall I see if I ever go over the 
 mountains high ? " she repeated dreamily. 
 
 " Shall we go down this next hill ? " he pro 
 posed abruptly, after another pause. 
 
 " What for ? " 
 
 " I don t know, but let s." 
 
 " Would you ? " 
 
 <l Wouldn t you ? " 
 
 She turned her eyes full upon his in the clear 
 starlight and deliberated in silence : 
 
 The swan s-down feather 
 
 That stands upon the swell at the full of tide, 
 And neither way inclines. 
 
 At last she answered, Why, if you like." 
 
 " Well," he said, and she seated herself re 
 signedly on the sled. 
 
 At the bottom of the hill they arose together. 
 Nothing was said, but, as if by a common un 
 derstanding, they continued to walk on mechan 
 ically in the same direction. This time he did 
 not offer her his arm, and they mounted the 
 acclivity together without speaking. Once only 
 she stopped and asked : 
 
 " Aren t we getting rather far away from the 
 others ? " 
 
 " We can go back any minute," he rejoined, 
 and they walked on. 
 
44 A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 
 
 At the top of this hill they stopped again. 
 They were now cut off by the intervening 
 ridge from the sounds of the coasting party. 
 The cold had moderated greatly within an hour, 
 and yet there was no film of vapor in the 
 heavens. It was one of those halcyon nights, 
 not infrequent in the winter climate of New 
 England whose changeableness is its glory as 
 well as its danger when the wind has fallen, 
 and the temperature has risen so rapidly that, in 
 contrast with the previous rigor of the season, 
 the weather has almost a summer balm, and 
 one can walk abroad comfortably without an 
 overcoat. In the morning there would be a 
 thaw, but now the absence of the sun kept 
 things still at freezing point. The air was just 
 cold enough to be bracing, but so dry and still 
 that it made upon the face only that feeling of 
 freshness which comes with the evening breeze 
 in June. 
 
 "Did you ever read Hawthorne s story of 
 Wakefield ? " asked Brainard. 
 
 " I don t remember it. What was it about ? " 
 
 " A steady-going old fellow, who has lived a 
 life as regular as clockwork for years with his 
 steady-going wife. All of a sudden an impulse 
 takes him. He goes out one October evening, 
 rents lodgings in the next street, disguises him 
 self completely, and for twenty years never 
 goes home again and is given up for dead." 
 
 " Yes, I think I have read it," she murmured. 
 
 "Didn t you ever feel that impulse: to cut 
 yourself off suddenly from the past by one 
 
A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 45 
 
 irrevocable act ; to burn all your ships behind 
 you ; to step across a narrow crack which you 
 know will widen into a crevice, and then into a 
 chasm that you can never get back across ? " 
 
 " Yes," she answered with a suppressed ex 
 citement in her voice ; " I have come to such 
 places and felt the temptation just to put my 
 foot across and see what would happen. I 
 have heard something say in my ear, Now is 
 your chance now now ; do it do it. And 
 then," she added, " I have looked down into the 
 crevice and found no bottom to it, and turned 
 around and gone home again." 
 
 " Yes," said Brainard, " we always do go 
 back. We never have spirit enough to take the 
 venture. I used to ramble along the docks in 
 New York and look at the ocean steamers get 
 ting ready to weigh anchor, and a dozen times 
 I ve been on the point of walking aboard one of 
 them and taking passage to whatever part of 
 the world it was bound for. But I never did." 
 
 She drew a long breath, but answered noth 
 ing. And now a tender white radiance began 
 to suffuse the eastern heaven, and presently a 
 point and then a rim of silver lifted itself above 
 the horizon. 
 
 " The moon ! " they exclaimed together. 
 They watched the planet until its gibbous disk 
 had risen free of the sky-line, and long shadows 
 from trees and fences wavered toward them 
 across the snow crust, sparkling with crystal 
 reflections. 
 
 " Sue," said Brainard in a low voice that 
 
4 6 A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 
 
 thrilled with emotion, " shall we go on toward 
 that ? " 
 
 " Why not ? " she replied. 
 
 As they faced each other in the new light of 
 the moon, it might have seemed that the super 
 stition which attributes madness to lunar in 
 fluence was not altogether fancy. Whether 
 because his eyes were dazzled and full of moon 
 shine, her own looked larger and brighter to 
 him than by day, and her face had an exalted 
 and bewitched expression. Whatever was 
 trivial or familiar in the girl that he had known 
 was strained away, and he found himself alone 
 in the enchanted night with a woman grown 
 suddenly sweet and strange. 
 
 " Because," he said, speaking with momen 
 tous slowness, " if you dare to go on any far 
 ther with me, we may never come back." 
 
 " I never take a dare," she answered defiantly. 
 
 "Dare you kiss me, then?" he asked, ap 
 proaching her. 
 
 She made no reply, but in the steady, auda 
 cious fixure of her regard he found an answer, 
 and seizing her in his arms, he kissed her re 
 peatedly on her cold cheeks and her warm lips, 
 until she covered her face with her hands and 
 stood as if dazed. 
 
 " Now we have crossed the chasm," she 
 said when he released her. 
 
 " We can still go back," he answered, over 
 taken with an instant misgiving, as the spirit 
 of the inevitable, which he had so rashly con 
 jured up, rose before him in its full stature. 
 
A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM, 47 
 
 " What ! after that ? " 
 
 " After what ? " 
 
 " After what you have done to me." 
 
 " Pshaw ! A kiss ! What s that ? " 
 
 " Do you want to go back ? " she asked, with 
 an intonation of irony which provoked him into 
 a feeling of shame for his weakness. 
 
 "Can you think it?" he demanded. "No. 
 Get on the sled." 
 
 Again she seated herself upon the odd vehi 
 cle of their flight, and taking his place behind 
 her, he steered to the east. It needs not to 
 say what relations with others these two had 
 formed or inherited in the world which they 
 were leaving behind them in this unexpected 
 and, as it were, accidental manner. Doubtless 
 in the sober daytime, the ties that they were 
 sundering, the responsibilities that they were 
 throwing off, the places that they were leaving 
 empty forever, would have worn the air of bless 
 ings rather than of burdens or constraints. 
 But the solitary quiet of the winter night, that 
 lay ail unbroken about them, seemed to shut 
 them away in a universe of their own : an un 
 real universe of starshine and snow, where all 
 manner of fantastic dreams might come true ; 
 a lawless, unpeopled universe or peopled by 
 themselves alone, and owing no allegiance to 
 the claims of day. 
 
 It was, at all events, characteristic of human 
 nature that, the step once taken, they dismissed 
 all thought of consequences and yielded them 
 selves to the current. As they receded farther 
 
48 A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 
 
 and farther from home, the elastic air and the 
 sorcery of the moonlight, the very unheard-of 
 wildness of their adventure, raised their spirits 
 to a mood of buoyant and reckless gayety. 
 They coasted down all the hills. Up the slopes 
 and along the levels, by turns they walked or 
 Brainard drew her on the sled. An unwonted 
 strength and lightness possessed him, and he 
 felt no fatigue ; sometimes they danced or 
 waved their arms to see the grotesque motions 
 of their shadows on the snow. Sometimes they 
 sang together or whooped in the still air, and 
 listened for the echo that came back to them 
 from a hillside or from some old barn standing 
 alone among the white fields. For they had 
 now cleared the suburbs and come out into the 
 open country. They talked about themselves 
 and about the appearances of the night and the 
 landscape, and repeated fragments of poetry, 
 and told each other their likes and dislikes. 
 They avoided all mention of yesterday and to 
 morrow, and spoke only of the present. Their 
 breach with the past was complete, and they 
 seemed to themselves to be wandering on and 
 on in a dream from which they would never 
 awake. The girl s bearing toward her new 
 found lover was as capricious as the circum 
 stances in which they found themselves. At 
 times she suffered his caresses and even returned 
 them ; and then again, with an abrupt alterna 
 tion of coyness, she would say, " Please let go 
 my hand, Mr. Brainard, and walk farther off." 
 The moon rose higher, a little wind began to 
 
A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 49 
 
 blow, and puffs of powdery snow were whirled 
 along the road and across the fields. Miss 
 Chantry had not spoken for nearly an hour, and 
 had remained sitting on the sled while Brainard 
 drew her over a long plain. Of a sudden she 
 asked, " What time is it ? " 
 
 He looked at his watch, turning the face to 
 ward the moon. 
 
 " My wa*tch has stopped," he answered. " I 
 forgot to wind it yesterday, and it has run 
 down. But I know that it must be long past 
 midnight." 
 
 " How far have we come ? " 
 " Oh, five or six miles, I should say." 
 " Is it too late to go back ? " 
 " To go back ! " he exclaimed. " You can t 
 mean it, darling "and he came and knelt be 
 side her in the snow. 
 
 " It is too late," she cried passionately, push 
 ing him away. " They have missed me long 
 since ; there is a hue and cry after me now. 
 Oh, what a fool I am, what a fool ! " and she 
 burst into tears. 
 
 " Don t, sweetheart, don t," he remonstrated ; 
 "you will never repent it, I promise you I 
 promise you." 
 
 But he felt a sinking of the heart, and a sick 
 ening uncertainty of everything. The reaction 
 had come to them both, and the awakening. 
 
 " Where are you taking me to ? " she inquired 
 at length. 
 
 " I hadn t thought distinctly of that or of 
 anything else but you. But Reddingham is 
 
50 A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 
 
 about five or six miles ahead, and Clark s Mills 
 is still nearer. We can go there." 
 
 " So that is your new world/ " she ex 
 claimed bitterly. " Redclingham, and Clark s 
 Mills ! " 
 
 " There are places beyond Reddingham," he 
 said sullenly. " It s on the railroad, and we 
 can take the morning train to I don t care 
 where the uttermost parts of the earth, if you 
 like." 
 
 " The morning train the morning train ! 
 she repeated. " There should be no morning 
 for fools like us." 
 
 " Sue," he entreated, " be brave. You are 
 .tired, you are excited. You ll feel better soon." 
 
 "I am tired," she answered listlessly, " and 
 I am cold." 
 
 " Of course you are, poor love poor love, 
 and I am a brute not to have thought of it. 
 See here, I ve got my brandy flask in my over 
 coat pocket ; take a pull at this and it will warm 
 you up." 
 
 She took a draught of the dark-brown liquor, 
 in which the moon made golden reflections, 
 then shuddered, and settled herself once more 
 on the sled. 
 
 " We could go back," said Brainard hesitat 
 ingly, " if you insist upon it, but good Heavens, 
 to what ? And it s as near to Reddingham as 
 to Burlington." 
 
 " No," she said, shaking her head vene-* 
 mently. " We re in for it. Go on. But you 
 are tired. Let me walk." 
 
A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 51 
 
 " Not I not I ; keep your seat. Do you feel 
 warmer now ? " 
 
 " Yes, but awfully sleepy." 
 
 " Lie clown on the sled ; it s long enough ; I ll 
 put my coat over you, and perhaps you can get 
 a nap. 
 
 She curled up on the sled, with her hand 
 under her head. He took off his heavy over 
 coat, tucked it around her, and cutting off a 
 length of superfluous rope from the sled, wound 
 it about her twice and tied it. 
 
 " Now you are tied on, like Mazeppa," he said, 
 with a forced laugh. 
 
 " You need the coat," she murmured. 
 
 " Not in the least ; it hampers me dreadfully. 
 You shut your little eyes now, and I ll take you 
 to Reddingham in no time." 
 
 Grasping the rope, he toiled on with renewed 
 energy. At first he felt chilly without his over 
 coat, but the exercise soon warmed his blood. 
 Gradually he was overcome by drowsiness. 
 The vast white landscape glimmered and swam 
 before his eyes. He caught himself nodding, 
 but still staggered mechanically forward, though 
 with increasing slowness. About cockcrow 
 they passed through a little town, and he 
 thought of Sir Galahad : 
 
 When, on my goodly charger borne, 
 Through dreaming towns I go, 
 
 The cock crows ere the Christmas morn, 
 The streets are dumb with snow. 
 
 This was Clark s Mills, a compact manufa 
 
52 A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 
 
 turing hamlet about three miles from Redding- 
 ham. The houses stood up stark and dead in 
 the moon. In one window a light was burning, 
 and Brainard thought, as he pushed the sled 
 rapidly before him down the pavement, how 
 strange it must sound to the citizen, waking 
 casually in the night, to hear the rumble of run 
 ners, as if some ghostly sledding party was dis 
 porting itself in silence at that uncanny hour in 
 the deserted street. 
 
 After leaving the town, the hills grew steeper 
 and the scenery wilder, intersected from left to 
 right by valleys which narrowed into woody 
 ravines. From the depth of these came, now 
 and then, the long howl of a farmer s dog bay 
 ing the moon, and once the yell of a screech- 
 owl resounded from a distant wood. 
 
 Miss Chantry seemed to have fallen asleep. 
 The impression of unreality, the sensation of 
 moving through a dream, grew stronger in 
 Brainard s mind. All manner of wild and fan 
 tastic images flitted through his brain ; his eyes 
 got heavier and heavier. Nothing kept him 
 from falling but the exertion necessary to drag 
 the sled through the snow. For the track had 
 become now almost unbroken : he had evi 
 dently left the highway and was on some un 
 frequented road where few sleighs had passed. 
 At the top of a hill he roused himself and came 
 to a halt. He was dead tired and felt really 
 unable to go on. The moon was now getting 
 low in the west. It must be, he thought, 
 about three o clock, and they ought to be near- 
 
A MID WIN TER NIGHT S DREA M. 5 3 
 
 ing Reddingham, but no symptom of a town 
 appeared. The summit was a high one and 
 overlooked a region of snowy hillsides topped 
 with gray woods. He stepped to the sled and 
 gazed down upon the unconscious girl. Her 
 finely chiseled features, in the moonlight and in 
 the relaxation of sleep, had the softness of a 
 child s. Her long lashes shadowed her cheek, 
 whose polished roundness, as it took the light, 
 looked almost infantile or cherubic, while be 
 neath the curve of her under lip lay a little well 
 of shade. There was something helpless and 
 confiding in her attitude. She lay on the sledge 
 like a bride in her bride-bed, with a suggestion 
 of domestic intimacy which brought into Brai- 
 nard s heart a sudden rush of pity. The stop 
 ping of the sled aroused her. 
 
 " I am not asleep," she said, opening her eyes* 
 but not offering to move. " Is anything the 
 matter ? " 
 
 " I am afraid we are lost," he replied. 
 " Lost ! " she exclaimed. 
 She sat up at once, and then, removing the 
 coat which had covered her and freeing herself 
 from the rope, she rose to her feet and stared 
 about her. 
 
 " Yes," said Brainard wearily, sitting down 
 on a rock which projected from the snow; 
 "Reddingham ought to be over there some 
 where, and not more than a mile or two away. 
 But I see no signs of it. I must have taken the 
 wrong turning after leaving Clark s Mills." 
 " Can t we ask our way at some house ? " 
 
$4 A MIDWINTER NIGHTS DREAM. 
 
 " We haven t passed a house forever an hour 
 and we seem to be getting into a more and 
 more God-forsaken country. This road is taper 
 ing out, for one thing, and we will have to go 
 back or else take to the crust." 
 
 He was still speaking when, on the opposite 
 hillside, a ruddy glare flashed out on the pale 
 night a parallelogram of living coal, against 
 which could be clearly descried the black 
 figure of a man moving forward and back. 
 
 " What is that ? " cried Miss Chantry, 
 startled. 
 
 " Ah," he exclaimed, leaping to his feet, "it s 
 a charcoal pit. Now I know about where we 
 are. But we have come up into the Woodridge 
 hills, a long way off from the direct road to 
 Reddingham." 
 
 " Hadn t we better go there and inquire our 
 way ? " she suggested. 
 
 " I suppose we had," he replied after a 
 moment s hesitation. " These charcoal-burners 
 are apt to be a tough crowd. But there seems 
 to be no other way. It looks like the mouth of 
 hell," he added, " with Satan feeding the fires." 
 
 They watched the weird spectacle for a few 
 minutes without moving. It was only one 
 more fantastic vision of this night of fantasies 
 and dreams. 
 
 From the open door of the pit, a path of rosy 
 light streamed clown the hillside and across the 
 frozen surface of a small pond in the hollow, 
 The illumination also made visible a group of 
 two or three buildings which stood a little to 
 
A MIDWINTER NIGHTS DREAM. 55 
 
 one side of the pit and somewhat lower on the 
 slope. 
 
 " The shortest way will be to leave the road 
 here and go cross lots over the crust. It will 
 bear/ said Brainard, stamping on a sample 
 piece of it to try its strength. " Come on, quick, 
 before they shut off the light." 
 
 He took up the sled and helped her over the 
 ditch and the rail fence into an open hillside 
 pasture. For the last time they took their seats 
 upon the sled, and the runners were soon glid 
 ing swiftly down the glazed surface of the field, 
 which glinted in the moonbeams like the icing 
 of a gigantic pound-cake. They descended at 
 a constantly accelerating, and at last really 
 frightful, speed. Brainard had all that he could 
 do to guide the sled by digging with his heel 
 into the crust. Miss Chantry gripped the edges 
 of the board and held on with suspended pulse, 
 while the air rushed past their faces like a 
 whirlwind. 
 
 " Pray Heaven there are no stumps or fence- 
 posts in the way," was his secret thought. But 
 in a few seconds, to his great relief, they reached 
 the bottom and rushed out upon the snow- 
 covered ice of the pond. Suddenly the girl 
 screamed. Right across their course, and only 
 a few yards ahead, she saw a black streak of 
 open water. She had just time to throw her 
 self sideways upon the ice, falling close to the 
 edge of the water, into which the sled, and 
 Brainard with it, plunged and disappeared. At 
 the same moment the door of the coal pit 
 
56 A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 
 
 closed and the light went out. Instantly she 
 began shouting for help, but it seemed an age 
 before an answering hallo came back from the 
 hill, and a still longer age before Brainard s 
 head emerged from the belt of dark water, 
 rippling under the moon, upon which her eyes 
 were staring in an agony of fear. He rose near 
 the opposite side of the opening and grasped 
 the edge, which was even and firm, having been 
 cut with an ice plow. 
 
 " O God ! O God ! " she cried, wringing her 
 hands, " what can I do ? I can t get near 
 you." 
 
 " Go back from the edge," he gasped ; " I can 
 hold on. Call for help." 
 
 " I have. Oh, please hold on. Only a min 
 ute. There ! I hear them coming." 
 
 Steps were now heard crashing hurriedly 
 down the hillside through the crust from the 
 direction of the charcoal pits. 
 
 " This way ! " she called. " For God s sake, 
 be quick ; there s a man drowning. Oh, Fred, 
 can you hold on a bit longer ? " 
 
 "Yes," he answered, with chattering teeth, 
 " but the cold is horrible. Look out for a 
 board." 
 
 She ran to and fro distractedly, but not even 
 a stick was to be seen on the white floor of the 
 pond. But now a man ran out from the oppo 
 site bank and approached the opening. 
 
 " Hang on," he called out. " The ice is solid ; 
 it won t break. I ll get you out in a jiffy." 
 
 He neared the edge cautiously and, lying 
 
A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 57 
 
 down at full length, held out both hands to 
 Brainard. 
 
 " Leave go the ice and get a grip on my 
 hands," he directed. 
 
 " Oh, how can I help ? " cried Miss Chantry. 
 " Where can I get a board or something ? " 
 
 " I don t want no board," returned the man ; 
 " run around to this side, quick, and lend a 
 hand." 
 
 The opening was only a few rods long, and 
 in a twinkling she was beside the prone form of 
 the rescuer. 
 
 " Now, lady," said the latter, " you git down 
 on your knees, take a holt o this arm, and pull. 
 Brace yourself agin the ice it ll hold. I ll yank 
 on the other arm. When we git you up s fur s 
 the waist, young feller, you jest lay your leg 
 out on the ice and we ll roll you out." 
 
 There was a short, sharp struggle, and then 
 Brainard lay shivering and dripping on the ice. 
 
 " You had a close call this time, boss, and no 
 mistake," said the man, who was panting from 
 his exertions. " How in hell did you git here, 
 anyway ? " he added with open-mouthed won 
 der. 
 
 " Never mind that now," rejoined Brainard, 
 rising with some difficulty to his feet ; " I must 
 get to a fire and have these clothes off in a 
 hurry. I m chilled to the marrow." 
 
 "Do you feel stiff? Can you run? Well, 
 then, cut up to the shanty. There s a fire and 
 there s clothes, sich as they be, and there s 
 whisky." 
 
58 A MIDWINTER NIGHTS DREAM. 
 
 The three ascended the hill and the man 
 threw open the door of an unplastered wooden 
 cabin, divided by a rude partition into two 
 rooms. In one of these was an air-tight stove 
 which threw out an intense heat from a fire of 
 oak billets. In the other was a bed, and a row 
 of coarse garments hung from the wall. Miss 
 Chantry, who was pale, silent, and very much 
 agitated, paced the floor nervously in the outer 
 room, while their host took Brainard into the 
 penetralia, helped him to strip off his wet cloth 
 ing, and furnished him with a change of raiment. 
 In a few minutes he joined her by the fire and 
 assured her that he was as good as new. The 
 charcoal burner went out to look for the sled. 
 
 " Well, now, what next ? " inquired Brainard 
 as the companion of his adventure paused oppo 
 site him in her restless walk. She looked at 
 him with a new resolution in her eyes. 
 
 " It was not to be," she said. " This is a 
 providence an interposition." 
 
 " Oh, no," he returned, " it is an interruption, 
 that is all." 
 
 "Just think," she whispered, "if you had 
 been drowned." She shuddered, and covered 
 her face with her hands. 
 
 " Oh, come, now, Sue," he remonstrated, and 
 tried to take her hand. 
 
 " No, don t," she cried, breaking away ; " I ll 
 never forgive myself. I ve been dreaming all 
 night. I ve been I don t know what I ve been. 
 But I m wide awake enough now," 
 
 He was silent, 
 
A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 59 
 
 " What time is it? " she asked. 
 
 He pointed to a small wooden clock that 
 stood on a shelf. 
 
 " Four o clock ! " she exclaimed. " There is 
 just one chance for me. If I can catch an early 
 train I can get home, perhaps, before they are 
 up. I have my latch-key, and I ll say that I 
 left Harvey to see Carrie home, and came back 
 early from the hill with you, and let myself in 
 and went right upstairs to bed. There s just 
 that chance that one chance that no one sat 
 up for me at home, and that I haven t been 
 missed. Quick, where s the man ? Maybe he 
 has a horse and sleigh, and can take me over." 
 
 " Sue," began Brainard, again approaching 
 her. 
 
 " No, no," she broke in vehemently. " You 
 can t turn me you can t talk me out of it. 
 You know that I m right. Don t you ? " she 
 asked, looking at him searchingly. 
 
 " And so our little melodrama ends in a 
 farce," he said, evading a direct reply to her 
 appeal. " It s always so." 
 
 " It is better so," she answered. 
 
 " You can t expect me to say yes to that." 
 
 At this moment the charcoal-burner entered. 
 He had been unable to find the sled, and ex 
 plained that it had probably sunk to the bot 
 tom of the pond owing to the weight of the 
 iron on the runners. . 
 
 " Have you got a horse and sleigh ? inquired 
 Miss Chantry hurriedly. " Could you take me 
 over to the depot at Reddingham in time to 
 
60 A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 
 
 catch the first train west ? Do you know what 
 time it goes ? " 
 
 " Why, cert, lady," answered the man slowly ; 
 " I ve got a horse and cutter, and kin hitch up 
 and take you there easy. It ain t but three 
 miles, and the train leaves at 4.55." 
 
 " It will get you to Burlington before half- 
 past five," added Brainard. 
 
 " But ain t you goin to have some breakfast 
 with me fore you go, ma am or lea stvvise a 
 cup of coffee to warm you up ? I ain t no 
 slouch at making coffee." 
 
 " No, no," she said beseechingly. " Please 
 please take me at once, and don t let me miss 
 the train." 
 
 "All right, ma am," he responded good- 
 naturedly, and taking clown a lantern, went out 
 side, where they heard him presently opening 
 the stable door and getting out the horse. 
 
 " I shall have to ask a favor of you, Mr. 
 Brainard," she said, blushing slightly. "I 
 haven t my purse with me the ticket the 
 man 
 
 " Why, am I not going with you ? " he asked. 
 
 "No, no; it won t do for us to be seen to 
 gether at the station. You must stay here, and 
 go back later." 
 
 " But I don t like to let you go alone." 
 
 " It is perfectly safe," she answered ; and he 
 handed her his purse and was silent. 
 
 "What, ain t the gentleman going too?" 
 inquired Brainard s deliverer, as Miss Chantry 
 was helped into the cutter and bade her cava- 
 
A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 6 1 
 
 Her good-by. "There s lots of room for 
 three." 
 
 " No, cap, I m going to stay here till my 
 clothes get dry, and keep house for you till you 
 get back." 
 
 "Wai, I ll be gosh darned!" remarked the 
 puzzled driver, as he gathered up the reins. 
 " Say, mister, when you git sleepy you kin turn 
 in in the bed. I ve got a shake down for myself, 
 and you ll find a pipe and tobacco on the shelf 
 and a jug of whisky in the locker, near the 
 bed." 
 
 " Mind you catch the train," Brainard called 
 after him. 
 
 "You bet," came back on the wind, and 
 horse and sleigh disappeared under the setting 
 moon, 
 
 Brainard slept profoundly, and it was deep 
 in the day when he awoke. At first he lay still 
 and stared at the wall. He could not remember 
 where he was, but an unaccountable feeling of 
 relief possessed him. His eyes were fastened 
 idly upon an object on the wall which he could 
 not at once identify. It was nothing but a big 
 knot in the rough planking of the cabin, through 
 which the sun streamed, making a kernel or 
 focus of light ; but it looked like a great rose or 
 ruby, glowing with vivid scarlets and crimsons, 
 and burning with an intensity which flooded his 
 eyes and his whole being with radiance, and 
 seemed an emblem of some inward happiness. 
 Slowly the twilight between sleep and waking 
 
62 A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 
 
 cleared into full consciousness, and the memory 
 of the night s adventures came back to him. 
 But still he lay in a kind of blissful trance, 
 thinking of the chasm in his life from the brink 
 of which his feet had gone back ; of the bonds 
 and the duties and the habits that had seemed, 
 in the witching light of the moon, a load to be 
 lightly cast off forever, but which now, in the 
 healthy sunshine of the new day, became in 
 finitely sweet and sacred. He heard the drip, 
 drip of thawing snow from the eaves. He 
 heard the charcoal-burner whistling outside, 
 and presently the steady blows of his ax. 
 
 After a while he rose and, finding his dry 
 clothes by the stove, dressed and went out 
 doors. His host was chopping down a tree, 
 one of the last of an army whose stumps pro 
 jected here and there from the snow, and whose 
 trunks had been converted into charcoal. 
 
 " Hello, colonel," he called out, suspending 
 his labor, " you ain t up, be you ? I swanny but 
 you have slept solid. Guess you was out late 
 last night, wasn t you ? I put some breakfast 
 by for you to keep hot, but, gosh ! it must be all 
 dried up by this time." 
 
 "Thank you, I ll go in and help myself to a 
 bite. Did you make the train ? " 
 
 " Wai, we did, and ten minutes to spare "- 
 and he resumed his work. 
 
 Brainard s sense took note of the odor of fresh 
 chips with a keen pleasure. The sun, many 
 hours high, poured a dazzling light over the 
 white, undulating country. .A few chippy-birds 
 
A MIDWINTER NIGHT S DREAM. 63 
 
 were hopping around the doorstep and their 
 cheeping made music in his heart, as did the 
 tinkling sound of little rills of snow-water dis 
 solved in the thaw and stealing off downhill 
 under the crust. The broad, commonplace face 
 of day cheered him with a conviction of the 
 good health of the world, and a thankfulness 
 that the place in that world which he had come 
 so near forfeiting was still kept open to him. 
 
 At Reddingham Station and on the train he 
 was lucky enough to meet no acquaintances. 
 But as he was making his way from the depot 
 at Burlington to the main street, he encountered 
 Wilmot, who greeted him with : 
 
 " Well, well ! What became of you and Sue 
 last night ? We looked for you all over the 
 hill and couldn t find even a mitten of you." 
 
 " Why, you don t expect people to coast all 
 night, do you ? Miss Chantry got cold and 
 tired, and wanted to go home." 
 
 4< Did she seem to be a trifle miffed, too ? " 
 asked Wilmot, with a slight shade of anxiety. 
 
 " Why, no. What should she be miffed 
 about? " 
 
 " Well, what should Miss Gillespie be miffed 
 about? All the same, she was. She wanted \ 
 to go home, and when I looked around for 
 you, and you were gone, and I . told her I 
 guessed she d have to accept the escort of 
 yours truly, she tossed her head and said, 
 you and Sue appeared to like the all-hands- 
 change-partners figure so well that you seemed 
 inclined to keep it up for the rest of the dance. " 
 
64 A MIDWINTER NIGHTS DREAM. 
 
 " Oh, no ! " said Brainard, with an uneasy 
 laugh. " It answered well enough for an 
 evening, but it wouldn t do for good." 
 
 " Thank you. Same here. But girls don t 
 take a joke worth a cent, and I think I ll go 
 around to Sue s and make my peace. She 
 might have been miffed and you not seen it. 
 Men are so damned obtuse, you know." 
 
 Miss Chantry was punctual at breakfast that 
 morning, and was rallied by the family on her 
 paleness. 
 
 "Coasting doesn t agree with everyone/ 
 said her brother Gilbert ; " makes some peo 
 ple sea-sick." 
 
 "You must have got home very late," said 
 her mother. " I didn t hear you come in." 
 
 "On the contrary," she asserted, "it was 
 very early." 
 
 "Well," said her father, from the window, 
 where he stood in his slippers, newspaper in 
 hand, and regarded the street, " it s the last of 
 the coasting, for the present. The January 
 thaw has set in and the wind is dead south." 
 
III. 
 
 A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 ]R. WILLIAM MERRIMAN, JR., de 
 scribed by his friends as a rising young 
 lawyer, came uptown one evening in 
 December about an hour later than 
 usual. It was his habit to stop somewhere on 
 the way up and dine in a leisurely way, and then 
 to get to his room at half-past seven or there 
 abouts. On this particular evening, however, 
 he had lingered over his coffee and newspaper, 
 and now, as he reached the door of his apart 
 ment, he was made aware of the lateness of the 
 hour by the roar of the grate inside. The 
 chambermaid had been instructed to leave the 
 blower up when she kindled the fire, by which 
 means the reluctant draught was coaxed into 
 efficiency just at the time of his customary 
 arrival. It had now an hour s extra headway, 
 but the faithful domestic, with the unreasoning 
 obedience of a Casabianca, stuck to the letter of 
 her instructions. Accordingly, when Merriman 
 entered the room he found things booming. A 
 loud smell of varnish went up from the legs of 
 the chairs, a crimson glare from the bottom of 
 the grate smote upon the carpet, and a fiery 
 crack defined the outline of the dull red blower. 
 
6 A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 This last being taken down, the walls and ceil 
 ing bloomed like a rose ; and while the glow 
 ing iron snapped and cracked, as it slowly 
 cooled, Merriman got himself into dressing 
 gown and slippers, lighted a big pipe, settled 
 himself in his easy-chair and, by the steady 
 firelight, proceeded to read a brace of letters 
 which he had found on his mantel. The first of 
 these ran as follows : 
 
 BLANKSKILL-ON-HlJDSON, 
 
 December 18, 187-. 
 DEAR MR. MERRIMAN : 
 
 Mamma is ill with a cold, so I am doing- her cor 
 respondence. We came up to Blankskill very un 
 expectedly, but now that we have opened the house 
 we mean to spend Christmas here, and we have hit 
 on quite a bright idea. We are going to ask about 
 a hundred people up for the evening of Christmas 
 Day and have that little comedy over again which 
 had such a success at the charity entertainment 
 " If She be not Fair for Me," you know. We shall 
 expect you to take the same part you had before. 
 The actors ought to be here by the 2$d to re 
 hearse, if possible. So you must R. S. V. P. We 
 shall keep a few choice spirits through the holi 
 days, and of course mamma says you are to con 
 sider yourself included in that list. There will be 
 sleighing, and, I hope, ice boating, if the river only 
 keeps frozen. So you must make arrangements 
 to leave your anxious clients for a few days. We 
 will let you go back in time for New Year s 
 calls. 
 
 Very truly, 
 
 HARRIET VAN SHUYSTER. 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 69 
 
 The other letter bore the postmark of a small 
 hill-town in Berkshire, Mass., and these were 
 its contents, to wit : 
 
 CHUCKATUCK, December 18, 187-. 
 MY DEAR COUNSELOR : 
 
 Can t you get off at Christmas for a week up here ? 
 We are alone, as usual, my sister and myself, and 
 can t offer you anything brilliant in the way of enter 
 tainment. You used to like to take long walks in 
 college and then come home and " chin" over a 
 wood fire. We can do that here to satiety. We 
 can take you sleighing too, if the snow doesn t drift 
 off the roads. Then you needn t go to church and 
 hear me preach if you don t want to. I will lend 
 you the MS. of my sermon, which will do just as 
 well. Say you will come. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 CHARLES HOPKINSON. 
 
 P. S. You take the Housatonic Railroad at 
 Bridgeport and stage for Chuckatuck at Whistle- 
 ville. Fishing through the ice on the pond. 
 
 The warmth of the room had a relaxing 
 effect on the will, and the recipient of these 
 invitations sat a long time in a luxury of in 
 decision. A complacent smile stole now and 
 then across his face, and his thoughts were 
 evidently as rosy as the clouds that curled 
 upward from his meerschaum. 
 
 Presently footsteps came -along the hall, fol 
 lowed by a smart rap at the door. 
 
 " Come in," called out Merriman lazily, not 
 troubling himself to look around. 
 
7 A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 The door opened, and a tall, Mephistophelian- 
 looking man, with a sallow face and black 
 mustache, stepped into the room. " For God s 
 sake ! " he exclaimed ; " do you keep a Turkish 
 bath here ? " 
 
 "Hallo, Willett; that you? Come in. 
 Why haven t you been in before ? " 
 
 " In before ! Who do you think is coming 
 into such a hell on earth ? Open a window, 
 quick." 
 
 " Why, of course," laughed Merriman. " I 
 was thinking of it, but I couldn t get up the 
 energy. Just open that one in the alcove, and 
 then come and sit down." 
 
 Willett flung up a window, and then, ap 
 proaching the mantel, said, " Give me a pipe. 
 I ve got time for just one smoke." 
 
 "You re always in a hurry," grumbled his 
 friend. "Sans aucune affaire et tonjours 
 ajfairt that s you. If you want a big-Injun 
 smoke there s old Popocatepetl on the table. 
 If you want a little smoke for a cent you d 
 better take Spitfire there on the shelf." 
 
 Willett picked up a pipe and began filling it 
 from a large jar representing the face of the 
 sleeping Holofernes. " Which it is limited," 
 he said, looking around the small room ; but 
 added approvingly, "which it is a bijou. 
 
 " It is kind of decorative. But haven t you 
 been here since I took these quarters ?" 
 
 " Never. You used to be on the other side 
 of the shebang, one flight up, last time I was 
 here." 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 7 1 
 
 " Well, how are you, anyway ? To-night 
 you co\\\egerade wie geivunsckt : I want your 
 professional advice. Sit down, and I ll put the 
 case. Have some whisky first ? " 
 
 " I will always have some whisky if properly 
 approached." 
 
 " Then read those two letters while I make a 
 tod, and tell me what to do." 
 
 Willett took the letters and read them gravely 
 through. He frowned a little and drew down 
 his heavy eyebrows, sucking silently at his pipe, 
 as he read. 
 
 " Well ? " said Merriman at length. " What 
 does the calumet say to my brother the saga 
 more ? Here, take your firewater and give us 
 your talk." 
 
 " Which do you want to do ? " 
 
 " I can t make up my mind." 
 
 "Toss up a cent." 
 
 :< At least, I know what I want to do, but I 
 don t know what I ought to do." 
 
 " In that case do the one you want to do." 
 
 " Willett, you have no Moral Earnestness. I 
 have long suspected it : now I know it." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I have, lots of M. E.; but where 
 does it come in here ? " 
 
 " Die Sac/ie ist ndmlich die : Hopkinson is 
 always asking me up there, and I ve never been. 
 I don t want him to think that I m cutting him. 
 Hopkinson is a very good fellow, if he is a 
 parson, and we were very thick in college 
 chummed together for a year, in fact. I m un 
 der considerable obligations to him in one way 
 
72 A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 and another. I ought to go. I really ought." 
 Merriman repeated this with the futile emphasis 
 of irresolute persons when they are trying to 
 bully themselves into a determination. As he 
 sat in the light of the fire, his face offered a 
 strong contrast to the swarthy, sardonic coun 
 tenance of his friend, its length of jaw and high 
 cheek bones. Merrirnan s face, with its deli 
 cately cut features, pale complexion, and straw- 
 colored side whiskers, expressed lively intelli 
 gence combined with a certain weakness. " I 
 know it will be a beastly bore," he continued : 
 " muffin-worries, and calls from parishioners; 
 introduced to the senior deacon and the village 
 belle with ringlets and the man who keeps 
 the academy, probably a graduate of Podunk 
 University. And then the sister is doubtless 
 the worst sort of old frump. The fact is, I am 
 sorry for Hopkinson. He has the making of a 
 man in him, but he is stuck off there on a 
 huckleberry hill with a salary of twelve hundred 
 dollars, and he s getting into the narrowest kind 
 of rut. I suppose he reads nothing but the 
 Missionary Herald and that sort of thing. 
 Last time I saw him he looked all gone to seed." 
 Merriman paused to contemplate the mental 
 image of the Rev. Mr. Hopkinson, and sipped 
 meditatively at his glass. 
 
 "The Van Shuysters are swellness ?" sug 
 gested Willett. 
 
 " Rather swell rather swell," answered 
 Merriman complacently. " I wish they wouldn t 
 put a crest on their note-paper ; and Blankskill- 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 73 
 
 on-Huclson is too much agony. But women 
 will do such things." 
 
 " And the Miss V., I suppose, is prettier than 
 a spotted purp ? " 
 
 " Well, she s not bad. But you ve seen her, 
 haven t you ? " 
 
 "No, I think not. Oh, you d better take 
 them up and have a good time of it. If you go 
 to Hopkinson s, now, you ll get nothing but 
 grocery cider with your Christmas dinner, and 
 have to go out on the stoop for a smoke. 
 Whereas if you do the other party, you can 
 travel with great drinking, deliciously money 
 spend, like your French friend wasn t it? 
 who wrote you that letter from Montreal." 
 
 " Yes," said Hopkinson, laughing at the recol 
 lection : " deliciously money spend that was 
 the phrase." 
 
 " Then on Sunday you ll have to hear out of 
 common politeness two sermons at least from 
 your host ; whereas at Blankskill-on-Hudson, I 
 infer, they knock spots out of the Christian 
 Sabbath." 
 
 " Willett, I fear you are little better than one 
 of the wicked." 
 
 Willett eyed him severely for a moment, and 
 then replied, " Far be it from me to speak 
 slightingly of your religious opportunities. I 
 am myself since my engagement a polished 
 corner of the temple. Go, by all means. Go 
 up, Baldhead. Yes, go up to Hardscrabble, 
 was the name ? and my blessing go with 
 you." 
 
74 A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 "But you haven t told me what excuse to 
 give Hopkinson." 
 
 "Tell him you had accepted the other bid 
 before you got his." 
 
 The two young men regarded each other 
 steadfastly and then burst into a simultaneous 
 explosion of laughter. 
 
 " You are a bad man a bold, bad man," 
 said Merriman. " Have another tod, and fill 
 up your pipe." 
 
 " No ; I must be going," replied Willett, 
 looking at his watch. He rose and wandered 
 round the room, examining the various articles 
 of " bigotry and virtue," and then, with an 
 abrupt " Good-night," took his departure. 
 
 Coming in like the monitions of the worldly 
 voice in " Dipsychus," Willett s counsel had 
 fixed for a moment the vacillating impulses in 
 Merriman s mind ; and, while the impression 
 was fresh, he lighted the gas and dashed off 
 answers to his two invitations, sealed and ad 
 dressed them, and sent out for a messenger 
 boy to post them. 
 
 Let us follow them to their destinations. 
 
 Mrs. Van Shuyster and her daughter were 
 sitting by an open fire in the library of their 
 country house at Blankskill-on-Hudson. The 
 wind shook the French windows, which opened 
 on a wide piazza. Thence the eye ranged 
 over a lawn glittering with crusted snow, over 
 clumps of Scotch firs weighed clown with piles 
 of feathery white, over the ice-bound river far 
 below and the dreary opposite hills. The drive- 
 
A CO AT ED Y OF ERRORS. 75 
 
 way which wound across the lawn was well 
 broken with sleigh tracks, but just at present 
 no living thing was in sight except a few men 
 stirring about the big ice-houses on the other 
 bank. The elder of the two ladies was a 
 comely matron, with the long Dutch nose and 
 heavy Knickerbocker chin. The same features 
 were repeated in Miss Van Shuyster, but with 
 the softer emphasis of youth. She had, too, 
 her mother s fresh complexion and tendency 
 to stoutness. Mrs. Van Shuyster was busy 
 over some mysterious piece of needlework ; 
 her daughter was listlessly turning over the 
 pages of a novel. Now and then the latter 
 yawned and looked dreamily out upon the 
 winter landscape. A young-lady cousin lay 
 asleep on the sofa, and her breathing was 
 more than audible. 
 
 " How that child does sleep ! " said Mrs. Van 
 Shuyster softly. 
 
 " How that child does snore ! " rejoined her 
 daughter. 
 
 " I m afraid she has taken a bad cold." 
 
 " Of course she has going out last evening 
 without the ghost of an overshoe. She s too 
 giddy for any use." 
 
 " Isn t it almost time for the mail ? " asked 
 Mrs. Van Shuyster after a long silence. 
 
 " Yes, it is after time ; and there s John 
 now." 
 
 And in fact the jingle of sleigh-bells was 
 heard, and a cutter came up the drive. The elder 
 lady went placidly on with her work, but the 
 
7 6 A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 younger threw down her book and stepped to the 
 window. The slight noise aroused the sleeper, 
 who sat up under her rug and rubbed her eyes. 
 " Have I been asleep ? " she asked. 
 
 Both ladies laughed, and Mrs. Van Shuyster 
 answered, " Well, you sounded like it." 
 
 " Oh, did I snore did I snore ? How 
 horrid ! Why didn t you wake me up ? " 
 
 " Call it stertorous breathing, Charlie," said 
 Miss Van Shuyster soothingly. 
 
 " Call it fiddlesticks ! You d have let me 
 do it all the same if the room had been full of 
 men." She approached the mirror over the 
 mantel and gazed ruefully at her reflection. 
 " What a nose I ve got on me ! " she continued. 
 " It s a regular purple. I know I shall be a 
 perfect fright next Tuesday. I m mad enough 
 to go upstairs and bite the bureau." 
 
 " Go up, instead, and put some cold cream on 
 your nose," suggested her cousin. 
 
 " It will go down before Tuesday," said her 
 aunt, inspecting the offending member with the 
 air of a connoisseur. 
 
 " Oh, do you think so ? " 
 
 " It won t if you fuss with it," said Miss Van 
 Shuyster brutally. " Put some cream on it, and 
 let it alone." 
 
 At this point the door opened, and a servant 
 brought in some letters, which she handed to 
 Miss Van Shuyster, who tore them open eagerly, 
 one after another, and announced the contents : 
 " This one is from the Hoffman Duyks ; they 
 are all coming ; that s good. H m ! Mr, Lam- 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 77 
 
 pick sends regrets ; he has to go to Washing 
 ton. Well, somebody else will have to take 
 Alonzo. Fortunately the part is short ; but 
 then his mustache is a great loss. Here s a 
 note from Mrs. Madison May. He is coming, 
 but she can t. Well, no one wants her. Oh, 
 here is one from Mr. Merriman. It is to you, 
 mamma: will you read it ? " 
 
 " Why, no, my dear. I suppose they are all 
 to me, aren t they ? " 
 
 " Oh, is Mr. Merriman coming ? " broke in 
 the impetuous Charlie. " I think he is just 
 too lovely ! Don t tell me that he isn t coming ! 
 It would darken all my young life." She 
 clasped her hands with a tragic gesture and 
 lifted her eyes appealingly to her cousin, who 
 colored slightly under her gaze. 
 
 Miss Charlotte Middlesex known to her 
 intimates, who were numerous, as " Charlie" 
 was a rapid brunette, with a baby face and 
 large, innocent eyes. She had also a low, coo 
 ing voice; and under cover of all these advan 
 tages she managed to say and do the riskiest 
 things with an air of confiding simplicity. 
 
 "There must be some mistake: I don t un 
 derstand," began Miss Van Shuyster, glancing 
 over the letter. " The envelope is addressed 
 to mamma, but the letter begins, Dear 
 Charlie. " 
 
 " Why, it must be for me ! " exclaimed Miss 
 Middlesex. 
 
 " Do be still, you ridiculous girl ! Mamma, 
 see if you can make it out." 
 
7 A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 Mrs. Van Shuyster took the letter and read 
 it out, as follows : 
 
 DEAR CHARLIE : 
 
 It would give me the greatest pleasure to take up 
 your offer for the holidays, but I have just written 
 accepting a bid to make one at a Christmas party 
 at Mrs. Van Shuyster s, up the North River. I m 
 very sorry, but it can t be helped. Perhaps I can 
 run up and see you some time before long and take 
 in the walks and the fishing through the ice. Don t 
 fail to let me know when you come down to New 
 York. Please give my respects to your sister, and 
 believe me 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 WILLIAM MERRIMAN. 
 
 " Oh, now I see it all," said Miss Van Shuys 
 ter. " He was writing to us and to some 
 other people, and he has exchanged envelopes. 
 What a thing for a man to do ! And he always 
 laughing at us for being Mrs Nicklebys and 
 sending bundles by kindness of Mr. So-and-So, 
 instead of by express, and for being afraid to 
 write on postal cards for fear the post-office 
 men would read it. Oh, we ll never let him 
 hear the last of it. Don t lose that letter, 
 mother, for the world. We ll learn it by heart 
 and quote it to him. We ll make his life per 
 fectly miserable." 
 
 " Hattie ! " said her mother warningly. And 
 then, looking at the letter again, " It seems that 
 we may expect him, at any rate : he says as 
 much to his correspondent here. Put the letter 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 79 
 
 in my desk, dear, and I will give it to him when 
 he comes. It would hardly be worth while to 
 send it back, I suppose. He will start before it 
 can reach New York." 
 
 " I wish I knew who got the other letter, and 
 what was in it," murmured Miss Middlesex. 
 " It might be something awfully compromising. 
 Wouldn t it be fun if it was ? like things in 
 Shakspere, you know." 
 
 " Compromising to whom ? " demanded her 
 cousin sharply. 
 
 " Oh, not to you, clear, not to you, of course ; 
 but maybe to Dear Charlie, whoever he is. 
 Charlie Charlie ! It s quite a coincidence, 
 isn t it?" 
 
 " I don t see any coincidence about it," an 
 swered Miss Van Shuyster. 
 
 Meanwhile the other letter had reached port. 
 
 The postmaster who was likewise the store 
 keeper at Chuckatuck had pigeonholed the 
 last newspaper of the afternoon mail. The few 
 people in waiting had taken their departure, 
 but the ring of village loafers still hugged the 
 stove, on whose red-hot sides the sizzle of the 
 frying tobacco-juice acted as a gentle stimulant 
 to conversation. The talk was suspended 
 for a few minutes by the entrance of a young 
 lady wrapped in a hooded cloak with scarlet 
 lining, who brought in with her a breath of cold 
 air. The gossips eyed her with the respectful 
 and furtive curiosity due to the minister s sister, 
 while she called for her mail, received a single 
 letter, and went quickly out again. Inside, the 
 
8o A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 stream of debate resumed its deliberate course. 
 Outside, the wind was sharp and the twilight 
 gathering. As the minister s sister turned into 
 the slender path trodden in the snow, which led 
 down through the pasture, across the frozen 
 brook, and up the hill to the parsonage, she 
 noticed that the lamp had already been lighted 
 in the study and was sending its glimmer 
 through the network of bare orchard boughs. 
 But her impatience to see the inside of the letter 
 was such that she opened it as she walked 
 along, and spelled out its contents by the fad 
 ing light. The envelope was directed to the 
 Rev. Charles Hopkinson, though in opening it 
 she was not committing one of those small 
 feminine breaches of honor over which the cyn 
 ical reader might naturally " chortle." The 
 Rev. Charles, in fact, had gone off for a day or 
 two to a " convocation " a mysterious period 
 ical ceremony whose recurrences formed the 
 only dissipations of his quiet life. He had 
 commissioned his sister to open all his letters 
 in his absence. Some of them might need im 
 mediate attention. In particular, he was ex 
 pecting an answer to his invitation to Merriman. 
 If the latter was coming, there were certain 
 household preparations to be made, of which 
 Miss Hopkinson should have timely warning. 
 On the other hand, if he was not coming, she 
 was free to accept an invitation to spend Christ 
 mas with some friends at a distance. She had 
 resigned herself to the self-denial of staying at 
 home to help entertain her brother s old college 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 8 1 
 
 chum, and her resignation had been made 
 easier, perhaps, by a certain flutter of expecta 
 tion natural to a youthful spinster about to be 
 confronted with a rising young lawyer from New 
 York, whose fascinating qualities her brother 
 was never weary of describing. Only a few 
 evenings ago, as they sat before the study fire, 
 Hopkinson had said, breaking out from a long 
 reverie, " Bill Merriman is one of the few fellows 
 that I know who haven t changed for the worse 
 since leaving college. When I go to the city 
 and hunt up my old classmates I come back 
 feeling melancholy. They seem to me to have 
 grown coarse, and I probably seem to them to 
 have grown narrow. They act as if they were 
 glad to see me, and are very kind, and all that, 
 but I can tell from their talk that their ideals 
 have become lower. They ve lost their old en 
 thusiasms; they re all for money money. I ve 
 no doubt they think me a stick. Now Merri 
 man has retained a kind of fine boyishness : he 
 is just the same old chap, and it makes me feel 
 younger to see him." Miss Hopkinson made 
 no reply to this outburst, and presently he went 
 on : " I m afraid, though, from what he told me 
 the last time I saw him, that he is going too 
 much into society. A young lawyer had better 
 stick to his books pretty closely at first." 
 
 " But think how society would suffer," sug 
 gested his sister. 
 
 " Oh, come, now, don t be ironical. I see 
 you are bound to nurse a prejudice against 
 Merriman." 
 
82 A COMEDY OF ERROXS. 
 
 " Well, if he is such a swell as you say, what 
 are we going to do to entertain him up here ? 
 Shall we take him to the meeting of the Dorcas 
 Society, or show him the public buildings? 
 There s the jail, now, and the bank. Or he 
 might go to the store and be weighed." 
 
 "Oh, you don t know Merriman ; he likes 
 this sort of thing just as much as you or I." 
 
 " What sort of thing ? " 
 
 "Well nature, for instance: walks, etc. 
 He will be interested in your collection of 
 ferns." 
 
 14 How kind of him ! " 
 
 " And sitting by the fire this way. We used 
 to have many an owl over the fire Saturday 
 nights in old South Middle. And that reminds 
 me : I must get that box of hickory nuts down 
 from the garret. I hope they haven t turned 
 rancid. And there s some of the canned cider 
 left that Deacon Appleseed sent in at the dona 
 tion party. But, Sarah dear, I ve told you a 
 dozen times that you must not give up your 
 visit on our account. Emma and I can run the 
 house well enough and take care of him with 
 out you." 
 
 Sarah s answer to this was to rise and come 
 behind her brother s chair. She took hold of 
 both his ears, and, bending over, kissed him 
 on the forehead. " You dear old thing ! " she 
 said. " You and Emma run the house ! I 
 think I see you ! What would you get to eat ? 
 No ; if he is coming I shall stay, though I know 
 I shan t like him." 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 8 3 
 
 " Yes, you will," asserted her brother 
 warmly : " he always makes himself agreeable 
 to women. The only thing about him that 
 you may not like at first is his not exactly 
 frivolity; Merriman is not a frivolous man at 
 bottom but I am afraid he is getting some 
 worldly notions in New York. I mean to have 
 a serious talk with him, if I get a chance." 
 
 It may admit of a doubt whether Merriman s 
 worldliness was really a very strong objection 
 to him in Miss Hopkinson s mind, or whether, 
 in her secret thought, she cherished so strong 
 an assurance that she should dislike him as 
 she pretended. She chose to take a defiant 
 tone in speaking about him to her brother ; 
 but who knows what little plans she made for 
 the time of his visit, what little touches of new 
 ness her simple wardrobe privately underwent, 
 what innocent dreams lent a subdued excite 
 ment to her maiden meditations ? 
 
 And now the epistle was come which would 
 decide her plans for the holidays. 
 
 A single quick glance, as she took it from the 
 hands of the postmaster, had told her that the 
 postmark was New York and that the hand 
 writing was well, was similar, in fact, to the 
 autograph under a certain photo in the Rev. 
 Charles Hopkinson s class album. 
 
 Miss Hopkinson was not conscious what a 
 charming " spot of color " she added to the 
 demi-gray landscape as she walked slowly on, 
 intent on deciphering the letter, or now and 
 then stood still to make out a word. The snow 
 
84 A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 creaked under her sauntering footsteps ; the 
 wind, which made a wintry music among the 
 dry stalks of golden rod along the path, swayed 
 her light figure, and blowing aside her cloak, 
 exposed the scarlet lining. It also rumpled the 
 fringe of yellow hair that hung down under the 
 eaves of her hood, and when at last she finished 
 the letter and lifted her indignant eyes, the 
 darkening heaven which they encountered was 
 less deeply and softly blue. Indignant eyes, 
 for they had just read the following words : 
 
 DEAR MRS. VAN SHUYSTER : 
 
 Your invitation comes just in time to save me 
 from another, which I couldn t very well have 
 declined, to spend my Christmas with a clerical class 
 mate who "keeps a few sheep in the wilderness," 
 with an old-maid sister for shepherdess. Accept my 
 gratitude, and expect me on the 23d to rehearse, 
 though I think I remember the part well enough. 
 Yours thankfully, 
 
 WILLIAM MERRIMAN. 
 
 The snarl of emotions which filled the young 
 lady s breast, the reader will hardly expect me 
 to untangle. She gave a fierce little laugh and 
 clutched the wicked missive tightly as she 
 strode up the hill. Had she been given to 
 soliloquy a habit convenient to novelists, but 
 seldom, alas ! indulged in in this work-a-day 
 world her monologue might perhaps have run 
 in this wise : " Well, you have given yourself 
 away, Mr. William Merriman ! So I m an old 
 maid, am I, and a shepherdess, and Charlie is 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 85 
 
 a clerical classmate ? poor Charlie, that 
 thinks he is his best friend, and all the while 
 he is laughing at him behind his back and 
 sneering about us to his rich acquaintances 
 like Hattie Van Shuyster. (What a queer 
 coincidence that he should be going to the Van 
 Shuysters ! Of course he can t know that 
 Hattie is a friend of mine.) He thinks we are 
 not swell enough for him. I always knew 
 he would prove to be a snob, a perfidious, 
 ungrateful, odious snob," etc., etc. 
 
 The letter raised a number of problems, 
 which she puzzled over as she sat at tea that 
 evening. Ought she, for instance, to destroy 
 the note, or keep it till Charlie came back, and 
 then show it to him and let him return it to 
 Merriman without further comment than to 
 mark on the envelope, in lead-pencil, " Opened 
 by mistake by C. H." ? This latter plan would 
 have a fine crushing effect. But then she knew 
 that the letter would make Charlie feel badly, 
 and she was not quite sure that he would ap 
 prove of her having gone on to read it after 
 seeing that the address was a mistake. Men 
 are so fussy about these little points. Then, 
 again, ought she under the circumstances to give 
 up her projected visit or to spend her Christmas 
 at home ? " Charlie will be awfully lonely," she 
 thought, " but then what a chance ! what a 
 chance ! " And she smiled maliciously as she 
 packed her trunk and put the letter in the tray 
 of it. 
 
 The next morning her brother came back. 
 
86 A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 She greeted him with more effusion than usual, 
 and hung on his arm as he stood warming him 
 self by the air-tight stove in the hall. 
 
 " Any letters ? " he asked after a while. 
 
 " Oh, yes, a few lines from Mr. Merriman. 
 He can t come, because he has made another 
 engagement for the holidays. So I ve packed 
 up, and I told Mason to have the stage stop for 
 me after dinner. But, Charlie dear, I don t feel 
 at all like going and leaving you alone. Please 
 reconsider and go with me. The Van Shuysters 
 will be so glad. Hattie has been wanting to 
 know you for years ; and you know what a point 
 they made of your coming." 
 
 " No, no ; I can t," answered Charlie. " Jen 
 kins has made arrangements to exchange with 
 Burroughs next Sunday, and couldn t preach 
 for me. Old Mr. Stone may drop off any 
 minute, and the family wouldn t like anyone 
 else to conduct the funeral. I shouldn t prob 
 ably enjoy the party much anyway, I should 
 have to hurry back so. I m sorry Merriman 
 can t come, but I shall have a snug Christmas 
 and get that work done for the Christian And 
 iron that I promised to send them a week ago. 
 You didn t burn Merriman s letter, did you ? " 
 
 " No ; I laid it down somewhere. You might 
 find it on the library table and then, again, 
 you mightn t," she added under her breath, as 
 she ran off to the kitchen for a final interview 
 with Emma, the " help." 
 
 The late lamented Van Shuyster had amused 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 87 
 
 his leisure with scientific and artistic dabblings, 
 and had built a large room with a skylight 
 adjoining his library, in which to carry on 
 experiments in the black arts of photography, 
 electricity, and molding in clay. This, Mrs. 
 Van Shuyster, who had a passion for theatricals, 
 had lately reorganized into a sort of dramatic 
 saloon, closing the skylight and arranging a 
 tasteful little stage at the upper end. Here, on 
 the evening of Christmas day, was seated an 
 audience of some two hundred guests, waiting 
 for the play to begin. The room was unlighted 
 except by the reflection from the drop-curtain, 
 which hung softly brilliant in the radiance of 
 the foot-lights. On either side of the stage 
 were painted in fresco grotesque masks, socks 
 and buskins, and other histrionic insignia. The 
 walls were decorated with Christmas greens 
 and illuminated Gothic texts expressive of senti 
 ments appropriate to the season. A subdued 
 hum of conversation filled the assembly, a faint 
 perfume hovered on the air, and here and there 
 a jewel flashed in the dimness. There were 
 yet some minutes to spare before the curtain 
 would be rung up, and Merriman, who had 
 finished dressing for his part, stepped out upon 
 the stage in the costume of a Spanish alcalde of 
 the seventeenth century. Finding a crack in 
 the curtain, he began a leisurely survey of the 
 audience. He was presently joined by Miss 
 Van Shuyster, who emerged from a thicket at 
 L. L. E. in a ravishing peasant costume with 
 shortish skirts and high heels, and with her 
 
88 A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 arms, which were shapely but rather massive 
 for a young girl, bare to the shoulder. 
 
 " Well, well ! Such curiosity ! " she ex 
 claimed. 
 
 " Sh ! " he responded softly ; " here s an 
 other hole ; come and peep." 
 
 "Who is here?" she asked. "I haven t 
 seen a soul yet outside of the troupe, I ve been 
 so busy getting things ready. Mamma and 
 Charlie have been receiving the people. Aren t 
 you awfully nervous ? " 
 
 " Frightfully. I know a few of the audience, 
 but more of them I don t. The room is 
 rather dark to make out faces. Come and do 
 Helen on the battlements of Troy pointing out 
 the leaders of the Greeks to the Trojan old men. 
 I ll be a Trojan old man. Don t I look vener 
 able in this dress ? " 
 
 " Talk about dresses ! I never, never will be 
 a peasant again. Don t you think it s horrid ? " 
 
 He turned and inspected her critically. She 
 cast down her eyes and stood demurely to be 
 looked at, with the least little conscious red on 
 her cheek. " You mean," he said, " that it s a 
 trifle unsecluded ? Well, you can t expect me 
 to object to that." 
 
 " Ac/i / gehen Sie ! gehen Sie ! " she an 
 swered, turning away. " Where is that peep 
 hole?" 
 
 " Here is mine, and there is a larger one for 
 you close by it." 
 
 It was in effect so close that, as they stood 
 side by side to play spy on the audience, her 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 89 
 
 dress brushed slightly against him, and he be 
 came aware of that subtle aroma which is 
 neither the breath of the lips nor the fragrance 
 of the hair, nor yet any definite odor like violet 
 or musk, but which is a delicate suggestion and 
 reminiscence of all these and holds a natural 
 affinity with silk and kidskin. She stood very 
 still, as if the proximity was not unpleasant. 
 Merriman was evidently on easy terms with this 
 young lady, and it occurred to him now, as it 
 had often done before, with a certain complac 
 ency, that her inclination toward him was 
 rather thinly disguised. Augustus Montague 
 had once said to him at a ball Augustus Mon 
 tague, whose acuteness of observation was 
 only equaled by his frankness of speech : 
 
 " Damn it, Merriman, why don t you go in 
 for Miss Van ? I ll bet my sweet life she says 
 Yes. A bonanza, my boy ; millions in it. 
 Law s awful slow ; you ll never get rich at it. 
 Fire out your office-boy, and take Miss Van 
 into partnership. Wedding in Grace Church : 
 tour out West ; settle down on the old woman 
 for a few months ; and then Mrs. M. finds that 
 her throat is delicate and she can t stand this 
 beastly changeable climate, and so off you go, 
 up the Nile and everywhere, first bestowing a 
 life-pension on yours truly in gratitude for this 
 advice." 
 
 " In sooth, Augustus," Merriman had an 
 swered, laughing, " I might do worse. And 
 there she is now ; I ll go ask her to dance." 
 
 " Conceited cuss ! but the women like him," 
 
QO A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 murmured Mr. Montague, as he watched his 
 friend making his way up the room. 
 
 And indeed Merriman had often acknowl 
 edged to himself in his more worldly moods 
 that he might do worse. Wealth, with its re 
 finements and elegancies, had lost none of its 
 glamour in the eyes of an ambitious youth 
 reared in a New England factory town, who 
 had struggled with poverty through school and 
 college and had come to New York with a 
 sharp appetite for success. Besides, Miss Van 
 Shuyster, though somewhat heavy and com 
 monplace, was not without personal attrac 
 tions. Montague s remark passed through his 
 mind again this evening as he stood adjusting 
 his eye to the little slit in the canvas. 
 
 The spectators were grouped with a pictur 
 esque irregularity. There was no slope to the 
 floor of the theater, but the seating had been 
 arranged as far as possible so as to let those at 
 the rear look over the heads of those in front. 
 Nearest to the stage was a double row of men 
 squatted Turkish fashion on the carpet here 
 and there among them a young woman lifted 
 above the general level upon a cushion or 
 brioche. Conspicuous among these was Miss 
 Charlotte Middlesex, chattering and laughing 
 with her admirers. " Now, I want you to 
 understand," she called out, " that we all be 
 long to the claque down here, and I shall ex 
 pect you to back the show." 
 
 " Shall we applaud everything, Charlie ? " 
 asked one. 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 91 
 
 " No, indeed. Oh, I have my favorites, I 
 tell you. You must wait for me to give the 
 signal. When I want you to clap, I ll tap Mr. 
 Block on the head so with my fan, and he 
 will lead off. Three taps means an encore. 
 Mr. Block, I hope your head isn t very soft, for 
 I know I shall get enthusiastic in the senti 
 mental parts." 
 
 " Let me get you a camp-chair, Miss Middle 
 sex," cried another ; " you will get awfully tired 
 without a back." 
 
 " No, no ; I don t want a chair ; Mrs. Est- 
 ridge s knees make a lovely back. Pinkie 
 Buchanan, be a good fellow and pass me that 
 paper of burnt almonds. Isn t this awfully, 
 awfully jolly ? Like sitting on the grass at a 
 circus ! " 
 
 Behind this advance guard, led by Miss 
 Middlesex, were several rows of low wicker 
 settees; behind these, higher tiers of uphol 
 stered sofas and chairs ; and, at the rear of the 
 room, a few seats mounted on tables. On one 
 of the highest of these, as upon a throne, sat a 
 girl whose face seemed to form the apex of the 
 whole assembly and the focus of all the scat 
 tered rays of light in the room. It was a short, 
 rosy face, crowned with heavy coils of straw- 
 colored hair. The mouth was large. The dark 
 eyes were leveled steadily at the drop-scene, 
 and Merriman had a nervous feeling as if they 
 looked through the canvas into his own. Her 
 ensemble was so striking that no jewelry would 
 have been too rich, no colors too pronounced, 
 
92 A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 which she might have chosen to wear. But 
 she was dressed very simply in a white cash 
 mere, with a necklace of the palest amber for 
 her sole ornament. 
 
 " Who is that very handsome girl at the 
 back of the room ? " inquired Merriman, after 
 regarding her fixedly for several minutes. 
 
 " Handsome girl ? " echoed his hostess. 
 " Which one ? Where ? " 
 
 " Don t you see? In a white dress ; right in 
 the center of the last row." 
 
 " Well, to be sure ! How glad I am she s 
 come ! Why, it s Sally Hopkinson, an old fern, 
 sem. chum of mine ; and I haven t seen her for 
 a year. Do you think her pretty ? " 
 
 " Pretty ! She is gorgeous." 
 
 " She has a lovely complexion and hair. But 
 her mouth is big, and her eyes don t match 
 with the rest of her face." 
 
 " I like a generous mouth," said Merriman. 
 " What s her name ? Hopkinson ? Where 
 from ?" 
 
 " Why, she is a compatriot of yours from 
 Massachusetts. She lives in a little country 
 town in Berkshire, with her brother, who is a 
 minister. We used to call her the Puritan 
 maiden Priscilla at the seminary. I m so glad 
 you like her looks ! " 
 
 At this moment the prompter s bell rang 
 sharply, a hush fell on the audience, and the 
 curtain began to tremble. Merriman and his 
 companion fled into the side-scenes just in 
 time to avoid an exposure. 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 93 
 
 The reader shall not be bored by a descrip 
 tion of the play which followed, nor of the 
 manner in which the various actors acquitted 
 themselves, nor of the comments of the specta 
 tors. Let it pass silently over our stage, like 
 the dumb show in an old comedy, noting only 
 that one of the mimes carried all through his 
 role a sub-consciousness of a figure in white 
 and a pair of indigo eyes that stared at him 
 from the end of the auditorium. In spite of 
 which distraction, he acted with his usual 
 cleverness, and won loud applause from Charlie 
 Middlesex and her band of claqueurs. 
 
 When the play was over, the company filed 
 out of the theater and stood about in groups in 
 the large parlors and library, discussing the 
 performance. Merriman, having washed off 
 his war-paint, went in search of Miss Van 
 Shuyster, whom he found receiving congratula 
 tions on the success of her theatricals. 
 
 " You promised to introduce me to Miss 
 Hopkinson," said Merriman, joining her circle. 
 
 "Oh, yes. There she is now, talking with 
 Charlie and Mr. Block, at the end of the room. 
 I haven t spoken to her yet." 
 
 The greeting between the two young ladies 
 was effusive. 
 
 " You dear little Yankee ! " said the hostess, 
 kissing her guest several times in rapid succes 
 sion. "Why didn t you come sooner? You ve 
 got to stay with us, now, till after New Year. 
 And why didn t you bring your brother? I 
 want to introduce an admirer, who says that he 
 
94 A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 knows your brother and is so disappointed that 
 he didn t come with you. Mr. Merriman, Miss 
 Hopkinson." 
 
 Merriman bowed eagerly, and Miss Hopkin 
 son rather coldly. 
 
 " If you are Charlie Hopkinson s sister," he 
 began, "I feel as if I knew you already. 
 Charlie and I were chums at college, you know, 
 for two years." 
 
 " Yes, I have heard him speak of you," said 
 Miss Hopkinson, not very emotionally. 
 
 Merriman was about to speak again, when 
 Miss Middlesex broke in, fixing her large eyes 
 on him, sighing and waving her fan slowly : 
 " Oh, Mr. Merriman, how beautifully you 
 acted ! I don t see how you do it. I never 
 could. I should break right down." 
 
 " Miss Middlesex has too much individuality 
 for an actress. She couldn t lose herself in her 
 part," said Merriman, laughing. 
 
 " No, it isn t that," she replied, shaking her 
 head mournfully ; " but I could not face the 
 audience never never! Twould be blush, 
 blush, blush with me, like that poor man in 
 Hardy s novel." 
 
 " Oh, we all know how bashful you are, poor 
 thing ! " said Miss Van Shuyster. " What 
 made Mr. Block run away when we came up ? " 
 
 " He s gone to smoke a cigarette in the 
 billiard-room," answered Charlie, pouting. " I 
 wanted to go awfully, but my stern mamma 
 has come down on my cigarette-smoking. She 
 says it stains my finger-tips. Do you think it 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 95 
 
 does, Mr. Merriman ? " And she held up a 
 row of ten little rosy puffs. 
 
 " It does," said her cousin quickly. " And it 
 burns holes in the front breadth of your 
 dresses." 
 
 Miss Hopkinson looked slightly shocked. 
 
 The door of the supper-room was now 
 thrown open, and there was a general move in 
 that direction. 
 
 " Miss Hopkinson, will you let me get you 
 something to eat ? " asked Merriman, offering 
 his arm. She took it, and they walked away. 
 
 " I can t abide your prim friend, Hattie," said 
 Miss Middlesex, looking after them. "She 
 always makes me feel vulgar." 
 
 " She isn t prim when you know her ; at 
 school she was quite a romp a regular fiend 
 in pillow-fights and such things." 
 
 "Let us go into the conservatory," proposed 
 Merriman to his companion : " it s nice and cool 
 in there, and plenty of room." 
 
 He seated her on a porcelain garden chair, 
 and she listened to the splash of the little 
 fountain, in whose basin a few goldfish were 
 swimming about, while he went to get her 
 some supper. She occupied this interval in 
 thinking over a plan of campaign, but reached 
 no definite resolution further than to stand on 
 the defensive and be guided by circumstances 
 until the opportunity came to mass her heavy 
 battalions on the enemy s center. Presently he 
 returned with some salad and biscuits, and 
 stood before her, holding her plate, while she 
 
g6 A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 arranged the napkin over her lap. " You can t 
 think how surprised I am to meet you here," 
 he said, as he handed her the plate and their 
 eyes met. 
 
 " Why ? " she asked. 
 
 " Well, I had no idea that you knew the Van 
 Shuysters." 
 
 " Hadn t you ? " she answered indifferently. 
 But she thought to herself, " That means as 
 much as, I took you for a little country school- 
 marm, with your hair full of hay-seed, and here 
 you are all of a sudden in my own motfde" 
 
 " And, besides that didn t you know ? 
 Charlie asked me up to Chuckatuck to spend 
 Christmas ; and if it hadn t been for my en 
 gagement here I should certainly have been 
 there now." 
 
 " Yes, I knew he was expecting you." 
 
 " Well, it seems that I did the lucky thing, 
 after all, when I accepted Mrs. Van Shuyster s 
 bid first." 
 
 " Oh, I think you did : you would have been 
 awfully bored at Chuckatuck." 
 
 " No ; you misunderstand me. I shouldn t 
 have been bored at all. But I should have 
 missed seeing Miss Hopkinson." 
 
 " Oh, no ; I was to stay at home if you came, 
 and help entertain you." 
 
 " That would have been rough on you, but I 
 don t know but what it would have been nicer 
 for me. I should have had you and Charlie 
 more to myself, you know, than I can here. 
 Come, now, what were you going to do for my 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 97 
 
 entertainment ? Methinks I see visions of 
 moonlight sleigh-rides, and candy-pulls in the 
 kitchen. I should like to see you with the 
 housewife s apron on, doing the domestic veal 
 for Charlie." 
 
 " I never wear an apron ; and I hate sleigh- 
 rides and candy-pulls they freeze your feet and 
 blister your hands," returned his vis-a-vis un 
 graciously. 
 
 There was silence for a while as they dis 
 patched their respective salads. Merriman was 
 thinking to himself, " What a queer girl to be 
 Hopkinson s sister ! There s no mistake about 
 her being a smasher ; but she isn t exactly 
 genial." Finally, he recommenced : " How is 
 Charlie, anyway ? I haven t seen him for an 
 age. Why didn t you bring him with you ? " 
 
 " Oh, he couldn t leave his sheep alone in 
 the wilderness, you know," she answered, with 
 a resentful glance. 
 
 Merriman vaguely recollected having heard 
 or used this phrase somewhere, but he could 
 not place it definitely, and he was quite at a 
 loss to interpret the look which accompanied 
 it. " Let me get you some oysters," he proposed. 
 " No ? Look out for the train of your dress, or 
 it will get into that fountain. I never come 
 into a conservatory without thinking of an ad 
 venture I had at the Buyclamms party last 
 winter. I took my partner into the conserva 
 tory to feed her, and, while she was explaining 
 to me that one side of a begonia-leaf is always 
 bigger than the other, I tripped backward 
 
9 8 A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 over the rim of the fountain it was a smaller 
 one than this, only held a tureenful and sat 
 right clown in it. I slapped the water all out 
 of the basin, and killed one goldfish." 
 
 " How funny ! " said Miss Hopkinson, laugh 
 ing in spite of herself. " What did you do ? " 
 
 " My partner had great presence of mind, 
 and fortunately there were few people in the 
 parlors. They d mostly gone out into the sup 
 per-room. She took my arm and covered my 
 retreat nobly as far as the stairs, and I got up 
 into the dressing room, slipped on my overcoat, 
 and made my escape without further disgrace." 
 
 " All of which shows how dangerous it is to 
 feed botanical young ladies in a conservatory." 
 
 " Ah," began Merriman with a sentimental 
 air, " if botany were the only dangerous thing 
 about them ! " 
 
 " Well," she broke in hastily, " please don t 
 repeat your sitz-bath on my account. I 
 shouldn t have the same presence of mind, I m 
 afraid." 
 
 " Should you scream ? " 
 
 " No ; I should laugh." 
 
 " How hard-hearted you are ! Are you 
 through with your plate ? Let me take it away 
 and get you some cream and things." He dis 
 appeared, much elated by the thaw in her 
 humor. " She isn t so chilly, after all," he said 
 to himself. " It seems that she does know how 
 to relax and desipere a bit in loco" He re 
 turned quickly with a plate of ices and a glass 
 of sherry. 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 99 
 
 " You may keep the sherry, please," she said, 
 as she took the plate. 
 
 " Doesn t the dominie let you drink wine ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " As if he could stop me if I wanted to ! " 
 with a toss of the head. 
 
 " Then, if you won t, why, Drink to me only 
 with thine eyes. Prosit, Miss Hopkinson." 
 And he raised the glass to his lips. " Do you 
 know," he went on presently, " that I can t get 
 over my surprise at your being Charlie Hopkin- 
 son s sister ? You look so entirely unlike him. 
 I can see perhaps a slight family resemblance in 
 the shape of the face, but your eyes are totally 
 strange." 
 
 She cast down the features alluded to and 
 reddened slightly, moving uneasily in her chair 
 with a look of annoyance. She found herself 
 drifting into a sort of mild flirtation with this 
 offensive young man, whom she had come 
 prepared to dazzle into a sufficient state of 
 admiration and then to snub into abject humil 
 ity perhaps by handing him back his letter 
 with a lofty and withering speech of some kind, 
 if a good opportunity offered. But her indigna 
 tion, which had seemed so virtuous at Chucka- 
 tuck, appeared to her now rather overstrained. 
 Perhaps the letter was not so very bad, after 
 all. To be sure, it was a shame for him to write 
 so to anyone about Charlie. But as to the 
 spretce injurza formce which had unconfessedly 
 formed no small part of its sting, that was 
 atoned for by his evident admiration and as- 
 
ioo A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 tonishment at sight of the " old-maid sister " 
 and " shepherdess " whom he had traduced. 
 Certainly the man was amusing enough, and 
 probably meant well, although he was so very, 
 very light. 
 
 " Miss Hopkinson," he now resumed, as he 
 finished his sherry, " what relation is a fellow to 
 his chum s sister ? " 
 
 " I should say that depended on what relation 
 he was to his chum." 
 
 " Oh, first-cousin at least. I think twice as 
 much of your brother as I do of my cousins 
 whose name is legion. Why doesn t he get a 
 nice little parish near New York, where he 
 wouldn t be so cut off from his old friends ? " 
 
 " Perhaps he can get along without his old 
 friends as well as some of them seem to without 
 him," she answered with asperity. Her resent 
 ment had suddenly come back to her, provoked 
 by the insincerity and the patronizing tone of 
 this last remark. 
 
 " I don t quite know what you mean," said 
 Merriman. 
 
 As fate would have it, she pulled her handker 
 chief out of her dress-pocket at this instant, and 
 a letter which was pulled out with it fell on the 
 floor. He stooped to pick it up for her, and, as 
 he did so, she rose, and gathering up the train 
 of her dress, replied, "Perhaps you will know 
 what I mean, Mr. Merriman, if you will read 
 over that letter again, which belongs to you, by 
 the way, and not to me. Keep it, please." 
 
 As Merriman in blank amazement proceeded 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. IOI 
 
 to open the letter and glance over the familiar 
 writing, Miss Van Shuyster, followed by a tall 
 young man, appeared at the conservatory door. 
 " So here is where you two have been hiding all 
 this time ! " she exclaimed. " I ve been looking 
 everywhere for you, Sallie, to introduce Mr. 
 Polhemus. Miss Hopkinson, Mr. Polhemus." 
 
 The gentleman bowed and said, " They are 
 making up a set in the library, Miss Hopkinson : 
 shall I have the honor ? " 
 
 " Certainly," she answered, courtesied slightly 
 to Merriman, and departed on Mr. Polhemus 
 arm. Miss Van Shuyster remained in the con 
 servatory. 
 
 " Since when, Miss Van Shuyster," broke out 
 Merriman excitedly, holding up the letter, " is it 
 considered a delicate joke among young ladies 
 to show each other the correspondence of their 
 gentlemen friends ? " 
 
 " I don t understand you." 
 " Perhaps you may, then, if you will look at 
 this, which is addressed to you, but which Miss 
 Hopkinson has just handed to me" 
 
 She took the letter, and, glancing over it, said 
 immediately, " This letter was never sent to me, 
 but another one was. If you will look at the 
 address on the envelope, I think you will see how 
 Miss Hopkinson came by it. And I assure you 
 I don t feel complimented by your suspicion." 
 
 Merriman glared in a bewildered way at the 
 envelope, and then replied, " I beg your pardon ; 
 I see it all now. I m the jackass of the nine 
 teenth century. But I wish you had told me of 
 
102 A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 my mistake before. It has put me in a very 
 embarrassing position with the Hopkinsons." 
 
 " How could I know who your letter was 
 for ? " she demanded warmly. " I intended to 
 mention your mistake to you and give you back 
 your letter, but it slipped my mind entirely till 
 this minute. If people will be so stupid as to 
 mix up their correspondence, they must take the 
 consequences." 
 
 " It s all my fault," said he ; " but it s very 
 unfortunate." 
 
 " You seem to care a good deal about Miss 
 Hopkinson s opinion," she said, with a tremor 
 in her voice. 
 
 " Of course I do," he answered. 
 
 At this moment the vivacious Miss Middle 
 sex darkened the door, and began, " Oh, Mr, 
 Merriman, I had almost forgot. Such a give 
 away on you ! Who who is Charlie ? 
 Why, what s the row ? " looking from one to 
 the other. 
 
 " Row is not a lady-like expression," re 
 sponded Miss Van Shuyster severely ; " and I 
 wish you wouldn t apply your slang terms to 
 me, please." And with that she swept from 
 the room. 
 
 " What have you been doing to my cousin, 
 Mr. Merriman ? " inquired Charlie. 
 
 " Oh, nothing, Miss Mildlesex : amanttum 
 ircz, you know," said Merriman, with a feeble 
 laugh. 
 
 " I know that s Latin ; but I think you might 
 translate." 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 103 
 
 " Come, let s go and have a dance," he pro 
 posed. 
 
 I think you are hawru?" she said, taking 
 his arm ; " but I ll get it all out of Hattie. I 
 can make her tell me anything I want by 
 threatening to tickle her if she doesn t." 
 
 " Mrs. Van Shuyster," said Merriman, about 
 half an hour later, approaching his hostess, 
 whose matronly figure was filling an arm 
 chair in the recess of the library, " I had hoped 
 to accept your invitation to stay a day or two, 
 but I find that a reference which comes on to 
 morrow will make it absolutely necessary for 
 me to catch the down train to-night." 
 
 Oh, I am sorry ! Couldn t you postpone 
 it, or something? One or two of Hattie s 
 friends are to stay through the week, and she 
 had counted on you to beau them about. 
 Hattie," she called out to her daughter, who 
 was talking to a group of ladies near by, "Mr. 
 Merriman says that he has an engagement 
 which will take him to New York to-night. 
 
 < We should be very sorry to interfere with 
 any of Mr. Merriman s engagements," returned 
 
 Hattie. 
 
 " Then I will bid you good-evening, ladies, 
 
 said Mevriman. 
 
 "Must you really? Well, then, good-by 
 said Mrs. Van Shuyster, putting out her hand. 
 " We are ever so much obliged to you for com 
 ing and for your help in the play, and so sorry 
 that you can t stay." 
 
104 A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 The younger lady simply bowed, and Merri- 
 man withdrew. He went at once into the 
 next room, where the dance was just over, and 
 approached Miss Hopkinson, who was stand 
 ing by the mantel-piece, talking with her 
 partner. " May I speak with you a moment, 
 Miss Hopkinson ? " he asked : " I have to 
 catch this train." 
 
 " Why, I suppose so, "she responded, with an 
 air of surprise, " if Mr. Polhemus will excuse 
 me." 
 
 " Oh, certainly," said Polhemus, glaring at 
 Merriman and moving off reluctantly. 
 
 " Miss Hopkinson," began our hero, " may 
 I ask whether your brother commissioned you 
 to say anything to me about that unfortunate 
 letter?" 
 
 " My brother has not seen it." 
 
 " Not seen it ! Who then ? " 
 
 " I opened the letter. Charlie was away for 
 a day or two, and he told me to open all his 
 letters, as some of them might need answering 
 before he got back." 
 
 " And you didn t show it to him afterward ? " 
 
 " No ; I was afraid it might hurt his feel 
 ings: so I merely told him that you had made 
 another engagement." 
 
 He heaved a sigh of relief : " I can t thank 
 you too much for your thoughtfulness. I 
 wouldn t have had Charlie see that letter for 
 anything." 
 
 She, too, felt relieved. She had half ex 
 pected to be put on her defense for reading his 
 
A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 105 
 
 note after she saw that it was meant for some 
 one else. But it did not apparently occur to 
 him that she had done anything blameworthy. 
 This magnanimity touched her, as did also 
 his manifest contrition. Her heart began to 
 soften. 
 
 " Yes," he resumed, " I am glad he didn t 
 see it ; but I am just so much the sorrier that 
 you did. I have made a bad impression on 
 you, Miss Hopkinson," he said solemnly. 
 
 She made no reply, but her eyes danced 
 mischievously. 
 
 " I have just had an awful quarrel about it 
 with Miss Van," he went on ruefully. " I 
 seem to have put my foot in it all around." 
 
 " I don t see why you should have quarreled 
 with her." 
 
 " Neither do I exactly ; but I have. But the 
 worst of it is that you are down on me, too, be 
 cause I called you an old maid." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I m furious," she laughed. 
 
 "Well, now, how was I to know? Where 
 has Charlie been hiding you away all .these 
 years ? Why didn t he ever have you down to 
 class-days and things? The idea of a man s 
 chum having such a pret having a sister, you 
 know, and never saying anything about it ! 
 From all he ever said, you might be a hundred 
 and thirty-five years old." 
 
 " Then you ought to have respected me all 
 the more." 
 
 " Oh, yes, so I should. Reverence for your 
 gray hairs, and that sort of thing. You ought 
 
io6 A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 to write Charlie s sermons for him. Come, now, 
 Miss Hopkinson, you know that if you really 
 were an old maid I wouldn t care so much for 
 your opinion as Miss Van Shuyster twitted 
 me with doing just now." 
 
 " Say no more about it, Mr. Merriman. I 
 forgive you the old maid. It didn t matter 
 anyway." 
 
 " But it matters to me that you shouldn t 
 form an opinion of me from that letter. The 
 fact is that when I wrote it I was fresh from a 
 talk with my cynical friend Willett, who always 
 puts me into the mood for saying all sorts of 
 reckless things that I don t mean in the least." 
 
 " Willett?" murmured Miss Hopkinson. 
 
 " Yes ; if you knew Barnaby WiRett Mephis- 
 topheles Willett, we call him and could hear 
 him talk for half an hour, you would under 
 stand my frame of mind when I dashed off that 
 confounded note. In fact, if it hadn t been for 
 his advice, I should have cut this appointment 
 anyway and followed my impulse to go up to 
 Chuckatuck. I wish I had ! " 
 
 " Mr. Barnaby Willett! Did he advise you 
 not to go to Chuckatuck? I wonder why." 
 Her eyes had suddenly grown big and round, 
 and her whole attitude expressed a newly 
 aroused interest. 
 
 " What ? You don t know Willett, do you ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," she answered, with a little laugh 
 and a little blush," very well indeed. Mr. Wil 
 lett and I are I am engaged to be married to 
 Mr. Willett." And she looked him straight in 
 
A COMEDY OF ERltOXS. 107 
 
 the face, while her blush gradually deepened, 
 until it forced her to cast down her eyes in be 
 witching confusion. 
 
 Merriman felt the ground give way from 
 under his feet. His jaw dropped and his eyes 
 goggled wildly. At last he laughed aloud. 
 " So this is all a put-up job on me ! " he ex 
 claimed. 
 
 " A put-up job ? I don t quite know what 
 that means. But if you mean there has been 
 a conspiracy against you no, there hasn t. I 
 never knew till this minute that you and Mr. 
 Willett were acquainted. And I am sure he has 
 never told me a word about you or about your 
 coming up to Chuckatuck." 
 
 " Well, the whole thing is simply enough to 
 make a man luny," said Merriman. " I talked 
 half an hour to Willett about you and Charlie, 
 and he never let on, by word or look, that he 
 had ever heard of either of you before. And 
 he made all manner of fun of country parsons, 
 etc., and advised me by all means to take up 
 the Van Shuysters bid and give Chuckatuck 
 the go-by. What was his game ? " 
 
 " Perhaps," suggested Mr. Willett s fiancte, 
 " perhaps he was a little bit jealous." 
 
 " I only wish he had reason to be," rejoined 
 Merriman galantly. " But I see that you are 
 laughing at me again, Miss Hopkinson. Well, 
 I must get away into the dark somewhere by 
 myself and think out this muddle. Just time 
 to catch my train," he added, looking at his 
 watch. " But if you are writing to Willett, 
 
io8 A COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 you had better advise him to keep out of my 
 sight for a few days. If he should cross my 
 war-path while I m in my present state of 
 mind, I won t answer for the consequences. 
 Good-evening, Miss Hopkinson, and oh, yes, 
 I had nearly forgotten Ich gratuliere." 
 
 " Good-evening, Mr. Merriman," she said, 
 extending her hand, and, as he took it, she 
 continued, " You must promise me to make 
 up your quarrel with Hattie. I shall explain 
 things to her, and you must call on her as 
 soon as they get back to town. Won t you, 
 now ? " 
 
 " Yes, I will ; and I m much obliged for 
 your intercession. She s too good a girl to 
 have a fight with." 
 
 " And, Mr. Merriman, I expect to be in New 
 York this spring, and should be very glad if 
 you would call on me, too. Charlie will let 
 you know where I am, or Mr. Willett." 
 
 Merriman s face flushed with pleasure. 
 " Thank you again. I certainly shall. And, 
 till then, good-by." 
 
 " Good-by," she answered, and added softly, 
 "till then." 
 
 " Till then till then," he repeated to himself 
 as the train bore him rapidly through the night 
 between the river bank and the echoing rocks. 
 44 How do those lines of Arnold s go ? Till 
 then 
 
 " Till then her lovely eyes maintain 
 Their gay, unwavering, deep disdain." 
 
IV. 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 A Fourth of July Story. 
 
 ,HE haymakers at work in my uncle s 
 side-hill meadows had an original 
 way of telling the noon. They were 
 not the owners of watches, and the 
 church clock was hidden behind the elms, over 
 the tallest of which the top of the white spire, 
 with its lazy vane, could barely be seen. Just 
 at present, too, that sacred time-piece was 
 suffering its semi-annual repairs at the hands 
 of the deliberate Mr. Harriman, the village 
 regulator. No : our chronometer in the hay- 
 field was a simple but admirable combination 
 of horse and hickory-tree. Old Charley, mane- 
 less and all but tailless, long since turned out 
 to grass, used to take refuge from the sun 
 under the shade of this hickory, which stood in 
 the pasture at the foot of the hill. Here he 
 would remain, with his nose to the trunk, 
 switching the flies that settled on his ribs, and, 
 as the shadow wheeled slowly in a shortening 
 radius through the hours of the forenoon, 
 Charley turned with it like a kind of revolving 
 sun-dial, with his nose for a pivot. At noon 
 the shadow thrown by the sparse foliage of the 
 
H2 DECLARATION OF 
 
 hickory was reduced to a round spot on the 
 pasture, leaving large portions of Charley 
 exposed to the sun. Then with an impatient 
 whinny, the old horse would start for the 
 shelter of the red barn across the field, and 
 thereupon the haymakers, hanging their 
 scythes over the fence-rail and wiping the 
 sweat from their foreheads, would get ready 
 to take their nooning. 
 
 I was then estate twelve just the meridian 
 of the errand-running age and so, when 
 Charley made for the barn, I would make for 
 the spring where the lunch was kept, treading 
 as far as I could on the line of the windrows, 
 my bare feet shrinking over the interme 
 diate stubble. The spring was under the 
 hill, walled up with stones and shaded by a 
 large chestnut-tree. The meadow thereabout 
 was spongy, and a good place to find fringed 
 gentians in October. A basket of bread and 
 cold meat reposed in the shadow, and in the 
 spring itself bobbed about some dozen stone 
 bottles filled with cider. These bottles, when 
 emptied, became convenient prisons for the 
 little garter-snakes which the haymakers used 
 to catch in the long grass. Many are the 
 bottled snakes which Cousin Bob and I have 
 carried up from the field and let loose among 
 the indignant poultry in the hen-yard. 
 
 On this particular day I had taken from the 
 cellar some of the best russet cider interiore 
 nota from behind the big cistern. Each bot 
 tle had two raisins in it to assist fermentation, 
 
INDEPENDENCE. 1 1 3 
 
 and had been laid on its side after being filled, 
 to keep the cork wet. The selection of this 
 choice deposit was a bit of hero-worship on my 
 part : the hay-field was to be honored by a dis 
 tinguished guest no less than Cousin Bob 
 himself, who had come all the way from 
 Philadelphia to be present at his sister Kate s 
 wedding. 
 
 " It was so kind of you, Bob," said poor 
 Kate, with tears in her eyes, " to come a whole 
 week beforehand and leave all your patients." 
 
 "Awful rough on the patients," answered 
 Bob, kissing her in the front hall: "patients 
 under a monument by the time I get back, I 
 guess ; and twouldn t make a very large ceme 
 tery either." 
 
 That was the evening before. Inside the 
 house the family were surrounding Bob in a 
 joyful group. Outside stood the red stage, 
 brilliant in the light that streamed from the 
 parlor windows. The driver was struggling up 
 the walk with Bob s trunk, and I was dancing 
 wildly about under a chaos of valises, dusters , 
 and fishing-rods. A stage-arrival was always 
 an excitement : the arrival of Bob was some 
 thing to banish sleep for hours. In the watches 
 of the night I longed for the morrow and for 
 Bob s cheeiy voice shouting, " Shorty, how s 
 Old Smoke ? Suppose you get some grease, 
 and we ll go at the barrel." Or else, "Bad 
 hay-weather, Charley ; looks good for pickerel. 
 Suppose you get out the scoop, and we ll try 
 the Pound Brook for live bait right away after 
 
H4 DECLARATION OF 
 
 grub." And in the morning I awoke to the 
 thought, " Bob s come ! He s in the next room. 
 There goes his guitar now." 
 
 I jumped out of bed, and dressed like a 
 minute-man of the Revolutionary War or a 
 freshman who hears the last strokes of the 
 prayer-bell. I really believe that Kate s wed 
 ding seemed chiefly important to me because it 
 brought old Bob home for a fortnight. 
 
 " Come in," said Bob, as I knocked at his 
 door. He was seated superbly on the edge of his 
 bed, clothed upon with his nightshirt as with the 
 toga of old Rome, strumming an accompani 
 ment on his guitar and singing " Rocked in the 
 Cradle of the Deep." His generous bass bore 
 out the song s suggestion of winds and waves 
 and "the wet, blown face of the sea." His 
 deep chest-notes breathed for me the quintes 
 sence of all manliness, and even the faces which 
 he had to make when he gave them utterance 
 were of heroic cast like the tragic masks of 
 the Greek actors. " How you was, old parcl ? " 
 inquired Bob, unstringing a peg in the guitar. 
 " Do I smell the breakfast in the air, or dooz 
 my eyes deceive my earsight ? " 
 
 "I guess it s the waffles," I responded. 
 " We re going to have some." As for Bob s 
 delightful slang, his " daliaunce and fair Ian- 
 gage," I never could answer that except by 
 gleeful and appreciative laughter. 
 
 A noise was heard below, as of a bell fiercely 
 wielded but impeded in its vibrations by some 
 wooden obstacle. It was produced by my 
 
INDEPENDENCE. * 1 5 
 
 uncle who, in his matutinal energy, sought to 
 reinforce the action of the bell by rapping it 
 against the balusters as he rang it. 
 we heard his voice thereunto calling, " Come, 
 get up! Get up! Breakfast! Get up ! 
 
 "Ah, bella-horrida bella!" said Bob. 
 There s the governor again. Been at it since 
 cock-crow. Now, I suppose my landlady, with 
 the usual foresight of her sex, has packed my 
 collars and cuffs at the bottom of that trunk. 
 Here, Charley, lend a hand : put those things 
 on the bed." And he handed out in succession 
 half a dozen pairs of boots, a pile of shirts, a box 
 of cigars, a medicine-chest, a powder-flask, a 
 dress-suit, and two or three human bones. 
 Put those on top-Ossa on Pelion. Begun 
 Latin yet, Charley ? " 
 
 Not yet " I answered ; " but I m going to 
 in the fall. Jim Cassidy said I d better. He 
 -says the classical always lick the Englishes at 
 foot-ball. I m going into Classical Four, 
 is in Classical Three now." 
 
 Look out for that box. That s something 
 for Katy." And, after a pause, "Charley, is 
 George Spencer in town ? " 
 
 Yes he is. He came last week. Kennedy 
 says he caught a four-pound bass in the pond 
 Friday; right over by the Point. That s a 
 bully place for bass, Kennedy says. He got 
 three there all in an hour," etc., etc. 
 After breakfast, Bob lighted a cigar and 
 stood with Kate out on the piazza, with his arm 
 round her waist. 
 
n6 DECLARATION OF 
 
 " How you do smell of tobacco, Bob ! " said 
 his sister. 
 
 " I suppose, now, Ketchum doesn t smoke 
 any ? " suggested he. 
 
 " Smoking ! " exclaimed my uncle, coming to 
 the door and sniffing. " Smoking s a foolish 
 and expensive habit. Never smoked in my 
 life. Never used tobacco in any form." And 
 he vanished within. We could hear him as he 
 went through the house and left all the doors 
 open behind him, and we laughed. 
 
 " Charley," said Bob, " never smoke. Be 
 virtuous, and you ll be happy. 
 
 I ll never smoke tobacco, no. It is a filthy 
 
 weed. 
 
 I ll never smoke tobacco, no, says little Robert 
 Reed. 
 
 Bless you, my child, bless you ! " 
 
 " Now, Bob, how can you make fun of pa in 
 that disrespectful way ? And, besides, you are 
 just encouraging Charley to learn the habit 
 when he gets older ; and you know father wants 
 him not to." 
 
 Katy had been a little nervous and petulant 
 of late. Bob made no reply, but puffed 
 reflectively. 
 
 "Jim Cassidy smokes catalpas," I volun 
 teered; "and he isn t but six months older 
 than me ; and he said his father saw him smok 
 ing one the other day, and he just laughed." 
 
 " Frightful levity in a parent ! " said Bob. 
 
INDEPENDENCE. 1 1 7 
 
 "Aren t you looking a little thin, Katy ? " he 
 went on, squeezing her waist a bit. 
 
 " I don t know but I am," answered Katy 
 listlessly. My cousin was a tall girl and very 
 pretty. She had rosy cheeks and gray eyes, and 
 a large, sweet mouth. 
 
 " By the way," continued Bob, a little awk 
 wardly, " Charley says that George Spencer has 
 come home." 
 
 Kate said nothing in response. 
 
 " Charley ! " I heard my aunt s voice calling 
 to me from the back yard. 
 
 " Yes, in a minute," I shouted. " Cousin Bob, 
 I ve got to go down to the hay-field now and 
 take the lunch. You re coming down by and 
 by, aren t you ? " 
 
 " Any cider left ? " 
 
 " Yes, some bully russet cider." 
 
 "Well," said Bob, " I ll come down about 
 noon." 
 
 " All right. They re mowing the heater lot 
 to-day." And I started around the house. 
 
 Accordingly, when the old horse struck 
 twelve in the manner which I have described, 
 and just as I was lifting the cider-bottles from the 
 spring and the haymakers were gathering under 
 the apple-tree in the lower part of the field, I 
 saw Bob vault the bars and come down the hill. 
 At the same time a buggy stopped at another 
 set of bars. It was drawn by Dick, successor to 
 Charley, and bore my uncle and Mr. Ketchum, 
 the gentleman who was to marry my cousin 
 Kate. After " hanging " the horse to the post, 
 
Ii8 DECLARATION OF 
 
 they also came down through the meadow, and 
 we all met at the spring. Bob and Mr. 
 Ketchum shook hands. 
 
 " How are you, Ketchum ? My congratula 
 tions." 
 
 " Thank you, doctor, thank you. Kate said 
 you were coming on the stage last night, and 
 you must excuse me for not having been at the 
 house to meet you. I had some important 
 business at the Farms. I m trying to get my 
 business all done up this week. Business before 
 pleasure, you know." 
 
 " Yes, of course ; don t mention it. Did you 
 drive down with the governor ? " 
 
 " With I beg your pardon." 
 
 " With my father. Of course you did, though. 
 I saw you get out. " Bob laughed constrainedly, 
 and turned to shake hands with his old friends 
 among the men, who had seated themselves at 
 a respectful distance and were waiting for their 
 lunch. 
 
 My uncle was a smooth-shaved, stoutish man, 
 with a face of a uniform red color. He carried 
 a rough apple-tree stick. He stood with great 
 emphasis on the ground (/its ground), with jaw 
 dropped and eyes asquint in the sun, regarding 
 the mowing-machine, which came clicking up 
 through its last swath and stopped at some dis 
 tance off. "Grass in that holler pretty thin, 
 ain t it ? " he shouted to the driver. 
 
 " Wai, tis kind o light. There s a piece in 
 the middle you ll have to cut with the scythes, 
 I guess." 
 
INDEPENDENCE. 1 1 9 
 
 "Cut it with scythes? What s that for? 
 Don t want any peckin round with scythes. 
 Men got enough to do along the fences." 
 
 " \Val, I can t go in there with the machine. 
 It s too rough. Scratch it all to thunder 
 Whoa, there ! " 
 
 " Rough ! What makes it rough ? " 
 
 11 Stuns makes it rough." 
 
 Stones ! Stones in there ? That s some of 
 McFadden s shiftless work. I told him to get 
 em all out last fall and pile em on the wall. 
 Gave him gunpowder to blast em with." 
 
 " Wai, squire, guess he used your gunpow 
 der up shootin woodchucks, then. He left 
 an almighty pile of stuns in that holler, 
 anyway." 
 
 This conversation w r as carried on in a shout. 
 Then the mowing-machine started up its click 
 and went off across the meadow. My uncle s 
 little blue eyes continued to squint in a 
 mechanical way over the landscape. Suddenly 
 they settled on me in the immediate foreground : 
 _ " Halloo ! shoo-shoo ! Where s your boots ? 
 i Mustn t go barefoot. Dirty trick ! Mustn t go 
 barefoot. Get your feet cut : get the lock 
 jaw." 
 
 I retired slowly toward the red barn, where 
 my shoes and stockings were stowed away on 
 a beam, and as I went I ruminated. My uncle 
 seldom interfered in my education. He left 
 that to the women, /. e., to Aunt Sophia and 
 Cousin Kate. His attentions to me were 
 usually confined to sudden warnings about the 
 
120 DECLARATION OF 
 
 danger of walking on the picket-fence or climb 
 ing the barn roof. " Hi ! hi ! " he would shout 
 from some coign of vantage the wood-shed 
 door, for instance " mustn t fool round the 
 horse. Get kicked." He often gave me six 
 pences and asked me if I should like to be a 
 lawyer when I grew up. Only on one occasion 
 had he taken my education directly in hand, 
 and that was when it had suddenly occurred to 
 him that my aesthetic culture was being 
 neglected. " Don t play on any musical instru 
 ment, do you ? " he inquired. " I used to play 
 the fife myself when I was a boy. Don t read 
 any poetry, do you ? Come into the office, and 
 I ll give you a copy of Hudibras. Got four 
 or five." 
 
 A single anecdote will illustrate sufficiently 
 my uncle s fitness to guide unassthetic youth 
 into the higher realms of imagination, and will 
 show how much sympathy he was likely to have 
 with the sentimental grievances of those under 
 his control. Cousin Bob who fancied himself 
 something of a connoisseur in painting had 
 picked up, at a dealer s in Philadelphia, some 
 half-dozen little oils which he affirmed rather 
 vaguely to be " originals." They represented 
 various saints and martyrs of all degrees of 
 maceration. They were visible only in a strong 
 light, the background and the raiment of the 
 holy men having seemingly been reduced by 
 smoke to a uniform blackness, against which 
 stood out here and there a leaden face or a 
 sallow and emaciated leg. These cheerful 
 
INDEPENDENCE. 121 
 
 effigies Bob brought out of his trunk when 
 home on a visit, and, after having explained 
 their points to Aunt Sophia, who put full faith 
 in them, and to Kate, who laughed at them, he 
 hung them without frames on the walls of 
 his room, where they remained after his de 
 parture. Bob s room was over my uncle s 
 office. It was a sacred apartment, always 
 reserved for him and retaining a faint odor of 
 tobacco-smoke. The mantelpiece was littered 
 with glorious vestigia of its occupant, such as 
 old pipes, sword-belts, rusty fishing-reels, and 
 surgical instruments, which were never dis 
 turbed. I sometimes penetrated to the seclu 
 sion of this chamber, inhaled its subtle aroma, 
 so suggestive of dear old absent Bob, and 
 gazed upon the ghostly presences which be 
 decked the walls. These, as originals, inspired 
 me with a mysterious respect, and not for the 
 kingdoms of this earth would I have dreamed 
 of laying sacrilegious hands on them. But one 
 day oh, my prophetic soul ! my uncle ! my 
 uncle, I say, had brought a house-painter on 
 the premises. After he had painted the well- 
 curb, the fence in the front yard, the red 
 benches in the back stoop, the green shutters 
 of the milk-room, etc., my uncle, ransacking 
 the house with his accustomed energy in search 
 of further objects needing repair, lighted on 
 Bob s saints. " Here," he shouted to the 
 painter from the top of the office staircase, 
 " here ! come up here ! Suppose you touch up 
 these picters. Give em a coat or two apiece \ 
 
122 DECLARATION OF 
 
 make em look pretty : faded out so you can t 
 see what they look like." 
 
 I had followed uncle, having made friends 
 with the painter, who conversed affably with 
 me while he plied his brush all the forenoon, 
 and I now stood rigid with horror, regarding 
 alternately the red face of this avuncular Vandal 
 and the parchment visages of his intended vic 
 tims. "But, uncle," I faltered, " Bob used to 
 say that the dark colors were all the beauty of 
 these paintings." 
 
 " Don t want any beauty of em here. Dingy 
 old things ! Touch em up a bit. Brighten 
 em up, so folks can see what they are. When 
 you get through, come down into the office and 
 I ll pay you." 
 
 Then did that smearer of barns, without a 
 misgiving, nay, even with a simple faith in the 
 resources of his art which begat in me a kind 
 of confidence, proceed to adorn Bob s originals 
 with fresh garments. To the mantle of one he 
 imparted a brave vermilion, using the very 
 pigment with which he had daubed the benches 
 in the stoop. The girdle which bound the 
 withered loins of a dying eremite was painted a 
 living green the green of the milk-room 
 shutters. Only a doubt as to the precise nature 
 of the aureole which encircled the head of one 
 glorified martyr saved that mystic circle from a 
 coat of the best brown paint. And, finally, 
 each leathery cheek received, exactly at its 
 centre, a hectic bloom of the shape and diameter 
 of the old-fashioned copper cent. And then 
 
INDEPENDENCE. I2 3 
 
 the artist, having surveyed his work with honest 
 pride, picked up his paint-pots and descended 
 into the office to receive his ill-gotten gains. I 
 rushed at once to my cousin Kate and dragged 
 her to the scene. She laughed till her pretty 
 eyes were full of tears, and sank gasping into 
 a chair. The comments of Bob on his next 
 visit home were brief flut emphatic. The 
 restored originals disappeared forever. 
 
 Well, I had put on my shoes and stockings 
 and returned to the spring just as Bob was 
 opening the first bottle of cider, when a man 
 was seen coming up the hill with a gun over his 
 shoulder and a game-bag slung under his arm. 
 Halloa!" cried Bob, looking up, "there 
 comes George Spencer. What has he been 
 after ? Woodcock ? To-day is the ist of July, 
 that s a fact, and the law is off." Spencer 
 bowed as he passed us, a few rods away, and 
 was going on up the hill, when Bob sung out, 
 " O George ! You aren t going to give me the 
 go-by, are you ? " 
 
 " Why, doctor, how are you ? " responded 
 Spencer, stopping suddenly and approaching 
 us. "I m glad to see you home; indeed I 
 am." 
 
 He shook hands warmly with Bob, and 
 bowed stiffly to Mr. Ketchum and my uncle, 
 the latter of whom simply glared at him in 
 return and then faced about and fixed his eye 
 on some distant point in the valley. The new 
 comer was a tall, boyish looking young man, 
 with a careless, not to say slouching, gait, but 
 
124 DECLARATION OF 
 
 graceful withal, and having a merry blue eye 
 with just a bit of the devil in it, and an expres 
 sion of face as of one who took the world 
 perhaps too easily.! 
 
 " Any sport ? " asked Bob, pointing to the 
 game-pouch. 
 
 " These," answered Spencer, taking out 
 some half-dozen small bodies, mostly feathers 
 and bill ; " the spoils of the chase," he added 
 with a laugh. 
 
 " Oh, golly ! " I began, fired with the preda 
 tory instinct and regardless of possible snubs, 
 " you ought to see the bag Dave Brown had, 
 day before yesterday, coming out of Parson s 
 cover. Sixteen woodcock and " 
 
 " Look out, Charley," broke in my cousin : 
 " don t be giving Dave away. Mr. Ketchum is 
 in the legislature, you know, and has to look 
 out for the game-laws." 
 
 " Day before yesterday was Sunday," said 
 the law-maker in question, with an accent of 
 disapproval. 
 
 " That s it," said I. " Dave Brown says 
 Sundays don t count in law. He says " 
 
 " Charley ! " shouted my uncle, " here ! 
 Take this basket clown to the men, and ask em 
 if they have got enough cider." 
 
 Spencer glanced up with a look half of annoy 
 ance and half of amusement. His face flushed 
 slightly, and he dropped the birds back into 
 the pouch, and saying, " Well, I must be off," 
 turned and pursued his way over the field just 
 as I was moving reluctantly off on my errand. 
 
INDEPENDENCE. 125 
 
 It was not so much what my uncle had said, 
 but the tone in which he said it implied 
 that he didn t want me in Spencer s company. 
 I hurried back to the spring in time to hear 
 him say, " I thought that fellow was gone to 
 New York for good gone to be an architect, 
 or something." 
 
 " I suppose he is taking a little vacation," 
 ventured Bob. 
 
 " Taking a vacation, hey ? " said my uncle, 
 with a snort. " Better stick to his work. 
 Young men take too many vacations now 
 adays." 
 
 " I m afraid," said Mr. Ketchum, with slow 
 and mournful unction, " that it s vacation with 
 Spencer pretty much all the time. I m afraid 
 he won t make architecture go. He is too 
 unstable : unstable as water, he will not 
 excel, as the good book says. Now, I spoke 
 to him, before he went to New York, about 
 making the plans for an extension we are 
 building to the mill ; I wanted to give him a 
 lift ; but he didn t seem to take any interest, 
 and my partners got sick of waiting for him, 
 and gave the job to another man. What a 
 man wants, to succeed in business, is concentra 
 tion. Spencer scatters himself goes round 
 playing chess, and botanizing, and tooting on a 
 French horn, and all that sort of fooling. He 
 doesn t bring himself to a focus, like he 
 ought." 
 
 " He s a poor toad," pronounced my uncle 
 sententiously, and with an air as though Mr. 
 
126 DECLARATION OF 
 
 Ketchum was refining too curiously on a sub 
 ject unworthy of such metaphysical analysis. 
 
 Bob seemed uncomfortable under this criti 
 cism of Spencer, and it was no less than shock 
 ing to me, in whose system of hero-worship 
 that over-versatile genius occupied a place 
 second only to Bob himself. Was not his 
 prowess with rod and gun acknowledged even 
 by Dave Brown him, the unsabbatical, the 
 scorner of statute law, the profane and bibulous 
 brother of the angle who frequently in my 
 own hearing had borne testimony to George s 
 gift, as he sat and spat among a crowd of 
 idlers on the stoop of the Eagle Hotel. 
 
 " Thar s the Hinmans," Dave would say : 
 " they gits some trouts, but I kin beat them. 
 Thar s Joe Briggs : he s a pretty good fisher 
 man ; he gits some trouts, but I can beat him. 
 Thar s Willem Holt comes up from York 
 he thinks he knows how to fish. Wai, he gits 
 some trouts. But I kin beat the hull on em 
 
 by ! Me and George Spencer kin beat the 
 
 hull d n lot of em ! " 
 
 It was this Crichton of a Spencer who had 
 taught me how to cast a fly and to construct a 
 sucker-trap. He had a canoe on the river, and 
 had given me lessons in paddling. Once he 
 even lent me his double-barreled shot-gun 
 under conditions of the strictest secrecy and 
 caution in handling, on my part. He could 
 whittle anything out of wood, and he had made 
 an elegant model in soap-stone of St. Swithin s 
 Church, which was quite the gem of the church- 
 
INDEPENDENCE. 1 2 7 
 
 fair where it was raffled for. He would dash 
 you off pen-and-ink caricatures of all the queer 
 people in the village. And how often at night, 
 when passing his mother s little white house, 
 had I listened with rapture to the strains of 
 George s French horn, where his lonely taper 
 glimmered late among the pines ! And then, 
 too, what an admirable woman was Mrs. 
 Spencer, the mother, and how toothsome the 
 vergalieu pears in her side-yard ! 
 
 But I knew, though rather vaguely, why my 
 uncle was down on this hero of mine. I am 
 telling this story ab extra, and solely from 
 recollection of what I myself saw and heard. 
 I will not vouch for hearsay evidence, and I 
 was not of an age when one is usually taken 
 into family councils ; nor should I have taken 
 much interest in the sentimental woes of my 
 elders, having in especial a boy s contempt for 
 young women and their love-affairs. But thus 
 much I partly knew and partly guessed: 
 George Spencer and my cousin Kate had been 
 sweethearts, and their passion had been 
 frowned on by my uncle, who, in an angry 
 interview with the young man, had spoken 
 most disrespectfully of his " prospects," and 
 had ended by forbidding Kate to see him. 
 This in itself might not have been enough to 
 break off the affair, for Kate was a spirited girl, 
 with a large share of inherited obstinacy ; but 
 there had followed some misunderstanding 
 between the lovers. Whether Kate thought 
 that George took his dismissal by her father too 
 
128 DECLARATION OF 
 
 proudly and kept away from her in conse 
 quence, or whether he thought that she took it 
 too lightly and consoled herself too readily by 
 flirtations with her other admirers, I never 
 quite knew. Kate certainly was a little of a 
 coquette, as indeed she had a right to be, being 
 the acknowledged belle of the village and 
 much sought after by the young men at picnics 
 and hops. Poor George took it hard enough. 
 I used to meet him in the dusk, mooning fur 
 tively about the outskirts of our orchard, and 
 to wonder what he was at. It has since oc 
 curred to me that he was watching the light in 
 Kate s window as time out of mind has been 
 lovers wont and that the apple-tree shadows 
 were to him in lieu of those " broom groves 
 whose shade the dismissed bachelor loves." 
 
 And once he bribed me with the sum of 
 fifty cents, to me in hand paid, to give him an 
 old photograph of Kate and say nothing about 
 it to anyone a bargain which seemed to me 
 advantageous beyond the wildest dreams of 
 " swaps " and speculations in jack-knives or 
 rabbit-coops. Kate, too, moped badly at first. 
 She chose melancholy airs for her piano. She 
 had redness of the eyes like the drunkards of 
 Ephraim ; and I used to find scraps of Byronic 
 verse on her writing-table and evidently of her 
 own composition, beginning : 
 
 Oh, there are times in life s dull dream. 
 
 Alas ! this was in ante-Tennyson days, when 
 L. E. L. was still in vogue ; and Kate was not 
 
INDEPENDENCE. 129 
 
 without a strong dash of romance in an other 
 wise very healthy and sensible temperament. 
 
 After a while she came out of this mood and 
 was quite gay again ; and finally, after a 
 desperate flirtation with Mr. Ketchum, she 
 engaged herself to that gentleman with her 
 father s full approval my aunt Sophia, as 
 usual, acquiescent rather than enthusiastic. 
 Mr. Ketchum was quite the rising young man 
 of our village. He had a third share in the 
 large cotton-mill at Whistleville. He was 
 of an inventive turn, and owned the patent 
 of several agricultural implements, which 
 brought him in a very pretty plum. He 
 was our postmaster, and had represented the 
 town twice in the State legislature. It was 
 mainly through his public-spirited exertions 
 that the railroad extension to the neighboring 
 town of Whistleville had been procured. He 
 was Sunday-school superintendent and junior 
 warden of St. Swithin s Church, of which my 
 uncle was senior warden. He was reckoned 
 rather a handsome man, too, with his luxuriant 
 side-whiskers, black eyes, and big red lips. 
 His manners were even excessive. If my aunt 
 Sophia or any lady entered the room where he 
 was sitting in an arm-chair, he would rise and 
 insist upon her taking his seat. Once, when 
 he dined at our house, I was greatly impressed 
 by the delicacy which he showed in holding 
 his handkerchief before his face, as a screen, 
 while he picked his teeth. And yet, in spite 
 of these unquestioned virtues, I knew that 
 
13 DECLARATION OF 
 
 Bob was never quite reconciled to Mr. 
 Ketchum s engagement with Kate. But if 
 asked to name his objection, he always put it 
 on some absurd ground as, for instance, that 
 Ketchum wore cloth shoes which was quite 
 as unreasonable as Petruchio s motive for 
 throwing his wine-sops in the sexton s face. 
 As for cloth shoes, Mr. Ketchum certainly 
 dressed elegantly, wearing a black frock and a 
 tall hat, even on week-days. His affable pros 
 perity had never seemed in stronger contrast 
 with poor George s prospectless condition than 
 now, while the latter, in his faded brown coat 
 and seedy trousers, was climbing slowly up the 
 hill toward the bars that led out of the meadow 
 into the Whistleville turnpike. His very back, 
 as he walked, had a dispirited and almost 
 loaferish expression. 
 
 But now the only absent member of my 
 dramatis -persona came on the scene the 
 heroine herself, who, with a wide straw hat on 
 her head and a bunch of pansies in her belt, 
 appeared on the other side of the bars just as 
 Spencer reached them from the field. We 
 could see the quondam lover raise his hat and 
 let down the bars for her to pass. We could 
 see Kate smile ; we could see that they ex 
 changed a word or two, as she stepped through 
 the gate and came toward us down the smooth 
 green slope, while he replaced the bars and 
 went up the road. Only a word or two, but it 
 proved to be enough. Balzac tells of a quick 
 witted demoiselle who could depecher une acco- 
 
INDEPENDENCE. 13* 
 
 lade while mounting the staircase behind her 
 duenna. 
 
 Kate was humming a tune as she approached 
 the group by the spring. She had a heightened 
 color and a conscious look about the mouth. 
 Her eyes, cast down demurely, seemed looking 
 for some wild flower along the shaven meadow- 
 ground. 
 
 "Well, good-morning, Miss Kate," began 
 Ketchum, taking her by the arm with an air of 
 ownership which she seemed a little to resent. 
 "Come tagging after the men, have you? 
 Couldn t keep away from us. No; I thought 
 not. That s the way with the ladies all. Isn t 
 that so, doctor ? " 
 
 Mr. Ketchum, though a man of business 
 habits and a Sunday-school superintendent, 
 was by no means a person of severe and gloomy 
 mien. He often said that, in his view, religion 
 should be a cheerful and not an ascetic thing. 
 In his business he found it more profitable to 
 be "genial" than "stuck up." Though not 
 " a drinking man," as he would explain, he 
 would take a drink upon occasion with com 
 mercial or political acquaintances, and would 
 himself insist upon " setting em up all round " 
 with hospitable iteration whenever the business 
 in hand required such lubricants. Though 
 holding strict views touching the observance of 
 the Sabbath, he was, on the whole, a progres 
 sive and liberal spirit, and in the famous con 
 tention in St. Swithin s Church as to the pro 
 priety of singing operatic selections, he held 
 
13* DECLARATION OP 
 
 with the popular side. He was secretly adored 
 by the young ladies of the choir and of the 
 Sunday school, who esteemed his air of min 
 gled gallantry and playfulness the perfection of 
 high-bred wit, to be met on their part only 
 with applausive giggles and cries of, " Oh, Mr. 
 Ketchum, do stop making me laugh ! You re 
 too funny ! " etc., etc. 
 
 But to-day this excellent fooling was for 
 some reason thrown away on Bob, who sul 
 lenly declined response to Ketchum s appeal, 
 and made as though he heard it not, ransacking 
 the hamper in silence to find the corkscrew. 
 
 " We saw you talking with Spencer at the 
 fence," pursued the humorist, winking at the 
 unresponsive Bob. " I guess I shall have to 
 be looking after Spencer. Come, now, tell us 
 what he said. Did he promise to dance at the 
 wedding ? " 
 
 " Oh, fiddlesticks ! " said Kate, disengaging 
 her arm and darting a look expressive of rather 
 complicated emotions at her prospective bride 
 groom. " I want some lunch. Is there any 
 pie, pa?" 
 
 "No pie here. Don t want any such flum 
 mery round here. Good, plain bread and 
 meat, cider, boiled eggs," answered my uncle, 
 with his mouth full of the last-named item. 
 
 " Come, step up to the counter and ask the 
 squire for a glass of cider," urged Ketchum. 
 
 " Cider goes to my head," answered Kate, 
 with a pout ; " but I want a sandwich and, 
 Charley, get me a glass of spring water, please. 
 
INDEPENDENCE. 133 
 
 Bob, you bad boy, what made you run off just 
 after breakfast ? I ve scarcely seen you yet, 
 and I ve got lots of things to talk to you 
 about." 
 
 " Fire away," said Bob, who had found the 
 corkscrew and was opening a fresh bottle. 
 
 " Well," remarked Mr. Ketchum, consulting 
 his watch, " time s up with me, so I ll clear out 
 and give you a chance. I know Kate has got 
 lots of things to talk to me about, too, but she s 
 too bashful to say them before company. So 
 you ll have to be patient, Katy, and keep em 
 till next week." 
 
 " Oh, go along with you," replied she. " I 
 haven t anything to say to you not anything 
 at all." 
 
 One perceives that our poor Kate was noth 
 ing of a Beatrice, and had little else at command 
 in the shape of repartee than the sauciness of 
 any old-fashioned Yankee girl. 
 
 "Well, good-morning, Mr. Craig; good- 
 morning all. Ta-ta, Katy ; keep up your 
 spirits, and try to get along without me for a 
 while." And Mr. Ketchum took himself off. 
 
 Presently, Kate put her arm into Bob s and 
 strolled down into the pastures, leaning against 
 his shoulder, talking and laughing. My uncle 
 had already started for a distant corner of the 
 hay-field, to examine a fence that needed re 
 pairs, and thus the lunch party broke up. 
 
 The wedding was appointed for the tenth of 
 July. On the evening of the Fourth there w f ere 
 fireworks on the village green. Our house 
 
134 DECLARATION OF 
 
 fronted on this center of disturbance and, as 
 soon as it grew dark, the family and many 
 neighbors assembled on the piazza, and in the 
 yard, which was filled with chairs and settees, 
 prepared to witness what the local press after 
 ward described as a " grand pyrotechnic dis 
 play." The scene, in sooth, was not without 
 its qualities. In the middle of the green was 
 a platform thickly sown with torches, by whose 
 smoky glare an infuriated brass band per 
 formed discords. The Eagle Hotel was bril 
 liant with candles in every window, and its 
 stoop was crowded with the sturdy yeomanry 
 of the vicinage. Fantastic lights and shadows 
 flickered over the turf, and a ring of darkness 
 shut in the whole, save where a few Chinese 
 lanterns twinkled among the trees of some 
 patriot s door-yard. Into this outer blackness 
 the fireworks cast momentary illuminations ; 
 and here, upon the skirts of the village, the 
 boys lay in wait for the dropping of the rocket- 
 sticks, useful in the construction of kites. I 
 was in those days a keen hunter of the rocket- 
 stick, and, though larger game may since have 
 crossed my path, I am ready to maintain that 
 there is an excitement in that mystic nocturnal 
 chase which nothing in later life can quite 
 supply. The flight of a rocket ! You wait in 
 the shadow with a beating heart, till suddenly 
 a rush a scream, and the noble creature 
 sails heavenward with the deliberate grace of a 
 serpent or an eagle, hovers an instant above the 
 world in a column of dissolving fire, and then 
 
INDEPENDENCE. 1 3 5 
 
 a soft explosion, and a few lambent stars, crim 
 son and green and violet, come dropping earth 
 ward through the summer night ; and away we 
 go after them, plunging into the dark, with 
 eyes fixed on the course of the meteors and 
 ears straining for the thud of the sticks as 
 they hit the ground. Sometimes they fall 
 on a roof, sometimes in a pond and then I 
 have known the entire hunt to leap in after 
 them, clothes and all, in the heat of the 
 chase. 
 
 On this particular evening I had been unlucky, 
 and had secured only one short stick. I was 
 posted alone in a field north of the green, near 
 the Whistleville pike, and most of the rockets 
 had taken a different direction. For half an 
 hour there had been nothing put off but blue- 
 lights, pin-wheels, and such small deer. I had 
 begun to despair of further prey, and had just 
 made up my mind to strike out for home and 
 claim my share of the lemonade and sponge 
 cake which I knew that Hannah was to dis 
 tribute among the spectators in our front yard, 
 when -f-r-s-h /the blackness overhead was 
 cleft as by an arrow of flame. The head burst 
 just above me, and the sticks descended toward 
 the north side of the field. 
 
 " By the mighty, I ve got em ! " I chortled 
 in my joy, and started across the field on a run. 
 Farther yet farther ! They ll drop beyond the 
 fence, perhaps in the road, perhaps in the next 
 lot. And, indeed, just as I reached the fence 
 the sticks fell. They struck the top of a carriage 
 
*3 6 DECLARATION OF 
 
 that was driving along the road, and frightened 
 the horses so that they reared and plunged. 
 The night was dark, but I could see the figure 
 of a man standing at the horses heads, and I 
 heard from the carriage a woman s voice a 
 voice that I knew saying, in a low, agitated 
 tone, " Oh, George, what was it ? Take me 
 back ! please take me back ! I wish I hadn t 
 come." 
 
 And then I heard the man whose voice I 
 recognized also answer soothingly, " It s noth 
 ing, darling : nothing but one of those cursed 
 rocket-sticks, that startled the horses a bit. 
 But they are all quiet now. They re perfectly 
 gentle. Don t be afraid, dear. Keep hold of 
 the reins a minute till I jump in." 
 
 And in a trice he was in the carriage, and 
 the team was off down the road at full speed. 
 It had all happened so quickly that I had had 
 no time to think what it meant. I had even 
 forgotten the rocket-sticks, till the tramp of feet 
 and a rush of boys across the field recalled my 
 mind to the quarry, which had now somehow 
 lost its importance. 
 
 " Say, young feller," the foremost called out, 
 "did them sticks fall anywheres round 
 here ? " 
 
 " In the road, somewhere," I answered indif 
 ferently. And, leaving them to search for them, 
 I hurried home and joined the circle in the front 
 yard. 
 
 "Where is Kate?" I whispered, as soon as 
 I had picked out my aunt Sophia from among 
 
INDEPENDENCE. 137 
 
 the mothers in Israel who were purring gently 
 in the back seats. 
 
 " Kate went into the house with a headache, 
 Charley, some time ago. Perhaps you had 
 better go and see how she is, and ask her if I 
 can do anything for her." 
 
 I ran upstairs and knocked at Kate s door. 
 No one answered. I opened the door. The 
 room was empty, and the lamp burning. Then 
 I looked for Bob, and found him at the front 
 gate, making himself agreeable to a local young 
 woman. 
 
 " Cousin Bob," I said, " come into the house, 
 please, a moment. Something important." 
 
 " Important ! Been blowing your fingers off 
 with a toy cannon ? " 
 
 "No. Please come in. Really and truly 
 it s important. Come." 
 
 Bob excused himself and followed me into 
 the hall. 
 
 " Kate has run off," I said breathlessly. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 "With George Spencer," I added. 
 
 " Where ? When ? Who told you so ? " 
 
 I explained as rapidly as I could. 
 
 " Come into the office," said Bob. 
 
 We found my uncle seated at his desk, writ 
 ing. The front door was sternly closed, that 
 he might seem to lend no countenance to the 
 fireworks, which he disapproved of as frivolous 
 and dangerous inventions, liable to set fire to 
 barns and other property whereby plaintiff 
 hath suffered great damage. 
 
I3 8 DECLARATION OF 
 
 " Tell him what you saw, Charley," said Bob. 
 
 I entered upon my narrative, my uncle listen 
 ing with a dazed expression, and when I had 
 finished, breaking out with, "Hey! What? 
 Kate in a wagon? Who with? Spencer? 
 Where was she going ? " 
 
 " Toward Whistleville." 
 
 " Whistleville ? What for?" 
 
 I hesitated, and Bob came to my relief : 
 " Why, it is very clear, sir, I think, that the 
 girl has run off." 
 
 " Run off ! Flummery ! What would she 
 want to run off for ! The boy has made a mis 
 take. Kate is out looking at the fireworks. 
 Saw her myself half an hour ago." 
 
 " No," I cried eagerly, " Aunt Sophia says 
 she went into the house some time ago with 
 a headache ; and I Ipoked in her room, and she 
 wasn t there." 
 
 " Then she is just taking a little drive. Run 
 off! What should make her run off? Stuff 
 and nonsense ! " But he rose from his desk 
 with an anxious look and grasped the apple- 
 tree stick that stood in the corner by his chair. 
 
 " I m afraid it s more than that, sir," said 
 Bob gravely. " Kate has been acting queer 
 the last few days. She s too good a girl to 
 do anything in a premeditated way that would 
 give us all pain. But, then, the best girls have 
 romantic notions, and she may have given way 
 all of a sudden. She used to be very fond of 
 Spencer at one time, you know ; and it isn t 
 likely is it? that they would be just taking 
 
INDEPENDENCE. 1 3 9 
 
 a drive all for nothing at this hour of the 
 evening." 
 
 " The miserable hound ! " shouted my uncle, 
 suddenly experiencing conviction and display 
 ing an equally sudden energy. " Tell William 
 to put Dick into the buggy quick ! Charley, 
 run over to the post-office and tell Ketchum to 
 come right over here. Send your aunt into the 
 office." 
 
 " Hold up a bit," said Bob. " Dick s no 
 good. We want the fastest pair they ve got 
 at the livery stable, and a light wagon. 
 Charley, dust out and order Scott to put in the 
 best team he has got. I ll follow you there in 
 a minute. And if I were you, sir, I wouldn t 
 notify Ketchum or say anything at all to 
 mother. There s no use making a scandal, 
 and it may be I can overtake them before the 
 10.35 train leaves Whistleville. They must 
 be meaning to catch that. Time enough to 
 kick up a bobbery if they get off." 
 
 " Do what you like, Bob," answered his 
 father, sinking into his chair with an air of 
 utter collapse. 
 
 "Run ahead, Charley," said Bob. "I ll 
 take you with me. You had better stay in 
 the office, sir, till we get back, and act as if 
 nothing had happened. I ll go up and lock 
 Kate s door and tell mother that she is asleep, 
 and not to disturb her." 
 
 At this point I left the office, and cannot 
 say what further conversation passed between 
 father and son. But when Bob joined me at 
 
14 DECLARATION OF 
 
 Scott s stables, some fifteen minutes later, he 
 reported, with a shake of the head, that the 
 governor was badly cut up. 
 
 Our team was a fast one, and hardly needed 
 the cut of the whip that my cousin gave them 
 as we turned into the Whistle ville road. The 
 night was dark and warm. The trees and 
 bushes went by with a rush, and I had such 
 a wild feeling of adventure that I could scarcely 
 keep from shouting aloud as Bob put the 
 ribbons into my hands, while he lighted a cigar, 
 and said, " Let em spin, Shorty ! Give em 
 head. They ve got at least half an hour s 
 start," he added, as he resumed the reins. 
 Beyond this we exchanged no words about 
 our errand, but bowled along in silence, hav 
 ing that shamefaced reticence in matters senti 
 mental which prevails between a man and 
 a boy. It was five miles to Whistleville. We 
 had gone about half the distance, and had 
 reached the top of a bare hill, when Bob 
 pulled up abruptly. " Hark ! " he exclaimed. 
 " Is that the sound of wheels ahead ? " 
 
 We both listened intently. 
 
 " No," I answered ; " it s only the brook 
 down in the hollow." 
 
 " Pshaw ! So it is," said Bob" Get up ! " 
 
 But, at the instant of starting, one of the 
 hind-wheels rolled gently from its axle, the car 
 riage toppled over on its side in a leisurely 
 manner, and I found myself lying among the 
 sweet-fern and huckleberry-bushes by the road 
 side. The horses stood perfectly still. There 
 
IND EPENDENCE. 1 4 l 
 
 was a moment of silence, and then "Damn 
 everything ! " said Bob, from the ditch. He 
 had kept hold of the reins, and neither of us 
 was hurt, as the carriage, luckily, had no head 
 way on and the fall was soft. " Strike a match, 
 Charley, and look at my watch. I can t let go 
 the reins." 
 
 " It is a quarter past ten/ I reported, after 
 some fumbling. 
 
 " The game is up," said Bob. 
 
 " It s only two miles and a quarter," I sug 
 gested ; " couldn t we hoof it ? " 
 
 " What ! in twenty minutes ? Not much we 
 couldn t. We had just about time enough to 
 make it with the wagon." 
 
 "We might get another wagon from a 
 farmer." 
 
 " There s nothing but woods fora mile ahead. 
 No ; about face ! The next time you see your 
 cousin Kate, young man, her name will be Mrs. 
 Spencer." 
 
 We unhitched the sweating team, drew the 
 carriage off the road, and started homeward on 
 foot, Bob leading the horses and whistling 
 softly as he went. About half a mile up the 
 road we came to a farmhouse, where the lights 
 were still burning. Here we got a pole, and, 
 putting in the horses, drove back to the village. 
 It was near midnight when we reached the 
 green, and the Fourth was over. A smell of 
 gunpowder still lingered in the air, but the 
 houses were dark, except where a few sleepless 
 revelers kept wassail in the barroom of the 
 
14-2 DECLARATION OF 
 
 Eagle Hotel. We left the horses at the stable, 
 and went directly to my uncle s office, where 
 a light was burning. Bob shrank perceptibly 
 from entering. There were voices inside, and, 
 as we opened the door and walked in, we found 
 Mr. Ketchum in the act of taking leave. He 
 evidently knew nothing of what had happened, 
 for his face wore its habitual look of smug self- 
 satisfaction. My uncle, on the contrary, had an 
 expression of ill-concealed nervousness, which 
 deepened into alarm as his eye sought Bob s 
 for tidings of our success. Bob shook his head. 
 No one spoke. 
 
 Mr. Ketchum saw that something was the 
 matter. "Anything wrong?" he inquired, 
 looking from one to the other. "Anybody 
 sick ? " 
 
 " Sit down a minute, Ketchum ; sit down," 
 said my poor uncle. He made one or two efforts 
 to speak, but his voice shook so that he could 
 hardly utter a word. Finally, he controlled 
 himself, and began, " I hoped it would turn out 
 a mistake, or that we could stop it in time, and 
 so I said nothing to you. But but I am 
 terribly shocked terribly mortified to have to 
 tell you. My daughter has acted badly ; she 
 has disgraced her father. You can t feel worse 
 about it than I do." 
 
 " For Heaven s sake, what s the matter ? " de 
 manded Ketchum. 
 
 " Oh, let s have it out," broke in Bob, stepping 
 forward. " Ketchum, she has run away with 
 George Spencer, this evening, while the fire- 
 
INDEPENDENCE. 143 
 
 works were going on. They went to Whistle- 
 ville, and I went after them as soon as we dis 
 covered it ; but the wagon broke down on top 
 of Moss Hill, and so they ve got off; and, 
 upon my soul, I m sorry for it, and I didn t 
 think it of Kate. If she wanted to break with 
 you, she might have done it fair and square. 
 This running off in the dark is a shabby busi 
 ness. The girl has treated you badly, Ketchum, 
 and the family owes you an apology." 
 
 Bob held out his hand, but Mr. Ketchum did 
 not appear to notice it. His face went white and 
 red by starts, and the passions of grief, anger, 
 and shame chased each other over his broad 
 cheeks like flying cloud-shadows across a 
 meadow. " Why didn t you tell me this when 
 I came in here to-night ? " he demanded at 
 length, facing my uncle. 
 
 " I thought Bob might catch the fools and 
 bring em back in time to save this disgrace 
 and hush the thing up," explained the run 
 away s parent. 
 
 " Oh ! And you thought the girl was good 
 enough for me anyway, even if she had run off 
 with another feller." 
 
 " There was time to catch em ; there was 
 time to stop it, before they could get the down 
 train, if the wagon hadn t broke down. Mean, 
 stinking wagons Scott always keeps ! " he 
 added, with a parenthetic rage. 
 
 " Oh, the wagon broke down, did it ? " 
 sneered Ketchum, with a black look at Bob. 
 " Yes ; I ve heard of that kind of wagon before. 
 
144 DECLARATION OF 
 
 I ll tell you what it is, Squire Craig ; I can 
 see when a job is put up on me as well as the 
 next man, and I ain t going to swallow it so 
 sweet and nice." 
 
 " What do you mean by that, sir ? " said my 
 uncle. 
 
 " I mean that I may not be a college-educated 
 man or belong to a high-toned family, but as 
 long as you felt sure I had the stamps, you was 
 glad enough to take me all the same, and so 
 was the girl. But as soon as this report about 
 the mill gets around, you shake me quick as a 
 wink. And the joke is on you, after all. For, 
 as sure as I sit here, that story about our 
 paper s being protested in Thimblebury is a 
 darned rotten lie, and the man that started it 
 knows it s a darned lie." And he brought his 
 fist down on the table with an emphasis on the 
 expletive that lent it almost the dignity of an 
 oath, and doubtless gave its utterer a delightful 
 thrill of wickedness. 
 
 " So help me God ! " said my uncle, after a 
 pause, " I never heard any report of that kind 
 till this minute, and it wouldn t have made a 
 particle of difference with me if I had. I didn t 
 want your money, and my daughter didn t want 
 your money. I favored the match myself be 
 cause I thought you a worthy, industrious young 
 man of good principles and steady habits." 
 
 " It s a put-up job," asserted Ketchum, ris 
 ing and taking his hat from the table. " I don t 
 say that you are in it yourself, Mr. Craig 
 and I dare say you aint ; but your daughter is, 
 
INDEPENDENCE. 145 
 
 clear enough, and so is her brother. Well, I 
 wish you joy of your son-in-law a cuss with 
 out a cent, and that don t know how to make 
 a cent for the life of him. As for that little 
 flirt " 
 
 "There," broke in Bob; "that ll do. Not 
 another word. I took you for a gentleman, and 
 I made you an apology accordingly, which I see 
 I didn t owe you ; but if you say anything- " 
 
 " Bob ! " interrupted my uncle authorita 
 tively. And, as Ketchum stalked out of the 
 office, he continued, " The man has been insult 
 ing, but he has a right to feel hard toward us. 
 Kate has treated him shamefully ; she has 
 treated the whole of us shamefully." 
 
 " Well," replied Bob, breathing short, " I 
 don t defend the way she did it, but I m glad 
 she s done it, after all. That fellow is a cad to 
 the bottom of him. I always thought so, and 
 now I know it. Spencer s a gentleman, if he 
 isn t anything else." 
 
 "Halloo!" exclaimed my uncle, recovering 
 his usual manner as his eye fell on me. 
 "What s the boy doing here? No place for 
 boys. Time to be abed. Here, here s a dol 
 lar for your savings bank ; buy fire-crackers 
 next Fourth. Off to bed with you." And I 
 withdrew. 
 
 Here is the letter which my tearful Aunt 
 Sophia received from Kate a day or two later. 
 I found it last week in a bundle of yellow 
 papers in the little hair-cloth trunk under the 
 garret stairs. Eheu fugaces! 
 
146 DECLARATION- OF 
 
 NEW YORK, July, 6, 18 . 
 MY DEAR, DEAR MOTHER : Will you ever for 
 give me ? You must, for I am so happy. I know 
 that I have done very, very wrong, but George 
 was so impetuous. He had a presentiment that, un 
 less I went with him that night, we never should be 
 married. You know what a strong will father has, 
 and I did not dare to face the scene that would have 
 taken place if I had broken off my engagement 
 with Mr. Ketchum in the usual way. Poor Mr. 
 Ketchum ! I have treated him very badly, and I did 
 like him in a way. But, mother, I found that I 
 could not marry him. He was too vulgar. Only 
 think ! I discovered that he had bought a book 
 called Etiquette and Eloquence ; or, The Perfect 
 Gentleman, telling about how to behave in com 
 pany, etc. ; and he used to learn little speeches out 
 of it and say them to me when he called. Please all 
 of you forgive me, and write to me at No. 137 
 Blank Street, where we are boarding. George has 
 a good situation with his uncle, who is an architect 
 and is going to take him into partnership some day. 
 I wish you could see how happy I am. 
 
 Ever your own loving daughter, 
 
 CATHERINE C. SPENCER. 
 
 P. S. We were married that evening at Whistle- 
 ville, by Rev. Dr. Quickly, in ten minutes. We 
 have heard of poor Bob s accident with the wagon. 
 Dear Bob ! how I love him ! Ask him to pardon 
 us for it. 
 
 It is needless to add that everyone came 
 round in time, even my uncle, who held out 
 manfully for several months. Even Mr. 
 
INDEPENDENCE. 147 
 
 Ketchum, if he did not forgive, at least forgot 
 so far as to marry a rich young woman of 
 Thimblebury, with whom he subsequently 
 moved to that flourishing burg and to higher 
 spheres of usefulness in business life. 
 
 2 
 
V. 
 SPLIT ZEPHYR, 
 
V. 
 
 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 An attenuated yarn spun by the Fates. 
 
 T was the evening of Commencement 
 Day. The old Church on the green, 
 which had rung for many consecutive 
 hours with the eloquence of slim 
 young gentlemen in evening dress, exhorting 
 the Scholar in Politics or denouncing the Gross 
 Materialism of the Age, was at last empty and 
 still. As it drew the dewy shadows softly 
 about its eaves and filled its rasped interior with 
 soothing darkness, it bore a whimsical likeness 
 to some aged horse which, having been pestered 
 all day with flies, was now feeding in peace 
 along the dim pasture. 
 
 It was Clay who suggested this resemblance, 
 and we all laughed appreciatively, as we used 
 to do in those days at Clay s clever sayings. 
 There were five of us strolling down the diago 
 nal walk to our farewell supper at " Ambrose s." 
 Arrived at that refectory, we found it bare of 
 guests and had things quite to ourselves. After 
 supper, we took our coffee out in the little court 
 yard, where a fountain dribbled, and the flutter 
 of the grape leaves on the trellises in the night 
 wind invited to confidences. 
 
IS 2 SPLIT ZEPHYR, 
 
 11 Well, Armstrong," began Doddridge, 
 "where are you going to spend the vacation ? " 
 
 "Vacation!" answered Armstrong; "vaca 
 tions are over for me." 
 
 " You re not going to work for your living at 
 once? " inquired Berkeley. 
 
 " I m going to work to-morrow," replied 
 Armstrong emphatically ; "I m going down to 
 New York to enter a law office." 
 
 " I thought you had some notion of staying 
 here and taking a course of graduate study." 
 
 " No, sir ! The sooner a man gets into har 
 ness, the better, I ve wasted enough time in 
 the last four years. The longer a man loafs 
 around in this old place, under pretense of read 
 ing and that kind of thing, the harder it is for 
 him to take hold." 
 
 Armstrong was a rosy little man, with yellow 
 hair and light eyes. His expression was one of 
 irresolute good nature. His temper was san 
 guine and expansive, and he had been noted in 
 college for anything but concentration of pur 
 suit. He was gregarious in his habits, suscep 
 tible and subject to sudden enthusiasms. His 
 good nature made him a victim to all the bores 
 and idlers in the class, and his room became a 
 favorite resort for men on their way to recita 
 tion, being on the ground floor and near the lec 
 ture rooms. They would drop it about half an 
 hour before the bell rang, and make up a little 
 game of " penny ante " around Armstrong s cen 
 ter table. In these diversions he seldom took 
 part, as he had given it out publicly that he was 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 153 
 
 " studying for a stand "; but his abstinence from 
 the game in no wise damped the spirits of his 
 guests. Occasionally his presence would re 
 ceive the notice of the company somewhat as 
 follows : 
 
 No. i. " Make less noise, fellows; Charley is 
 digging out tnat Puckle lesson." 
 
 No. 2. " You go into the bedroom, Charley, 
 and shut the door, and then you won t be 
 bothered by the racket." 
 
 No. 3. " Oh, hang the Puckle ! Come and 
 take a hand, Charley. We ll let you in this pool 
 without an ante." 
 
 No. 4. " Why don t you get a new pack of 
 cards, Charley ? It s a disgrace to you to keep 
 such a dirty lot of old pasteboards for your 
 friends." 
 
 In face of which abuse, Armstrong was as 
 helpless as Telemachus under the visitation of 
 the suitors. The resolute air with which he 
 now declared his intention of grappling with life 
 had therefore something comic about it, and 
 Berkeley said, rather incredulously : 
 
 " I suppose you ll keep up your reading along 
 with your law ? " 
 
 " No," replied the other ; " Themis is a jeal 
 ous mistress. No; I m going to bone right 
 down to it." 
 
 " Haven t you changed your ideal of life 
 lately ? " asked Clay a little scornfully, 
 
 " Perhaps I have," said Armstrong ; " per 
 haps I ve had to." 
 
 " What is your ideal of life ? " I inquired. 
 
154 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 " Well, I ll tell you/ he answered, draining 
 his coffee cup solemnly, and putting it down 
 with the manner of a man who has made up 
 his mind. The rest of us arranged ourselves in 
 attitudes of attention. " My ideal is independ 
 ence," began Armstrong. I want to live my 
 own life ; and as the first condition of independ 
 ence is money, I m going for money. Culture 
 and taste, and all that, are well enough when a 
 man can afford it, but for a poor man it means 
 just so many additional wants which he can t 
 gratify. My father is an educated man ; a 
 country minister with a small salary and a large 
 family ; and his education, instead of being a 
 blessing, has been an actual curse to him. He 
 has pined for all sorts of things which he 
 couldn t have books, engravings, foreign travel, 
 leisure for study, nice people, and nice things 
 about him. I ve made up my mind that, what 
 ever else I may be, I won t be poor, and I won t 
 be a minister, and I won t have a wife and 
 brats hanging to me. I tell you that, next to 
 ill health, poverty is the worst thing that can 
 happen to a man. All the sentimental griev 
 ances that are represented in novels and poetry 
 as the deepest of human afflictions, disap 
 pointed ambitions, death of friends, loss of 
 faith, estrangements, having your girl go back 
 on you, they don t signify very long if a man 
 has sound health and a full purse. The min 
 isters and novel writers and fellows that preach 
 the sentimental view of life don t believe it 
 themselves. It s a kind of professional or 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 155 
 
 literary quackery with them. Just let them feel 
 the pinch of poverty, and then offer them a 
 higher salary or a chance to make a little sordid 
 gain in some way, and see how quick they ll 
 accept the call to a higher sphere of usefulness. 
 Berk, hand over a match, will you ; this cigar 
 has gone out." 
 
 " Loud cries of We will we will ! " said 
 Berkeley. "But can it be? Has the poick 
 turned cynic,- and the sickly sentimentalist be 
 come a materialist and a misogynist ? " 
 
 (Armstrong was our class poet, and had 
 worried the official muse on Presentation Day 
 to the utterance of some four hundred lines 
 filled with allusions to Alma Mater, Friend 
 ship s Altar, the Elms of Yale, etc. His piece 
 on that occasion had been " pronounced, by a 
 well known literary gentleman who was pres 
 ent, equal to the finest productions of our own 
 Willis.") 
 
 " I ll bet the cigars," said Doddridge, "that 
 Armstrong marries the first girl he sees in New 
 York." 
 
 "Yes," said Clay, "his boarding-house 
 keeper s daughter." 
 
 "And has a dozen children before he is 
 forty," added Berkeley ; " a dozen kids, and all 
 of them girls. Charley is sure to be a begetter 
 of wenches." 
 
 " And writes birthday odes To My Infant 
 Daughter for the Home Journal, " continued 
 Clay. 
 
 "No, no," said the victim of this banter, 
 
156 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 shaking his head solemnly. " I shall give no 
 hostages to fortune. I mean to live snug and 
 carry as little sail as possible : to leave only the 
 narrowest margin out for Fate to tread on. 
 The man who has the fewest exposed points 
 leads, on the whole, the happiest life. How can 
 a man enjoy himself freely when a piece of de 
 fective plumbing, the bursting of a toy pistol, 
 the carelessness of a nurse, may plunge him 
 into a lifelong sorrow ? I don t say it s a very 
 noble life that I propose to myself, but it s a 
 safe one. I m too nervous and anxious to stand 
 the responsibilities of matrimony." 
 
 " If you can t stand responsibility," said 
 Doddridge, " I don t see why you choose the 
 law for a profession. You don t seem to me 
 cut out for a lawyer anyway. I always 
 thought you meant to be some kind of a 
 literary chap." 
 
 " Yes," said Berkeley, " why don t you go for 
 a snug berth under the government, or study 
 for a tutorship here ? That s the life that would 
 suit you, old man." 
 
 " Not at all," answered Armstrong ; " I have 
 a horror of any salaried position, or of any posi 
 tion where a man is obliged to conform his 
 habits and opinions to other people s. It is 
 the worst sort of dependence. Now a lawyer 
 in successful practice, and especially if he is a 
 bachelor, is about as independent as a man can 
 be. His relations with his clients are merely 
 professional, and what he does or thinks pri 
 vately is nobody s business." 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 157 
 
 " If you are going- to be a mere lawyer," 
 asked Clay, " what becomes of your education 
 and your intellectual satisfactions ? " 
 
 "A man can get his best intellectual satisfac 
 tions out of the work of his profession," an 
 swered Armstrong. " Besides, as to that, 
 there s time enough. Fifteen years of solid 
 work will enable one to put by a fair compe 
 tence, if he lives carefully and has no one but 
 himself to support ; and then he will be free to 
 take up a hobby. Oh, I shall cultivate a hobby 
 or two after a while. It keeps the mind healthy 
 to have some interest of the kind outside of one s 
 business. I may take to book-collecting or 
 numismatics or raising orchids. Perhaps I may 
 become an authority on ancient armor ; time 
 enough for that by and by. And then I can 
 cut over to Europe every summer if I like, and 
 no one to interfere with my down-sittings or up 
 risings, my goings-out or my comings-in. Do 
 you know," he went on, after a pause, " how I 
 always look to myself in the glass of the future ? 
 I figure myself like old Tulkinghorn, in Bleak 
 House, going down into his reverberating 
 vaults for a bottle of choice vintage, after the 
 work of the day, and then sitting quietly in the 
 twilight in his dusky, old-fashioned law cham 
 bers, sipping his wine while the room fills with 
 the fragrance of southern grapes. The gay old 
 silver-top ! " 
 
 There was silence for a few minutes after 
 Armstrong had finished his declaration. It was 
 broken by Berkeley, who had risen, and was 
 
158 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 walking up and down in front of the fountain 
 with his hands thrust into his pockets. 
 
 "You couldn t lead that sort of life if you 
 tried," he said ; " you aren t built for it." 
 
 " Don t you make any mistake," rejoined the 
 other ; " it s the sort of life I m going to live." 
 
 " It s a cowardly life," retorted Berkeley. 
 
 " Did I say it wasn t ? I said it was safe. 
 You can call it what you like." 
 
 " Well," replied Berkeley, reseating himself 
 again, " my ideal career is just the opposite of 
 that. " 
 
 " Suppose you explain yours, then," said 
 Armstrong. 
 
 Berkeley hesitated a few moments before be 
 ginning. He was a lean, tallish fellow, with a 
 Scotch cast of countenance, a small blue eye, 
 high cheek bones, a freckled skin, and whity- 
 brown hair. He had a dry, cautious humor, 
 fed by much out of the way reading. He had 
 been distinguished in college by methodical 
 habits, a want of ambition, a disposition to keep 
 to himself, and a mixture of selfishness and 
 bonhomie which made him a fold friend but an 
 agreeable companion. It was therefore with 
 some surprise that we heard him deliver himself 
 as follows : 
 
 " I believe that the greatest mistake a man 
 can make is in not getting enough out of life. 
 I want to lead a full life, to have a wide ex 
 perience, to develop my whole nature to the 
 utmost, to touch mankind at the largest 
 possible number of points. I want adventure, 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 159 
 
 change, excitement, emotion, suffering even 
 1 don t care what, so long as it is not stag 
 nation. Just consider what there is on this 
 planet to be seen, learned, enjoyed, and what a 
 miserably small share of it most people appro 
 priate. Why, there are men in my village who 
 have never been outside the county and seldom 
 out of the township ; who have never heard a 
 word of any language but English ; never seen 
 a city or a mountain or the ocean or, indeed, 
 any body of water bigger than Fresh Pond or 
 the Hogganum River ; never been in a theater, 
 steamboat, library, or Cathedral. Cathedral ! 
 Their conception of a church is limited to the 
 white wooden meeting-house at the center. 
 Their art-gallery is the wagon of a traveling 
 photographer. Their metropolitan hotel is the 
 stoop and barroom of the Uncas House. 
 Their university is the unpainted schoolhouse 
 on the hill. Their literature is the weekly news 
 paper from the county town. But take the 
 majority of educated men even. What a rusty, 
 small kind of existence they lead ! They are in 
 a rut, just the same as the others, only the rut 
 is a trifle wider. If I had my way I would 
 never do the same work or talk with the same 
 people hardly live in the same place for two 
 days running. Life is too short to do a thing 
 twice. When I come to the end of mine I don t 
 want to say fai manque la vie ; but make my 
 brag, with the Wife of Bath : 
 
 " Unto this day it doth myn herte bote 
 That I have had my world as in my time. " 
 
J 6o SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 " Well, how are you going to do all those 
 fine things ? " inquired Armstrong. " For in 
 stance, that about not living in one place two 
 days running. I m afraid you ll find that in 
 convenient, not to say expensive." 
 
 "Oh, you mustn t take me too literally. I may 
 have to travel on foot or take a steerage pas 
 sage, but I shall keep going all the same. I 
 haven t made any definite plans yet. I shall 
 probably strike for something in the diplomatic 
 line secretary of legation, or some small con 
 sulship perhaps. But the principle is the main 
 thing, and the principle is : Don t do anything 
 because it s the nearest and easiest and most 
 obvious thing to do, but make up your mind to 
 get the best. Look at the lazy way in which 
 men accept their circumstances. There is the 
 matter of acquaintance, for instance we let 
 chance determine it. We know the men that 
 we can t help knowing the ones in the next 
 house, cousins and second cousins, business 
 connections, etc. Here at college, now, we get 
 acquainted with the fellows at the eating club 
 or in the same society, or those who happen to 
 sit next us in the classroom, because their 
 names begin with the same letter. That s 
 it ; it s just a sample of our whole life. 
 Our friendships, like everything else about 
 us, are determined by the alphabet. We go 
 with the Z s because some arbitrary system 
 of classification has put us among them, 
 instead of fighting our way up to the 
 A s, where we naturally belong. The conse- 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 161 
 
 quence is that one s friends are mostly dreadful 
 bores." 
 
 " I m sure we are all much obliged to you," 
 murmured Clay parenthetically. 
 
 " There are about two or three thousand 
 people in the world," continued Berkeley, " su 
 premely worth knowing. Why shouldn t / 
 know them ? I will ! Everybody knows 
 two or three thousand people mostly very 
 stupid people or, rather, he lets them know 
 him. Why shouldn t he use some choice in the 
 matter? Why not know Thackeray and Car- 
 lyle, Lord Palmerston and the Pope, and the 
 Emperor of China and all the great statesmen, 
 authors, African explorers, military com 
 manders, artists, hereditary nobles, actresses, 
 wits and belles of the best society, instead of 
 putting up with Tom, Dick, and Harry ? " 
 
 " Berkeley, 4 with whom the bell-mouthed 
 flask had wrought ! " exclaimed Clay. "De 
 cidedly, Berk, you should take your coffee 
 without cognac." 
 
 " Let me suggest," put in Doddridge, " that 
 some of those parties you mentioned are not so 
 easy to get introductions to." 
 
 * Oh, I say again, you mustn t take me too 
 literally. But even the top swells are easier to 
 know than you think. All that is wanted is a 
 little cheek. But take it in a smaller way ; say 
 that we resolve to cultivate the best society 
 within our reach. Doubtless there are numbers 
 of interesting and distinguished people right 
 here in New Haven whose acquaintance it 
 
1 6 2 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 would be worth while to have. But how long 
 would you beggars live here without making 
 the least effort to look them out, and meanwhile 
 put up with the same old everyday bores like 
 me, or Polisson here ? And it s the same way 
 with marriage. A fellow blunders into matri 
 mony with the first attractive girl that gives 
 him the opportunity. He knows, if he takes 
 the time to think about it, that there are a 
 thousand others better than she, if he will wait 
 and look through the world a little. Juxta 
 position in fine, as Clough says." 
 
 " Of course, with such a brilliant destiny 
 before you, you II never marry, said I. 
 
 " Yes, I think I shall. I fancy that the 
 noblest possibilities of life are never realized 
 without marriage. Yes, I can think of nothing 
 finer than to have a lot of manly boys and sweet 
 girls growing up around one. But when I 
 marry it shall be so as to give completeness and 
 expansion to life, not narrowness and dullness. 
 I shall never marry and settle down. Settle 
 down ! What a damnable expression that is ! 
 A man ought to settle up. I mean to have my 
 fling first, too. I should like to gamble a bit at 
 Baden-Baden. I should like to go out to Colo 
 rado and have a lick at mining speculations. I 
 want to rough it some too, and see how life is 
 lived close to the bone : ship fora voyage before 
 the mast ; enlist for a campaign or two some 
 where and have joy of battle ; join the gypsies 
 or the Mormons or the Shakers for a while, and 
 taste all the queerness of things. And then I 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 163 
 
 want to float for another while on the very top 
 most crest of society. I want to fight a duel 
 or two, elope with a marquise, do a little of 
 everything for the experience s sake, as a man 
 ought to take opium once in his life just to 
 know how it feels." 
 
 Whether it was indeed the cognac, or only 
 the unusual excitement attending this outburst 
 of pent-up fire, Berkeley s cheek had got a flush 
 upon it. Perhaps, too, it was owing to the in 
 fluences of the day and the hour, the splash of 
 the fountain, the rustle of the vine-leaves, and 
 the wavering shadows which played about the 
 courtyard as the gas-jets flickered in the breeze 
 of night, that made his boastful words seem less 
 extravagantly out of character than they other 
 wise would. The silence which followed his 
 speech was broken by Clay, who sat with his 
 foot on the rim of the fountain, balancing on 
 the hind legs of his chair, and looking thought 
 fully at the slender jet as it rose and fell. He 
 still wore the dress suit in which he had figured 
 on the Commencement platform in the after 
 noon, and which set off the aristocratic grace 
 of his slight figure. There was a pale intellect 
 ual light in his face, and his black eyes had the 
 glow of genius. 
 
 " I think," he began, " that Berkeley makes a 
 mistake in confounding a full life with a rest 
 less one. I believe in a full experience too, but 
 the satisfactions should be inward ones. Take 
 the matter of foreign travel, for one thing, on 
 which you lay so much stress. It is a great 
 
1 64 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 stimulus to the imagination, no doubt ; but then 
 foreign countries are accessible to the imagina 
 tion by other means through books and art, 
 for example. I think it likely that the reality is, 
 quite as often as not, disappointing. Place, after 
 all, is indifferent. The soul is its own place ; 
 you can t get rid of yourself by going abroad, 
 and it s himself that a man gets sooner tired of 
 than of anything else. Then as to acquaintances, 
 I don t know that I should care to know person 
 ally such men as Thackeray and Carlyle, and 
 the big composers and artists and other people 
 that you mentioned. It might be equally disen 
 chanting. They put the best of themselves into 
 their books, or pictures, or music. I certainly 
 would not seek their society through a formal 
 introduction, at all events. It is hard for a 
 small man to keep his self-respect in face of a 
 great man when he obtains his acquaintance as 
 a special favor. If I could meet some of those 
 fellows, quite naturally and accidentally, on 
 equal terms, I might like it, but not otherwise. 
 But, leaving that point out of account, I think 
 that the career which Berkeley proposes to him 
 self would turn out very hollow. It would re 
 sult in the superficial gratification of the curios 
 ity and the senses ; and, as soon as the novelty 
 got rubbed off, what is there left ? " 
 
 "So then,"said Berkeley, "you ve swung into 
 line with Armstrong, have you ? You mean to 
 plod along in some professional rut too. What 
 has got into all our idealists ? " 
 
 " Not by any means," answered Clay. " Arm- 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 165 
 
 strong talks about independence, and yet 
 destines himself to the worst kind of depend 
 ence slavery to money-getting. Most people, 
 it seems to me, spend the best part of their lives 
 not in living, but in getting the means to live. 
 We ll give Armstrong, say twenty years, to lay 
 up enough money to retire on and begin to live. 
 What sort of a position will he be in then to 
 enjoy his independence ? His nature will have 
 got so subdued to what it works in that the 
 only safety for him will be to keep on at the 
 law." 
 
 "All right! Then I ll keep on," interjected 
 Armstrong. 
 
 "What the devil do you mean to do then ? " 
 asked Berkeley of Clay. 
 
 "I don t quite know yet," replied the latter. 
 " I shall loaf and invite my soul whenever I 
 feel like it. I shall live as I go along, and not 
 postpone it till I am forty. I shan t put myself 
 into any mill that will grind me just so much a 
 day. I need my leisure too badly for that. I 
 presume I shall spend most of my time at first 
 in reading and walking. Then, whenever I 
 think of anything to write I shall write it, and 
 if I can sell what I write to some publisher or 
 other so much the better. If not, go on as 
 before." 
 
 "Meanwhile, where will your bread and 
 butter come from ? " asked Armstrong. 
 
 " Oh, I shan t starve. I can get some sort 
 of hack work something that won t take much 
 of my time, and which I can do with my left 
 
1 66 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 hand. But the great point, after all, is to make 
 your wants simple ; to live like an Arab, con 
 tent with a few dates and a swallow from the 
 gourd. Lessen your denominator ; it s easier 
 than raising your numerator, and the quotient 
 is the same." 
 
 " No, it s not the same," Berkeley retorted. 
 " Renunciation and enjoyment are not the 
 same. It makes a heap of difference whether 
 you have a thing or simply do without it. The 
 plain living and high thinking philosophy may 
 do for Clay, whose mind to him a kingdom is ; 
 but a fellow like me, whose mind is only a small 
 Central American republic, can t live on the 
 revenues of the spirit. The fact is, Clay, you ve 
 read too much Emerson. I went into that 
 myself once, but I soon found out that it 
 wouldn t wear. I want mine thicker. The 
 worst thing about the career of a literary man 
 or an artist is that, if he fails, there are no com 
 pensations ; and success is mighty uncertain. 
 Nobody doubts that you are smart enough, Clay, 
 and I am sure we expect great things of you, 
 whatever line you take up. But, for the sake 
 of the argument, suppose you have grubbed 
 along in a small way, living on crusts and 
 water till you are fifty, without doing any really 
 good work. Then where are you ? You haven t 
 had any fun. You ve no other string to your 
 bow. You haven t that practical experience of 
 the world which would enable you to turn your 
 hand to something else. You have no influence 
 or reputation ; for, of all poor things, poor art 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 167 
 
 of any kind is the worst hateful to gods and 
 men and columns. In short, where are you ? 
 You re out of the dance ; you don t count." 
 
 "Yes," added Armstrong, "and you ve no 
 professional success or solid standing in the 
 community ; and, what s worse, you ve no. 
 money, which might make up for the want of 
 all the rest." 
 
 " I don t think you get my meaning. I may 
 fail," said Clay proudly ; " I may never even try 
 to succeed, in your sense of the word. I de 
 cline all mean competitions and all low views of 
 success. The noblest ideal of life at least, the 
 noblest to me is self-culture in the high mean 
 ing of the word ; the harmonious development 
 of one s whole nature. Armstrong has drawn a 
 picture of his future in the likeness of old Tul- 
 kinghorn. I suppose we are all accustomed to 
 put our anticipations into some such concrete 
 shape before our mind s eye. The typical situ 
 ation which I am fond of imagining is some 
 thing like this : I like to fancy myself sitting in 
 a dark old upper room of some remote farm 
 house at the close of a winter day, after three 
 or four hours of steady reading or writing. 
 The room is full of books the best books. 
 There is a little fire on the hearth, there is a 
 dingy curtain at the window. It is solitary and 
 still, and when the light gets too scant to let 
 me read any more, I fill my pipe and go and 
 stand in the window. Outside, there is a row 
 of leafless elms, and beyond that a dim wide 
 landscape of lakes and hills, and beyond that a 
 
1 68 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 red, windy sunset. I can sit in that window 
 and smoke my pipe and have my own thoughts 
 till the hills grow black. There is no one to 
 say to me Go or Come ; no patient to visit ; 
 no confounded case on the docket next morn 
 ing at nine ; no distasteful, mean, slavish job 
 of any kind. How can I fail to have thoughts 
 worth the thinking, and to live a rich and free 
 life when I breathe every day the bracing air 
 of nature and the great poets? Isn t such a 
 life in itself the best kind of success, even if a 
 man accomplishes nothing in particular that 
 you can put your hand on ? " 
 
 " Yes, I know," said Armstrong, taking a 
 long breath. "I have felt that way, too. But 
 a man has got to put all that sternly behind 
 him and do the world s work for the world s 
 wages, if he means to amount to anything. 
 It s only a finer kind of self-indulgence, after 
 all egoistic hedonism and that sort of thing." 
 
 "It won t be all standing at windows and 
 looking at sunsets," added Doddridge. " Has 
 it ever occurred to you that, before entering on 
 a life of self-denial and devotion to rather vague 
 ideals, a man ought to be mighty sure of himself ? 
 Can you keep up the culture business without 
 growing in on yourself unhealthily, and then 
 getting -sick of inaction ? Don t you think there 
 will be times of disappointment and doubt, when 
 you look around and see fellows without half 
 your talents getting ahead of you in the world ? " 
 
 " Of course," answered Clay, " I shall have to 
 make sacrifices, and I shall have to stick to 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 169 
 
 them when made. But there have always been 
 plenty of people willing to make similar sacri 
 fices for similar compensations. Men have 
 gone out into the wilderness or shut themselves 
 up in the cloister for opportunities of study 
 or self-communion, or for other objects which 
 were perhaps at bottom no more truly devo 
 tional than mine. Nowadays such opportuni 
 ties may be had by any man who will keep him 
 self free from the servitude of a bread-winning 
 profession. It is not necessary now to cry 
 Ecce in deserto or Ecce in penetralibus. Oh, I 
 shall have my dark days ; but whenever the 
 blue devils get thick I shall take to the woods 
 and return to sanity." 
 
 " You mean to live in the country, then ? " I 
 inquired, 
 
 "Yes ; most of the time, at any rate. Nature 
 is fully half of life to me." 
 
 Again there was a pause. 
 
 " Well, you next, Polisson," said Armstrong 
 finally. " Let s hear what your programme is." 
 
 "Oh, nothing in the least interesting," I re 
 plied. " My future is all cut and dried. I shall 
 spend the next two years in the south of 
 France mainly at Lyons to learn the details 
 of the silk manufacture. Then I shall come 
 home to go into my father s store for a year, 
 as a clerk in the importing department. At 
 the close of that year the governor will take 
 me in as junior partner, and I shall marry my 
 second cousin. We shall live with my parents, 
 and I am going to be very domestic, though, as 
 
170 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 a matter of form, I shall join one or two clubs. 
 I shall go down town every morning at nine, 
 and come up at five." 
 
 " Quite a neat little destiny," said Armstrong. 
 "I wish I had your backing. Come, Dodd, 
 what s yours ? You re the only man left." 
 
 " I haven t made up my mind yet," said 
 Doddridge slowly. 
 
 He was a large, spare man, with a swarthy 
 skin, a wide mouth, a dark, steady eye, and a 
 long jaw. There was an appearance of power 
 and will about him which was well borne 
 out by his character. He had been a system 
 atic though not a laborious student, and while 
 maintaining a stand comfortably near the 
 head of the class, had taken a course in the 
 Law School during Senior year, doing his 
 double duties with apparent ease. He was a 
 constant speaker in the debates of the Linonian 
 Society, and the few who attended the meetings 
 of that moribund school of eloquence spoke of 
 Doddridge s speeches as oases in the waste 
 of forensic dispute, being always distinguished 
 by vigor and soundness, though without any 
 literary quality, such as Clay s occasional per 
 formances had. Berkeley, who covered his 
 own lazy and miscellaneous reading with the 
 mask of eclecticism, and proclaimed his dis 
 belief in a prescribed course of study, was wont 
 to say that Doddridge was the only man that 
 he knew who was using the opportunities 
 given by the college for all they were worth, 
 and really getting out of " the old curric " that 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. I? I 
 
 mental discipline which it professed to impart. 
 Though rather taciturn, he was not unsocial, 
 and was fond of his pipe in the evening. He 
 liked a joke, especially if it was of a definite 
 kind and at some one s expense, touching some 
 characteristic weakness of the man. There 
 was at bottom something a little hard about 
 him, though everyone agreed that he was a 
 good fellow. We all felt sure that he would 
 make a distinguished success in practical life ; 
 and we doubtless thought if we thought about 
 it at all that, with his clear foresight and 
 habits of steady work, he had already decided 
 upon his career. His words were therefore a 
 surprise. 
 
 " What ! you don t mean to say that you are 
 going to drift, Dodd ? " inquired Armstrong. 
 
 " Drift ? Well, no ; not exactly. I shall 
 keep my steering apparatus well in hand, but 
 I haven t decided yet what port to run for. 
 There s no hurry. I have an uncle in the 
 Northwest in the lumber business who would 
 give me a chance. I may go out there and 
 look about a while at first. If it doesn t promise 
 much, there is the law to fall back upon. My 
 father has a fruit farm at Byzantium in Western 
 New York where I come from, you know 
 and he is part owner of the Byzantium weekly 
 Bugle. I ve no doubt I could get on as editor 
 and go to the legislature. Or I might do worse 
 than begin on the farm ; farming is looking up 
 in that section. I may try several things till I 
 find the right one." 
 
172 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 11 That s queer," said Armstrong. " I thought 
 you had made up your mind to enter the 
 Columbia Law School." 
 
 " Hardly," answered Doddridge, " though I 
 may, after all. The main point is to keep your 
 self in readiness for any work, and take the best 
 thing that turns up like Berkeley here," he 
 added dryly. 
 
 Armstrong looked at his watch and remarked 
 that it was nearly midnight. 
 
 " Boys," said I, " in fifteen years from to 
 night let s have a supper here and see how each 
 man of us has worked out his theory of life, 
 and how he likes it as far as he has got." 
 
 " Oh, give us twenty," said Doddridge, laugh 
 ing, as we all arose and prepared to break up. 
 " No one accomplishes anything in this latitude 
 before he is forty." 
 
 It was in effect just fifteen years from the 
 summer of our graduation that I started out to 
 look up systematically my quondam classmates 
 and compare notes with them. The course of 
 my own life had been quite other than I had 
 planned. For one thing, I had lived in New 
 Orleans and not in New York, and my occasions 
 had led me seldom to the North. The first 
 visit I paid was to Berkeley. I had heard that 
 he was still unmarried, and that he had been for 
 years settled, as minister, over a small Episco 
 pal parish on the Hudson. The steamer landed 
 me one summer afternoon at a little dock on 
 the west bank, and after obtaining from the 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 173 
 
 dock-keeper precise directions for finding the 
 parsonage, I set out on foot. After a walk of 
 a mile along a road skirted by handsome coun 
 try seats, but contrasting strangely in its loneli 
 ness with the broad thoroughfare of the river 
 constantly occupied by long tows of barges and 
 rafts, I came to the rectory gate. The house 
 was a stone cottage, covered with trailers, and 
 standing well back from the road. In the same 
 inclosure, surrounded by a grove of firs, was a 
 little stone chapel with high pitched roof and 
 rustic belfry. In front of the house I spied a 
 figure which I recognized as Berkeley. He was 
 in his shirt sleeves, and was pecking away with 
 a hoe at the gravel walk, whistling meanwhile 
 his old favorite "Bonny Boon." He turned as 
 I came up the driveway, and regarded me at 
 first without recognition. He, for his part, was 
 little changed by time. There was the same 
 tall, narrow-shouldered, slightly stooping figure , 
 the face, smooth-shaved, with a spot of wintry 
 red in the cheek, and the old humorous cast in 
 the small blue eyes. 
 
 " You don t know me from Adam," I said, 
 pausing in front of him. 
 
 "Ah!" he exclaimed directly. " Polisson, 
 old man, upon my conscience I m glad to see 
 you, but I didn t know you till you spoke. 
 You ve been having the yellow fever, haven t 
 you ? Come in come into the house." 
 
 We passed in through the porch, which was 
 covered with sweet-pea vines trained on strings, 
 and entered the library, where Berkeley resumed 
 
174 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 his coat. The room was lined with book 
 shelves loaded to the ceiling, while piles of lit 
 erature had overflowed the cases and stood 
 about on the floor in bachelor freedom. After 
 the first greetings and inquiries, Berkeley carried 
 my valise upstairs, and then returning, said : 
 
 " I m a methodical though not methodistical 
 person, or rather parson (excuse the Fullerisrn) ; 
 and as you have got to stay with me until I let 
 you go, that is, several days at the least (don t 
 interrupt), I ll keep a little appointment for the 
 next hour, if you will excuse me. A boy comes 
 three times a week to blow the bellows for my 
 organ practice. Perhaps you would like to 
 step into the church and hear me." 
 
 I assented, and we went out into the yard 
 and found the boy already waiting in the 
 church porch. Berkeley and his assistant 
 climbed into the organ loft, while I seated 
 myself in the chancel to listen. The instru 
 ment was small but sweet, and Berkeley really 
 played very well. The interior of the little 
 church was plain to bareness ; but the sun, 
 which had fallen low, threw red lights on the 
 upper parts of the undecorated walls, and rich 
 shadows darkened the lower half. Through 
 the white, pointed windows I saw the trem 
 bling branches of the firs. I had been hurry 
 ing for a fortnight past over heated railways, 
 treading fiery pavements, and lodging in red- 
 hot city hotels. But now the music and the 
 day s decline filled me with a sense of religious 
 calm, and for a moment I envied Berkeley. 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 175 
 
 After his practicing was over, the organist 
 locked the chapel door, and we paced up and 
 down in the fir grove on the matting of dark 
 red needles, and watched the river, whose 
 eastern half still shone in the evening light. 
 After supper we sat out on the piazza, which 
 commanded a view of the Hudson. Berkeley 
 opened a bottle of Chablis, and produced some 
 very old and dry Manilla cheroots, and, leaning 
 back in our willow chairs, we proceeded to 
 " talk Cosmos." 
 
 " You are very comfortably fixed here," I 
 began ; " but this is not precisely what I ex 
 pected to find you doing, after your declaration 
 of principles, fifteen years ago, you may remem 
 ber, on our Commencement night." 
 
 "Fifteen years! So it is so it is," he 
 answered, with a sigh. " Well, I homme pro 
 pose, you know. I don t quite remember what 
 it was that I said on that occasion : dreadful 
 nonsense, no doubt. As Thackeray says, a 
 boy is an ass. Whatever it was, it proceeded, 
 I suppose, from some temporary mood rather 
 than from any permanent conviction, though, 
 to be sure, I slipped into this way of life almost 
 by accident at first. But, being in, I have found 
 it easy to continue. I am rather too apt, per 
 haps, to stay where I am put. I am a quietist 
 by constitution." He paused, and I waited for 
 him to enter upon a fuller and more formal 
 apology. Finally he went on much as follows : 
 
 " Just after I left college I made application 
 through some parties at Washington for a for- 
 
176 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 eign consulate. While I was waiting for the 
 application to be passed on (it was finally 
 unsuccessful), I came up here to visit my uncle, 
 who was the rector of this parish. He was a 
 widower without any children, and the church 
 was his hobby. It is a queer little affair, some 
 thing like the old field-kirks or chapels of ease 
 in some parts of England. It was built partly 
 by my uncle and partly by a few New York 
 families who have country places here, and 
 who use it in the summer. This is all glebe 
 land," he said, indicating, with a sweep of his 
 hand, the twilight fields below the house, slop 
 ing down toward the faintly glimmering river. 
 " My uncle had a sort of prescription or lien 
 by courtesy on the place. There s not much 
 salary to speak of, but he had a nice plum of 
 his own, and lived inexpensively. Well, that 
 first summer I moped about here, got ac 
 quainted with the summer residents, read a 
 good deal of the time, took long walks into the 
 interior a rough, aboriginal country, where 
 they still talk Dutch and waited for an answer 
 to my application. When it came at last, I 
 fretted about it considerably, and was for start 
 ing off in search of something else. I had an 
 idea of getting a place as botanist on Coprolite s 
 survey of the Nth parallel, and I wrote to New 
 Haven for letters. I thought it would be a 
 good outdoor, horseback sort of life, and might 
 lead to something better. But that fell through, 
 and meanwhile the dominie kept saying : My 
 dear fellow, don t be in too much of a hurry to 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. *77 
 
 begin. Young America goes so fast nowadays 
 that it is like the dog in the hunting story a 
 leetle bit ahead of the hare. Why not stay here 
 for a while and ripen ripen ? The dominie 
 had a good library all my old college favorites, 
 old Burton, old Fuller, and Browne, etc., and it 
 seemed the wisest course to follow his advice 
 for the present. But in the fall my uncle had 
 a slight stroke of paralysis, and really needed 
 my help for a while ; so that what had been 
 a somewhat aimless life, considered as loafing, 
 became all at once a duty. At first he had 
 a theological student, from somewhere across 
 the river, come to stay in the house and read 
 service for him on Sundays. But he was a 
 ridiculous animal, whose main idea of a min 
 ister s duties was to intone the responses in a 
 sonorous manner. He used to practice this on 
 week days in his surplice, and I remember 
 especially the cadence with which he delivered 
 the sentence: Yea, like a broken wall shall 
 ye be and as a ruined hedge. 
 
 " He got the huckleberry, as we used to say 
 in college, on that particular text, and it has 
 stuck by me ever since. The dominie fired him 
 out after a fortnight, and one day said to me : 
 Jack, why don t you study for orders and take 
 up the succession here ? You are a bookworm, 
 and the life seems to be to your liking. Of 
 course, I declined very vigorously in the begin 
 ning, though offering to stay on so long as the 
 dominie needed my help. I used to do lay 
 reading on Sundays when he was too feeble. 
 
178 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 Gradually, the idea of the life did sweetly creep 
 into my study of imagination. The quaint- 
 ness of the place appealed to me. And here 
 was a future all cut out for me ; no preliminary 
 struggle, no contact with vulgar people, no cut 
 throat competition, but everything gentlemanly 
 and independent about it. I had strong doubts 
 touching my theology, and used to discuss 
 them with my uncle, but he said and said 
 rightly, I now think You young fellows in 
 college fancy that it s a mighty fine, bold thing 
 to affect radicalism and atheism, and the Lord 
 knows what all ; but it won t stick by you when 
 you get older. Experience will soften your 
 heart, and you ll find after a while that belief 
 and doubt are not matters of the pure reason, 
 but of the will. It is a question of attitude. 
 Besides, the church is broad enough to cover a 
 good many private differences in opinion. It 
 isn t as if you were going to be a blue-nosed 
 Presbyterian. You can stay here and make 
 your studies with me, instead of going into a 
 seminary, and when you are ready to go before 
 the bishop I ll see that you get the right send- 
 off. In short, here I am ! My uncle died two 
 years after, when I was already in orders, and 
 I ve been here ever since." 
 
 " I should think you would get lonely some 
 times, and make a strike for a city parish," I 
 suggested. 
 
 " Why no, I don t think I should care for 
 ordinary parish work. The beauty of my posi 
 tion here is its uniqueness. In winter I keep 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 179 
 
 the church open for the aborigines till they get 
 snowed up and stop coming, and then I put 
 down to New York for about a month or two 
 of work at the Astor Library. Last winter I 
 held service for two Sundays running with one 
 boy for congregation. Finally I announced to 
 him that the church would be closed until 
 spring. 
 
 " What jn the Well, what do you find to 
 
 do all alone up here? " 
 
 " Oh, there s always plenty to do, if you ll 
 only do it. I ve been cultivating some virtuosi 
 ties, among other things. Remind me to show 
 you my etchings when we go in. Did you 
 notice, perhaps, that little head over the table, 
 on the north wall ? No ? Then I sinatter 
 botany some. I ll let you look over my hortus 
 siccus before you go. It has some very rare 
 ferns ; one of them is a new species, and Fos 
 ter who exchanges with me swore he was 
 going to have it named after me. I sent the 
 first specimen to have it described in his forth 
 coming report. But doubtless all this sort of 
 thing is a bore to you. Well, lately I have been 
 going into genealogy, and I find it more and 
 more absorbing. Those piles of blank books 
 and manuscripts on the floor at the south end 
 are all crammed with genealogical notes and 
 material." 
 
 " I should think you would find it pretty dry 
 fodder," I said. 
 
 " That is because you take an outside, un 
 sympathetic view of it. Now, to an amateur it s 
 
180 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 anything but dry. There is as much excitement 
 in hunting down a missing link in a pedigree 
 that you have been on the trail of for a long 
 time, as there is in the chase of any other kind 
 of game." 
 
 " Do you ever get across the water ? Travel, 
 if I remember right, played a large part in your 
 scheme of life once." 
 
 "Yes; I ve been over once, or a few 
 months. But my income, though very com 
 fortable for the statics of existence, is rather 
 short for the dynamics, and so I mostly stay 
 at home." 
 
 " Did you meet any interesting people over 
 there ? Any of the crowned heads, famous 
 wits, etc., whom you once proposed to culti 
 vate ? " 
 
 " No ; nobody in particular. I went in a very 
 quiet way. I had some good letters to people 
 in England, but I didn t present them. The 
 idea of introductions became a bore as I got 
 nearer to it." 
 
 " And, of course you didn t elope with the 
 marquise ? " 
 
 " Was that in my scheme ? Well, no, I did 
 not." 
 
 " You might have done worse, old man. You 
 ought to have a wife, to keep you from getting 
 rusty up here. And, besides, a fellow that goes 
 so much into genealogy should take some 
 interest in posterity. You ought to cultivate 
 the science practically." 
 
 " Oh, I m past all danger of matrimony now," 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 181 
 
 said Berkeley, with a laugh. " There was a girl 
 that I was rather sweet on a few years ago. I 
 was looking up a pedigree for her papa, and I 
 found that I was related to her myself, in eight 
 different ways, though none of them very near. 
 I explained it to her one evening. It took me 
 an hour to do it, and I fancy she thought it a 
 little slow. At all events, when I afterward 
 hinted that we might make the eight ways nine, 
 she answered that our relationship was so in 
 tricate already that she couldn t think of com 
 plicating it any further. No, you may put me 
 down as safe." 
 
 After this, we sat listening in silence to the 
 distant beat of paddle-wheels where a steamer 
 was moving up river. 
 
 " The river is a deal of company," resumed 
 my host. " Thirty-six steamers pass here every 
 twenty-four hours. That now is the Mary 
 Powell r 
 
 " Well," I said, answering not so much to 
 his last remark as to the whole trend of 
 his autobiography, " I suppose you are happy 
 in this way of life, since you seem to prefer 
 it. But it would be terribly monotonous 
 to me." 
 
 " Happy ? " replied Berkeley doubtfully. " I 
 don t know. Happiness is a subjective matter. 
 You are happy if you think yourself so. As 
 for me, I cultivate an obsolete mood the old- 
 fashioned humor of melancholy. I don t sup 
 pose now that a light-hearted, French kind of 
 chap like you can understand, in the least, what 
 
1 82 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 those fine, crusty old Elizabethans meant when 
 they wrote, 
 
 There s naught in this life sweet, 
 If man were wise to see t, 
 But only melancholy. 
 
 This noisy generation has lost their secret. As 
 for me, I am content with the grays and drabs. 
 I think the brighter colors would disturb my 
 mood. I know it s not a large life, but it is a 
 safe one." 
 
 I did not at the moment remember that this 
 had been Armstrong s very saying fifteen years 
 ago, but some unconscious association led me 
 to mention him. 
 
 " Armstrong and you have changed places 
 in one respect, I should think," said I. " He is 
 keeping a boarding-school somewhere in Con 
 necticut. And instead of leading a Tulking- 
 horny existence in the New York University 
 building, as he firmly intended, he has married 
 and produced a numerous offspring, I hear." 
 
 " Yes, poor fellow ! " said Berkeley ; " I fancy 
 that he is dreadfully overrun and hard up. 
 There always was something absurdly domestic 
 about Armstrong. They say he has grown 
 red, fat, and bald. Think of a man with Arm 
 strong s education and he had some talent, 
 too keeping a sort of Dotheboys Hall ! I 
 haven t seen him for eight or nine years. The 
 last time was at Jersey City, and I had just time 
 to shake hands with him. He was with a lot 
 of other pedagogues, all going up to a teacher s 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYX. 183 
 
 convention, or some such dreary thing, at 
 Albany." 
 
 I had an opportunity for verifying Berkeley s 
 account of Armstrong a few clays after my con 
 versation with the former. The Pestalozzian 
 Institute, in the pleasant little village of Thim- 
 bleville, was situated, as its prospectus informed 
 the public, on " one of the most elegant resi 
 dence streets, in one of the healthiest and most 
 beautiful rural towns of Eastern Connecticut." 
 Over the entrance gate was a Roman arch bear 
 ing the inscription " Pestalozzian Institute " in 
 large gilt letters. The temple of learning itself 
 was a big, bare, white house at some distance 
 from the street, with an orchard and kitchen 
 garden on one side, and a roomy playground 
 on the other. The latter was in possession of 
 some small boys, who were kicking a broken- 
 winded football about the field with an amount 
 of noise greatly in excess of its occasion. To 
 my question where I could find Mr. Armstrong, 
 they answered eagerly : " Mr. Armstrong ? 
 Yes, sir. You go right into the hall, and knock 
 on the first door to the right, and he ll come 
 or some one." 
 
 The door to the large square entry stood wide 
 open, and through another door opposite, which 
 was ajar, I saw long tables, and heard the clat 
 ter of dishes being removed, while a strong 
 smell of dinner filled the air. I knocked at the 
 door on the right, but no one appeared. Finally, 
 a chubby girl of about ten summers came run 
 ning round the corner of the house and into the 
 
1 84 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 front door. She was eating an apple, and gazed 
 at me wonderingly. 
 
 " Is Mr. Armstrong in ? " I asked. 
 
 " Yes, sir ; he s about somewhere. Walk 
 into the parlor, please, and sit clown, and I ll 
 find him." 
 
 I entered the room on the right, which was 
 a bleak and official-looking apartment, ap 
 parently the reception room where parents held 
 interviews with the instructor of youth, or tore 
 themselves from the parting embraces of home 
 sick sons at the beginning of a new term. 
 There is always something depressing about the 
 parlor of an " institution " of any kind, and I 
 could not help feeling sorry for Armstong, as I 
 waited for him, seated on a sofa covered with 
 faded rep. At length the door of an inner room 
 opened, and the principal of the Pestalozzian 
 Institute waddled across the floor with his hand 
 held out, crying : 
 
 " Franky Polisson, how are you ? " 
 
 He certainly had grown stout, and his light 
 hair had retreated from the forehead. He wore 
 glasses and was dressed in a suit of rusty black, 
 with a high vest which gave him a ministerial 
 look a much more ministerial look than Berke 
 ley had. His pantaloons presented that appear 
 ance which tailors describe as " kneeing out." 
 He sat clown, and we chatted for half an hour. 
 The little girl had followed him into the room, 
 and behind her came another three or four 
 years her junior. The older one stood by his 
 side, and he kept his arm around her, while he 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 185 
 
 held the younger on his knee. They were both 
 pretty, healthy-looking children, and kept their 
 eyes fixed on " the man." 
 
 " Are those your own kids ? " I inquired 
 presently. 
 
 " Yes, two of them. I have six, you know," 
 he answered, with a fond sigh ; " five girls and 
 one boy. The lasses are rather in the majority." 
 
 " I heard you were quite a paterfamilias" 
 I said. " Won t you come and kiss me, little 
 girl ? " 
 
 To this proposal the elder answered by bury 
 ing her head bashfully in her father s shoulder, 
 while the smaller one simply opened her eyes 
 wider and stared with more fixed intensity. 
 
 " Oh, by the way," exclaimed Armstrong, 
 " of course you ll take tea with us and spend 
 the evening. I wish I could offer to sleep you 
 here; but the fact is, Mrs. Armstrong s sister 
 is with us for a few days, and the parents of one 
 of my boys, who is sick, are also staying here ; 
 so that my guest chambers are full." 
 
 "Don t mention it," I said. " I couldn t stay 
 over night. I ve got to be in New York in the 
 morning, and must take the nine o clock train. 
 But I ll stay to supper and much obliged, if you 
 are sure I shan t take up too much of your 
 time." 
 
 " Not the least not the least. This is a half 
 holiday, and nothing in particular to do." He 
 bustled to the door and called out loudly, 
 " Mother ! Mother ! " 
 
 There was no response. 
 
1 86 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 " Nelly," he commanded, " run and find your 
 mamma, and tell her that Mr. Polisson from 
 New Orleans an old classmate of papa s, will 
 be here to tea. That s a good girl. Polisson, 
 put on your hat and let s go round the place. I 
 want to show you what an establishment I ve 
 got here." 
 
 We accordingly made the tour of the prem 
 ises, Armstrong doing the cicerone impressively, 
 and every now and then urging me with em 
 phatic hospitality to come and spend a week a 
 fortnight longer, if I chose, during the summer 
 vacation. 
 
 "Bring Mrs. Polisson and the kids. Bring 
 em all," he said. " It will do them good ; the 
 air here is fine ; eleven hundred feet above the 
 sea. No malaria no typhoid. I laid out four 
 hundred dollars last year on sewerage." 
 
 It being a half holiday, most of the big boys 
 had gone to a pond in the neighborhood for 
 a swim, under the conduct of the classical 
 master a Yale graduate, Armstrong explained, 
 who had stood fourth in his class, " and a very 
 able fellow, very able." 
 
 But while we sat at tea in Armstrong s 
 family dining room, which adjoined the school 
 commons, we were made aware of the return 
 of the swimming party by the constant shuffle 
 and tramp of feet through the hall and the 
 noise of feeding in the next room. At our 
 table were present Mrs. Armstrong, her sister 
 (who had a frightened air when addressed and 
 conversed in monosyllables), the parents of the 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 187 
 
 sick pupil, and Armstrong s two eldest children. 
 I surmised that the younger children had been 
 in the habit of sharing in the social meal, and 
 had been crowded out on this occasion by the 
 number of guests ; for I heard them fremunt- 
 ing in carcere behind a door through which 
 the waitress passed out and in, bringing plates 
 of waffles. The remonstrances of the waitress 
 were also audible, and, when the wailing rose 
 high, my hostess face had a distrait expres 
 sion, as of one prepared at any moment for an 
 irruption of infant Goths. 
 
 Mrs. Armstrong was a vivacious little 
 woman, who, I conjectured, had once been 
 a village belle, with some pretensions to es- 
 fiieglerie and the fragile prettiness common 
 among New England country girls. But the 
 bearing and rearing of a family of children, and 
 the matronizing of a houseful of hungry school 
 boys in such a way as to make ends meet, had 
 substituted a faded and worried look for her 
 natural liveliness of expression. She bore up 
 bravely, however, against the embarrassments 
 of the occasion. In particular, it pleased her to 
 take a facetious view of college life. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Polisson," she cried, " I am afraid 
 that you and my husband were very gay young 
 men when you were at college together. Oh, 
 don t tell me ; I know I know. I ve heard of 
 some of your scrapes." 
 
 I protested feebly against this impeachment, 
 but Armstrong winked at me with the air of 
 a sly dog, and said : 
 
1 88 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 " It s no use, Polisson. You can t fool Mrs. 
 A. Buckingham and one or two of the fellows 
 have been here to dinner occasionally, and I m 
 afraid they ve given us away." 
 
 " Yes," she affirmed, " Mr. Buckingham was 
 one of you, too, I guess, though he is the Rev. 
 Mr. Buckingham now. Oh, he has told me." 
 
 "You remember old Buck? "put in Arm 
 strong. " He is preaching near here settled 
 over a church at Bobtown." 
 
 " Yes," I answered, " I remember there was 
 such a man in the class, but really I didn t 
 know that he was ah such a character as 
 you seem to infer, Mrs. Armstrong." 
 
 " Oh, he has quieted down now, I assure 
 you," said the lady. " He is as prim and proper 
 as a Methodist meeting-house. Why, he has to 
 be, you know." 
 
 This amusing fiction of the wildness of Arm 
 strong s youth had evidently become a family 
 tradition and even, by a familiar process, an 
 article of belief in his own mind. It reminded 
 me grotesquely of Justice Shallow s reminis 
 cences with Sir John Falstaff: " Ha, Cousin 
 Silence, that thou haclst seen that, that this 
 knight and I have seen. . . Jesu, Jesu, the 
 mad days that I have spent ! " 
 
 The resemblance became still stronger when, 
 as we rose from the table, the good fellow 
 beckoned me into a closet which opened off the 
 dining room, saying, in a hoarse whisper : 
 
 " Here, Polisson, come in here." 
 
 He was uncorking a large bottle half rilled 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 189 
 
 with some red liquid, and as he poured a por 
 tion of this into two glasses he explained : 
 
 " I don t have this sort of thing on the table, 
 you understand, on account of the children and 
 my ah position. It would make talk. But 
 I tell you this is some of the real old stuff. 
 How \" And he held his glass up to the light, 
 regarding it with the one eye of a connoisseur, 
 and then drank down its contents with a smack. 
 I was considerably astonished, on doing the 
 same, to discover that this dark beverage 
 which, from Armstrong s manner, I had been 
 prepared to find something at least as wicked as 
 absinthe was simply and solely Bordeaux of a 
 mild quality. After this Bacchanalian proceed 
 ing we went out into the orchard, which was 
 reserved for family use, and sat on a bench 
 under an apple tree. Armstrong called his 
 little boy who had been at supper with us and 
 gave him a whispered message, together with 
 some small change. The messenger disap 
 peared, and after a short absence returned with 
 two very domestic cigars, transparently bought 
 for the nonce from some neighboring grocer. 
 
 " Have a smoke," commanded my host, and we 
 solemnly kindled the rolls of yellow leaf, Arm 
 strong puffing away at his with the air of a 
 man who, though intrusted by destiny with the 
 responsibility of molding the characters of 
 youth, has not forgotten how to be a man of 
 the world on occasion. 
 
 " Well, Charley," I began, after a few pre 
 liminary draughts, " you seem to have a good 
 
190 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 thing of it. Your school is prosperous, I under 
 stand ; the work suits you ; you have a mighty 
 pretty family of children growing up, and your 
 health appears to be perfect." 
 
 " Yes," he admitted ; " I suppose I ought to 
 be thankful. I certainly enjoy great mercies. 
 It s a warm, crowded kind of life ; plenty of 
 affection plenty of anxiety too, to be sure. 
 I like to have the boys around me; it keeps 
 one s heart fresh, though in a way it s some 
 times wearing to the nerves. Yes, I like the 
 young rascals I like them. But, of course, it 
 has its drawbacks. Most careers have," he 
 added, in a burst of commonplace. 
 
 " It is not exactly the career that you had cut 
 out for yourself," I suggested, " when we talked 
 our plans over, you remember, that last evening 
 at New Haven." 
 
 "No, it s not," he acknowledged; "but per 
 haps it is a better one. What was it I said 
 then? I really don t recall it. Something very 
 silly, no doubt." 
 
 " Oh, you said, in a general way, that you 
 were going in for money and celibacy and selfish 
 ness just as you have not done." 
 
 " Yes, yes ; I know, I remember now," he 
 said, laughing. " Boys are great fools with 
 their brag of what they are going to do and be. 
 Life knocks it out of them fast enough ; they 
 learn to do what they must." 
 
 " Do you ever write any poetry nowadays ? " 
 
 " No, no ; not I. The muse has given me 
 the go-by completely. Except for some occa- 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 191 
 
 sional verses for a school festival or something 
 of the kind, which I grind out now and then, 
 I ve sunk my rhyming dictionary deeper than 
 ever plummet sounded. The chief disadvan 
 tage of running a big school like this," he con 
 tinued, with a sigh, " is the want of leisure and 
 retirement to enable a man to keep up his 
 studies. Sometimes I actually ache for solitude 
 for a few weeks or months of absolute loneli 
 ness and silence. Mrs. Armstrong has fixed 
 me up a nice little private study remind me to 
 take you in there before you go where I keep 
 my books, etc. But the children will find their 
 way in, and then I m seldom undisturbed any 
 where for more than an hour at a time ; there s 
 always some call on me something wanted 
 that no one else can see to." 
 
 " You ought to swap places with Berkeley 
 for a while. He s got more leisure than he 
 knows what to do with," 
 
 " Berkeley ! Well, what s he up to now ? 
 Philately ? Arboriculture ? What s his last 
 fad ? You ve seen him lately, you said. I met 
 him for a minute in New York, a few years ago, 
 and he told me he was going to an old book 
 auction." 
 
 "He s got genealogy at present," I ex 
 plained. 
 
 " Genealogy ! What hay ! What sawdust ! 
 Aren t there enough live people to take an 
 interest in, without grubbing up dead ones 
 from tombstones and town clerks records ? 
 Berkeley must be a regular old bachelor anti- 
 
192 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 quary by this time, with all human sympathy 
 dried out of him. No, I wouldn t change with 
 him. Would we, fatty ? " he said, appealing to 
 a small offspring of uncertain sex which had 
 just toddled out the door and across the gang 
 way to kiss its papa good-night. 
 
 I took leave of Armstrong and his interesting 
 family with a sense of increased liking, His 
 unworldliness, good nature, and simple little 
 enthusiasms and self-satisfactions had some 
 how kept him young, and he seemed quite the 
 old Armstrong of college days. I afterward 
 learned that the excellent fellow had just 
 finished his law studies and was preparing to 
 enter upon practice, when his father s health 
 failed, forcing him to give up his parish, and 
 leaving a number of younger brothers and 
 sisters partly dependent on Armstrong. He 
 had accordingly taken the first situation that 
 promised a fair salary, and, having got started 
 upon the work of teaching, had been unable to 
 let go until it was too late ; had, indeed, got 
 deeper and deeper in, by falling in love and 
 impulsively marrying at the first opportunity, 
 and finally setting up for himself at the Pesta- 
 lozzian Institute. Poor fellow ! Good fellow ! 
 Amico mio, non delta ventura. 
 
 My next call was upon Clay, who had rooms 
 in the Babel building in New York, and was 
 reported to be something of a Bohemian. He 
 received me in a smoking jacket and slippers. 
 He had grown a full beard, which hid his 
 finely cut features. His black eyes had the old 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 1 93 
 
 fire, but his skin was sallower, and I thought 
 that his manner had a touch of listlessness, 
 mingled with irritability and defiance. He was 
 glad to see me ; but inclined to be at first, not 
 precisely distant, yet by no means confidential, 
 After a while, however, he thawed out and 
 became more like the Clay whom I remem 
 bered our college genius, the brilliant, the 
 admired, in those days of eager hero worship. 
 I told him of my visits to Berkeley and 
 Armstrong. 
 
 " Berkeley I see now and then in town," said 
 Clay. " It was rather queer of him to turn 
 parson, but I guess he doesn t let his theology 
 bother him much. He has a really superior 
 collection of etchings, I am told. Armstrong, 
 I haven t seen in years. I knew he was a peda 
 gogue somewhere in Connecticut." 
 
 " Don t you ever go to the class reunions ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " Class reunions ? Well, hardly." 
 
 " I should think you would ; you are so near 
 New Haven." 
 
 " How charmingly provincial you are you 
 Southern chaps ! Don t you know that, to a 
 man who lives in New York, nothing is near? 
 Besides, as to my classmates at old Yale and 
 all that, I would go round a corner to avoid 
 meeting most of them." 
 
 I expressed myself as duly shocked by this 
 sentiment, and presently I inquired : 
 
 " Well, Clay, how are you getting on, any- 
 
194 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 " That s a d d general question. How do 
 
 you want me to answer it ? " 
 
 " Oh, not at all, if you don t like." 
 
 " Well, don t get miffed. Suppose I answer, 
 Pretty well, I thank you, sir. How will that 
 do ? " 
 
 " Are you writing anything now ? " 
 
 " I m always scribbling something or other. 
 At present I ve got the position of dramatic 
 critic on the Daily Boreas, which is not a very 
 bad bore, and keeps the pot boiling. And I do 
 more or less work of a hack kind for the 
 magazines and cyclopedias, etc." 
 
 " I thought you were on the Weekly Prig. 
 Berkeley or somebody told me so." 
 
 " So I was at one time, but I got out of it. 
 The work was drying me up too fast. The 
 concern is run by a lot of cusses who have 
 failed in various branches of literature them 
 selves, and undertake in consequence to make 
 it unpleasant for everyone else who tries to 
 write anything. I got so that I could sling as 
 cynical a quill as the rest of them. But the trick 
 is an easy one and hardly worth learning. It s 
 a great fraud, this business of reviewing. Here s 
 a man of learning, for instance, who has spent 
 years of research on a particular work. He 
 has collected a large library, perhaps, on his 
 subject; knows more about it than anyone else 
 living. Then along comes some insolent little 
 whipper-snapper like me whose sole knowl 
 edge of the matter in hand is drawn from the 
 very book that he pretends to criticise, and 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 195 
 
 patronizes the learned author in a book notice. 
 No, I got out of it ; I hadn t the cheek." 
 
 " I bought your book," * said I, " as soon as 
 it came out." 
 
 " That s more than the public did." 
 
 "Yes, and I read it, too." 
 
 " No ! Did you, now ? That s true friend 
 ship. Well, how did you like it ? Did you get 
 your money s worth ? " 
 
 I hesitated a moment and then answered : 
 
 " It was clever, of course. Anything that 
 you write would be sure to be that. But it 
 didn t appear to get down to hard-pan or to 
 take a firm grip on life did it ? " 
 
 " Ah, that s what the critics said only 
 they ve got a set of phrases for expressing it. 
 They said it was amateurish, that it was in a 
 falsetto key, etc." 
 
 "Well, how does it strike you, yourself? 
 You know that it didn t come out of the deep 
 places of your nature, don t you ? You feel that 
 you ve got better behind ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don t know. A man does what he 
 can. I rather think it s the best I can do at 
 present." 
 
 "Why don t you go at some more serious 
 work? some magnum opus that would bring 
 your whole strength into play ? " 
 
 " A magnum opus, my dear fellow ! " replied 
 Clay, with a shade of irritation in his voice. 
 
 * Dialogues and Romances. By E. Clay. New 
 York : Pater & Sons, 1874. 
 
196 SPLIT ZEPHYR, 
 
 "You talk as if a magnum opus could be done 
 for the wishing. Why don t you do a magnum 
 opus, then ? " 
 
 "Why don t I? Oh, I m not a literary 
 fellow never professed to be. What a ques 
 tion ! " 
 
 "Well, no more am I, perhaps. I don t think 
 any better of the stuff that I scribble than you 
 do. It s all an experiment with me. I m try 
 ing my brushes trying my brushes. Perhaps 
 I may be able to do something stronger some 
 day, and perhaps not. But at all events I 
 shan t force my mood. I shall wait for my in 
 spiration. One thing I ve noticed, that as a 
 man grows older he loses his spontaneity and 
 gets more critical with himself. I could do 
 more, no doubt, if I would only let myself go. 
 But I m like this meerschaum here a hard 
 piece and slow in coloring." 
 
 " Well, meanwhile you might do something 
 in the line of scholarship, a history or a volume 
 of critical essays Hours with the Poets, or 
 something of that kind, that would bring in the 
 results of your reading. Have you seen Brain- 
 ard s book ? It seemed to me work that was 
 worth doing. But you could do something of 
 the same kind, only much better, without taking 
 your hands out of your pockets." 
 
 Brainard was a painstaking classmate of ours, 
 who had been for some years Professor of Men 
 tal and Moral Philosophy, English Literature, 
 and European History, in a western university, 
 and had recently published a volume entitled 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. ^97 
 
 " Theism and Pantheism in the Literature of 
 the English Renaissance," which was well 
 spoken of, and was already in its third edition. 
 " Yes, I ve seen the stuff," said Clay. " My 
 unhappy country swarms with that sort of 
 thing: books about books, and books about 
 other books about books like the big fleas and 
 little fleas. It s not literature; it s a parasitic 
 growth that infests literature. I always say to 
 myself, with the melancholy Jaques, whenever I 
 have to look over a book by Brainard or any 
 such fellow, I think of as many matters as he ) 
 but I give Heaven thanks and make no boast 
 of them. No, I don t care to add anything to 
 that particular rubbish heap. You know Emer 
 son said that the worse poem is better than the 
 best criticism of it. The trouble with me is that 
 what I want to do I can t do at present ; what 
 I can do I don t think it worth while to do 
 worth my while, at least. Someone else may 
 do it and get the credit and welcome." 
 
 " But you do a good deal of work that you 
 don t care about, as it is," I objected. 
 
 " Of course. A man must live, and so I do 
 the nearest thing and the one that pays quick 
 est. I got eighty dollars, now, for that last 
 screed in The Reservoir. 
 
 " But," I persisted, " I thought that money- 
 making had no part in your scheme. You 
 could make more money in a dozen other busi 
 nesses." 
 
 " So I could," he answered ; " but they all 
 involve some form of slavery. Now, I am my 
 
I9 8 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 own master. After all, every profession has 
 its drudgery, and literary drudgery is not the 
 worst." 
 
 " Well," I conceded, " independent of what 
 you accomplish, I suppose your way of life fur 
 nishes as many daily satisfactions as any. I 
 sometimes envy you and Berkeley your freedom 
 from business cares and your opportunities for 
 study. What becomes of most men s college 
 training, for example ? By Jove ! I picked up 
 a Greek book the other day, and I couldn t read 
 three words running. Now, I take it, you 
 manage to keep up your classics, among other 
 things." 
 
 " Oh, my way of life has its compensations," 
 he answered. " But Sidney Smith wasn t it ? 
 said that life was a middling affair, anyway. 
 As for the classics, etc., I find that reading and 
 study lose much of their stimulus unless they 
 get an issue in action unless one can apply 
 them directly toward his own work. I often 
 think that, if I were fifteen or even ten years 
 younger, I would go into some branch of natural 
 science. A scientific man always seems to me 
 peculiarly happy in the healthy character of his 
 work. He can keep himself apart from it. It is 
 objective, impersonal, makes no demand on his 
 emotions. Now a writing man has to put him 
 self into his work. He has to keep looking out 
 all the time for impressions, material ; to keep 
 trying to enlarge and deepen his own experi 
 ence, and he gets self-conscious and loses his 
 freshness in the process." 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. *99 
 
 " I am surprised to find you in New York," 
 said I, by way of changing the subject. " I 
 thought you had laid out to live in the country. 
 Do you remember that pretty little word-picture 
 of a winter afternoon that you drew us some 
 thing in the style of anllPenseroso landscape? 
 I expected to find you domesticated in a Berk 
 shire farmhouse." 
 
 " Yes, I remember. I tried it. But I find it 
 necessary, for my work, to be in New York. 
 The newspapers confound em ! won t move 
 into the woods. But, after all, place is indif 
 ferent. See here; this isn t bad." 
 
 He drew aside the window curtain, and I 
 looked out over a wilderness of roofs to the 
 North River and the Palisades tinged with a 
 purple light. The ferryboats and tugs plying 
 over the water in every direction, the noise of 
 the steam whistles, and the clouds of white 
 vapor floating on the clear air, made an inspirit 
 ing scene. 
 
 " I m up among the architects here," con 
 tinued Clay ; " nothing but the janitor s family 
 between me and the roof." 
 
 We talked awhile longer, and on taking leave 
 I said : 
 
 "I shall be on the lookout for something 
 big from you one of these days. You know 
 what we always expected of you. So don t 
 lose your grip, old man." 
 
 "Who knows?" he replied. "It doesn t 
 rest with me, but with the daimon." 
 
 I was unable to visit Dodd ridge, the remain- 
 
200 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 ing member of our group. He lived in the 
 thriving town of Wahee, Minnesota, and I had 
 heard of him, in a general way, as highly 
 prosperous. He was a prominent lawyer and 
 successful politician, and had lately been 
 appointed United States district judge, after 
 representing his section in the state senate for 
 a term or two. I wrote to him, congratulating 
 him on his success and asking for details. I 
 mentioned also my visits to Berkeley, Arm 
 strong, and Clay. I got a prompt reply from 
 Doddridge, from whfch I extract such portions 
 as are material to this narrative : 
 
 The first few months after I left college, I traveled 
 pretty extensively through the West, making con 
 tracts with the farmers, as agent for a nursery and 
 seed farm in my part of the country, but really with 
 the object of spying out the land and choosing a 
 place to settle in. Finally I lit on Wahee, and 
 made up my mind that it was a town with a future. 
 It was bound to be a railroad center. It had a first- 
 rate agricultural country around it and a rich timber 
 region a little further back ; and it already had an 
 enterprising little pop. growing rapidly, To-day 
 Wahee is as smart a city of its inches as there is in 
 the Northwest. I squatted right down here, got a 
 little raise from the old man, and put it all into 
 building lots. I made a good thing of it, and paid 
 it all back in six years with eight per cent, interest. 
 Meanwhile, I went into Judge Pratt s law office and 
 made my salt by fitting his boy for college till I 
 learned enough law to earn a salary. The judge 
 was an old Waheer belonged to the time-honored 
 aristocracy of the place, having been here at least 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 201 
 
 fifteen years before I came. He got into railroads 
 after a while (is president now of the Wahee and 
 Heliopolis Bee Line), and left his law practice to me. 
 I married his daughter Alice in 1875. She is a 
 "Western girl, but she was educated at Vassar. We 
 have two boys. If you ever come out our way, 
 Polisson, you must put up with us for as long as you 
 can stay. I would like to show you the country 
 about here, and have you ride after my team. I ve 
 got a pair that can do it inside three minutes. Do 
 you remember Liddell of our class? He is an 
 architect, you know. I got him to come to Wahee, 
 and he has all he can do, putting up business blocks. 
 We have got some here equal to anything in 
 Chicago. . . . 
 
 Yes, I am United States judge for this district. 
 There is not much money in it, but it will help me 
 professionally by and by. I shall not keep it long. 
 Do I go into politics much, you ask. I used to, but 
 I ve got through for the present. The folks about 
 here wanted to run me for Congress last term, but I 
 hadn t any use for it. As to what you are kind 
 enough to say about my "success," etc., whatever 
 success I have had is owing to nothing but a capacity 
 for hard work, which is the only talent that I lay 
 claim to. They want a man out here who will do 
 the work that comes to hand, and keep on doing it 
 till something better turns up. . . . 
 
 So Berkeley has turned out a dilettante instead of 
 an African explorer. I heard he was a minister. 
 He does not seem to have much ambition even in 
 that line of life. I should think Armstrong had got 
 the right kind of place for him. He was a good fel 
 low, but never had much practical ability. You say 
 very little about Clay. How is old " Sweetness and 
 
202 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 Light," anyway ? I saw some fluff of his in one of the 
 magazines a " romance " I think he called it. This 
 is not an age for scribbling romances. The country 
 wants something solider. I never took much stock in 
 philosophers like Berkeley and Clay. There is the 
 the same thing the trouble with them both : they 
 don t want to do any hard work, and they conceal 
 their laziness under fine names culture, transcen 
 dentalism, and what not ? " Feeble and restless 
 youths, born to inglorious days." 
 
 This letter may be supplemented by another 
 say Exhibit B which I received from Clay 
 not long after : 
 
 MY DEAR POLISSON : 
 
 It occurs to me that your question the other day, 
 as to how I was "getting on," did not receive as 
 candid an answer as it deserved. I am afraid that 
 you carried away an impression of me as of a man 
 who suspected himself to be a failure, but had not 
 the manliness to acknowledge it. You will say, 
 perhaps, that there are all degrees of half success 
 short of absolute failure. But I say no. In the ca 
 reer which I have chosen, to miss of success pro 
 nounced, unquestionable success is to fail ; and I 
 am not weak enough to hide from myself on which 
 side of the line I fall. The line is a very distinct 
 one, after all. The fact is, I took the wrong turn 
 ing, and it is too late to go back. I am a case of 
 arrested development a common enough case. I 
 might give plenty of excellent excuses to my friends 
 for not having accomplished what they expected me 
 to. But the world doesn t want apologies ; if wants 
 performance. 
 
SPLIT ZEPHYR. 203 
 
 You will think this letter a most extraordinary out 
 burst of morbid vanity. But while I can afford to 
 have you think me a failure, I couldn t let you go on 
 thinking me a fraud. That must be my excuse for 
 writing. 
 
 Yours, as ever, 
 
 E. CLAY. 
 
 This letter moved me deeply by its character 
 istic mingling of egotism and elevation of feel 
 ing. As I held it open in my hand, and thought 
 over my classmates fortunes, I was led to make 
 a few reflections. From the fact that Armstrong 
 and Berkeley were leading lives that squarely 
 contradicted their announced ideals and inten 
 tions, it was an obvious, but not therefore a true, 
 inference that circumstance is usually stronger 
 than will. Say, rather, that the species of ne 
 cessity which consists in character and inborn 
 tendency is stronger than any resolution to run 
 counter to it. 
 
 Both Armstrong and Berkeley, on our Com 
 mencement night, had spoken from a sense of 
 their own limitations, and in violent momentary 
 rebellion against them. But, in talking with 
 them fifteen years later, I could not discover 
 that the lack of correspondence between their 
 ideal future and their actual present troubled 
 them much. It is matter of common note 
 tftat it is impossible to make one man realize 
 another s experience ; but it is often quite as 
 hard to make him recover a past stage of his 
 own consciousness. 
 
 These, then, had bent to the force of chance 
 
204 SPLIT ZEPHYR. 
 
 or temperament. But Clay had shaped his life 
 according to his programme, and had the result 
 been happier ? He who gets his wish often 
 suffers a sharper disappointment than he who 
 loses it. " So tduscht uns also bald die Hoff- 
 nung, bald das Gehqffte" says the great pes 
 simist, and Fate is never more ironical than 
 when she humors our whim. Doddridge alone, 
 who had thrown himself confidingly into the 
 arms of the Destinies, had obtained their 
 capricious favors. 
 
 I cannot say that I drew any counsel, civil or 
 moral, from these comparisons. Life is deeper 
 and wider than any particular lesson to be 
 learned from it ; and just when we think that 
 we have at last guessed its best meanings, it 
 laughs in our face with some paradox which 
 turns our solution into a new riddle. 
 
VI. 
 A GRAVEYARD IDYL 
 
VI. 
 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 ,N the summer of 187-, when young 
 Doctor Putnam was recovering from 
 
 an attack of typhoid fever, he used to 
 take short walks in the suburbs of the 
 little provincial town where he lived. He was 
 still weak enough to need a cane, and had to 
 sit down now and then to rest. His favorite 
 haunt was an old-fashioned cemetery lying at 
 the western edge of the alluvial terrace on 
 which the town is built. The steep hillside 
 abuts boldly on the salt marsh. One of the 
 cemetery paths runs along the brink of the hill ; 
 and here, on a wooden bench under a clump of 
 red cedars, Putnam would sit for hours enjoy 
 ing the listless mood of convalesence, where the 
 will remains passive, the mind, like an idle 
 weathercock, turns to every puff of suggestion, 
 and the senses, born new from sickness, have 
 the freshness and delicacy of a child s. It 
 soothed his eye to follow lazily the undulations 
 of the creek, lying like the folds of a blue silk 
 ribbon on the flat ground of the marsh below. 
 He watched the ebbing tide suck down the 
 water from the even lines of trenches that 
 207 
 
208 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 sluiced the meadows, till the black mud at their 
 bottom glistened in the sun. The opposite hills 
 were dark with the heavy foliage of July. In 
 the distance a sail or two speckled the flashing 
 waters of the bay, and the lighthouse beyond 
 bounded the southern horizon. 
 
 It was a quiet, shady old cemetery, not much 
 disturbed by funerals. Only at rare intervals a 
 fresh heap of earth and a slab of clean marble 
 intruded, with their tale of a new and clamorous 
 grief, among the sunken mounds and weather- 
 stained tombstones of the ancient sleepers for 
 whom the tears had long been dried. Now 
 and then a mourner came to put flowers on a 
 grave ; now and then one of the two or three 
 laborers who kept the walks and shrubberies in 
 order would come along the path by Putnam s 
 bench, trundling a squeaking wheelbarrow ; 
 sometimes a nurse with a baby-carriage found 
 her way in. But generally the only sounds to 
 break the quiet were the songs of birds, the 
 rumble of a wagon over the spile bridge across 
 the creek and the whetting of scythes in the 
 water-meadows, where the mowers, in boots up 
 to their waists, went shearing the oozy plain 
 and stacking up the salt hay. 
 
 One afternoon Putnam was in his accus 
 tomed seat, whistling softly to himself and cut 
 ting his initials into the edge of the bench. 
 The air was breathless, and the sunshine lay 
 so hot on the marshes that it seemed to draw 
 up in a visible steam a briny incense which 
 mingled with a spicy smell of the red cedars. 
 
A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 209 
 
 Absorbed in reverie, he failed to notice how 
 the scattered clouds that had been passing 
 across the sky all the afternoon were being 
 gradually re-enforced by big fluffy cumuli rolling 
 up from the north, until a rumble overhead and 
 the rustle of a shower in the trees aroused him. 
 In the center of the grounds was an ancient 
 summer-house standing amid a maze of flower 
 beds intersected by gravel walks. This was 
 the nearest shelter, and, as the rain began to 
 patter smartly, Putnam pocketed his knife, 
 turned up his coat collar, and ran for it. Ar 
 rived at the garden-house, he found there a 
 group of three persons, driven to harbor from 
 different parts of the cemetery. The shower 
 increased to a storm, the lattices were lashed 
 by the rain, and a steady stream poured from 
 the eaves. The althaea and snowberry bushes 
 in the flower-plots, and even the stunted box- 
 edges along the path, swayed in the wind. It 
 grew quite dark in the summer-house, shaded 
 by two or three old hemlocks, and it was only 
 by the lightning flashes that Putnam could 
 make out the features of the little company of 
 refugees. They stood in the middle of the 
 building, to avoid the sheets of rain blown in 
 at the doors in gusts, huddling around a pump 
 that was raised on a narrow stone platform 
 not unlike the daughters of Priam clustered 
 about the great altar in the penetralia : 
 
 Praecipites atra ceu tempestate columbae. 
 They consisted of a young girl, an elderly 
 
210 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 woman with a trowel and watering-pot, and a 
 workman in overalls, who carried a spade and 
 had perhaps been interrupted in digging a grave. 
 The platform around the pump hardly gave 
 standing room for a fourth. Putnam accord 
 ingly took his seat on a tool chest near one of 
 the entrances, and, while the soft spray blew 
 through the lattices over his face and clothes, 
 he watched the effect of the lightning flashes 
 on the tossing, dripping trees of the cemetery 
 grounds. 
 
 Soon a shout was heard and down one of the 
 gravel walks, now a miniature river, rushed a 
 Newfoundland dog, followed by a second man 
 in overalls. Both reached shelter soaked and 
 lively. The dog distributed the contents of his 
 fur over the party by the pump, nosed inquir 
 ingly about, and then subsided into a corner. 
 Second laborer exchanged a few words with 
 first laborer, and melted into the general silence. 
 The slight flurry caused by their arrival was 
 only momentary, while outside the storm rose 
 higher and inside it grew still darker. Now 
 and then someone said something in a low 
 tone, addressed rather to himself than to the 
 others, and lost in the noise of the thunder and 
 rain. 
 
 But in spite of the silence there seemed to 
 grow up out of the situation a feeling of in 
 timacy between the members of the little com- 
 munity in the summer-house. The need of 
 shelter one of the primitive needs of humanity 
 had brought them naturally together and shut 
 
A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 211 
 
 them up " in a tumultuous privacy of storm." 
 In a few minutes, when the shower should leave 
 off, their paths would again diverge, but for the 
 time being they were inmates and held a house 
 hold relation to one another. 
 
 And so it came to pass that when it began to 
 grow lighter and the rain stopped, and the sun 
 glanced out again on the reeking earth and 
 saturated foliage, conversation grew general. 
 
 " Gracious sakes ! " said the woman with the 
 trowel and watering-pot as she glanced along 
 the winding canal that led out from the summer- 
 house " just see the water in them walks ! " 
 
 " Gol ! tis awful ! " murmured the Irishman 
 with the spade. " There 11 be a fut of water in 
 the grave, and the ould mon to be buried the 
 morning ! " 
 
 " Ah, they had a right to put off the funeral," 
 said the other workman, "and not be giving 
 the poor corp his death of cold." 
 
 " Tis warrum enough there where the ould 
 mon s gone, but tis cold working for a poor lad 
 like mesilf in the bottom of a wet grave. Gol ! 
 tis like a dreen." With that he shouldered his 
 spade and waded reluctantly away. 
 
 Second laborer paused to light his dhudeen, 
 and then disappeared in the opposite direction, 
 his Newfoundland taking quite naturally to the 
 deepest puddles in their course. 
 
 " Hath this fellow no feeling of his busi 
 ness ? " asked Putnam, rising and sauntering 
 up to the pump. The question was meant more 
 for the younger than the elder of the t\vo 
 
212 A GRAVE YARD IDYL. 
 
 women, but the former paid no heed to it, and 
 the latter, by way of answer, merely glanced at 
 him suspiciously and said " H m ! " She was 
 unlocking the tool-chest on which he had been 
 sitting, and now raised the lid, stowed away 
 her trowel and watering-pot, locked the chest 
 again and put the key in her pocket with the 
 remark, " I guess I haint got any more use 
 for a sprinkle-pot to-day." 
 
 " It would be rather superfluous," said Put 
 nam. 
 
 The old woman looked at him still more dis 
 trustfully, and then, drawing up her skirts, 
 showed to his great astonishment a pair of 
 india-rubber boots, in which she stumped away 
 through the water and the mud, leaving in the 
 latter colossal tracks which speedily became as 
 pond-holes in the shallower bed of the stream. 
 The younger woman stood at the door, gather 
 ing her dress about her ankles and gazing irreso 
 lutely at these frightful vestigia, which gauged 
 all too accurately the depth of the mud and the 
 surface-water above it. 
 
 " These look like the fossil bird-tracks in the 
 Connecticut Valley sandstone," said Putnam, 
 following the direction of her eyes. 
 
 These were very large and black. She turned 
 them slowly on the speaker, a tallish young 
 fellow with a face expressive chiefly of a good- 
 natured audacity and an alertness for whatever 
 in the way of amusement might come within 
 range. Her look rested on him indifferently, 
 and then turned back to the wet gravel. 
 
A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 213 
 
 Putnam studied for a moment the back of her 
 head and her figure, which was girlishly slender 
 and clad in gray. " How extraordinary," he 
 resumed, " that she should happen to have 
 rubber boots on ! " 
 
 "She keeps them in the tool-chest. The 
 cemetery man gives her a key," she replied 
 after a pause, and as if reluctantly. Her voice 
 was very low and she had the air of talking to 
 herself. 
 
 " Isn t that a rather queer place for a ward 
 robe? I wonder if she keeps anything else 
 there besides the boots and the trowel and the 
 sprinkle-pot ? " 
 
 " I believe she has an umbrella and some 
 flower seeds." 
 
 " Now, if she only had a Swedish cooking- 
 box and a patent camp-lounge," said Putnam 
 laughing, " she could keep house here in regu 
 lar style." 
 
 " She spends a great deal of time here : her 
 children are all here, she told me." 
 
 "Well, it s an odd taste to live in a bury- 
 ing-ground, but one might do worse perhaps. 
 There s nothing like getting accustomed grad 
 ually to what you ve got to come to. And then 
 if one must select a cemetery for a residence, 
 this isn t a bad choice. Have you noticed what 
 quaint old ways they have about it ? At sunset 
 the sexton rings a big bell that hangs in the 
 arch over the gateway : he told me he had done 
 it every day for twenty years. It s not done, I 
 believe, on the principle of firing a sunset gun, 
 
214 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 but to let people walking in the grounds know 
 the gate is to be shut. There s a high stone 
 wall, you know, and somebody might get shut 
 in all night. Think of having to spend the 
 night here ! " 
 
 " I have spent the night here often," she an 
 swered, again in an absent voice and as if mur 
 muring to herself. 
 
 " You have ? " exclaimed Putnam. " Oh, 
 you slept in the tool-chest, I suppose, on the 
 old lady s shake-down." 
 
 She was silent, and he began to have a weird 
 suspicion that she had spoken in earnest. " This 
 is getting interesting," he said to himself; and 
 then aloud, " You must have seen queer sights. 
 Of course, when the clock struck twelve, all the 
 ghosts popped out and sat on their respective 
 tombstones. The ghosts in this cemetery must 
 be awfully old fellows. It doesn t look as if 
 they had buried anyone here for a hundred and 
 thirty-five years. I ve often thought it would 
 be a good idea to inscribe Complet over the 
 gate, as they do on a Paris omnibus." 
 
 "You speak very lightly of the dead," said 
 the young girl in a tone of displeasure and 
 looking directly at him. 
 
 Putnam felt badly snubbed. He was about 
 to attempt an explanation, but her manner 
 indicated that she considered the conversation 
 at an end. She gathered up her skirts and 
 prepared to leave the summer-house. The 
 water had soaked away somewhat into the 
 gravel. 
 
A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 215 
 
 " Excuse me," said Putnam, advancing des 
 perately and touching his hat, " but I notice 
 that your shoes are thin and the ground is 
 still very wet. I m going right over to High 
 Street, and if I can send you a carriage or any 
 thing " 
 
 " Thank you, no : I shan t need it ; " and she 
 stepped off hastily down the walk. 
 
 Putnam looked after her till a winding of the 
 path took her out of sight, and then started 
 slowly homeward. " What the deuce could she 
 mean," he pondered as he walked along, " about 
 spending the night in the cemetery ? Can she 
 no she can t be the gatekeeper s daughter and 
 live in the gate-house ? " 
 
 His mother and his maiden aunt, who with 
 himself made up the entire household, received 
 him with small scoldings and twitterings of 
 anxiety. They felt his wet clothes, prophesied 
 a return of his fever, and forced him to go 
 immediately to bed, where they administered 
 hot drinks and toast soaked in scalded milk. 
 He lay awake a long time, somewhat fatigued 
 and excited. In his feeble condition and in the 
 monotony which his life had assumed of late, 
 the trifling experience of the afternoon took 
 on the full proportions of an adventure. He 
 thought it over again and again, but finally fell 
 asleep and slept soundly. He awoke once, just 
 at dawn, and lay looking through his window 
 at a rosy cloud which reposed upon an infinite 
 depth of sky, motionless as if sculptured, against 
 the blue. A light morning wind stirred the 
 
216 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 curtains and the scent of mignonette floated in 
 from the dewy garden. He had that confused 
 sense of anticipation so common in moments 
 between waking and sleeping, when some new, 
 pleasant thing has happened, or is to happen on 
 the morrow, which the memory is too drowsy 
 to present distinctly. Of this pleasant, indis 
 tinct promise that auroral cloud seemed some 
 how the omen or symbol, and watching it he 
 fell asleep again. When he next awoke, the sun 
 light of mid-forenoon was flooding the cham 
 ber, and he heard his mother s voice below 
 stairs as she sang at her sewing. 
 
 In the afternoon he started on his customary 
 walk, and his feet led him involuntarily to the 
 cemetery. As he traversed the path along the 
 edge of the hill, he saw in one of the grave lots 
 the heroine of his yesterday s encounter, and 
 a sudden light broke in upon him : she was 
 a mourner. And yet how happened it that she 
 wore no black ? There was a wooden railing 
 round the enclosure, and within it a single 
 mound and a tombstone of fresh marble. A 
 few cut flowers lay on the grave. She was 
 sitting in a low wicker chair, her hands folded 
 in her lap, and her eyes fixed vacantly on the 
 western hills. Putnam $ now took closer note of 
 her face. It was of a brown paleness. The air 
 of hauteur, given it by the purity of the profile 
 and the almost insolent stare of the large black 
 eyes, was contradicted by the sweet, irresolute 
 curves of the mouth. At present her look 
 expressed only a profound apathy. As he ap- 
 
A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 217 
 
 preached, her eyes turned toward him, but 
 seemingly without recognition. Diffidence was 
 not among Tom Putnam s failings. He felt 
 drawn by an unconquerable sympathy and 
 attraction to speak to her, even at the risk of 
 intruding upon the sacreclness of her grief. 
 
 " Excuse me, miss," he began, stopping in 
 front of her, " but I want to apologize for what 
 I said yesterday about about the cemetery. It 
 must have seemed very heartless to you ; but I 
 didn t know that you were in mourning when I 
 spoke as I did." 
 
 " I have forgotten what you said," she an 
 swered. 
 
 " I am glad you have," said Putnam rather 
 fatuously. There seemed really nothing fur 
 ther to say, but as he lingered for a moment 
 before turning away, a perverse recollection sur 
 prised him, and he laughed out loud. 
 
 She cast a look of strong indignation at him, 
 and rose to her feet. 
 
 " Oh, I ask your pardon a thousand times," 
 he exclaimed reddening violently. " Please 
 don t think that I was laughing at anything to 
 do with you. The fact is, that last idiotic speech 
 of mine reminded me of something that hap 
 pened day before yesterday. I ve been sick, 
 and I met a friend on the street who said, I m 
 glad you re better ; and I answered, I m glad 
 that you re glad that I m better ; and then he 
 said, I m glad that you re glad that I m glad 
 that you re better like the House that Jack 
 Built, you know and it came over me all of a 
 
218 A GKAFEYARD IDYL. 
 
 sudden that the only way to continue our con 
 versation gracefully would be for you to say, 
 I m glad that you re glad that I ve forgotten 
 what you said yesterday. " 
 
 She had listened impatiently to this naive and 
 somewhat incoherent explanation, and she now 
 said, " I wish you would go away. You see 
 that I am alone here and in trouble. I can t 
 imagine what motive you can have for annoying 
 me in this way," her eyes filling with angry tears. 
 
 Putnam was too much pained by the vehe 
 mence of her language to attempt any immediate 
 reply. His first impulse was to bow and retire 
 without more words. But a pertinacity which 
 formed one of his strongest though perhaps 
 least amiable traits countermanded his impulse, 
 and he said gravely, " Certainly, I will go at 
 once, but in justice to myself I must first assure 
 you that I didn t mean to intrude upon you or 
 annoy you in any way." 
 
 She sank down into her chair and averted 
 her face. 
 
 " You say," he continued, " that you are in 
 trouble, and I beg you to believe that I respect 
 your affliction, and that when I spoke to you 
 just now it was simply to ask pardon for having 
 hurt your feelings yesterday, without meaning 
 to, by my light mention of the dead. I ve been 
 too near death s door myself lately to joke about 
 it." He paused, but she remained silent. " I m 
 going away now," he said softly. " Won t you 
 say that you excuse me, and that you haven t 
 any hard feelings toward me ? " 
 
A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 219 
 
 "Yes, oh, yes," she answered wearily; "I 
 have no feelings. Please go away." 
 
 Putnam raised his hat respectfully, and went 
 off down the pathway. On reaching the little 
 gate-house, he sat down to rest on a bench 
 before the door. The gatekeeper was standing 
 on the threshold in his shirt-sleeves, smoking 
 a pipe. " A nice day after the rain, sir," he 
 began. 
 
 " Yes, it is." 
 
 " Have you any folks here, sir ? " 
 
 "No; no one. But I come here sometimes 
 for a stroll." 
 
 " Yes, I ve seen you about. Well, it s a nice, 
 quiet place for a walk, but the grounds aint 
 kep up quite the shape they used to be ; there 
 aint so much occasion for it. Seems as though 
 the buryin business was dull, like pretty much 
 everything else nowadays. 
 
 " Yes, that s so," replied Putnam absently. 
 
 The gatekeeper spat reflectively upon the 
 center of the doorstep, and resumed : "There s 
 some that comes here quite reg lar, but they 
 mostly have folks here. There s old Mrs. Lyon 
 comes very steady, and there s young Miss 
 Pinckney. She s one of the most reg lar." 
 
 " Is that the young lady in gray, with black 
 eyes ? " 
 
 " That s her." 
 
 " Who is she in mourning for? " 
 
 " Well, she aint exactly in mourning. I guess, 
 from what they say, she aint got the money for 
 black bunnets and dresses, poor gal ! But it s 
 
220 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 her brother that s buried here last April. He 
 was in the hospital learning the doctor s busi 
 ness when he was took down." 
 
 " In the hospital ? Was he from the South, 
 do you know ? " 
 
 " Well, that I can t say : like enough he 
 was." 
 
 " Did you say that she is poor ? " 
 
 " So they was telling me at the funeral. It 
 was a mighty poor funeral too not more n 
 a couple of hacks. But you can t tell much 
 from that, with the fashions nowadays. Some 
 of the richest folks buries private-like. You 
 don t see no such funerals now as they had ten 
 years back. I ve seen fifty kerridges to onst 
 a-comin in that gate," waving his pipe impres 
 sively toward that piece of architecture, " and 
 that was when kerridge-hire was half again 
 as high as it is now. She must have spent a 
 good sum in greenhouse flowers, though : 
 fresh bouquets most every day she keeps 
 a-fetchin ." 
 
 " Well, good-day," said Putnam, starting off. 
 
 " Good-day, sir." 
 
 Putnam had himself just completed his 
 studies at the medical college when attacked 
 by fever, and he now recalled somewhat 
 vaguely a student of the name of Pinckney, 
 and remembered to have heard that he was 
 a Southerner. The gatekeeper s story increased 
 the interest which he was beginning to feel in 
 his new acquaintance, and he resolved to follow 
 up his inauspicious beginnings to a better issue. 
 
A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 221 
 
 He knew that great delicacy would be needed 
 in making further approaches, and so decided 
 to keep out of her sight for a time. In the 
 course of the next few clays he ascertained, by 
 visits to the cemetery and talks with the keeper, 
 that she now seldom visited her brother s grave 
 in the forenoon, although during the first 
 month after his death she had spent all her 
 days and some of her nights beside it. 
 
 " I hadn t the heart, sir, to turn her out at 
 sundown, accordin to the regulations; so I d 
 leave the gate kinder half on the jar, and she d 
 slip out when she had a mind to." 
 
 Putnam read the inscription on the tomb 
 stone, which ran as follows : 
 
 To the Memory of 
 
 HENRY PINCKNEY, 
 Born October 2gth, 1852. 
 Died April 27th, 187-; 
 
 and under this the text : 
 
 If thou have borne him hence, tell me where 
 thou hast laid him. 
 
 He noticed with a sudden twinge of pity that 
 the flowers on the grave, though freshly picked 
 every day, were wild flowers mostly the com 
 mon field varieties, with now and then a rarer 
 blossom from wood or swamp, and now and 
 then a garden flower. He gathered from this 
 that the sister s purse was running low, and 
 that she spent her mornings in collecting 
 flowers outside the city. His imagination 
 
222 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 dwelt tenderly upon her slim, young figure and 
 mourning face passing through far-away fields 
 and along the margins of lonely creeks in 
 search of some new bloom which grudging 
 Nature might yield her for her sorrowful needs. 
 Meanwhile he determined that the shrine of 
 her devotion should not want richer offerings. 
 There was a hothouse on the way from his 
 home to the cemetery, and he now stopped 
 there occasionally of a morning and bought a 
 few roses to lay upon the mound. This con 
 tinued for a fortnight, He noticed that his 
 offerings were left to wither undisturbed, 
 though the little bunches of field flowers were 
 daily renewed as before. 
 
 In spite of the funereal nature of his occupa 
 tion, his spirits in these days were extraor 
 dinarily high. His life, so lately escaped from 
 the shadows of death, seemed to enjoy a 
 rejuvenescence and to put forth fresh blossoms 
 in the summer air. As he sat under the cedars 
 and listened to the buzzing of the flies that 
 frequented the shade, the unending sound grew 
 to be an assurance of earthly immortality. His 
 new lease of existence prolonged itself into a 
 fee simple, and even in presence of the monu 
 ments of decay his future, filled with bright 
 hazy dreams, melted softly into eternity. But 
 one morning, as he approached the little grave- 
 lot with his accustomed offerings, he looked up 
 and saw the young girl standing before him. 
 Her eyes were fixed on the flowers in his hand. 
 He colored guiltily and stood still, like a boy 
 
A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 223 
 
 caught robbing an orchard. She looked both 
 surprised and embarrassed, but said at once, 
 " If you are the gentleman who has been put 
 ting flowers on my brother s grave, I thank you 
 for his sake " 
 
 She paused, and he broke in : " I ought to 
 explain, Miss Pinckney, that I have a better 
 right than you think, perhaps, to bring these 
 flowers here. I was a fellow-student with your 
 brother in the medical school." 
 
 Her expression changed immediately. " Oh, 
 did you know my brother ? " she asked eagerly. 
 
 He felt like a wretched hypocrite as he 
 answered, " Yes, I knew him, though not in 
 timately exactly. But I took I take a very 
 strong interest in him." 
 
 Everyone loved Henry who knew him," 
 she said, " but his class have all been graduated 
 and gone away, and he made few friends, be 
 cause he was so shy. No one comes near him 
 now but me." 
 
 He was silent. She walked to the grave and 
 he followed, and they stood there without 
 speaking. It did not seem to occur to her to 
 ask why he had not mentioned her brother at 
 their former interview. She was evidently of 
 an unsuspecting nature, or else all other im 
 pressions were forgotten and absorbed in the 
 one thought of her bereavement. After a 
 glance at her, Putnam ventured to lay his roses 
 reverently upon the mound. She held in her 
 hand a few wild flowers just gathered. These 
 she kissed, and dropped them also on the grave. 
 
224 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 He understood the meaning of her gesture and 
 was deeply moved. 
 
 " Poor, little, dull-colored things," she said, 
 looking down at them. 
 
 " They are a thousand times more beautiful 
 than mine," he exclaimed passionately ; " I am 
 ashamed of those heartless affairs : anybody 
 can buy them." 
 
 "Oh, no. My brother was very fond of 
 roses. Perhaps you remember his taste for 
 them ? " she inquired innocently. 
 
 " I I don t think he ever alluded to them. 
 The atmosphere of the medical college was not 
 very aesthetic, you know." 
 
 " At first I used to bring greenhouse 
 flowers," she continued, without much heed 
 ing his answer, "but lately I haven t been 
 able to afford them except on Sundays. Sun 
 days I bring white ones from the green 
 house." 
 
 She had seated herself in her wicker chair, 
 and Putnam, after a moment s hesitation, sat 
 down on the low railing near her. He observed, 
 among the wild plants that she had gathered, 
 the mottled leaves and waxy blossoms of the 
 pipsissewa and its cousin the shinleaf. 
 
 " You have been a long way to get some of 
 those," he said. " That pipsissewa grows in 
 hemlock woods, and the nearest are several 
 miles from here." 
 
 " I don t know their names. I found them 
 in a wood where I used to walk sometimes with 
 my brother. He knew all their names. I went 
 
A GRATE YARD IDYL. 225 
 
 there very early this morning, when the dew 
 was on them." 
 
 " Flowers that have on them the cold dews 
 of the night are strewings fittest for graves, " 
 said Putnam in an undertone. 
 
 Her face had assumed its usual absent ex 
 pression, and she seemed busy with some 
 memory, and unconscious of his presence. He 
 recalled the latter to her by rising and saying, 
 " I will bid you good-morning now, but I hope 
 you will let me come and sit here sometimes if 
 it doesn t disturb you. I have been very sick 
 myself lately : I was near dying of the typhoid 
 fever. I think it does me good to come here." 
 
 " Did you have the typhoid ? My brother 
 died of the typhoid." 
 
 " May I come sometimes ? " 
 
 " You may come if you wish to visit Henry. 
 But please don t bring any more of those ex 
 pensive flowers. I suppose it is selfish in me, 
 but I can t bear to have any of his friends do 
 more for him than I can." 
 
 " I won t bring any more, of course, if it 
 troubles you, and I thank you very much for 
 letting me come. Good-morning, Miss Pinck- 
 ney." He bowed and walked away. 
 
 Putnam availed himself discreetly of the per 
 mission given. He came occasionally of an 
 afternoon, and sat for an hour at a time. 
 Usuajly she said little. Her silence appeared 
 to proceed not from reserve, but from dejec 
 tion. Sometimes she spoke of her brother. 
 Putnam learned that he had been her only 
 
226 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 near relative. Their parents had died in her 
 childhood, and she had come North with her 
 brother when he entered the medical school. 
 From something that she once said, Putnam 
 inferred that her brother had owned an annuity 
 which died with him, and that she had been left 
 with little or nothing. They had few acquaint 
 ances in the North, almost none in the city. 
 An aunt in the South had offered her a home, 
 and she was going there in the fall. She 
 looked forward with dread to the time of her 
 departure. 
 
 " It will be so cruel," she said, "to leave my 
 poor boy all alone here among strangers, and I 
 never away from him before." 
 
 " Don t think of it now," he answered, " and 
 when you are gone I will come here often and 
 see to everything." 
 
 Her bereavement had evidently benumbed all 
 her faculties and left her with a slight hold on 
 life. She had no hopes or wishes for the future. 
 In alluding to her brother she confused her 
 tenses, speaking of him sometimes in the past, 
 and sometimes in the present as of one still 
 alive. Putnam felt that in a girl of her age 
 this mood was too unnatural to last, and he 
 reckoned not unreasonably on the reaction 
 that must come when her youth began again 
 to assert its rights. He was now thoroughly 
 in love, and as he sat watching her beautiful, 
 abstracted face, he found it hard to keep back 
 some expression of tenderness. Often, too, it 
 was difficult for him to tone down his spirits to 
 
A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 227 
 
 the proper pitch of respectful sympathy with 
 her grief. His existence was golden with new 
 found life and hope; into the shadow that 
 covered hers he could not enter. He could 
 only endeavor to draw her out into the sunshine 
 once more. 
 
 One day the two were sitting, as usual, in 
 silence or speaking but rarely. It was a day in 
 the very core of summer, and the life of Nature 
 was at its flood. The shadows of the trees 
 rested so heavy and motionless on the grass 
 that they appeared to sink into it and weigh it 
 down like palpable substances. 
 
 " I feel," said Putnam suddenly, "as though 
 I should live forever." 
 
 " Did you ever doubt it ? " she asked. 
 
 "Oh, I mean here in the body. I can t 
 conceive of death or of a spiritual existence on 
 such a day as this." 
 
 " There is nothing here to live for," she said 
 wearily. Presently she added, " This hot glare 
 makes me sick. I wish those men would stop 
 hammering on the bridge. I wish I could die 
 and get away into the dark." 
 
 Putnam paused before replying. He had 
 never heard her speak so impatiently. Was the 
 revulsion coming ? Was she growing tired of 
 sorrow ? After a minute he said, " Ah, you 
 don t know what it is to be a convalescent and 
 lie for months in a darkened room listening to 
 the hand-organ man and the scissors-grinder, 
 and the fellow that goes through the streets 
 hallooing Cash paid for rags ! It s like hav- 
 
228 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 ing a new body to get the use of your limbs 
 again and come out into the sunshine." 
 
 " Were you very sick ? " she inquired with 
 some show of interest. 
 
 He remembered with some mortification that 
 he had told her so once or twice before. She 
 had apparently forgotten it. " Yes, I nearly 
 died." 
 
 " Were you glad to recover ? " 
 
 " Well, I can t remember that I had any feel 
 ings in particular when I first struck the up-track. 
 It was hard work fighting for life, and I don t 
 think I cared much one way or the other. But 
 when I got well enough to sit up it began to 
 grow interesting. I used to sit at the window 
 in a very infantile frame of mind and watch 
 everything that went by. It wasn t a very rowdy 
 life, as the prisoner in solitary confinement said 
 to Dickens. We live in a back street, where 
 there s not much passing. The advent of the 
 baker s cart used to be the chief excitement. 
 It was painted red and yellow, and he baked 
 very nice leaf-cookies. My mother would hang 
 a napkin in the door-knocker when she wanted 
 him to stop ; and as I couldn t see the knocker 
 from my window, I used to make bets with 
 Dummy as to whether the wagon would stop or 
 not." 
 
 " Your mother is living, then ? " 
 
 " Yes ; my father died when I was a boy." 
 
 She asked no further questions, but a few 
 minutes after rose and said, " I think I will go 
 now. Good-evening." 
 
A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 229 
 
 He had never before outstayed her. He 
 looked at his watch and found that it was only 
 half-past four. 
 
 :< I hope," he began anxiously, " that you are 
 not feeling sick : you spoke just now of being 
 oppressed by the heat. Excuse me for staying 
 so long." 
 
 " Oh, no," she answered, " I m not sick. I 
 reckon I need a little rest. Good-evening." 
 
 Putnam lingered after she was gone. He 
 found his way to his old bench under the cedars 
 and sat there for awhile. He had not occupied 
 this seat since his first meeting with Miss 
 Pinckney in the summer-house, and the initials 
 which he had whittled on its edge impressed 
 him as belonging to some bygone stage of his 
 history. This was the first time that she had 
 questioned him about himself. His sympathy 
 had won her confidence, but she had treated 
 him hitherto in an impersonal way, as some 
 thing tributary to her brother s memory, like 
 his tombstone or the flowers on his grave. The 
 suspicion that he was seeking her for her own 
 sake had not, so far as Putnam could discover, 
 ever entered her thoughts. 
 
 But in the course of their next few interviews 
 there came a change in her behavior. The 
 simplicity and unconsciousness of her sorrow 
 had become complicated with some other feel 
 ing. He caught her looking at him narrowly 
 once or twice, and when he looked hard at her 
 there was visible in her manner a soft agita 
 tion something which in a girl of more san- 
 
230 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 guine complexion might have been interpreted 
 as a blush. She sometimes suffered herself to 
 be coaxed a little way into talking of things re 
 mote from the subject of her sorrow. Occa 
 sionally she questioned Putnam shyly about 
 himself, and he needed but slight encourage 
 ment to wax confidential. She listened quietly 
 to his experiences, and even smiled now and 
 then at something that he said. His heart beat 
 high with triumph: he fancied that he was 
 leading her slowly up out of the Valley of the 
 Shadow of Death. 
 
 But the upward path was a steep one. She 
 had many sudden relapses and changes of 
 mood. Putnam divined that she felt her grief 
 loosening its tight hold on her and slipping 
 away, and that she clung to it as a consecrated 
 thing with a morbid fear of losing it altogether. 
 There were days when her demeanor betokened 
 a passionate self-reproach, as though she 
 accused herself secretly of wronging her brother 
 and profaning his tomb in allowing more cheer 
 ful thoughts to blunt the edge of her bereave 
 ment. He remarked also that her eyes were 
 often red from weeping. There sometimes 
 mingled with her remorse a plain resentment 
 toward himself. At such times she would 
 hardly speak to him, and the slightest gayety 
 or even cheerfulness on his part was received 
 as downright heartlessness. He made a prac 
 tice, therefore, of withdrawing at once when 
 ever he found her in this frame of mind. 
 
 One day they had been sitting long together. 
 
A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 231 
 
 She had appeared unusually content, but had 
 spoken little. The struggle in her heart had 
 perhaps worn itself out for the present, and she 
 had yielded to the warm current of life and 
 hope which was bearing her back into the sun 
 shine. Suddenly the -elderly woman who had 
 formed one of the company in the summer- 
 house, on the day of the thunder storm, passed 
 along the walk with her trowel and watering- 
 pot. She nodded to Miss Pinckney, and then 
 pausing opposite the pair, glanced sharply from 
 one to the other, smiled significantly and passed 
 on. This trifling incident aroused Putnam s 
 companion from her reverie: she looked at 
 him with a troubled expression and said, 
 " Do you think you ought to come here so 
 much ? " 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 " I don t know. How well did you know my 
 brother Henry ? " 
 
 " If I didn t know him so very intimately when 
 he was living, I feel that I know him well now 
 from all that you have told me about him. 
 And, if you will pardon my saying so, I feel 
 that I know his sister a little too, and have 
 some title to her acquaintance." 
 
 " You have been very kind, and I am grate 
 ful for it, but perhaps you ought not to come so 
 much." 
 
 " I m sorry if I have come too much," rejoined 
 Putnam bitterly, " but I shall not come much 
 more. I am going away soon. The doctor 
 says I am not getting along fast enough and 
 
232 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 must have change of air. He has ordered me 
 to the mountains." 
 
 There was silence for a few minutes. He 
 was looking moodily down at the turf, pulling 
 a blade of grass now and then, biting it, and 
 throwing it away. 
 
 " I thank you very much for your sympathy 
 and kindness," she said at length, rising from 
 her chair ; " and I hope you will recover very 
 fast in the mountains. Good-by." 
 
 She extended her hand, which Putnam took 
 and held. It was trembling perceptibly. 
 " Wait a moment," he said. " Before I go I 
 should like to show some little mark of respect 
 to your brother s memory. Won t you meet 
 rne at the greenhouse to-morrow morning say 
 about nine o clock and select a few flowers ? 
 They will be your flowers, you know your of 
 fering." 
 
 "Yes," she answered,"! will; and I thank 
 you again for him." 
 
 The next morning at the appointed hour 
 Putnam descended the steps into the green 
 house. The gardener had just watered the 
 plants. A rich steam exhaled from the earth 
 and clouded all the glass, and the moist air was 
 heavy with the breath of heliotropes and roses. 
 A number of butterflies were flying about, and 
 at the end of a many-colored perspective of 
 leaves and blossoms, Putnam saw Miss Pinckney 
 hovering around a collection of tropical orchids. 
 The gardener had passed on into an adjoining 
 hothouse, and no sound broke the quiet but the 
 
A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 233 
 
 dripping of water in a tank of aquatic plants. 
 The fans of the palms and the long fronds of 
 the tree-ferns hung as still as in some painting 
 of an Indian isle. 
 
 She greeted him with a smile and held out 
 her hand to him. The beauty of the morning 
 and of the place had wrought in her a gentle 
 intoxication, and the mournful nature of her er 
 rand was for the moment forgotten. "Isn t it 
 delicious here?" she exclaimed; "I think I 
 should like to live in a greenhouse and grow 
 like a plant." 
 
 " A little of that kind of thing would do you 
 no end of good," he replied ; " a little concen 
 trated sunshine and bright colors and the smell 
 of the fresh earth, you know. If you were my 
 patient, I would make you take a course of it. 
 I d say you wanted more vegetable tissue, and 
 prescribe a greenhouse for six months. I ve no 
 doubt this man here would take you. A young 
 lady apprentice would be quite an attractive 
 feature. You could pull off dead leaves and 
 strike graceful attitudes, training up vines, like 
 the gardener s daughter in Tennyson." 
 
 " What are those gorgeous things ? " she 
 asked, pointing to a row of orchids hung on 
 nails along the wall. 
 
 " Those are epiphytic orchids air plants, you 
 know : they require no earth for their roots : 
 they live on the air." 
 
 " Like a chameleon ? " 
 
 " Like a chameleon." 
 
 He took down from its nail one of the little 
 
234 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 wooden slabs, and showed her the roots coiled 
 about it, with the cluster of bulbs. The flower 
 was snow-white and shaped like a butterfly. 
 The fringe of the lip was of a delicate rose- 
 pink, and at the base of it were two spots of 
 rich maroon, each with a central spot of the 
 most vivid orange. Every color was as pro 
 nounced as though it were the only one. 
 
 "What a daring combination!" she cried. 
 " If a lady should dress in all those colors she d 
 be thought vulgar, but somehow it doesn t seem 
 vulgar in a flower." 
 
 She turned the blossom over and looked at 
 the under side of the petals. " Those orange 
 spots show right through the leaf," she went 
 on. " as if they were painted and the paint laid 
 on thick." 
 
 " Do you know," said Putnam, " that 
 what you ve just said gives me a good deal of 
 encouragement ? " 
 
 " Encouragement ? How ? " 
 
 " Well, it s the first really feminine thing 
 
 At least no, I don t mean that. But it makes 
 me think that you are more like other girls." 
 
 His explanation was interrupted by the 
 entrance of the gardener. 
 
 " Will you select some of those orchids, please 
 if you like them, that is ? " asked Putnam. 
 
 A shade passed over her face. " They are 
 too gay for his for Henry," she answered. 
 
 " Try to tolerate a little brightness to-day," 
 he pleaded in a low voice. " You must dedicate 
 this morning to me ; it s the last, you know." 
 
A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 235 
 
 " I will take a few of them if you wish it, but 
 not this one. I will take that little white one 
 and that large purple one." 
 
 The gardener reached down the varieties 
 which she pointed out, and they passed along 
 the alley to select other flowers. She chose a 
 number of white roses, dark-shaded fuchsias 
 and English violets, and then they left the 
 place. Her expression had grown thoughtful, 
 though not precisely sad. They walked slowly 
 up the long shady street leading to the ceme 
 tery. 
 
 " I am dropping some of the flowers," she 
 said, stopping; "will you carry these double 
 fuchsias a minute, please, while I fasten the 
 others ? " 
 
 He took them and laughed. " Now, if this 
 were in a novel," he said, " what a neat oppor 
 tunity for me to say, May I not always carry 
 your double fuchsias ? " 
 
 She looked at him quickly, and her brown 
 cheek blushed rosy red, but she started on with 
 out making any reply and walked faster. 
 
 " She takes," he said to himself. But he saw 
 the cemetery gate at the end of the street. " I 
 must make this walk last longer," he thought. 
 Accordingly he invented several cunning devices 
 to prolong it, stopping now and then to point 
 out something worth noting in the handsome 
 grounds which lined the street. And so they 
 sauntered along, she appearing to have forgot 
 ten the speech which embarrassed her, or at 
 least she did not resent it. They paused in 
 
236 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 front of a well-kept lawn, and he drew her at 
 tention to the turf. " It s almost as dark as the 
 evergreens," he said. 
 
 " Yes," she answered, " it s so green that it s 
 almost blue." 
 
 " What do you suppose makes the bees gather 
 round that croquet stake so ? " 
 
 " I reckon they take the bright colors on it 
 for flowers," she answered, with a certain quaint- 
 ness of fancy which he had often remarked in 
 her. 
 
 As they stood there, leaning against the fence, 
 a party of schoolgirls came along with their 
 satchels and spelling-books. They giggled and 
 stared as they passed the fence, and one of 
 them, a handsome, long-legged, bold-faced 
 thing, said aloud, " Oh, my ! look at me and my 
 fancy beau a-takin a walk ! " 
 
 Putnam glanced at his companion, who col 
 ored nervously and looked away. " Saucy little 
 giglets ! " he laughed. " Did you hear what she 
 said? " 
 
 "Yes," almost inaudibly. 
 
 " I hope it didn t annoy you ? " 
 
 " It was very rude," walking on. 
 
 " Well, I rather like naughty schoolgirls : 
 they are amusing creatures. When I was a 
 very small boy I was sent to a girl s school, and 
 I used to study their ways. They always had 
 crumbs in their apron pockets ; they used to 
 write on a slate, Tommy is a good boy, and 
 hold it up for me to see when the teacher wasn t 
 looking ; they borrowed my geography at recess 
 
A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 237 
 
 and painted all the pictures vermilion and 
 yellow." He paused, but she said nothing, and 
 he continued, talking against time. " There 
 was one piece of chewing-gum in that school 
 which circulated from mouth to mouth. It had 
 been originally spruce gum, I believe, but it was 
 masticated beyond recognition : the parent tree 
 wouldn t have known her child. One day I 
 found it hidden away on a window-sill behind 
 the shutter. It was flesh-colored and dented 
 all over with the marks of sharp little teeth. I 
 kept that chewing-gum for a week, and the 
 school was like a cow that s lost her cud." 
 
 As Putnam completed these reminiscences 
 they entered the cemetery gate, and the shadow 
 of its arch seemed to fall across the young 
 girl s soul. The bashful color had faded from 
 her cheek and the animation from her eye. 
 Her face wore a troubled expression ; she 
 walked slowly and looked about at the grave 
 stones. 
 
 Putnam stopped talking abruptly, but pres 
 ently said, " You have not asked me for your 
 fuchsias." 
 
 She stood still and held out her hand for 
 them. 
 
 " I thought you might be meaning to let me 
 keep them," said Putnam. His heart beat 
 fast and his voice trembled as he continued : 
 " Perhaps you thought that what I said a while 
 ago was said in joke, but I mean it in real 
 earnest." 
 
 " Mean what ? " she asked faintly. 
 
238 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 " Don t you know what I mean ? " he said, 
 coming near and taking her hand. "Shall I 
 tell you, darling ? " 
 
 " Oh, please don t ! Oh, I think I know. 
 Not here not now. Give me the flowers," 
 she said, disengaging her hand, " and I will put 
 them on Henry s grave." 
 
 He handed them to her and said, " I won t 
 go on now if it troubles you ; but tell me first 
 I am going away to-morrow, and shan t be back 
 till October shall I find you here then, and 
 may I speak then ? " 
 
 " I shall be here till winter." 
 
 " And may I speak then ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And will you listen ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Then I can wait." 
 
 They moved on again along the cemetery 
 walks. Putnam felt an exultation that he could 
 not suppress. In spite of her language, her 
 face and the tone of her voice had betrayed 
 her. He knew that she cared for him. But in 
 the blindness of his joy he failed to notice an 
 increasing agitation in her manner, which fore 
 told the approach of some painful crisis of feel 
 ing. Her conflicting emotions, long pent up, 
 were now in most delicate equilibrium. The 
 slightest shock might throw them out of bal 
 ance. Putnam s nature, though generous and 
 at bottom sympathetic, lacked the fineness of 
 insight needed to interpret the situation. Like 
 many men of robust and heedless temperament, 
 
A GRAVEYABD IDYL. 239 
 
 he was more used to bend others moods to his 
 own than to enter fully into their s. His way of 
 approaching the subject had been unfortunate, 
 beginning as he had with a jest. The sequel 
 was destined to be still more unlucky. 
 
 They had reached a part of the cemetery 
 which was not divided into lots, but formed a 
 sort of burial commons for the behoof of the 
 poor. It was used mainly by Germans, and the 
 graves were principally those of children. The 
 headstones were wooden, painted white, with in 
 scriptions in black or gilt lettering. Humble 
 edgings of white pebbles or shells, partly em 
 bedded in the earth, bordered some of the 
 graves ; artificial flowers, tinsel crosses, hearts 
 and other such fantastic decorations lay upon 
 the mounds. Putnam s companion paused with 
 an expression of pity before one of these un 
 couth septilchers, a little heap of turf which 
 covered the body of a " span-long babe." 
 
 " Now, isn t that echt Deutsch? " began Put 
 nam, whom the gods had made mad. " Is that 
 glass affair let into the tombstone a looking- 
 glass or a portrait of the deceased like that 
 statoot of a deceased infant that Holmes 
 tells about ? Even our ancestral cherub and 
 willow tree are better than that, or even the in 
 evitable sick lamb and broken lily." 
 
 " The people are poor," she murmured. 
 
 " They do the same sort of thing when 
 they re rich. It s the national taste to stick lit 
 tle tawdry fribbles all over the face of Nature." 
 
 " Poor little baby ! " she said gently. 
 
240 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 11 It s a rather old baby by this time," rejoined 
 Putnam, pointing out the date on the wooden 
 slab " Eighteen fifty-one : it would be older 
 than I now, if it had kept on." 
 
 Her eyes fell upon the inscription, and she 
 read it aloud : " Hier ruht in Gott, Heinrich 
 Franz, Geb. Mai 13, 1851. Gest. August 4, 
 1852. Wir hoffen auf Wiedersehen." She re 
 peated the last words softly to herself. 
 
 " Are those white things cobblestones, or 
 what ? " continued Putnam perversely, indicat 
 ing the border which quaintly encircled the lit 
 tle mound. " As I live," he exclaimed, " they 
 are door-knobs ! " and partly through careless 
 ness, partly through accident, he poked one of 
 them out of the ground with the end of his cane. 
 
 " Stop ! " she cried vehemently ; " how can 
 you do that ? " 
 
 He dropped his cane and looked at her in 
 wonder. She burst into tears and turned away. 
 "You think I am a heartless brute?" he cried 
 remorsefully, hastening after her. 
 
 " Oh, go away, please go away and leave 
 me alone. I am going to my brother ; I want 
 to be alone." 
 
 She hurried on, and he paused irresolute. 
 " Miss Pinckney ! " he called after her, but she 
 made no response. His instinct, now aroused 
 too late, told him that he had better leave her 
 alone for the present. So he picked up his 
 walking stick and turned reluctantly homeward. 
 He cursed himself mentally as he retraced the 
 paths along which they had walked together a 
 
A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 241 
 
 few moments before. " I m a fool," he said to 
 himself ; " I ve gone and upset it all. Couldn t 
 I see that she was feeling badly ? I suppose I 
 imagined that I was funny, and she thought I 
 was an insensible brute. This comes of giving 
 way to my infernal high spirits." At the same 
 time a shade of resentment mingled with his 
 self-reproaches. " Why can t she be a little 
 more cheerful and like other girls, and make 
 some allowance for a fellow ? " he asked. 
 " Her brother wasn t everybody else s brother. 
 It s downright morbid, this obstinate woe of 
 hers. Other people have lost friends and got 
 over it." 
 
 On the morrow he was to start for the moun 
 tains. He visited the cemetery in the morning, 
 but Miss Pinckney was not there. He did not 
 know her address, nor could the gatekeeper in 
 form him ; and in the afternoon he set out on 
 his journey with many misgivings. 
 
 It was early October when Putnam returned 
 to the city. He went at once to the cemetery, 
 but on reaching the grave his heart sank at the 
 sight of a bunch of withered flowers which must 
 have lain many days upon the mound. The 
 blossoms were black and the stalks brittle and 
 dry. " Can she have changed her mind and 
 gone South already ? " he asked himself. 
 
 There was a new sexton in the gate-house, 
 who could tell him nothing about her. He 
 wandered through the grounds, looking for the 
 old woman with the watering-pot, but the sea 
 son had grown cold, and she had probably 
 
242 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 ceased her gardening operations for the year. 
 He continued his walk beyond the marshes. 
 The woods had grown rusty and the sandy pas 
 tures outside the city were ringing with the in 
 cessant creak of grasshoppers, which rose in 
 clouds under his feet as he brushed though the 
 thin grass. The blue-curl and the life-everlast 
 ing distilled their pungent aroma in the autumn 
 sunshine. A feeling of change and forlornness 
 weighed upon his spirit. As with Thomas of 
 Ercildoune, whom the Queen of Faery carried 
 away into Eildon Hill, the short period of his 
 absence seemed seven years long. An old Eng 
 lish song came into his head: 
 
 Winter wakeneth all my care, 
 
 Now these leaves waxeth bear : 
 
 Oft it cometh in my thought, 
 
 Of this worldes joy how it goeth all to naught. 
 
 Soon after arriving at the hills he had written 
 to Miss Pinckney a long letter of explanations 
 and avowals ; but he did not know the number 
 of her lodgings, nor, oddly enough, even her 
 Christian name, and the letter had been returned 
 to him unopened. The next month was one of 
 the unhappiest in Putnam s life. On returning 
 to the city, thoroughly restored in health, he 
 had opened an office, but he found it impossible 
 to devote himself quietly to the duties of his 
 profession. He visited the cemetery at all hours, 
 but without success. He took to wandering 
 about in remote quarters and back streets of 
 the town, and eyed sharply every female figure 
 
A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 243 
 
 that passed him in the twilight, especially if it 
 walked quickly or wore a veil. He slept little 
 at night, and grew restless and irritable. He 
 had never confided this experience even to his 
 mother ; it seemed to him something apart. 
 
 One afternoon, toward the middle of Novem 
 ber, he was returning homeward weary and de 
 jected from a walk in the suburbs. His way 
 led across an uninclosed outskirt of the town 
 which served as a common to the poor people 
 of the neighborhood. It was traversed by a 
 score of footpaths, and frequented by goats, 
 and by ducks that dabbled in the puddles of 
 rain water collected in the hollows. Halfway 
 across this open tract stood what had formerly 
 been an old-fashioned country house, now 
 converted into a soap-boiling establishment. 
 Around this was a clump of old pine trees, the 
 remnant of a grove which had once flourished 
 in the sandy soil. There was something in the 
 desolation of the place that flattered Putnam s 
 mood, and he stopped to take it in. The air 
 was dusk, but embers of an angry sunset burned 
 low in the west. A cold wind made a sound in 
 the pine tops like the beating of surf on a dis 
 tant shore. A flock of little winter birds flew 
 suddenly up from the ground into one of the 
 trees, like a flight of gray leaves whirled up by 
 a gust. As Putnam turned to look at them he 
 saw, against the strip of sunset along the hori 
 zon, the slim figure of a girl walking rapidly to 
 ward the opposite side of the common. His 
 heart gave a great leap, and he started after her 
 
244 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 on a run. At a corner of the open ground the 
 figure vanished, nor could Putnam decide into 
 which of two or three small streets she had 
 turned. He ran down one and up another, but 
 met no one except a few laborers coming home 
 from work, and finally gave up the quest. But 
 this momentary glimpse produced in him a new 
 excitement. He felt sure that he had not been 
 mistaken ; he knew the swift, graceful step, the 
 slight form bending in the wind. He fancied 
 that he had even recognized the poise and shape 
 of the little head. He imagined, too, that he 
 had not been unobserved, and that she had 
 some reason for avoiding him. For a week or 
 more he haunted the vicinity of the common, 
 but without result. December was already 
 drawing to an end when he received the follow 
 ing note : 
 
 DEAR MR. PUTNAM : 
 
 You must forgive me for running away from you 
 the other evening. I am right am I not in sup 
 posing that you saw and recognized me ? It was 
 rude in me not to wait for you, but I had not courage 
 to talk with anyone just then. Perhaps I should 
 have seen you before at the cemetery if you still 
 walk there but I have been sick and have not been 
 there for a long time. I was only out for the first 
 time when I saw you last Friday. My aunt has sent 
 for me, and I am going South in a few days. I shall 
 leave directions to have this posted to you as soon as 
 I am gone. 
 
 I promised to be here when you came back, and 
 I write this to thank you for your kind interest in me 
 
A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 245 
 
 and to explain why I go away without seeing you 
 again. I think that I know what you wanted to ask 
 me that day that we went to the greenhouse, and 
 perhaps under happier circumstances I could have 
 given you the answer which you wished. But I have 
 seen so much sorrow, and I am of such a gloomy 
 disposition that I am not fit for cheerful society, and 
 I know you would regret your choice. 
 
 I shall think very often and very gratefully of you, 
 and shall not forget the words on that little German 
 baby s gravestone. Good-by. 
 
 IMOGEN PINCKNEY. 
 
 Putnam felt stunned and benumbed on first 
 reading- this letter. Then he read it over me 
 chanically two or three times. The date was a 
 month old, but the postmark showed that it had 
 just been mailed. She must have postponed 
 her departure somewhat after writing it, or the 
 person with whom it had been left had neg 
 lected to post it till now. He felt a sudden op 
 pression and need of air, and taking his hat left 
 the house. It was evening, and the first snow 
 of the season lay deep on the ground. An 
 ger and grief divided his heart. " It s too bad ! 
 too bad ! " he murmured, with tears in his eyes ; 
 " she might have given me one chance to speak. 
 She hasn t been fair to me. What s the matter 
 with her, anyhow ? She has brooded and 
 brooded till she is downright melancholy-mad ;" 
 and then with a revulsion of feeling : " My poor 
 darling girl ! Here she has been, sick and all 
 alone, sitting day after day in that cursed grave 
 yard. I ought never to have gone to the moun- 
 
24 6 A GRAVEYARD IDYL. 
 
 tains ; I ought to have stayed. I might have 
 known how it would turn out. Well, it s all 
 over now, I suppose." 
 
 He had taken, half unconsciously, the direc 
 tion of the cemetery, and now found himself at 
 the entrance. The gate was locked, but he 
 climbed over the wall and waded through the 
 snow to the spot where he had sat with her so 
 many summer afternoons. The wicker chair 
 was buried out of sight in a drift. A scarcely 
 visible undulation in the white level marked the 
 position of the mound, and the headstone had a 
 snow cap. The cedars stood black in the dim 
 moonlight, and the icy coating of their boughs 
 rattled like candelabra. He stood a few mo 
 ments near the railing, and then tore the letter into 
 fragments and threwthemon thesnow. "There! 
 good-by, good-by ! " he said bitterly, as the wind 
 carried them skating away over the crust. 
 
 But what was that ? The moon cast a 
 shadow of Henry Pinckney s headstone on the 
 snow, but what was that other and similar 
 shadow beyond it? Putnam had been standing 
 edgewise to the slab ; he shifted his position 
 now and saw a second stone and a second 
 mound side by side with the first. An awful 
 faintness and trembling seized him as he ap 
 proached it and bent his head close down to the 
 marble. The jagged shadows of the cedar 
 branches played across the surface, but by the 
 uncertain light he could read the name " Imogen 
 Pinckney," and below it the inscription, " Wir 
 hoffen auf Wiedersehen." 
 
VII. 
 
 EDRIC THE WILD AND THE 
 WITCH WIFE. 
 
EDRIC THE WILD AND THE 
 WITCH WIFE. 
 
 HAT the unseen powers are female 
 appears from the capricious way in 
 which they bestow their favors. You 
 shall have a spiritually minded man 
 in search of the marvelous all his life, and yet 
 never see so much as a ghost. He is abroad at 
 the most propitious seasons ; in windy autumn 
 twilights, and in the hours of deepest sleep, 
 toward morning, when the moon is low. He 
 fasts to purge his sense of grossness and make 
 his vision clear. Sometimes he wakes a whole 
 summer night and wanders about the dusky 
 fields, the edges of woods and marshes and all 
 haunted places, yet never hears anything more 
 evil than the boom of the nighthawk hunting 
 insects in the heavens, or the iterations of a 
 whip-poor-will from a tree in the meadow. 
 But some wild boon companion, some Tarn 
 O Shanter, who drinks deep and sleeps sound, 
 and never troubles his head about wraiths and 
 fairies, has but to lose his way anywhere after 
 nightfall, when presto ! the curtains of the 
 invisible world are drawn aside and his drunken 
 eyes are staring on the mad dances of goblins, 
 249 
 
250 EDRIC THE WILD 
 
 for an instant glimpse of which many a better 
 man would give ten years of his life. 
 
 The conditions on which the powers grant 
 their rare favors to men are easy but, once 
 violated, the givers are inexorable. They are 
 the lords of a manor held at some trifling 
 rental an annual shoat or hare. But the rent 
 must be paid. The very easiness of the con 
 dition leads the recipient of their bounties to 
 neglect it. " What ! " he thinks in his heart, 
 " the gods will never exact such a toy." And 
 then he finds too late that his right is forfeit 
 beyond recall, and his lords stand upon the 
 letter of the bond. Naaman, the Syrian, 
 thought it a light matter to bathe in Jordan, 
 and would have chosen some more difficult way 
 to be healed of his leprosy ; and Orpheus did 
 but glance behind him to lose his wife and find 
 the truth : 
 
 By the just gods whom no weak pity moved. 
 
 This also found Edric the Wild, the Saxon 
 thane, who stood out for four years against 
 William the Conqueror. Edric " Salvage " and 
 " Silvaticus," he is described in Domesday 
 Book, where he is entered as lord of the manor 
 of Ledbury North. And old Simeon of Dur 
 ham calls him a vir strenuissimus, who laid 
 waste the lands of the castellans of Hereford, 
 and killed many of their knights and squires. 
 He lurked, with his following of Saxon outlaws, 
 in the forests and hills of the rough Welsh 
 border, and made his peace with the Norman? 
 
AND THE WITCH WIFE. 251 
 
 only in 1070, when resistance to the foreign 
 rule had become hopeless. He was then taken 
 into the favor of William who, like a later 
 monarch of England, " loved a man " and 
 made the expedition to Scotland with him in 
 1072. So much is history ; but legend, hardly 
 less authentic than the chronicles of those dim 
 times, says as follows : 
 
 Edric, returning late one night from a hunt, 
 lost his way in the great oak forests which 
 filled the valley of the Dee. He was attended 
 by a single horse-boy, who nodded half asleep 
 on his horse, as he followed his master slowly 
 along a narrow wood-road that wound be 
 tween the thick boles of the oak trees and the 
 clumps of gigantic fern. The night was a 
 wild one, with a high wind and a scud of clouds 
 across the gibbous moon. There was a steady 
 war in the tree-tops, lower down a groaning 
 and shrieking in the boughs, and lower still a 
 whistle and rustle in the fern. All these sounds 
 occasionally assumed a resemblance to human 
 voices, and the wavering moon shadows that 
 ran along the path seemed every now and 
 then to be fantastic shapes of living creatures, 
 that raced ahead of the riders, to hide behind a 
 trunk and then dart out and race on again. It 
 was a haunted region, " where Deva spreads 
 her wizard stream," full of the memory of Mer 
 lin and not far from the waste city of Chester, 
 on whose walls, the few Saxon churls that 
 sometimes took shelter there in stormy weather 
 still saw the apparitions of Roman sentries 
 
252 EDRIC THE WILD 
 
 making- their nightly rounds. But Edric was 
 not superstitious. He was a rough-and-ready 
 soldier, distinguished, says Walter Map, cor- 
 poris ag Hit ate et jocunditate verborum et ope- 
 rum. The horses stumbled on till the wood- 
 path broadened into a glade, in the middle of 
 which a deserted hunting lodge broke the 
 moonlight with its dark bulk. Here Edric and 
 his squire took lodging for the night, after hob 
 bling their horses and turning them loose to 
 crop the grass in the little clearing. They 
 found the lodge unfurnished save for a few 
 shreds of worm-eaten arras that waved and 
 flapped in the gusty air. But groping their 
 way through hall and bower, they finally came 
 upon a heap of leaves which the winds of many 
 autumns had driven through the empty case 
 ments and piled up in the corner of a bare 
 chamber. There they made their bed and were 
 soon asleep. It was long past midnight when 
 Edric awoke. The wind had fallen and the 
 moon was down, but a light streamed through 
 the door of the neighboring apartment, whence 
 also issued an indescribable sound. The boy 
 was still asleep and the master, grasping his 
 short seax or Saxon sword, stole to the door 
 and looked in. The room was full of light, the 
 source of which, however, was invisible ; as also 
 of the whirring, buzzing noise which sounded, 
 as much as anything, like the continuous rustle 
 of ten thousand clocks that hang upon the 
 wall of the Uhrausstellung at Triberg in the 
 Black Forest, and keep up a humming as of a 
 
AND THE WITCH WIFE. 253 
 
 myriad insects. Through this pierced at inter 
 vals the twanging of a Welsh harp, though the 
 harper was nowhere to be seen. In the center 
 of the room a score of women moved to and 
 fro in a sort of choral dance, chanting a low 
 song in a tongue which was neither Welsh nor 
 English, both of which languages were familiar 
 to the hardy borderer. The dancers were very 
 fair, tall as men, and clad in light tunics of 
 white linen. Edric gazed until his eyes grew 
 dazzled and his head swam. He had no doubt 
 as to the true nature of the beings that he saw 
 before him. He had heard of the nocturnal 
 phalanxes of demons and the vengeance which 
 they were wont to wreak upon the venturesome 
 mortals who violated their divinities and ex 
 posed their rites. But his blood was up and 
 the daredevil spirit of the outlaw prompted him 
 to go all lengths. Gradually his gaze became 
 concentrated upon a single figure, the tallest 
 and most beautiful witch in the band. He de 
 voured her graceful motions with his eyes, as 
 she wheeled and leaped, linked and unlinked 
 herself in the choral chain, till the impulse to 
 break the spell by action became overpowering, 
 and, dropping his sword, he rushed into the 
 group with a shout and seized the beautiful 
 sorceress in his arms. Instantly the music 
 stopped with a loud rattling and jarring sound, 
 and the companions of his captive, swarming 
 about him like angry bees, assailed him with 
 teeth and nails. His prize, too, writhed and 
 twisted in his grasp, but he held her fast and 
 
254 EDRIC THE WILD 
 
 shouted lustily for the boy. At last the latter, 
 with pale face and chattering teeth, appeared 
 in the doorway, and immediately all was dark 
 ness and silence. So suddenly had the appari 
 tions vanished that Edric almost thought that 
 the creature which he held had vanished too. 
 But, no ; in the darkness he still felt the warm 
 flesh palpitating in his embrace, heard her thick 
 pantings, and even smelled the sweet breath of 
 her lips. She made no further resistance, while 
 her captor led her out from the lodge into the 
 open air, where the gray light of dawn shone 
 into her wild eyes. The boy caught the horses 
 and led them up, and Edric, seating her before 
 him on the saddle, rode slowly off into the 
 woods, looking warily into the thickets on 
 either side, as fearful of an ambush. But he 
 met with no disturbance, and soon the forest 
 about began to have a familiar look, and before 
 the noon was high he had brought her home to 
 Ladbury. 
 
 For three days she uttered no word, but she 
 yielded herself patiently to his caresses, and it 
 is said that he found in her embraces a delight 
 beyond all pleasure which a mortal woman can 
 impart. On the fourth day she said to him in 
 good West Saxon, "I salute you, my dearest 
 lord. You will be safe and prosperous until you 
 reproach me, either with my sisters or the place 
 where you found me, or with any circumstances 
 connected therewith. From that day you will 
 lose me, and decline from your felicity, and die 
 before your time, through your importunity." 
 
AND THE WITCH WIFE. 255 
 
 So Edric made a great feast and bade the 
 neighboring earls to it, and was solemnly wed 
 ded to his sylvan bride. Her fame reached the 
 court, and King William summoned her with her 
 husband to London for a season, Edric having 
 now made his peace with the Conqueror and 
 received from him the manor of Ledbury North 
 in fief. At court her unheard of beauty was 
 the wonder of all the nobles and the ladies. 
 
 She bore her husband a boy, Alnodus, who 
 differed seemingly in no respect from the fruit 
 of ordinary marriages. Edric lived happily 
 with his wife for many years, but at last he 
 grew careless and secure. She was of a still 
 conversation and had some elfish ways, though 
 not unpleasing ones. She would laugh and 
 talk in a low tone to herself. If Edric woke in 
 the night he always found her waking. She 
 loved to walk through solitary pastures at dew- 
 fall, at which times she could be heard at a 
 great distance singing a peculiar song. Some 
 times she disappeared for hours at a time, none 
 knew whither, but this was always by day. At 
 length, however, Edric, returning from the hunt 
 about the third hour of the night, sought her in 
 her chamber, and not finding her there called 
 her. She came slowly from somewhere when 
 called, and Edric, looking upon her, said in 
 sudden anger and impatience, "Have your 
 sisters been keeping you?" The rest of his 
 speech, says the chronicler, was uttered to air, 
 for, in the instant, at the mention of her sisters, 
 she vanished and was never seen again. In 
 
256 EDRIC THE WILD. 
 
 vain her deserted mate sought the enchanted 
 glade and the old hunting lodge where he had 
 won her. He traced and retraced every path 
 through the forest till each tree and bush had 
 grown familiar, but never found the spot. He 
 called her name day and night with tears, with 
 prayers for forgiveness, with promises of 
 amends. But naught availed, and he wasted 
 away with grief and died in a few short months 
 after her disappearance. 
 
 Of his son Alnodus, who survived him, it is 
 related that he became a man of great sanctity 
 and wisdom, who, being struck with palsy and 
 a tremor of the head and limbs when still 
 young, had himself carried to Hereford to the 
 shrine of St. Ethelbert, king and martyr, and 
 praying before his altar was restored in a single 
 night to sound health. In gratitude for this 
 miraculous interposition, he gave his manor of 
 Ledbury to God and the Blessed Virgin and 
 St. Ethelbert, with all its appurtenances in 
 perpetuity, and it is now annexed to the epis 
 copal see of Hereford. He himself, having 
 stripped him of his entire possessions, spent the 
 rest of his life as a pilgrim in the service of 
 Christ. 
 
VIII. 
 THE WINE-FLOWER, 
 
THE WINE-FLOWER. 
 
 1HAT is a mushroom, Thomas, a little 
 button mushroom ; and there is an 
 other, and still another. They spring 
 up where the turf is smooth and 
 thick and nibbled close by the sheep. Notice 
 their flesh-colored gills and the ruptured edges 
 of the white membrane that covered them, as 
 delicate as the softest undressed kid-skin. Smell 
 their earthy fragrance. Break off this stem and 
 take a bite of it. It tastes like a hickory-nut, 
 without its oil. These little fungi start up in a 
 single night, as if begotten by the dew and the 
 starlight. But we have heard of plants that 
 had an even quicker growth. There was Jack s 
 beanstalk, and Jonah s gourd, and the blossom 
 ing pilgrim staff of Tannhauser. And I will 
 tell you of a flower that grew and withered as 
 suddenly as these, and which expressed a mys 
 tic purity by its snowy petals, though its birth 
 was not " of the womb of morning dew," nor 
 its " conception of the glorious prime" ; but the 
 juices that fed it were of blood-red wine, rich as 
 the soil that lay in Isabella s pot of basil. 
 
 Waerferth was Bishop of Worcester in the 
 reign of the great Alfred, at whose request he 
 
260 THE WINE-FLOWER. 
 
 translated the " Dialogues of Pope Gregory " 
 into English. The book has never been put 
 into print, but remains in handwriting in the 
 famous book-houses of Oxenford. 
 
 Waerferth was a good and learned man, but 
 he loved much sleep and worldly lore ; to talk 
 with his friends about a bright fire of ashen bil 
 lets, to hear the harp touched, and to drink the 
 wine which chapmen brought hither from the 
 kingdom of the Franks, because the wine- 
 berries did not ripen well in English land. 
 Waerferth loved also his wife Angharad ; for, 
 before the coming of the Norman, bishop and 
 mass-priest were not ashamed of their man 
 hood, but took the comfort and love of woman 
 in holy wedlock. But the haughty French pre 
 lates scorn the Word of God, which says that a 
 bishop shall be the husband of one wife. Nei 
 ther would Waerferth shave his face like the 
 womanish ecclesiastics of these days, but let 
 his yellow beard cover his rosy cheeks. Ang 
 harad was a Welsh woman, and by some she 
 was accounted a sorceress. But I think this 
 was only by reason of her dark favor and 
 of her shape, which was so long and slender 
 that she looked like a snake. It was hard to say 
 whether her eyes were blacker than her eye 
 brows, or her eyebrows blacker than her hair, 
 which was rolled and piled upon her head in 
 such masses that it seemed a wonder how her 
 thin body could stand so upright under the 
 weight of it. And her tire-women reported 
 that when she was unclothed and her hair was 
 
THE WINE-FLOWER. 261 
 
 loosened, it would fall about her like a cloak, so 
 tnat from her bosom to her feet one might not 
 see even an inch of her flesh. Withal she was 
 expfe/t in starcraft, leechdom and wort-cun 
 ning. She knew tales of Cynon ap Clydno and 
 his We, Morvyth, the daughter of Urien ; and 
 of the whitethorn bush in the forest Broch al- 
 lean, where Merlin lies chained ; and of the 
 maiden Luned with her enchanted bezel. And 
 she sang these to her harp in a marvelously 
 clear, high, and sweet voice, like a wild swan 
 singing among the rushes of the river Usk, or 
 upon the solitary lakes of Snowdon. Howbeit, 
 like all the women of the Bret, she was jealous 
 and passionate and sharp of tongue, and had a 
 great pride of xineage. She could and often 
 did recite all the names in her pedigree for 
 twenty generations, back to a certain king of 
 the tribe of the Iceni, who had beaten three 
 Roman legions in battle. 
 
 Howbeit, the kinsmen of Waerferth took 
 offense that he should have to wife a foreign 
 woman instead oi choosing a bride among his 
 own folk of Wessex ; and there was no love lost 
 between Angharad and them. But it happened 
 that adistant kinsman, to whom the bishop had 
 been greatly beholden, died in the capital city 
 of Winchester, and on his death-bed he com 
 mitted his only child, a girl of some seventeen 
 years, to the care of his cousin Waerferth. The 
 orphan had neither fee nor land, and the bishop 
 took her under his protection and into his 
 household. The maid was well grown and had 
 
262 THE WINE-FLOWER. 
 
 eyes as blue as the blossom of the flax and hair 
 as yellow as a cowslip. Moreover, her ways 
 were gentle and her voice as soft as a dove s, 
 and she blushed prettily when spoken to. So 
 that the women of Waerferth s blood said often 
 to one another : " It is a pity that our brother 
 did not get him for a wife some bonny Saxon 
 wench like Godgifu, instead of that black she- 
 warlock, who mutters Welsh charms to the 
 embers when we sit by her fire, and whom 
 Wicglaf the herd has thrice seen floating on the 
 Severn at midnight in the likeness of a black 
 cygnet." These speeches were carried to the 
 ears of Angharad, who forthwith conceived 
 such hatred and jealousy of her new inmate 
 that she treated her with the utmost harshness. 
 One day Waerferth, finding the poor maid in 
 tears, drew from her, much against her will, an 
 acknowledgment of Angharad s unkindness. 
 Thereupon he admonished his wife angrily, say 
 ing, " The father of Godgifu was my gossip and 
 my blood-friend, who saved my life and got me 
 favor with the king. While I have a roof she 
 shall have shelter, and while I have a loaf she 
 shall share it. And do not you drive her from the 
 house, lest evil befall it and the curse of God." 
 Angharad answered nothing, but her sullen 
 jealousy waxed daily, and every innocent kind 
 ness which her lord showed to his young kins 
 woman added proof to his wife s suspicions. 
 At last she made a desperate resolve and betook 
 herself to a wise woman of the Cymry who 
 dwelt by the sea. She found her on a windy 
 
THE WINE-FLOWER. 263 
 
 evening, standing by the edge of the waves on a 
 low sand- spit. She was clad in a single robe of 
 sea-water green, and was looking off over the 
 ocean. Her back was turned, and her heel 
 rested lightly on a rope, the other end of which 
 was tied to the horns of a monstrous bull which 
 plunged and bellowed furiously. But such was 
 the power of the witch that, though she did not 
 once vary her easy attitude, or even seem to 
 notice the creature s violent struggles to free 
 itself, the rope held. When Angharad had 
 made known her errand, the sorceress, without 
 turning to face her, threw over her shoulder a 
 small vial made of the tip of a wild buffalo s 
 horn and filled with a colorless liquid. Ang 
 harad picked it up from the sand where it had 
 fallen, and kissing the hem of the wise woman s 
 robe, which was blowing about in the wind, stole 
 softly away. That evening in his low-studded, 
 oaken-ceiled hall, blackened by the smoke of 
 torches, the bishop sat drinking his wine and 
 listening to his lady as she struck the harp and 
 sang, She had made herself exceeding fair, 
 having put on a gown of yellow satin and shoes 
 of variegated leather, clasped with golden bosses 
 in the shape of dragons. Ever and anon Waer- 
 ferth kissed her as he drank, and called for 
 another song, and ever she sang wildly well. 
 At last her lord, as was his wont, fell into a 
 gentle doze, and, with a quick motion, she flung 
 the witch s poison into the half empty cup and 
 still played on. And ever her voice was shriller 
 and louder, as she sang the death-wail of 
 
264 THE WINE-FLOWER. 
 
 Aneurin over the warriors who came not back 
 from Cattraeth, and the lament of Ovvain when 
 the drinking-horn, " Hirlas, rich with ancient 
 silver," was borne to the empty seat of Tudur. 
 
 The moonshine, which poured in a flood 
 through the casement, fell upon the crystal 
 goblet standing before her sleeping lord, and the 
 shadow of the wine made a rosy spot in the 
 white slab of light that lay across the board. 
 Suddenly there was a disturbance in the depths 
 of the cup. The liquor, glowing like a car 
 buncle in its stillness, began to bubble and 
 seethe, and finally from its agitated surface 
 there slowly rose and unfolded a great white 
 flower with a golden heart, resembling a lily, 
 only that no lily sprung from earth was evei 1 
 half so white or half so beautiful. The lady 
 stared a moment with dilated eyes upon the 
 lovely miracle as it glittered in the moon, then, 
 with a happy cry, threw herself upon her hus 
 band s breast. The harp fell with a musical 
 clang to the floor, and the cup, overturned 
 by Angharad s sleeve, rolled upon the table. 
 " What ! little wife, have I slept ? " said Waer- 
 ferth, awakening and flinging his arms about 
 her. And Godgifu, coming at the instant to 
 the door and lifting the curtain, smiled when she 
 saw the pair embracing, and retreated softly 
 without having been perceived. But later, 
 when the torches were lighted, the goblet lay 
 upon its side, but the wondrous bloom had 
 vanished. Nor was the table wet or stained 
 near by, for the flower had drawn up all the 
 
THE WINE-FLOWER. 265 
 
 wine into itself, even as the new leaves and 
 buds of the tree draw up the sap in spring. 
 Only a few black seeds, like the seeds of the 
 Lily of the Annunciation, adhered to the bot 
 tom of the cup. " This wine draws muddy and 
 near the lees," said the bishop, as he glanced 
 into the empty beaker. " Here are some grape 
 seeds. I must have Wulfheard broach the 
 other cask." 
 
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 volume of about 700 pages, containing sketches 
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