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PROSE WRITINGS OF K P. WILLIS. 
 
PROSE WETTINGS 
 
 OF 
 
 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS 
 
 
 SELECTED BY 
 
 HENRY A. BEERS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 
 1885 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1885, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNEK S SONS. 
 
 ELBCTROTTPED AND PRINTED 
 
 BT RAND, AVERT. & COMPANY. 
 
 BOSTON. 
 
v 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 THE LUNATIC S SKATE 
 
 From " Scenes of Fear." 
 
 LOVE IN THE LlBEAKY 
 
 From " Edith Linsey." 
 
 TRENTON FALLS 62 
 
 From " Edith Linsey." 
 
 TOM FANE AND I 6 ? 
 
 F. SMITH 83 
 
 THE FEMALE WARD 1^ 
 
 PASQUALI, THE TAILOR OF VENICE 125 
 
 THE GYPSY OF SARDIS 
 
 A LOG IN THE ARCHIPELAGO 2 7 
 
 A DINNER AT LADY BLESSINGTON S 224 
 
 From "Pencillings by the Way." 
 A BREAKFAST WITH CHARLES LAMB ..... 231 
 
 From "Pencillings by the Way." 
 A WEEK AT GORDON CASTLE . . . . . 236 
 
 From "Pencillings by the Way." 
 
 LADY KAVELGOLD 248 
 
 THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS 283 
 
 LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE 297 
 
 vii 
 
 M151280 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 KATE CREDIFORD 3^4 
 
 THE GHOST-BALL AT CONGRESS HALL 322 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 FROM SARATOGA 335 
 
 SUMMER IN TOWN ,339 
 
 BROADWAY AND THE BATTERY 344 
 
 A TETE-A-TETE 348 
 
 A SUNDAY WALK 3 52 
 
 A SPRING DAY IN WINTER 355 
 
 EVANESCENT IMPRESSIONS 353 
 
 FROST OKA 
 359 
 
 A CONTADINA 3^! 
 
 SORROW S RELUCTANT GATE 362 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 AS long ago as 1854 Horace Greeley, in a letter to Willis, 
 urged him to publish a selection from the best of his 
 prose writings. "I have your big volume somewhere," he 
 W rote, alluding to the " Complete Works," published by 
 Redfield in 1846, but some venture less heavily freighted, 
 he thought, would have a better chance of floating down to 
 posterity. A generation has passed since then, and Willis 
 himself has been dead nearly twenty years, yet the sugges 
 tion has never been acted upon. The swift oblivion that 
 seems to have overtaken him may well appear unaccountable 
 to those who remember with what eagerness his letters from 
 abroad were read when they first came out in the old New- 
 York Mirror;" or how his sparkling sketches of life and 
 adventure, reprinted from Colburn s " New Monthly," or 
 issued in the fresh numbers of " Graham s " and " Godey s," 
 made him, for a time, the favorite magazinist of America. 
 Whether he wrote any thing really lasting, whether he is to 
 enjoy a fee-simple in fame, is still in doubt ; but many will 
 say without hesitation that his lease deserves renewing for 
 some years to come, and in this faith the present volume is 
 
 offered to the public. 
 
 tx 
 
X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Of late, while preparing a biography of Willis for the 
 "American Men of Letters" series, I took occasion to 
 make some inquiries among readers of my own age, and 
 younger, and was surprised to find how completely his prose, 
 so far as the result of these inquiries showed, had gone out 
 of date. Most of those who had read him at all had read 
 nothing beyond a few of his scriptural pieces. His poems, 
 indeed, are still in circulation ; but these, though smoothly 
 written and often natural and tender in feeling, by no means 
 exhibit his most characteristic traits, the wit, high spirits, 
 and knowledge of the world, the easy narrative and vivid 
 descriptive power, which made his early sketches and stories 
 so engaging. 
 
 Willis, in fact, outlived his own reputation. During the 
 last ten or fifteen years of his life, contemporary readers 
 thought of him only as the editor of the "Home Journal" 
 and the writer of mildly interesting letters of a domestic and 
 invalid cast from " Idlewild " or elsewhere. But his youth 
 and early manhood had given brilliant promise. Born at 
 Portland, Me., in 1806, and educated at Andover and Yale, 
 he had published, on leaving college, a volume of poems, 
 mainly on scriptural subjects, which enrolled him at once in 
 the little band of what was then called " Columbia s bards." 
 Then after a few years apprenticeship to journalism and 
 literature in Boston, where he conducted, among other things, 
 the "American Monthly Magazine," he went to Europe in 
 1831 as foreign editor and correspondent of the " New- York 
 Mirror." His " Pencillings by the Way," which he sent 
 home to that paper during his four-years stay abroad, were 
 
INTR OD UCTION. xi 
 
 immensely popular, and were his first real hit in a wider field 
 than that which he had occupied in his youthful verses. In 
 England, where he spent two years, and made a decided 
 social and literary success, he followed up the " Pencillings" 
 with his very clever " Slingsby Papers," which were cheerful 
 though highly improbable stories of American life and of 
 travel in Italy and the East, "Inklings of Adventure," 
 in fact, as he afterwards entitled them. In the same way in 
 which he had entertained the English public with somewhat 
 florid representations of climes and societies foreign to it ; so, 
 on reaching home, did he proceed to draw for the American 
 public, pictures of high life in England, against the truth of 
 which the critics vigorously protested, but which proved no 
 less interesting in spite of that, and especially to the lady 
 reader, to whose approval Willis always had an eye. 
 
 Not long after his return to America, Willis, who had 
 brought back with him an English wife, purchased a little 
 estate, which he named " Glenmary," on Owego Creek just 
 above its junction with the Susquehanna. Here he lived, 
 off and on, from 1837 to 1842 ; and hence he wrote his 
 " Letters from Under a Bridge," charming transcripts of rural 
 life in a wild country, where the farmer was still something of 
 the settler, and the axe and plough were both implements 
 of husbandry. This was the last of his books which lays any 
 real claim to remembrance. From 1842, when he removed 
 to New York, till his death in 1867, his life was that of a 
 metropolitan journalist. With Gen. G. P. Morris, his old 
 friend and associate, he edited in succession the u New 
 Mirror," the "Evening Mirror" (a daily paper), and the 
 
Xll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 " Home Journal." During all these years his pen was never 
 idle, and he put forth volume after volume made up from his 
 articles and correspondence in the columns of these periodi 
 cals. A second and a third trip to Europe, visits to the 
 South and AVest, to Washington, Cape Cod, Sharon Springs, 
 and elsewhere, letters from "Idlewild," his country-seat on 
 the Hudson, studies of city-life, and miscellaneous papers of 
 all kinds, furnished the contents of these books. They were 
 good enough reading at the time, but altogether ephemeral, 
 except now and then a poem or a short sketch which showed 
 something of original inspiration, and rose above the general 
 mediocrity of hack-work. More than half of the titles in 
 this volume, and a great deal more than half of the amount 
 of matter, have been taken from his three early books, 
 "Pencillings by the Way," "Inklings of Adventure," and 
 " Letters from Under a Bridge." 
 
 Bryant, Emerson, and Hawthorne were born before Willis, 
 Longfellow and Poe only a little after him ; yet the continu 
 ance of their literary influence down to the present time 
 makes them seem really of a later generation. As compared 
 with them, Willis belongs to a bygone period of American 
 literature. We think of him as a contemporary of Irving 
 and Cooper. And though himself of New-England birth 
 and breeding, he belongs, like Irving and Cooper, by his 
 writings to the State of New York and to the Knickerbocker 
 group. Like theirs, his name is associated with the scenery 
 of the Empire State, with the Hudson River, though less 
 profoundly so than Irving s or even Drake s, with Trenton 
 Falls, Niagara, the Susquehauna, and above all with Sara- 
 
INTRODUCTION. xiii 
 
 toga. The gay life of the Springs and the eternal movement 
 of Broadway were his congenial element; and of both of 
 these he has left his deeper impression in his story "The 
 Ghost Ball at Congress Hall," and his poem "Unseen 
 Spirits." I incline to think his title to be remembered, as 
 one of the shaping influences of that early period in Amer 
 ican letters, is quite as well made out as that of Irving and 
 Cooper, though it covers, of course, a much narrower acre 
 age. His special gift to our literature was in his instinct for 
 style. Cooper had no style : his effects were produced by 
 sheer force of invention. Irving s diction was indeed much 
 better than Willis s, more chastened and mellowed, never 
 running into frippery and bad taste as Willis s constantly 
 was : yet, after all, was it as original, as American? Irving s 
 gentle elaboration was, in fact, the last expression of the 
 Addisonian tradition. The grace and ease, the nice artistic 
 sense, of which Willis, at his best, was master, was a purely 
 home product ; and at a time when almost all the lighter 
 literature of America was both feeble and dull, the bright, 
 thin jet of his writing, interjected into the muddy stream that 
 flows interminably through the magazines and annuals of the 
 thirties and forties, must certainly have seemed a fountain of 
 refreshment. It was formerly the habit to find an English 
 analogue for every new literary genius who sprung up in this 
 country. Cooper was the American Scott, Emerson a cis- 
 Atlantic Carlyle, Mrs. Sigourney the Hemans of America. 
 Willis s poetry was often compared with Barry Cornwall s, 
 of whom he was indeed an undisguised admirer ; but, taking 
 him all in all, he certainly bore a striking resemblance to 
 
XIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Leigh Hunt in the cast of his mind and the tone of his 
 writings. They were alike in their sunny philosophy, in their 
 carelessness about money matters, and in their attention to 
 those minor refinements and elegances which persons of 
 sterner mould condemn as trifles. Hunt s little plea for " A 
 Flower for Your Window," for example, might easily have 
 been written by Willis ; and the cheerful way in which he set 
 himself to decorate the walls of his prison chamber was 
 something quite in Willis s taste. As writers, they had the 
 same light, airy touch and daintiness of perception. The 
 Englishman s work is more full-flavored, and finer in grain, 
 but lacks a certain dash which one finds in the American. 
 
 Personally, Willis was the kind of man who is described by 
 friends as a gentleman, and by enemies as a fop. He was 
 fastidious in his tastes and in his choice of companions. He 
 dressed fashionably, went much into society, and could make 
 himself very agreeable to people that he liked. His manner 
 is variously described, as cordial and demonstrative ; as 
 marked by an aristocratic hauteur and reserve ; as distin 
 guished by self-complacency and affectation, according to 
 the standpoint of the observer. Doubtless it differed toward 
 different persons, as that of most people does. But without 
 question, he possessed, especially when he was young and 
 handsome, a quite decided personal charm. He was unfixed 
 in character ; his temperament restless, sanguine, buoyant. 
 He had the traditional impatience of a poet for business 
 details and practical responsibilities. He was affectionate, 
 generous, hospitable, fond of children and animals ; and it is 
 agreed by all his contemporaries, that he was entirely fre 
 
INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 from literary jealousy, and was always the first to extend a 
 welcome, and, if need were, substantial aid, to rising talent. 
 The last years of his life were imbittered by a lingering dis 
 ease, which impaired his mind and his temper, but brought 
 out in him a remarkable power of persistence in work. He 
 kept his desk until a few weeks before his death. 
 
 In making my selections, it has been my aim, while choos 
 ing the best, to display also, as far as possible, the range and 
 variety of Willis s talent. The personal element entered 
 strongly into all his most characteristic work. He did not 
 often project himself successfully into scenes and incidents 
 foreign to his own experience. With the exception of " Pas- 
 quali" and "The Inlet of Peach Blossoms," all the selec 
 tions in the book have this peculiarity of drawing upon their 
 author s stock of reminiscences. His method in composing 
 a story, as illustrated, for instance, in " Lady Ravelgold," 
 in "The Gypsy of Sardis," and in "Edith Linsey," was 
 not to invent, objectively, a definite situation and a number 
 of characters dramatically conceived ; but rather to let his 
 fancy work upon slight hints of possible adventures, latent 
 in persons or things that he had met in his travels, and to 
 carry out these suggestions into actual romances. The 
 nucleus of his fictions is generally not a plot, but a recollec 
 tion ; and the narrative seems to exist not so much for its 
 own sake as for the sake of the descriptive digressions, 
 impressions of scenery and life, outlines of character, and 
 records of feeling, which it holds together. These stories 
 are, in short, rather of the nature of sketches than of tales. 
 "Edith Linsey," in particular, is so loosely constructed and 
 
X vi INTE OD UCTION. 
 
 overladen with episodes that I have given only passages from 
 it, and these less as specimens of Willis s story- telling than 
 as illustrations of the reflective and moralizing side of his 
 mind. Indeed, in such early pieces as his three papers on 
 " Unwritten Music," " Unwritten Poetry," and " Unwritten 
 Philosophy," as well as in this of "Minute Philosophies," 
 he seemed at one time to be entering upon the path of 
 the formal essayist, as distinguished from that of the para- 
 grapher and periodical correspondent, into which circum 
 stances finally led him. 
 
 HENRY A. BEERS. 
 
PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 THE LUNATIC S SKATE. 
 
 I HAVE only, in my life, known one lunatic properly so 
 called. In the days when I carried a satchel on the 
 banks of the Shawsheen (a river whose half-lovely, half-wild 
 scenery is tied like a silver thread about my heart), Larry 
 Wynn and myself were the farthest boarders from school, 
 in a solitary farmhouse on the edge of a lake of some miles 
 square, called by the undignified title of Pomp s Pond. An 
 old negro, who was believed by the boys to have come over 
 with Christopher Columbus, was the only other human being 
 within any thing like a neighborhood of the lake (it took 
 its name from him) ; and the only approaches to its waters, 
 girded in as it was by an almost impenetrable forest, were 
 the path through old Pomp s clearing, and that by our own 
 door. Out of school, Larry and I were inseparable. He 
 was a pale, sad-faced boy ; and in the first days of our 
 intimacy, he had confided a secret to me which, from its 
 uncommon nature, and the excessive caution with which he 
 kept it from every one else, bound me to him with more than 
 the common ties of schoolfellow attachment. We built wig 
 wams together in the woods, had our tomahawks made of 
 the same fashion, united our property in fox-traps, and 
 played Indians with perfect contentment in each other s 
 approbation. 
 
 *** From " Scenes of Fear," 
 
 1 
 
: .:: : -- . 
 
 .: : pfitfsE WRITING S OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 I had found out, soon after my arrival at school, that 
 Larry never slept on a moonlight night. With the first 
 slender horn that dropped its silver and graceful shape be 
 hind the hills, his uneasiness commenced ; and by the time its 
 full and perfect orb poured a flood of radiance over vale and 
 mountain, he was like one haunted by a pursuing demon. At 
 early twilight he closed the shutters, stuffing every crevice 
 that could admit a ray ; and then, lighting as many candles 
 as he could beg or steal from our thrifty landlord, he sat 
 down with his book in moody silence, or paced the room with 
 an uneven step, and a solemn melancholy in his fine coun 
 tenance, of which, with all my familiarity with him, I was 
 almost afraid. Violent exercise seemed the only relief ; and 
 when the candles burnt low after midnight, and the stillness 
 around the lone farmhouse became too absolute to endure, 
 he would throw up the window, and, leaping desperately out 
 into the moonlight, rush up the hill into the depths of the 
 wild forest, and walk on with supernatural excitement till the 
 clay dawned. Faint and pale he would then creep into his 
 bed, and, begging me to make his very common and always 
 credited excuse of illness, sleep soundly till I returned from 
 school. I soon became used to his way ; ceased to follow 
 him, as I had once or twice endeavored to do, into the 
 forest ; and never attempted to break in on the fixed and 
 rapt silence which seemed to transform his lips to marble. 
 And for all this Larry loved me. 
 
 Our preparatory studies were completed ; and, to our 
 mutual despair, we were destined to different universities. 
 Larry s father was a disciple of the great Channing, and 
 mine a Trinitarian of uncommon zeal ; and the two institu 
 tions of Yale and Harvard were in the hands of most emi 
 nent men of either persuasion, and few are the minds that 
 could resist a four years ordeal in either. A student was as 
 to come forth a Unitarian from one as a Calvinist 
 
THE LUNATIC S SKATE. 3 
 
 from the other; and in the New-England States these two 
 sects are bitterly hostile. So, to the glittering atmosphere 
 of Channing and Everett went poor Larry, lonely and dis 
 pirited ; and I was committed to the sincere zealots of Con 
 necticut, some two hundred miles off, to learn Latin and 
 Greek if it pleased Heaven, but the mysteries of "election 
 and free grace " whether or no. 
 
 Time- crept, ambled, and galloped, by turns, as we were 
 in love or out, moping in term-time or revelling in vacation ; 
 and gradually, I know not why, our correspondence had 
 dropped, and the four years had come to their successive 
 deaths, and we had never met. I grieved over it ; for in 
 those days I believed with a schoolboy s fatuity, 
 
 " That two, or one, are almost what they seem ; " 
 
 and I loved Larry Wynn, as I hope I may never love man 
 or woman again, with a pain at my heart. I wrote one or 
 two reproachful letters in my senior year, but his answers 
 were overstrained, and too full of protestations by half ; and, 
 seeing that absence had done its usual work on him, I gave 
 it up, and wrote an epitaph on a departed friendship. I do 
 not know, by the way, why I am detaining you with all this, 
 for it has nothing to do with my story ; but let it pass as 
 an evidence that it is a true one. The climax of things in 
 real life has not the regular procession of incidents in a 
 tragedy. 
 
 Some two or three years after we had taken u the irrev 
 ocable yoke" of life upon us (not matrimony, but money- 
 making), a winter occurred of uncommonly fine sleighing 
 sledging, you call it in England. At such times the American 
 world is all abroad, either for business or pleasure. The 
 roads are passable at any rate of velocity of which a horse is 
 capable ; smooth as montagnes rimes, and hard as is good 
 for hoofs ; and a hundred miles is diminished to ten in 
 
4 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 facility of locomotion. The hunter brings down his venison 
 to the cities, the Western trader takes his family a hundred 
 leagues to buy calicoes and tracts, and parties of all kinds 
 scour the country, drinking mulled wine and "flip," and 
 shaking the very nests out of the fir-trees with the ringing of 
 their horses bells. You would think death and sorrow were 
 buried in the snow with the leaves of the last autumn. 
 
 I do not know why I undertook, at this time, a journey to 
 the West ; certainly not for scenery, for it was a world of 
 waste, desolate, and dazzling whiteness, for a thousand un 
 broken miles. The trees were weighed down with snow, 
 and the houses were thatched and half-buried in it, and the 
 mountains and valleys were like the vast waves of an illimit 
 able sea, congealed with its yeasty foam in the wildest hour 
 of a tempest. The eye lost its powers in gazing on it. 
 The "spirit-bird" that spread his refreshing green wings 
 before the pained eyes of Thalaba would have been an 
 inestimable fellow-traveller. The worth of the eyesight lay 
 in the purchase of a pair of green goggles. 
 
 In the course of a week or two, after skimming over the 
 buried scenery of half a dozen States, each as large as Great 
 Britain (more or less), I found myself in a small town on 
 the border of one of our Western lakes. It was some twenty 
 years since the bears had found it thinly settled enough for 
 their purposes, and now it contained perhaps twenty thou 
 sand souls. The oldest inhabitant, born in the town, was a 
 youth in his minority. With the usual precocity of new 
 settlements, it had already most of the peculiarities of an old 
 metropolis. The burnt stumps still stood about among the 
 houses ; but there was a fashionable circle, at the head of 
 which were the lawyer s wife and the member of Congress s 
 daughter ; and people ate their peas with silver forks, and 
 drank their tea with scandal, and forgave men s many sins, 
 and refused to forgive woman s o/ie, very much as in towns 
 
THE LUNATIC S SKATE. 5 
 
 whose history is written in black letter. I dare say there 
 were not more than one or two offences against the moral 
 and Levitical law, fashionable on this side the water, which 
 had not been committed, with the authentic aggravations, in 
 
 the town of : I would mention the name if this were 
 
 not a true story. 
 
 Larry Wynn (now Lawrence Wynn, Esq.) lived here. He 
 had, as they say in the United States, " hung out a shingle" 
 (Londonice, put up a sign) as attorney-at-law ; and to all the 
 twenty thousand innocent inhabitants of the place, he was 
 the oracle and the squire. He was, besides, colonel of militia, 
 church-warden, and canal commissioner ; appointments which 
 speak volumes for the prospects of u rising young men " in 
 our flourishing Republic. 
 
 Larry was glad to see me very. I was more glad to see 
 him. I have a soft heart, and forgive a wrong generally, if 
 it touches neither my vanity nor my purse. I forgot his 
 neglect, and called him " Larry." By the same token, he 
 did not call me " Phil." (There are very few that love me, 
 patient reader ; but those who do, thus abbreviate my pleas 
 ant name of Philip. I was called after the Indian sachem 
 of that name, whose blood runs in this tawny hand.) Larry 
 looked upon me as a man. I looked on him, with all his 
 dignities and changes, through the sweet vista of memory, 
 as a boy. His mouth had acquired the pinched corners of 
 caution and mistrust common to those who know their fellow- 
 men ; but I never saw it unless when speculating as I am 
 now. He was to me the pale-faced and melancholy friend 
 of my boyhood ; and I could have slept, as I used to do, 
 with my arm around his neck, and feared to stir lest I should 
 wake him. Had my last earthly hope lain in the palm of my 
 hand, I could have given it to him, had he needed it, but to 
 make him sleep ; and yet he thought of me but as a stranger 
 under his roof, and added, in his warmest moments, a "Mr." 
 
6 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 to my name ! There is but one circumstance in my life that 
 has wounded me more. Memory avaunt ! 
 
 Why should there be no unchangeableness in the world ? 
 why no friendship? or why am I, and you, gentle reader (for, 
 by your continuing to pore over these idle musings, you have 
 a heart too) , gifted with this useless and restless organ beat 
 ing in our bosoms, if its thirst for love is never to be slaked, 
 and its aching self-fulness never to find flow or utterance? 
 I would positively sell my whole stock of affections for three 
 farthings. Will you say " two " ? 
 
 "You are come in good time," said Larry one morning, 
 with a half-smile, "and shall be groomsman to me. Iain 
 going to be married." 
 
 "Married?" 
 
 "Married." 
 
 I repeated the word after him, for I was surprised. He 
 had never opened his lips about his unhappy lunacy since my 
 arrival ; and I had felt hurt at this apparent unwillingness to 
 renew our ancient confidence, but had felt a repugnance to 
 any forcing of the topic upon him, and could only hope that 
 he had outgrown or overcome it. I argued, immediately on 
 this information of his intended marriage, that it must be so. 
 No man in his senses, I thought, would link an impending 
 madness to the fate of a confiding and lovely woman. 
 
 He took me into his sleigh, and we drove to her father s 
 house. She was a flower in the wilderness. Of a delicate 
 form, as all my countrywomen are, and lovely, as quite all 
 certainly are not, large-eyed, soft in her manners, and yet 
 less timid than confiding and sister-like, with a shade of mel 
 ancholy in her smile, caught, perhaps, with the "trick of 
 sadness" from himself, and a patrician slightness of reserve, 
 or pride, which Nature sometimes, in very mockery of high 
 birth, teach :s her most secluded child, the bride elect was, 
 as I said before, a flower in the wilderness. She was one of 
 
THE LUNATIC S SKATE. 1 
 
 those women we sigh to look upon as they pass by, as if 
 there went a fragment of the wreck of some blessed dream. 
 
 The day arrived for the wedding, and the sleigh-bells 
 jingled merrily into the village. The morning was as soft 
 and genial as June, and the light snow on the surface of the 
 lake melted, and lay on the breast of the solid ice beneath, 
 giving it the effect of one white silver mirror stretching to 
 the edge of the horizon. It was exquisitely beautiful ; and I 
 was standing at the window in the afternoon, looking off 
 upon the shining expanse, when Larry approached, and laid 
 his hand familiarly on my shoulder. 
 
 " What glorious skating we shall have," said I, "if this 
 smooth water freezes to-night ! " 
 
 I turned the next moment to look at him ; for we had not 
 skated together since I went out, at his earnest entreaty, at 
 midnight, to skim the little lake where we had passed our 
 boyhood, and drive away the fever from his brain, under the 
 light of a full moon. 
 
 He remembered it, and so did I ; and I put my arm behind 
 him, for the color fled from his face, and I thought he would 
 have sunk to the floor. 
 
 " The moon is full to-night," said he, recovering instantly 
 to a cold self-possession. 
 
 I took hold of his hand firmly, and, in as kind a tone as I 
 could summon, spoke of our early friendship, and, apologiz 
 ing thus for the freedom, asked if he had quite overcome his 
 melancholy disease. His face worked with emotion, and he 
 tried to withdraw his hand from my clasp, and evidently 
 wished to avoid an answer. 
 
 " Tell me, dear Larry," said I. 
 
 "O God! No!" said he, breaking violently from me, 
 and throwing himself with his face downward upon the sofa. 
 The tears streamed through his fingers upon the silken 
 cushion. 
 
PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 " Not cured? And does she know it? " 
 
 " No, no, thank God ! not yet." 
 
 I remained silent a few minutes, listening to his suppressed 
 moans (for he seemed heart-broken with the confession), and 
 pitying while I inwardly condemned him. And then the pic 
 ture of that lovely and fond woman rose up before me, and 
 the impossibility of concealing his fearful malady from his 
 wife, and the fixed insanity in which it must end, and the 
 whole wreck of her hopes and his own prospects and happi 
 ness ; and my heart grew sick. 
 
 I sat down by him ; and, as it was too late to remonstrate 
 on the injustice he was committing toward her, I asked how 
 he came to appoint the night of a full moon for his wed 
 ding. He gave up his reserve, calmed himself, and talked 
 of it at last as if he were relieved by the communication. 
 Never shall I forget the doomed pallor, the straining eye, 
 and feverish hand, of my poor friend during that half- 
 hour. 
 
 Since he had left college, he had striven with the whole 
 energy of his soul against it. He had plunged into business ; 
 he had kept his bed resolutely, night after night, till his 
 brain seemed on the verge of frenzy with the effort; he 
 had taken opium to secure to himself an artificial sleep : but 
 he had never dared to confide it to any one, and he had no 
 friend to sustain him in his fearful and lonely hours ; and it 
 grew upon him rather than diminished. He described to me 
 with the most touching pathos how he had concealed it for 
 years ; how he had stolen out like a thief to give vent to his 
 insane restlessness in the silent streets of the city at mid 
 night, and in the more silent solitudes of the forest ; how he 
 had prayed, and wrestled, and wept over it; and, finally, 
 how he had come to believe that there was no hope for him 
 except in the assistance and constant presence of some one 
 who would devote life to him in love and pity. Poor Larry ! 
 
THE LUNATIC S SKATE. 9 
 
 I put up a silent prayer in my heart that the desperate ex 
 periment might not end in agony and death. 
 
 The sun set, and, according to my prediction, the wind 
 changed suddenly to the north ; and the whole surface of the 
 lake, in a couple of hours, became of the lustre of polished 
 steel. It was intensely cold. 
 
 The fires blazed in every room of the bride s paternal 
 mansion, and I was there early to fulfil my office of master 
 of ceremonies at the bridal. My heart was weighed down 
 with a sad boding ; but I shook off at least the appearance 
 of it, and superintended the concoction of a huge bowl of 
 punch with a merriment which communicated itself in the 
 shape of most joyous hilarity to a troop of juvenile rela 
 tions. The house resounded with their shouts of laughter. 
 
 In the midst of our noise, in the small inner room, entered 
 Larry. I started back, for he looked more like a demon 
 possessed than a Christian man. He had walked to the 
 house alone in the moonlight, not daring to trust himself in 
 company. I turned out the turbulent troop about me, and 
 tried to dispel his gloom ; for a face like his at that moment 
 would have put to flight the rudest bridal party ever assem 
 bled on holy ground. He seized on the bowl of strong 
 spirits which I had mixed for a set of hardy farmers, and, 
 before I could tear it from his lips, had drank a quantity 
 which, in an ordinary mood, would have intoxicated him 
 helplessly in an hour. He then sat down with his face buried 
 in his hands, and in a few minutes rose, his eyes sparkling 
 with excitement, and the whole character of his face utterly 
 changed. I thought he had gone wild. 
 
 " Now, Phil," said he, " now for my bride ! " And with 
 an unbecoming levity he threw open the door, and went half 
 dancing into the room where the friends were already assem 
 bled to witness the ceremony. 
 
 I followed with fear and anxiety. He took his place by 
 
10 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 the side of the fair creature on whom he had placed his hopes 
 of life ; and, though sobered somewhat by the impressiveuess 
 of the scene, the wild sparkle still danced in his eyes, and 
 I could see that every nerve in his frame was excited to the 
 last pitch of tension. If he had fallen a gibbering maniac 
 on the floor, I should not have been astonished. 
 
 The ceremony proceeded, and the first tone of his voice 
 in the response startled even the bride. If it had rung from 
 the depths of a cavern, it could not have been more sepul 
 chral. I looked at him with a shudder. His lips were 
 curled with an exulting expression, mixed with an indefinable 
 fear ; and all the blood in his face seemed settled about his 
 eyes, which were so bloodshot and fiery that I have ever 
 since wondered he was not, at the first glance, suspected of 
 insanity. But oh the heavenly sweetness with which that 
 loveliest of creatures promised to love and cherish him, in 
 sickness and in health ! I never go to a bridal but it half 
 breaks my heart ; and as the soft voice of that beautiful 
 girl fell with its eloquent meaning on my ear, and I looked 
 at her, with lips calm and eyes moistened, vowing a love 
 which I knew to be stronger than death, to one who, I 
 feared, was to bring only pain and sorrow into her bosom, 
 my eyes warmed with irrepressible tears, and I wept. 
 
 The stir in the room as the clergyman closed his prayer 
 seemed to awake him from a trance. He looked around 
 with a troubled face for a moment ; and then, fixing his eyes 
 on his bride, he suddenly clasped his arms about her, and, 
 straining her violently to his bosom, broke into an hysterical 
 passion of tears and laughter. Then suddenly resuming his 
 self-command, he apologized for the over-excitement of his 
 feelings, and behaved with forced and gentle propriety till 
 the guests departed. 
 
 There was an apprehensive gloom over the spirits of the 
 small bridal party left in the lighted rooms ; and, as they 
 
THE LUNATIC S SKATE. 11 
 
 gathered round the fire, I approached, and endeavored to 
 take a gay farewell. Larry was sitting with his arm about 
 his wife ; and he wrung ray hand in silence as I said, 
 " Good-night," and dropped his head upon her shoulder. I 
 made some futile attempt to rally him ; but it jarred on the 
 general feeling, and I left the house. 
 
 It was a glorious night. The clear, piercing air had a 
 vitreous brilliancy which I have never seen in any other cli 
 mate, the rays of the moonlight almost visibly splintering 
 with the keenness of the frost. The moon herself was in 
 the zenith, and there seemed nothing between her and the 
 earth but palpable and glittering cold. 
 
 I hurried home. It was but eleven o clock; and, heaping 
 up the wood in the large fireplace, I took a volume of " Ivan- 
 hoe," which had just then appeared, and endeavored to rid 
 myself of my unpleasant thoughts. I read on till midnight ; 
 and then, in a pause of the story, I rose to look out upon 
 the night, hoping, for poor Larry s sake, that the moon was 
 buried in clouds. The house was near the edge of the lake ; 
 and, as I looked down upon the glassy waste, spreading 
 away from the land, I saw the dark figure of a man kneeling 
 directly in the path of the moon s rays. In another moment 
 he rose to his feet; and the tall, slight form of my poor 
 friend was distinctly visible, as with long and powerful strokes 
 he sped away upon his skates along the shore. 
 
 To take my own Hollanders, put a collar of fur around 
 my mouth, and hurry after him, was the work of but a minute. 
 My straps were soon fastened ; and, following in the marks 
 of the sharp irons at the top of my speed, I gained sight of 
 him in about half an hour, and with great effort neared him 
 sufficiently to shout his name with a hope of being heard. 
 
 4 Larry! Larry! " 
 
 The lofty mountain-shore gave back the cry in repeated 
 echoes ; but he redoubled his strokes, and sped on faster 
 
12 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 than before. At my utmost speed I followed on ; and when, 
 at last, I could almost lay my hand on his shoulder, I sum 
 moned my strength to my breathless lungs, and shouted 
 again, " Larry ! Larry ! " 
 
 He half looked back, and the full moon at that instant 
 streamed full into his eyes. I have thought since that he 
 could not have seen me for its dazzling brightness ; but I 
 saw every line of his features with the distinctness of day 
 light, and I shall never forget them. A line of white foam 
 ran through his half-parted lips ; his hair streamed wildly 
 over his forehead, on which the perspiration glittered in 
 large drops ; and every lineament of his expressive face was 
 stamped with unutterable and awful horror. He looked back 
 no more ; but, increasing his speed with an energy of which 
 1 did not think his slender frame capable, he began gradu 
 ally to outstrip me. Trees, rocks, and hills fled back like 
 magic. My limbs began to grow numb ; my fingers had lost 
 all feeling. But a strong north-east wind was behind us, and 
 the ice smoother than a mirror ; and I struck out my feet 
 mechanically, and still sped on. 
 
 For two hours we had kept along the shore. The branches 
 of the trees were reflected in the polished ice ; and the hills 
 seemed hanging in the air, and floating past us with the 
 velocity of storm-clouds. Far down the lake, however, there 
 glimmered the just visible light of a fire ; and I was thanking 
 God that we were probably approaching some human succor, 
 when, to my horror, the retreating figure before me suddenly 
 darted off to the left, and made swifter than before toward 
 the centre of the icy waste. O God ! what feelings were 
 mine at that moment ! Follow him far, I dared not ; for, 
 the sight of land once lost, as it would be almost instantly 
 with our tremendous speed, we perished without a possibility 
 of relief. 
 
 He was far beyond my voice, and to overtake him was the 
 
THE LUNATIC S SKATE. 13 
 
 only hope. I summoned my last nerve for the effort, and, 
 keeping him in my eye, struck across at a sharper angle, 
 with the advantage of the wind full in my back. I had 
 taken note of the mountains, and knew that we were already 
 forty miles from home, a distance it would be impossible 
 to retrace against the wind ; and the thought of freezing to 
 death, even if I could overtake him, forced itself appallingly 
 upon me. 
 
 Away I flew, despair giving new force to my limbs, and 
 soon gained on the poor lunatic, whose efforts seemed flagging 
 and faint. I neared him. Another struggle ! I could have 
 dropped down where I was, and slept, if there were death in 
 the first minute, so stiff and drowsy was every muscle in my 
 frame. 
 
 44 Larry ! " I shouted. " Larry ! " 
 
 He started at the sound ; and I could hear a smothered and 
 breathless shriek, as, with supernatural strength, he straight 
 ened up his bending figure, and, leaning forward again, sped 
 away from me like a phantom on the blast. 
 
 I could follow no longer. I stood stiff on my skates, still 
 going on rapidly before the wind, and tried to look after him ; 
 but the frost had stiffened my eyes, and there was a mist before 
 them, and they felt like glass. Nothing was visible around 
 me but moonlight and ice, and dimly and slowly I began to 
 retrace the slight path of semicircles toward the shore. It 
 was painful work. The wind seemed to divide the very 
 fibres of the skin upon my face. Violent exercise no longer 
 warmed my body ; and I felt the cold shoot sharply into my 
 loins, and bind across my breast like a chain of ice. And, 
 with the utmost strength of mind at my command, I could 
 just resist the terrible inclination to lie down and sleep. 
 I forgot poor Larry. Life dear life was now my only 
 thought. So selfish are we in our extremity ! 
 
 With difficulty I at last reached the shore ; and then, un- 
 
14 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 buttoning my coat, and spreading it wide for a sail, I set my 
 feet together, and went slowly down before the wind, till the 
 fire which I had before noticed began to blaze cheerily in the 
 distance. It seemed an eternity in my slow progress. Tree 
 after tree threw the shadow of its naked branches across 
 the way ; hill after hill glided slowly backward : but my 
 knees seemed frozen together, and my joints fixed in ice. 
 And, if my life had depended on striking out my feet, I 
 should have died powerless. My jaws were locked, my 
 shoulders drawn half down to my knees ; and in a few 
 minutes more, I am well convinced, the blood would have 
 thickened in my veins, and stood still forever. 
 
 I could see the tongues of the flames ; I counted the burn 
 ing fagots ; a form passed between me and the fire. I struck, 
 and fell prostrate on the snow ; and I remember no more. 
 
 The sun was darting a slant beam through the trees when 
 I awoke. The genial warmth of a large bed of embers 
 played on my cheek, a thick blanket enveloped me, and be 
 neath my head was a soft cushion of withered leaves. On 
 the opposite side of the fire lay four Indians wrapped in their 
 blankets ; and with her head on her knees, and her hands 
 clasped over her ankles, sat an Indian woman, who had appar 
 ently fallen asleep upon her watch. The stir I made aroused 
 her ; and as she piled on fresh fagots, and kindled them to 
 a bright blaze with a handful of leaves, drowsiness came over 
 me again, and I wrapped the blanket about me more closely, 
 and shut my eyes to sleep. 
 
 I awoke refreshed. It must have been ten o clock, by the 
 sun. The Indians were about, occupied in various avoca 
 tions ; and the woman was broiling a slice of deer s flesh on 
 the coals. She offered it to me as I rose ; and, having eaten 
 part of it with a piece of a cake made of meal, I requested 
 her to call in the men, and, with offers of reward, easily 
 induced them to go with me in search of my lost friend. 
 
THE LUNATIC S SKATE. 15 
 
 We found him, as I had anticipated, frozen to death, far 
 out on the lake. The Indians tracked him by the marks of 
 his skate-irons ; and from their appearance he had sunk 
 quietly down, probably drowsy and exhausted, and had died, 
 of course, without pain. His last act seemed to have been 
 under the influence of his strange madness ; for he lay on his 
 face, turned from the quarter of the setting moon. 
 
 We carried him home to his bride. Even the Indians were 
 affected by her uncontrollable agony. I cannot describe that 
 scene, familiar as I am with pictures of horror. 
 
 I made inquiries with respect to the position of his bridal 
 chamber. There were no shutters, and the moon streamed 
 broadly into it ; and, after kissing his shrinking bride with 
 the violence of a madman, he sprang out of the room with a 
 terrific scream, and she saw him no more till he lay dead on 
 his bridal bed. 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBRARY. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 FROST AND FLIRTATION. 
 I. 
 
 IT began to snow. The air softened ; the pattering of the 
 horses hoofs was muffled with the impeded vibration ; 
 the sleigh glided on with a duller sound; the large, loose 
 flakes fell soft and fast, and the low and just audible mur 
 mur, like the tread of a fairy host, melted on the ear with a 
 drowsy influence, as if it were a descent of palpable sleep 
 upon the earth. You may talk of falling water, of the run 
 ning of a brook, of the humming song of an old crone on a 
 sick vigil, or of the levi susurro of the bees of Hybla ; but 
 there is nothing like the falling of the snow for soft and sooth 
 ing music. You hear it or not, as you will, but it melts into 
 your soul unaware. If you have ever a heartache, or feel 
 the need of " poppy or mandragora," or, like myself, grow 
 sometimes a-weary of the stale repetitions of this unvaried 
 world, seek me out in Massachusetts, when the wind softens 
 and veers south, after a frost, say in January. There 
 shall have been a long-lying snow on the ground, well- 
 trodden. The road shall be as smooth as the paths to our 
 first sins, of a seeming perpetual declivity, as it were, 
 and never a jolt or jar between us and the edge of the 
 horizon, but all onward and down apparently, with an insen 
 sible ease. You sit beside me in my spring-sleigh, hung 
 
 ** From " Edith Linsey." 
 16 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBRARY. 17 
 
 with the lightness of a cobweb cradle for a fairy s child in 
 the trees. Our horse is, in the harness, of a swift and even 
 pace, and around his neck is a string of fine small bells, that 
 ring to his measured step in a kind of muffled music, softer 
 and softer as the suowflakes thicken in the air. Your seat is 
 of the shape of the fauleuil in your library, cushioned and 
 deep, and with a backward and gentle slope ; and you are 
 enveloped to the eyelids in warm furs. You settle down 
 with every muscle in repose, the visor of your ermine cap 
 just shedding the snow from your forehead ; and with a word 
 the groom stands back, and the horse speeds on, steady, but 
 beautifully fast. The bells, which you hear loudly at first, 
 begin to deaden ; and the low hum of the alighting flakes 
 steals gradually on your ear ; and soon the hoof-strokes are 
 as silent as if the steed were shod with wool, and away you 
 flee through the white air, like birds asleep upon the wing 
 diving through the feathery fleeces of the moon. Your eye 
 lids fall, forgetfulness steals upon the senses, a delicious 
 torpor takes possession of the uneasy blood, and brain and 
 thought yield to an intoxicating and trance-like slumber. It 
 were, perhaps, too much to ask that any human bosom may 
 go scathless to the grave ; but in my own unworthy peti 
 tions I usually supplicate that my heart may be broken about 
 Christmas. I know an anodyne o that season. 
 
 Fred Fleming and I occupied one of the seven long seats 
 in a stage-sleigh, flying at this time twelve miles in the hour 
 (yet not fast enough for our impatience) westward from 
 the university gates. The sleighing had been perfect for a 
 week ; and the cold, keen air had softened for the first time 
 that morning, and assumed the warm and woolly complexion 
 that foretokened snow. Though not very cheerful in its 
 aspect, this is an atmosphere particularly pleasant to breathe ; 
 and Fred, who was making his first move after a six weeks 
 fever, sat with the furs away from his mouth, nostrils ex- 
 
18 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 paneled, lips parted, and the countenance altogether of a man 
 in a high state of physical enjoyment. I had nursed him 
 through his illness, by the way, in my own rooms, and hence 
 our position as fellow-travellers. A pressing invitation from 
 his father, to come home with him to Skaneateles for the 
 holidays, had diverted me from my usual winter journey to 
 the North ; and, for the first time in my life, I was going 
 upon a long visit to a strange roof. My imagination had 
 never more business upon its hands. 
 
 Fred had described to me, over and over again, every 
 person I was to meet, brothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, and 
 friends, a household of thirty people, guests included ; but 
 there was one person among them of whom his descriptions, 
 amplified as they were, were very unsatisfactory. 
 
 " Is she so very plain ? " I asked for the twentieth time. 
 
 41 Abominably!" 
 
 " And immense black eyes? " 
 
 Saucers! " 
 
 u And large mouth? " 
 
 "Huge!" 
 
 " And very dark ? " 
 
 " Like a squaw ! " 
 
 " And skinny hands, did you say ? " 
 
 " Lean, long, and pokerish ! " 
 
 u And so very clever? " 
 
 " Knows every thing, Phil ! " 
 
 " But a sweet voice? " 
 
 " Um ! everybody says so ! " 
 
 " And high temper? " 
 
 "She s the devil, Phil! don t ask any more questions 
 about her ! " 
 
 " You don t like her, then? " 
 
 44 She never condescends to speak to me. Plow should I ? " 
 
 And thereupon I put my head out of the sleigh, and 
 
LOVE IN THE LILEARY. 19 
 
 employed myself with catching the snowflakes on my nose, 
 and thinking whether Edith Linsey would like me or no ; 
 for, through all Fred s derogatory descriptions, it was clearly 
 evident that she was the ruling spirit of the hospitable house 
 hold of the Flemings. 
 
 As we got farther on, the new snow became deeper, and 
 we found that the last storm had been heavier here than in 
 the country from which we had come. The occasional farm 
 houses were almost wholly buried, the black chimney alone 
 appearing above the ridgy drifts ; while the tops of the doors 
 and windows lay below the level of the trodden road, from 
 which a descending passage was cut to the threshold, like 
 the entrance to a cave in the earth. The fences were quite 
 invisible. The fruit-trees looked diminished to shrubberies 
 of snow-flowers, their trunks buried under the visible sur 
 face, and their branches loaded with the still falling flakes 
 till they bent beneath the burden. Nothing was abroad, for 
 nothing could stir out of the road without danger of being 
 lost ; and we dreaded to meet even a single sleigh, lest, in 
 turning out, the horses should " slump " beyond their depth 
 in the untrodden drifts. The poor animals began to labor 
 severely, and sunk at every step over their knees in the 
 clogging and wool-like substance ; and the long and cum 
 brous sleigh rose and fell in the deep pits like a boat in a 
 heavy sea. It seemed impossible to get on. Twice we 
 brought up with a terrible plunge, and stood suddenly still, 
 for the runners had struck in too deep for the strength of 
 the horses ; and with the snow-shovels, which formed a part 
 of the furniture of the vehicle, we dug them from their con 
 crete beds. Our progress at last was reduced to scarce a 
 mile in the hour, and we began to have apprehensions that 
 our team would give out between the post-houses. Fortu 
 nately it was still warm, for the numbness of cold would 
 have paralyzed our already flagging exertions. 
 
20 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 We had reached the summit of a long hill with the greatest 
 difficulty. The poor beasts stood panting, and reeking with 
 sweat ; the runners of the sleigh were clogged with hard 
 cakes of snow, and the air was close and dispiriting. We 
 came to a standstill, with the vehicle lying over almost on 
 its side ; and I stepped out to speak to the driver, and look 
 forward. It was a discouraging prospect : a long deep val 
 ley lay before us, closed at the distance of a couple of miles 
 by another steep hill, through a cleft in the top of which 
 lay our way. We could not even distinguish the line of 
 the road- between. Our disheartened animals stood at this 
 moment buried to their breasts, and to get forward without 
 rearing at every step seemed impossible. The driver sat on 
 his box, looking uneasily down into the valley. It was one 
 undulating ocean of snow, not a sign of a human habitation 
 to be seen, and even the trees indistinguishable from the 
 general mass by their whitened and overladen branches. 
 The storm had ceased; but the usual sharp cold that suc 
 ceeds a warm fall of snow had not yet lightened the clammi 
 ness of the new-fallen flakes, and they clung around the 
 foot like clay, rendering every step a toil. 
 
 "Your leaders are quite blown," I said to the driver, as 
 he slid off his uncomfortable seat. 
 
 " Pretty nearly, sir." 
 
 " And your wheelers are not much better." 
 
 "Sca cely." 
 
 " And what do you think of the weather? " 
 
 " It ll be darnation cold in an hour." As he spoke he 
 looked up to the sky, which was already peeling off its clouds 
 in long stripes, like the skin of an orange, and looked as hard 
 and cold as marble between the widening rifts. A sudden 
 gust of a more chilling temperature followed immediately 
 upon his prediction ; and the long cloth curtains of the sleigh 
 flew clear of their slight pillars, and shook off their fringes 
 of icicles. 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBRARY. 21 
 
 "Could you .shovel a little, mister?" said the driver, 
 handing me one of the broad wooden utensils from his foot 
 board, and commencing himself, after having thrown off his 
 box-coat, by heaving up a solid cake of the moist snow at 
 the side of the road. 
 
 "It s just to make a place to rub down them creturs," 
 said he, as I looked at him, quite puzzled to know what he 
 was going to do. 
 
 Fred was too weak to assist us, and having righted the 
 vehicle a little, and tied down the flapping curtains, he 
 wrapped himself in his cloak ; and I set heartily to work with 
 my shovel. In a few minutes, taking advantage of the hol 
 low of a drift, we had cleared a small area of frozen ground ; 
 and, releasing the tired animals from their harness, we rubbed 
 them well down with the straw from the bottom of the sleigh. 
 The persevering driver then cleared the runners of their iced 
 and clinging masses ; and, a half-hour having elapsed, he 
 produced two bottles of rum from his box, and, giving each 
 of the horses a dose, put them again to their traces. 
 
 We heaved out of the pit into which the sleigh had settled ; 
 and for the first mile it was down-hill, and we got on with 
 comparative ease. The sky was by this time almost bare, a 
 dark, slaty mass of clouds alone settling on the horizon in 
 the quarter of the wind, while the sun, as powerless as moon 
 light, poured with dazzling splendor on the snow, and the 
 gusts came keen and bitter across the sparkling waste, rim 
 ming the nostrils as if with bands of steel, and penetrating 
 to the innermost nerve with their pungent iciness. No pro 
 tection seemed of any avail. The whole surface of the body 
 ached as if it were laid against a slab of ice. The throat 
 closed instinctively, and contracted its unpleasant respiration ; 
 the body and limbs drew irresistibly together, to economize, 
 like a hedgehog, the exposed surface ; the hands and feet 
 felt transmuted to lead ; and across the forehead, below the 
 
22 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 pressure of the cap, there was a binding and oppressive ache, 
 as if a bar of frosty iron had been let into the skull. The 
 mind, meantime, seemed freezing up, unwillingness to stir, 
 and inability to think of any thing but the cold, becoming 
 every instant more decided. 
 
 From the bend of the valley, our difficulties became mora 
 serious. The drifts often lay across the road like a wall, 
 some feet above the heads of the horses ; and we had dug- 
 through one or two, and had been once upset, and often near 
 it, before we came to the steepest part of the ascent. The 
 horses had by this time begun to feel the excitement of the 
 rum, and bounded on through the snow with continual leaps, 
 jerking the sleigh after them with a violence that threatened 
 momently to break the traces. The steam from their bodies 
 froze instantly, and covered them with a coat like hoar-frost ; 
 and spite of their heat, and the unnatural and violent exer 
 tions they were making, it was evident by the pricking of 
 their ears and the sudden crouch of the body when a 
 stronger blast swept over, that the cold struck through even 
 their hot and intoxicated blood. 
 
 We toiled up, leap after leap ; and it seemed miraculous 
 to me that the now infuriated animals did not burst a blood 
 vessel or crack a sinew with every one of those terrible 
 springs. The sleigh plunged on after them, stopping dead 
 and short at every other moment, and reeling over the heavy 
 drifts like a boat in a surging sea. A finer crystallization 
 had meantime taken place upon the surface of the moist 
 snow, and the powdered particles flew almost insensibly on 
 the blasts of wind, filling the eyes and hair, and cutting the 
 skin with a sensation like the touch of needle-points. The 
 driver and his maddened but almost exhausted team were 
 blinded by the glittering and whirling eddies ; the cold grew 
 intenser every moment, the forward motion gradually less 
 and less ; and when, with the very last effort apparently, we 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBRARY. 23 
 
 reached a spot on the summit of the hill, which, from its 
 exposed situation, had been kept bare by the wind, the pa 
 tient and persevering whip brought his horses to a stand, 
 and despaired, for the first time, of his prospects of getting 
 on. I crept out of the sleigh, the iron-bound runners of 
 which now grated on the bare ground, but found it impossible 
 to stand upright. 
 
 " If you can use your hands," said the driver, turning his 
 back to the wind, which stung the face like the lash of a 
 whip, "I ll trouble you to untackle them horses." 
 
 I set about it, while he buried his hands and face in the 
 snow, to relieve them for a moment from the agony of cold. 
 The poor animals staggered stiffly, as I pushed them aside, 
 and every vein stood out from their bodies like ropes under 
 the skin. 
 
 "What are you going to do?" I asked, as he joined me 
 again, and, taking off the harness of one of the leaders, 
 flung it into the snow. 
 
 " Ride for life ! " was his ominous answer. 
 " Good God ! and what is to become of my sick friend ? " 
 " The Almighty knows if he can t ride to the tavern ! " 
 I sprang instantly to poor Fred, who was lying in the bot 
 tom of the sleigh, almost frozen to death ; informed him of 
 the driver s decision, and asked him if he thought he could 
 ride one of the horses. He was beginning to grow drowsy, 
 (the first symptom of death by cold), and could with diffi 
 culty be roused. With the driver s assistance, however, I 
 lifted him out of the sleigh, shook him soundly, and, making 
 stirrups of the traces, set him upon one of the horses, and 
 started him off before us. The poor beasts seemed to have 
 a presentiment of the necessity of exertion, and, though 
 stiff and sluggish, entered willingly upon the deep drift 
 which blocked up the way, and toiled exhaustedly on. The 
 cold, in our exposed position, was agonizing. Every small 
 
24 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 fibre in the skin of my own face felt splitting and cracked, 
 and my eyelids seemed made of ice. Our limbs soon lost all 
 sensation. I could only press with my knees to the horse s 
 side, and the whole collected energy of my frame seemed 
 expended in the exertion. Fred held on wonderfully. The 
 driver had still the use of his arm, and rode behind, flogging 
 the poor animals on, whose every step seemed to be the last 
 summons of energy. The sun set, and it was rather a relief, 
 for the glitter upon the snow was exceedingly painful to the 
 sight, and there was no warmth in its beams. I could see my 
 poor friend drooping gradually to the neck of his horse ; but, 
 until he should drop off, it was impossible to assist him, and 
 his faithful animal still waded on. I felt my own strength 
 fast ebbing away. If I had been alone, I should certainly 
 have lain down, with the almost irresistible inclination to 
 sleep : but the thought of my friend, and the shouting of the 
 energetic driver, nerved me from time to time ; and with 
 hands hanging helplessly down, and elbows fastened convul 
 sively to my side, we plunged and struggled painfully for 
 ward. I but remember being taken afterward to a fire, and 
 shrinking from it with a shriek, the suffering of reviving 
 consciousness was so intolerable. We had reached the tav 
 ern, literally frozen upon our horses. 
 
 II. 
 
 I was balancing my spoon on the edge of a cup at the 
 breakfast-table, the morning after our arrival, when Fred 
 stopped in the middle of an eulogium on my virtues as a 
 nurse, and, a lady entering at the same moment, he said 
 simply in parenthesis, "My cousin Edith, Mr. Slingsby," 
 and went on with his story. I rose and bowed, and, as Fred 
 had the parole, I had time to collect my courage, and take a 
 look at the enemy s camp ; for, of that considerable house 
 hold, I felt my star to be in conjunction or opposition with 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBRARY. 25 
 
 hers only, who was at that moment my vis~d,-vis across a dish 
 of stewed oysters. 
 
 In about five minutes of rapid mental portrait-painting, I 
 had taken a likeness of Edith Linsey, which I see at this 
 moment (I have carried it about the world for ten years) as 
 distinctly as the incipient lines of age in this thin-wearing 
 hand. My feelings changed in that time from dread, or ad 
 miration, or something between these, to pity ; she was so 
 unscrupulously and hopelessly plain, so wretchedly ill and 
 suffering in her aspect, so spiritless and unhappy in every 
 motion and look. " I ll win her heart," thought I, "by 
 being kind to her. Poor thing ! it will be something new to 
 her,! dare say." O Philip Slingsby ! what a doomed don 
 key thou wert for that silly soliloquy ! 
 
 And yet, even as she sat there leaning over her untasted 
 breakfast, listless, ill, and melancholy, with her large 
 mouth, her protruding eyes, her dead and sallow complexion, 
 and not one redeeming feature, there was something in 
 her face which produced a phantom of beauty in my mind ; 
 a glimpse, a shadowing of a countenance that Beatrice Cenci 
 might have worn at her last innocent orison ; a loveliness 
 moulded and exalted by superhuman and overpowering mind, 
 instinct, through all its sweetness, with energy and fire. So 
 strong was this phantom portrait, that in all my thoughts of 
 her as an angel in heaven (for I supposed her dying, for 
 many a month, and a future existence was her own most fre 
 quent theme), she always rose to my fancy with a face half 
 Niobe, half Psyche, radiantly lovely. And this, too, with a 
 face of her own, a bona-Jide physiognomy, that must have 
 made a mirror an unpleasant article of furniture in her 
 chamber. 
 
 I have no suspicion in my own mind whether Time was 
 drunk or sober during the succeeding week of those Christ 
 mas holidays. The second Saturday had come round, and I 
 
26 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 just remember that Fred was very much out of humor with 
 me for having appeared to his friends to be every thing he 
 had said I was not, and nothing he had said I was. He had 
 described me as the most uproarious, noisy, good-humored, 
 and agreeable dog in the world. And I was not that at all, 
 particularly the last. The old judge told him he had not 
 improved in his penetration at the university. 
 
 A week ! and what a life had been clasped within its brief 
 calendar, for me ! Edith Linsey was two years older than I, 
 and I was considered a boy. She was thought to be dying 
 slowly, but irretrievably, of consumption ; and it was little 
 matter whom she loved, or how. They would only have 
 been pleased, if, by a new affection, she could beguile the 
 preying melancholy of illness ; for by that gentle name they 
 called, in their kindness, a caprice and a bitterness of char 
 acter that, had she been less a sufferer, would not have been 
 endured for a day. But she was not capricious or bitter 
 to me ! Oh, no ! And from the very extreme of her im 
 patience with others, from her rudeness, her violence, her 
 sarcasm, she came to me with a heart softer than a child s, 
 and wept upon my hands, and weighed every word that 
 might give me offence, and watched to anticipate my light 
 est wish ; and was humble, and generous, and passionately 
 loving, and dependent. Her heart sprang to me with a 
 rebound. She gave herself up to me with an utter and 
 desperate abandonment that owed something to her peculiar 
 character, but more to her own solemn conviction that she 
 was dying, that her best hope of life was not worth a week s 
 purchase. 
 
 We had begun with books, and upon them her past enthu 
 siasm had hitherto been released. She loved her favorite 
 authors with a passion. They had relieved her heart ; and 
 there was nothing of poetry or philosophy that was deep or 
 beautiful, in which she had not steeped her very soul. How 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBRARY, 27 
 
 well I remember her repeating to me from Shelley those 
 glorious lines to the soaring swan ! 
 
 " Thou hast a home, 
 
 Beautiful bird ! Thou voyagest to thy home, 
 Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck 
 With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes 
 Bright with the lustre of their own fond joy ! 
 And what am I, that I should linger here, 
 With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, 
 Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned 
 To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers 
 To the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven 
 That echoes not my thoughts!" 
 
 There was a long room in the southern wing of the house, 
 fitted up as a library. It was a heavily curtained, dim old 
 place, with deep-embayed windows, and so many nooks, and 
 so much furniture, that there was that hushed air, that ab 
 sence of echo within it, which is the great charm of a haunt 
 for study or thought. It was Edith s kingdom. She might 
 lock the door if she pleased, or shut or open the windows : 
 in short, when she was there, no one thought of disturbing 
 her, and she was like a "spirit in its cell," invisible and 
 inviolate. And here I drank into my very life and soul the 
 outpourings of a bosom that had been locked till (as we both 
 thought) the last hour of its life, a flow of mingled intellect 
 and passion that overran my heart like lava, sweeping every 
 thing into its resistless fire, and (may God forgive her!) 
 leaving it scorched and desolate when its mocking brightness 
 had gone out. 
 
 I remember that " Elia " Charles Lamb s " Elia " 
 was the favorite of favorites among her books ; and partly 
 that the late death of this most-to-be-loved author reminded 
 me to look it up, and partly to have time to draw back my 
 indifference over a subject that it something stirs me to recall, 
 
28 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 you shall read an imitation (or continuation, if you will) that 
 I did for Edith s eye, of his " Essay on Books and Reading." 
 I sat with her dry and fleshless hand in mine while I read it 
 to her, and the fingers of Psyche were never fairer to Canova 
 than they to me. 
 
 u It is a little singular," I began (looking into her eyes as 
 long as I could remember what I had written), " that, among 
 all the elegances of sentiment for which the age is remarka 
 ble, no one should ever have thought of writing a book upon 
 Reading. The refinements of the true epicure in books are 
 surely as various as those of the gastronome and the opium- 
 eater ; and I can conceive of no reason why a topic of such 
 natural occurrence should have been so long neglected, unless 
 it is that the taste itself, being rather a growth of indolence, 
 has never numbered among its votaries one of the busy craft 
 of writers. 
 
 " The great proportion of men read, as they eat, for hun 
 ger. I do not consider them readers. The true secret of 
 the thing is no more adapted to their comprehension, than 
 the sublimations of Louis Eustache Ucle for the taste of a 
 day-laborer. The refined reading-taste, like the palate of 
 g&urmanderie, must have got beyond appetite, gross appe 
 tite. It shall be that of a man who, having fed through 
 childhood and youth on simple knowledge, values now only, 
 as it were, the apotheosis of learning, the spiritual nare. 
 There are, it is true, instances of a keen natural relish : a 
 boy, as you will sometimes find one, of a premature thought- 
 fulness, will carry a favorite author in his bosom, and feast 
 greedily on it in his stolen hours. Elia tells the exquisite 
 story : 
 
 I saw a boy, with eager eye, 
 
 Open a book upon a stall, 
 
 Arid read as he d devour it all; 
 
 Which, when the stall-man did espy, 
 
 Soon to the boy I heard him call, 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBRARY. 29 
 
 " You sir, you never buy a book, 
 
 Therefore in one you shall not look!" 
 
 The boy passed slowly on, and, with a sigh, 
 
 He wished he had never been taught to read 
 
 Then of the old churl s books he should have had no need. 
 
 "The pleasure as well as the profit of reading depends 
 as much upon time and manner, as upon the book. The 
 mind is an opal, changing its color with every shifting shade. 
 Ease of position is especially necessary. A muscle strained, 
 a nerve uupoised, an admitted sunbeam caught upon a mir 
 ror, are slight circumstances ; but a feather may tickle the 
 dreamer from paradise to earth. Many a f reward axiom, 
 says a refined writer, many an inhumane thought, hath arisen 
 from sitting uncomfortably, or from a want of symmetry in 
 your chamber. Who has not felt, at times, an unaccountable 
 disrelish for a favorite author? Who has not, by a sudden 
 noise in the street, been startled from a reading dream, and 
 found, afterward, that the broken spell was not to be re 
 wound ? An ill-tied cravat may unlink the rich harmonies of 
 Taylor. You would not think Barry Cornwall the delicious 
 heart he is, reading him in a tottering chair. 
 
 "There is much in the mood with which you come to a 
 book. If you have been vexed out of doors, the good humor 
 of an author seems unnatural. I think I should scarce relish 
 the 4 gentle spiriting of Ariel with a pulse of ninety in the 
 minute. Or, if I had been touched by the uukindness of a 
 friend, Jack Falstaff would not move me to laughter as easily 
 as he is wont. There are tones of the mind, however, to 
 which a book will vibrate with a harmony than which there is 
 nothing more exquisite in nature. To go abroad at sunrise 
 in June, and admit all the holy influences of the hour still 
 ness, and purity, and balm to a mind subdued and digni 
 fied, as the mind will be by the sacred tranquillity of sleep, 
 and then to come in with bathed and refreshed senses, and 
 
30 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 a temper of as clear joyfulness as the soaring lark s, and sit 
 down to Milton or Spenser, or, almost loftier still, the divine 
 Prometheus of Shelley, has seemed to me a harmony of 
 delight almost too heavenly to be human. The great secret 
 of such pleasure is sympathy. You must climb to the eagle 
 poet s eyry. You must have senses, like his, for the music 
 that is only audible to the fine ear of thought, and the beauty 
 that is visible only to the spirit-eye of a clear and for the 
 time unpolluted fancy. The stamp and pressure of the 
 magician s own time and season must be upon you. You 
 would not read Ossian, for example, in a bath, or sitting 
 under a tree in a sultry noon ; but after rushing into the eye 
 of the wind with a fleet horse, with all his gallant pride and 
 glorious strength and fire obedient to your rein, and so 
 mingling, as it will, with his rider s consciousness, that 
 you feel as if you were gifted in your own body with the 
 swiftness and energy of an angel after this, to sit down 
 to Ossian, is to read him with a magnificence of delusion, to 
 my mind, scarce less than reality. I never envied Napo 
 leon till I heard it was his habit, after a battle, to read 
 Ossian. 
 
 " You cannot often read to music. But I love, when the 
 voluntary is pealing in church, every breath in the con 
 gregation suppressed, and the deep-volumed notes pouring 
 through the arches of the roof with the sublime and almost 
 articulate praise of the organ, to read, from the pew Bible, 
 the Book of Ecclesiastes. The solemn stateliness of its 
 periods is fitted to music like a hymn. It is to me a spring 
 of the most thrilling devotion though I shame to confess 
 that the richness of its Eastern imagery, and, above all, the 
 inimitable beauty of its philosophy, stand out somewhat 
 definitely in the reminiscences of the hour. 
 
 " A taste for reading comes comparatively late. Robin 
 son Crusoe will turn a boy s head at ten. The Arabian 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBRARY. 31 
 
 Nights are taken to bed with us at twelve. At fourteen, a 
 forward boy will read the Lady of the Lake, Tom Jones, 
 and 4 Peregrine Pickle ; and at seventeen (not before) he 
 is ready for Shakspeare, and, if he is of a thoughtful turn, 
 Milton. Most men do not read these last with a true relish 
 till after this period. The hidden beauties of standard au 
 thors break upon the mind by surprise. It is like discover 
 ing a secret spring in an old jewel. You take up the book in 
 an idle moment, as you have done a thousand times before, 
 perhaps wondering, as you turn over the leaves, what the 
 world finds in it to admire ; when suddenly, as you read, your 
 fingers press close upon the covers, your frame thrills, and 
 the passage you have chanced upon chains you like a spell, 
 it is so vividly true and beautiful. Milton s Comus flashed 
 upon me in this way. I never could read the Rape of the 
 Lock till a friend quoted some passages from it during a 
 walk. I know no more exquisite sensation than this warming 
 of the heart to an old author ; and it seems to me that the 
 most delicious portion of intellectual existence is the brief 
 period in which, one by one, the great minds of old are 
 admitted with all their time-mellowed worth to the affections. 
 With what delight I read for the first time the ; kind-hearted 
 phiys of Beaumont and Fletcher ! How I doted on Burton ! 
 What treasures to me were the Fairy Queen and the Lyrics 
 of Milton ! 
 
 "I used to think, when studying the Greek and Latin 
 poets in my boyhood, that to be made a school-author was 
 a fair offset against immortality. I would as lief, it seemed 
 to me, have my verses handed down by the town-crier. But 
 latterly, after an interval of a few years, I have taken up my 
 classics (the identical school copies, with the hard places all 
 thumbed and pencilled), and have read them with no little 
 pleasure. It is not to be believed with what a satisfaction 
 the riper eye glides smoothly over the once difficult line, find- 
 
32 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 ing the golden cadence of poetry beneath what once seemed 
 only a tangled chaos of inversion. The associations of hard 
 study, instead of reviving the old distaste, added wonder 
 fully to the interest of a re-perusal. I could see now what 
 brightened the sunken eye of the pale and sickly master, as 
 he took up the hesitating passage, and read on, forgetful of 
 the delinquent, to the end. I could enjoy now, what was a 
 dead letter to me then, the heightened fulness of Herodotus, 
 and the strong-woven style of Thucydides, and the magnifi 
 cent invention of ^Eschylus. I took an aversion to Homer 
 from hearing a classmate in the next room scan it perpetually 
 through his nose. There is no music for me in the Iliad. 
 But, spite of the recollections scored alike upon my palm and 
 the margin, I own to an Augustan relish for the smooth 
 melody of Virgil, and freely forgive the sometime trouble 
 some ferule enjoying by its aid the raciuess of Horace and 
 Juvenal, and the lofty philosophy of Lucretius. It will be 
 a dear friend to whom I put down in my will that shelf of 
 defaced classics. 
 
 44 There are some books that bear reading pleasantly once 
 a year. Tristram Shandy is an annual with me : I read 
 him regularly about Christmas. Jeremy Taylor (not to min 
 gle things holy and profane) is a good table-bock, to be used 
 when you would collect your thoughts and be serious a while. 
 A man of taste need never want for Sunday reading while he 
 can find the sermons of Taylor, and South, and Fuller, 
 writers of good theological repute, though, between our 
 selves, I think one likelier to be delighted with the poetry 
 and quaint fancifulness of their style, than edified by the 
 piety it covers. I like to have a quarto edition of Sir Thomas 
 Brown on a near shelf, or Milton s prose works, or Bacon. 
 These are healthful moods of the mind when lighter nutri 
 ment is distasteful. 
 
 "I am growing fastidious in poetry, and confine myself 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBRARY. 33 
 
 more and more to the old writers. Castaly of late runs shal 
 low. Shelley s (peace to his passionate heart !) was a deep 
 draught, and Wordsworth and Wilson sit near the well, and 
 Keats and Barry Cornwall have been to the fountain s lip, 
 feeding their imaginations (the latter his heart as well) , but 
 they have brought back little for the world. The small 
 silver stream will, I fear, soon cease to flow down to us ; 
 and, as it dries back to its source, we shall close nearer and 
 nearer upon the pure English undefiled. The dabblers in 
 muddy waters (tributaries to Lethe) will have Parnassus to 
 themselves. 
 
 " The finest pleasures of reading come unbidden. You 
 cannot, with your choicest appliances for the body, always 
 command the many-toned mind. In the twilight alcove of 
 a library, with a time-mellowed chair yielding luxuriously to 
 your pressure, a June wind laden with idleness and balm 
 floating in at the window, and in your hand some Russia- 
 bound rambling old author, as Izaak Walton, good-humored 
 and quaint, one would think the spirit could scarce fail to be 
 conjured. Yet often, after spending a morning hour rest 
 lessly thus, I have risen with my mind unhinged, and strolled 
 off with a book in my pocket to the woods ; and, as I live, 
 the mood has descended upon me under some chance tree, 
 with a crooked root under my head, and I have lain there, 
 reading and sleeping by turns, till the letters were blurred in 
 the dimness of twilight. It is the evil of refinement, that it 
 breeds caprice. You will sometimes stand un fatigued for 
 hours on the steps of a library ; or, in a shop the eye will be 
 arrested, and all the jostling of customers and the looks 
 of the jealous shopman will not divert you till you have read 
 out the chapter. 
 
 " I do not often indulge in the supernatural ; for I am an 
 unwilling believer in ghosts, and the topic excites me. But, 
 for its connection with the subject upon which I am writing, 
 
34 PROSE WETTINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 I must conclude these rambling observations with a late 
 mysterious visitation of my own. 
 
 "I had, during the last year, given up the early summer 
 tea-parties common in the town in which the university 
 stands ; and having, of course, three or four more hours 
 than usual on my hands, I took to an afternoon habit of 
 imaginative reading. Shakspeare came first, naturally ; and 
 I feasted for the hundredth time upon what I think his (and 
 the world s) most delicate creation, the Tempest. The 
 twilight of the first day overtook me at the third act, where 
 the banquet is brought in with solemn music by the fairy 
 troop of Prospero, and set before the shipwrecked king and 
 his followers. I closed the book, and, leaning back in my 
 chair, abandoned myself to the crowd of images which throng 
 always upon the traces of Shakspeare. The fancy music 
 was still in my mind, when an apparently real strain of the 
 most solemn melody came to my ear, dying, it seemed to me 
 as it reached it, the tones were so expiringly faint and low. 
 I was not startled, but lay quietly, holding my breath, and 
 more fearing when the strain would be broken, than curious 
 whence it came. The twilight deepened till it was dark, and 
 it still played on, changing the tune at intervals, but always 
 of the same melancholy sweetness ; till by and by I lost all 
 curiosity, and, giving in to the charm, the scenes I had been 
 reading began to form again in my mind, and Ariel, with his 
 delicate ministers, and Prospero, and Miranda, and Caliban, 
 came moving before me to the measure, as bright and vivid 
 as the reality. I was disturbed in the midst of it by Alfonse, 
 who came in at the usual hour with my tea ; and, on starting 
 to my feet, I listened in vain for the continuance of the 
 music. I sat thinking of it a while, but dismissed it at last, 
 and went out to enjoy, in a solitary walk, the loveliness of 
 the summer night. The next day I resumed my book, with 
 a smile at my previous credulity, and had read through the 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBRARY. 35 
 
 last scenes of the Tempest, when the light failed me. I 
 again closed the book ; and presently again, as if the sym 
 pathy was instantaneous, the strain broke in, playing the 
 same low and solemn melodies, and falling with the same 
 dying cadence upon the ear. I listened to it, as before, with 
 breathless attention ; abandoned myself once more to its 
 irresistible spell ; and half-waking, half-sleeping, fell again 
 into a vivid dream, brilliant as fairy-land, and creating itself 
 to the measures of the still audible music. I could not now 
 shake off my belief in its reality ; but I was so rapt with its 
 strange sweetness, and the beauty of my dream, that I cared 
 not whether it came from earth or air. My indifference, 
 singularly enough, continued for several days ; and, regu 
 larly at twilight, I threw aside my book, and listened with 
 dreamy wakefulness for the music. It never failed me, and 
 its results were as constant as its coming. Whatever I had 
 reac l, sometimes a canto of Spenser, sometimes an act of 
 a play, or a chapter of romance, the scene rose before me 
 with the stately reality of a pageant. At last I began to 
 think of it more seriously ; and it was a relief to me one 
 evening when Alfonse came in earlier than usual with a mes 
 sage. I told him to stand perfectly still ; and after a min 
 ute s pause, during which I heard distinctly an entire passage 
 of a funeral hymn, I asked him if he heard any music? 
 He said he did not. My blood chilled at his positive reply, 
 and I bade him listen once more. Still he heard nothing. 
 I could endure it no longer. It was to me as distinct and 
 audible as my own voice ; and I rushed from my room as 
 he left me, shuddering to be left alone. 
 
 "The next day I thought of nothing but death. Warn 
 ings by knells in the air, by apparitions, by mysterious 
 voices, were things I had believed in speculatively for years ; 
 and now their truth came upon me like conviction. I felt 
 a dull, leaden presentiment about my heart, growing heavier 
 
36 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 and heavier with every passing hour. Evening came at last ; 
 and with it, like a summons from the grave, a dead march 
 swelled clearly on the air. I felt faint and sick at heart. 
 This could not be fancy ; and why was it, as I thought I had 
 proved, audible to my ear alone? I threw open the window, 
 and the first rush of the cool north wind refreshed me ; but, 
 as if to mock my attempts at relief, the dirge-like sounds rose, 
 at the instant, with treble distinctness. I seized my hat, and 
 rushed into the street ; but, to my dismay, every step seemed 
 to bring me nearer to the knell. Still I hurried on, the dis 
 mal sounds growing distractingly louder ; till, on turning a 
 corner that leads to the lovely burying-ground of New Haven, 
 I came suddenly upon a bell-foundery ! In the rear had 
 lately been hung, for trial, the chiming-bells just completed 
 for the new Trinity Church ; and the master of the establish 
 ment informed me that one of his journeymen was a fine 
 player, and every day after his work he was in the habit of 
 amusing himself with the Dead March in Saul, the Mar 
 seilles Hymn/ and other melancholy and easy tunes, muffling 
 the hammers that he might not disturb the neighbors." 
 
 I have had my reward for these speculations, dear reader, 
 a smile that is lying at this instant, perdu, in the inner 
 most recess of memory, and I care not much (without 
 offence) whether you like it or no. She thanked me ; she 
 thought it well clone ; she laid her head on my bosom while 
 I read it in the old library of the Flemings : and every word 
 has been " paid for in fairy gold." 
 
 I have taken up a thread that lengthens as I unravel it, 
 and I cannot well see how I shall come to the end without 
 trespassing on your patience. We will cut it here, if you 
 like, and resume it after a pause ; but before I close I must 
 give you a little instance of how love makes the dullest earth 
 poetical. Edith had given me a portefQuille, crammed with 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBEAEY. 37 
 
 all kinds of embossed and curious note-paper, all quite too 
 pretty for use ; and what I would show you are my verses 
 on the occasion. For a hand unpractised, then, in aught save 
 the "Gradus ad Parnassum," I must own I have fished 
 them out of that same old portefeuille (faded now from its 
 glory, and worn with travel, but oh, how cherished !) with a 
 pleasant feeling of paternity. 
 
 Thanks for thy gift ! But heardst thou ever 
 
 A story of a wandering fay, 
 Who, tired of playing sylph forever, 
 
 Came romping to the earth one day; 
 And, flirting like a little Love 
 
 With every thing that flew and flirted, 
 Made captive of a sober dove, 
 
 Whose pinions (so the tale asserted), 
 Though neither very fresh nor fair, 
 Were well enough for common wear. 
 
 The dove, though plain, was gentle bred, 
 
 And cooed agreeably, though low; 
 But still the fairy shook her head, 
 
 And, patting with her foot, said "Nol" 
 Twas true that he was rather fat, 
 
 But that was living in an abbey ; 
 And solemn but it was not that. 
 
 " What then? " " Why, sir, your wings are shabby." 
 
 The dove was dumb: he drooped, and sidled 
 
 In shame along the abbey-wall ; 
 And then the haughty fay unbridled, 
 
 And blew her snail-shell trumpet-call; 
 And summoning her waiting-sprite, 
 
 Who bore her wardrobe on his back, 
 She took the wings she wore at night, 
 
 (Silvery stars on plumes of black), 
 And, smiling, begged that he would take 
 And wear them for his lady s sake. 
 
38 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 He took them, but he could not fly! 
 
 A fay-wing was too fine for him; 
 And when she pouted by and by, 
 
 And left him for some other whim, 
 He laid them softly in his nest, 
 
 And did his flying with his own; 
 And they were soft upon his breast, 
 
 When many a night he slept alone; 
 And many a thought those wings would stir, 
 And many a dream of love and her. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 LOVE AND SPECULATION. 
 I. 
 
 EDITH LINSEY was religious. There are many intensifters 
 (a new word, that I can t get on without : I submit it for 
 admission into the language) , there are many intensifies, 
 I say, to the passion of love ; such as pride, jealousy, poetry 
 (money, sometimes, Dlo mio !) , and idleness : x but, if the 
 experience of one who first studied the art of love in an 
 "evangelical" country is worth a para, there is nothing 
 within the bend of the rainbow that deepens the tender pas 
 sion like religion. I speak it not irreverently. The human 
 being that loves us throws the value of its existence into 
 the crucible, and it can do no more. Love s best alchemy 
 can only turn into affection what is in the heart. The vain, 
 the proud, the poetical, the selfish, the weak, can and do 
 fling their vanity, pride, poetry, selfishness, and weakness 
 into a first passion ; but these are earthly elements, and there 
 is an antagonism in their natures that is forever striving to 
 
 1 " La paresse dans les femmes est le presage de 1 amour." LA BRUYEBE. 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBRARY. 39 
 
 resolve them back to their original earth. But religion is 
 of the soul as well as the heart, the mind as well as the 
 affections, and when it mingles in love, it is the infusion 
 of an immortal essence into an unworthy and else perishable 
 mixture. 
 
 Edith s religion was equally without cant, and without 
 hesitation or disguise. She had arrived at it by elevation of 
 mind, aided by the habit of never counting on her tenure 
 of life beyond the setting of the next sun ; and with her it 
 was rather an intellectual exaltation than a humility of heart. 
 She thought of God because the subject was illimitable, and 
 her powerful imagination found in it the scope for which she 
 pined. She talked of goodness, and purity, and disinter 
 estedness, because she found them easy virtues with a frame 
 worn down with disease, and she was removed by the shel 
 tered position of an invalid from the collision which tries so 
 shrewdly in common life the ring of our metal. She prayed, 
 because the fulness of her heart was loosed by her eloquence 
 when on her knees, and she found that an indistinct and 
 mystic unburthening of her bosom, even to the Deity, was 
 a hush and a relief. The heart does not always require 
 rhyme and reason of language and tears. 
 
 There are many persons of religious feeling, who, from a 
 fear of ridicule or misconception, conduct themselves as if 
 to express a devout sentiment was a want of taste or good 
 breeding. Edith was not of these. Religion was to her a 
 powerful enthusiasm, applied without exception to every pur 
 suit and affection. She used it as a painter ventures on a 
 daring color, or a musician a new string in his instrument. 
 She felt that she aggrandized botany, or history, or friend 
 ship, or love, or what you will, by making it a stepping-stone 
 to heaven ; and she made as little mystery of it as she 
 did of breathing and sleep, and talked of subjects which the 
 serious usually enter upon with a suppressed breath, as she 
 
40 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 would comment upon a poem or define a new philosophy. 
 It was surprising what an impressiveness this threw over her 
 in every thing ; how elevated she seemed above the best of 
 those about her ; and with what a worshipping and half- 
 reverent admiration she inspired all whom she did not utterly 
 neglect or despise. For myself, my soul was drank up in 
 hers as the lark is taken into the sky, and I forgot there was 
 a world beneath me in my intoxication. I thought her an 
 angel unrecognized on earth. I believed her as pure from 
 worldliness, and as spotless from sin, as a cherub with his 
 breast upon his lute ; and I knelt by her when she prayed, 
 and held her upon my bosom in her fits of faintness and 
 exhaustion, and sat at her feet with my face in her hands 
 listening to her wild speculations (often till the morning 
 brightened behind the curtains) , with an utter and irresistible 
 abandonment of my existence to hers, which seems to me now 
 like are collection of another life, it were, with this con 
 scious body and mind, a self-relinquishment so impossible ! 
 
 Our life was a singular one. Living in the midst of a 
 numerous household, with kind and cultivated people about 
 us, we were as separated from them as if the ring of Gyges 
 encircled us from their sight. Fred wished me joy of my 
 giraffe, as he offensively called his cousin ; and his sisters, 
 who were quite too pretty to have been left out of my story 
 so long, were more indulgent, I thought, to the indigenous 
 beaux of Skaneateles than those aboriginal specimens had a 
 right to expect ; but I had no eyes, ears, sense, or civility 
 for any thing but Edith. The library became a forbidden 
 spot to all feet but ours ; we met at noon after our late vigils, 
 and breakfasted together ; a light sleigh was set apart for 
 our tete-&-t6te drives over the frozen lake ; and the world 
 seemed to me to revolve on its axle with a special reference 
 to Philip Slingsby s happiness. I wonder whether an angel 
 out of heaven would have made me believe that I should 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBEAEY. 41 
 
 ever write the story of those passionate hours with a smile 
 and a sneer ! I tell thee, Edith (for thou wilt read every 
 line that I have written, and feel it as far as thou canst feel 
 any thing), that I have read "Faust" since, and thought 
 thee Mephistopheles ! I have looked on thee since, with thy 
 cheek rosy dark, thy lip filled with the blood of health, and 
 curled with thy contempt of the world and thy yet wild am 
 bition to be its master-spirit and idol ; and struck my breast 
 with instinctive self-questioning if. thou hadst given back my 
 soul that was thine own! I fear thee, Edith. Thou hast 
 grown beautiful that wert so hideous, the wonder-wrought 
 miracle of health and intellect, filling thy veins, and breath 
 ing almost a newer shape over form and feature ; but it is 
 not thy beauty, no, nor thy enthronement in the admiration 
 of thy woman s world. These are little to me ; for I saw 
 thy loveliness from the first, and I worshipped thee more in 
 the duration of a thought than a hecatomb of these world 
 lings in their lifetime. I fear thy mysterious and unaccount 
 able power over the human soul ! I can scorn thee here, in 
 another land, with an ocean weltering between us, and anato 
 mize the character that I alone have read truly and too well, 
 for the instruction of the world (its amusement, too, proud 
 woman ! thou wilt writhe at that) ; but I confess to a 
 natural and irresistible obedience to the mastery of thy spirit 
 over mine. I would not willingly again touch the radius of 
 thy sphere. I would come out of paradise to walk alone 
 with the Devil as soon. 
 
 How little even the most instructed women know the secret 
 of this power ! They make the mistake of cultivating only 
 their oivn minds. They think that by self- elevation they will 
 climb up to the intellects of men, and win them by seeming 
 their equals. Shallow philosophers ! You never remember, 
 that, to subdue a human being to your will, it is more neces 
 sary to know his mind than your own ; that, in conquering 
 
42 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 a heart, vanity is the first outpost ; that, while you are em 
 ploying your wits in thinking how most effectually to dazzle 
 /urn, you should be sounding his character for its unde 
 veloped powers to assist him to dazzle you; that love is a 
 reflected light, and to be pleased with others we must be first 
 pleased with ourselves. 
 
 Edith (it has occurred to me in my speculations since) 
 seemed to me always an echo of myself. She expressed my 
 thought as it sprang into my brain. I thought that in her 
 I had met my double and counterpart, with the reservation 
 that I was a little the stronger spirit, and that in my mind 
 lay the material of the eloquence that flowed from her lips 
 as the almond that you endeavor to split equally leaves the 
 kernel in the deeper cavity of its shell. Whatever the topic, 
 she seemed using my thoughts, anticipating my reflections, 
 and, with an unobtrusive but thrilling flattery, referring me 
 to myself for the truth of what I must know was but a 
 suggestion of my own. O Lucrezia Borgia ! if Machiavelli 
 had but practised that subtle cunning upon thee, thou wouldst 
 have had little space in thy delirious heart for the passion 
 that, in the history of crime, has made thee the marvel and 
 the monster. 
 
 The charm of Edith to most people was that she was no 
 sublimation. Her mind seemed of any or no stature. She 
 was as natural, and earnest, and as satisfied to converse, on 
 the meanest subject as on the highest. She overpowered 
 nobody. She (apparently) eclipsed nobody. Her passion 
 ate and powerful eloquence was only lavished on the passion 
 ate and powerful. She never misapplied herself; and what a 
 secret of influence and superiority is contained in that single 
 phrase ! We so hate him who out-measures us, as we stand 
 side by side before the world ! 
 
 I have in my portfolio several numbers of a manuscript 
 " Gazette," with which the Flemings amused themselves 
 
LOVE IN THE LIEEAEY. 43 
 
 during the deep snows of the winter in which I visited them. 
 It was contributed to by everybody in the house, and read 
 aloud at the breakfast-table on the day of its weekly appear 
 ance ; and, quite apropos to these remarks upon the univer 
 sality of Edith s mind, there is in one of them an essay of 
 hers on what she calls minute philosophies. It is curious as 
 showing how, with all her loftiness of speculation, she de 
 scended sometimes to the examination of the smallest ma 
 chinery of enjoyment. 
 
 "The principal sources of every-day happiness" (I am 
 copying out a part of the essay, dear reader) "are too ob 
 vious to need a place in a chapter of breakfast-table philoso 
 phy. Occupation and a clear conscience, the very truant in 
 the fields will tell you, are craving necessities. But when 
 these are secured, there are lighter matters, which, to the 
 sensitive and educated at least, are to happiness what foliage 
 is to the tree. They are refinements which add to the beauty 
 of life without diminishing its strength ; and, as they spring 
 only from a better use of our common gifts, they are neither 
 costly nor rare. I have learned secrets under the roof of a 
 poor man, which would add to the luxury of the rich. The 
 blessings of a cheerful fancy and a quick eye come from 
 nature, and the trailing of a vine may develop them as well 
 as the curtaining of a king s chamber. 
 
 " Riding and driving are such stimulating pleasures, that 
 to talk of any management in their indulgence seems super 
 fluous. Yet we are, in motion or at rest, equally liable to 
 the caprices of feeling ; and perhaps, the gayer the mood, 
 the deeper the shade cast on it by untoward circumstances. 
 The time of riding should never be regular. It then be 
 comes a habit ; and habits, though sometimes comfortable, 
 never amount to positive pleasure. I would ride when nature 
 prompted, when the shower was past, or the air balmy, 
 or the sky beautiful ; whenever and wherever the significant 
 
44 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 finger of desire pointed. Oh ! to leap into the saddle when 
 the west wind blows freshly, and gallop off into its very eye, 
 with an undrawn rein, careless how far or whither ; or, to 
 spring up from a book when the sun breaks through after a 
 storm, and drive away under the white clouds, through light 
 and shadow, while the trees are wet and the earth damp and 
 spicy ; or, in the clear sunny afternoons of autumn, with a 
 pleasant companion on the seat beside you, and the glorious 
 splendor of the decaying foliage flushing in the sunshine, to 
 loiter up the valley dreaming over the thousand airy castles 
 that are stirred by such shifting beauty, these are pleasures 
 indeed, and such as he who rides regularly after his dinner 
 knows as little of as the dray-horse of the exultation of the 
 courser. 
 
 " There is a great deal in the choice of a companion. If 
 he is an indifferent acquaintance, or an indiscriminate talker, 
 or has a coarse eye for beauty, or is insensible to the delica 
 cies of sensation or thought, if he is sensual, or stupid, or 
 practical constitutionally, he will never do. He must be 
 a man who can detect a rare color in a leaf, or appreciate 
 a peculiar passage in scenery, or admire a grand outline in a 
 cloud ; he must have accurate and fine senses, and a heart 
 noble at least by nature, and subject still to her direct in 
 fluences ; he must be a lover of the beautiful, in whatever 
 shape it comes ; and, above all, he must have read and 
 thought like a scholar, if not like a poet. He will then ride 
 by your side without crossing your humor : if talkative, he 
 will talk well ; and if silent, you are content, for you know 
 that the same grandeur or beauty which has wrought the 
 silence in your own thoughts has given a color to his. 
 
 " There is much in the manner of driving. I like a capri 
 cious rein, now fast through a hollow, and now loiteriugly 
 on the edge of a road or by the bank of a river. There is a 
 singular delight in quickening your speed in the animation 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBRARY. 45 
 
 of a climax, and in coming down gently to a walk with a 
 disgressioii of feeling or a sudden sadness. 
 
 " An important item in household matters is the manage 
 ment of light. A small room well lighted is much more im 
 posing than a large one lighted ill. Cross-lights are painful 
 to the eye, and they destroy besides the cool and picturesque 
 shadows of the furniture and figures. I would have a room 
 always partially darkened : there is a repose in the twilight 
 dimness of a drawing-room which affects one with the proper 
 gentleness of the place ; the out-of-door humor of men is too 
 rude, and the secluded light subdues them fitly as they enter. 
 I like curtains, heavy and of the richest material. There 
 is a magnificence in large crimson folds which nothing else 
 equals ; and the color gives every thing a beautiful tint as 
 the light streams through them. Plants tastefully arranged 
 are pretty ; flowers are always beautiful. I would have my 
 own room like a painter s, one curtain partly drawn: a 
 double shadow has a nervous look. The effect of a proper 
 disposal of light upon the feelings is, by most people, surpris 
 ingly neglected. I have no doubt, that, as an habitual thing, 
 it materially affects the character : the disposition for study 
 and thought is certainly dependent on it in no slight degree. 
 What is more contemplative than the twilight of a deep 
 alcove in a library ? What more awakens thought than the 
 dim interior of an old church, with its massive and shadowy 
 pillars ? 
 
 " There may be the most exquisite luxury in furniture. A 
 crowded room has a look of comfort, and suspended lamps 
 throw a mellow depth into the features. Descending light 
 is always the most becoming : it deepens the eye, and dis 
 tributes the shadows in the face judiciously. Chairs should 
 be of different and curious fashions, made to humor every 
 possible weariness. A spice-lamp should burn in the corner ; 
 and the pictures should be colored of a pleasant tone, and 
 
46 PEOSE WETTINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 the subjects should be subdued and dreamy. It should be 
 a place you would live in for a century without an uncom 
 fortable thought. I hate a neat room. A dozen of the 
 finest old authors should lie about, and a new novel, and the 
 last new prints. I rather like the French fashion of a bon- 
 bonniere, though that, perhaps, is an extravagance. 
 
 " There is a management of one s own familiar intercourse 
 which is more neglected, and at the same time more impor 
 tant to happiness, than every other. It is particularly a pity 
 that this is not oftener understood by newly married people. 
 As far as my own observation goes, I have rarely failed to 
 detect, far too early, signs of ill-disguised and disappointed 
 weariness. It was not the re-action of excitement, not the 
 return to the quiet ways of home, but a new manner, a 
 forgetful indifference, believing itself concealed, and yet be 
 traying itself continually by unconscious and irrepressible 
 symptoms. I believe it resulted oftenest from the same 
 causes : partly that they saw each other too much, and partly 
 that when the form of etiquette was removed, they forgot to 
 retain its invaluable essence, an assiduous and minute dis 
 interestedness. It seems nonsense to lovers, but absence 
 is the secret of respect, and, therefore, of affection. Love is 
 divine, but its flame is too delicate for a perpetual household 
 lamp : it should be burned only for incense, and even then 
 trimmed skilfully. It is wonderful how a slight neglect, or 
 a glimpse of a weakness, or a chance defect of knowledge, 
 dims its new glory. Lovers, married or single, should have 
 separate pursuits ; they should meet to respect each other 
 for new and distinct acquisitions. It is the weakness of 
 human affections, that they are founded on pride, and waste 
 with over-much familiarity. And oh the delight to meet 
 after hours of absence, to sit down by the evening lamp, 
 and, with a mind unexhausted by the intercourse of the day, 
 to yield to the fascinating freedom of conversation, and 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBRARY. 47 
 
 clothe the rising thoughts of affection in fresh and unhack 
 neyed language ! How richly the treasures of the mind are 
 colored, not doled out counter by counter, as the visible 
 machinery of thought coins them, but heaped upon the mutual 
 altar in lavish and unhesitating profusion ! And how a bold 
 fancy assumes beauty and power, not traced up through 
 all its petty springs till its dignity is lost by association, but 
 flashing full-grown and suddenly on the sense. The gifts of 
 no one mind are equal to the constant draught of a lifetime ; 
 and, even if they were, there is no one taste which could 
 always relish them. It is a humiliating thought, that im 
 mortal mind must be husbanded like material treasure. 
 
 " There is a remark of Godwin, which, in rather too strong 
 language, contains a valuable truth : < A judicious and limited 
 voluptuousness, he says, is necessary to the cultivation of 
 the mind, to the polishing of the manners, to the refinement 
 of the sentiment, and to the development of the understand 
 ing ; and a woman deficient in this respect may be of use in 
 the government of our families, but cannot add to the enjoy 
 ment, nor fix the partiality, of a man of taste. Since the 
 days when St. Leon was written, the word by which the 
 author expressed his meaning is grown perhaps into dis 
 repute ; but the remark is still one of keen and observant 
 discrimination. It refers (at least, so I take it) to that sus 
 ceptibility to delicate attentions, that fine sense of the name 
 less and exquisite tenderness of manner and thought, which 
 constitutes in the minds of its possessors the deepest under 
 current of life, the felt and treasured, but unseen and 
 inexpressible richness of affection. It is rarely found in the 
 characters of men : but it outweighs, when it is, all grosser 
 qualities ; for its possession implies a generous nature, pur 
 ity, fine affections, and a heart open to all the sunshine and 
 meaning of the universe. It belongs more to the nature of 
 woman ; but, indispensable as it is to her character, it is 
 
48 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 oftener than any thing else wanting. And without it, what 
 is she ? What is love to a being of such dull sense that she 
 hears only its common and audible language, and sees noth 
 ing but what it brings to her feet to be eaten and worn and 
 looked upon? What is woman, if the impassioned language 
 of the eye, or the deepened fulness of the tone, or the ten 
 derness of a slight attention, are things unnoticed and of no 
 value ? one who answers you when you speak, smiles when 
 you tell her she is grave, assents barely to the expression of 
 your enthusiasm, but has no dream beyond, no suspicion 
 that she has not felt and reciprocated your feelings as 
 fully as you could expect or desire. It is a matter too little 
 looked to. Sensitive and ardent men too often marry with a 
 blindfold admiration of mere goodness or loveliness. The 
 abandon of matrimony soon dissipates the gay dream ; and 
 they find themselves suddenly unsphered, linked indissolubly 
 with affections strangely different from their own, and lavish 
 ing their only treasure on those who can neither appreciate 
 nor return it. The after-life of such men is a stifling soli 
 tude of feeling. Their avenues of enjoyment are their mani- 
 form sympathies ; and when these are shut up or neglected, 
 the heart is dark, and they have nothing to do thenceforward 
 but to forget. 
 
 " There are many, who, possessed of the capacity for the 
 more elevated affections, waste and lose it by a careless and 
 often unconscious neglect. It is not a plant to grow un- 
 tended. The breath of indifference, or a rude touch, may 
 destroy forever its delicate texture. To drop the figure, 
 there is a daily attention to the slight courtesies of life, and 
 an artifice in detecting the passing shadows of feeling, which 
 alone can preserve, through life, the first freshness of pas 
 sion. The easy surprises of pleasure, and earnest cheerful 
 ness of assent to slight wishes, the habitual respect to 
 opinions, the polite abstinence from personal topics in the 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBRARY. 49 
 
 company of others, the assiduous and unwavering attention to 
 her comfort at home and abroad, and, above all, the absolute 
 preservation in private of those proprieties of conversation 
 and manner which are sacred before the world, are some of 
 the thousand secrets of that rare happiness which age and 
 habit alike fail to impair or dimmish." 
 
 II. 
 
 Vacation was over, but Fred and myself were still linger 
 ing at Fleming Farm. The roads were impassable with a 
 premature THAW. Perhaps there is nothing so peculiar in 
 American meteorology as the phenomenon which I alone 
 probably, of all the imprisoned inhabitants of Skaneateles, 
 attributed to a kind and "special Providence." Summer 
 had come back, like Napoleon from Elba, and astonished 
 usurping Winter in the plenitude of apparent possession and 
 security. No cloud foreboded the change, as no alarm pre 
 ceded the apparition of " the child of destiny." We awoke 
 on a February morning, with the snow lying chin-deep on the 
 earth, and it was June ! The air was soft and warm ; the 
 sky was clear, and of the milky cerulean of chrysoprase ; 
 the south wind (the same, save his unperfumed wings, who 
 had crept off like a satiated lover in October) stole back sud 
 denly from the tropics, and found his flowery mistress asleep 
 and insensible to his kisses beneath her snowy mantle. The 
 sunset warmed back from its wintry purple to the golden 
 tints of heat ; the stars burned with a less vitreous sparkle ; 
 the meteors slid once more lambently down the sky ; and the 
 house-dove sat on the eaves, washing her breast in the snow 
 water, and thinking (like a neglected wife at a capricious 
 return of her truant s tenderness) that the sunshine would 
 last forever. 
 
 The air was now full of music. The water trickled away 
 under the snow ; and as you looked around, and saw no 
 
50 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 change or motion in the white carpet of the earth, it seemed 
 as if a myriad of small bells were ringing under ground, 
 fairies, perhaps, startled in mid-revel with the false alarm of 
 summer, and hurrying about with their silver anklets to 
 wake up the slumbering flowers. The mountain-torrents were 
 loosed, and rushed down upon the valleys like the children 
 of the mist ; and the hoarse war-cry, swelling and falling 
 upon the wind, maintained its perpetual undertone like an 
 accompaniment of bassoons ; and occasionally, in a sudden, 
 lull of the breeze, you would hear the click of the under 
 mined snow-drifts dropping upon the earth, as if the chorister 
 of spring were beating time to the reviving anthem of nature. 
 
 The snow sunk perhaps a foot in a clay ; but it was only 
 perceptible to the eye where you could measure its wet mark 
 against a tree from which it had fallen away, or by the rock, 
 from which the dissolving bank shrunk and separated, as if 
 rocks and snow were as heartless as ourselves, and threw off 
 their friends, too, in their extremity ! The low-tying lake, 
 meantime, surrounded by melting mountains, received the 
 abandoned waters upon its frozen bosom, and, spreading 
 them into a placid and shallow lagoon, separate by a crystal 
 plane from its own lower depths, gave them the repose denied 
 in the more elevated sphere in which lay their birthright. 
 And thus (oh, how full is nature of these gentle moralities !), 
 and thus sometimes do the lowly, whose bosom, like the 
 frozen lake, is at first cold and unsympathetic to the rich 
 and noble, still receive them in adversity ; and when neigh 
 borhood and dependance have convinced them that they are 
 made of the same common element, as the lake melts its 
 dividing and icy plane, and mingles the strange waters with 
 its own, do they dissolve the unnatural barrier of prejudice, 
 and take the humbled wanderer to their bosom ! 
 
 The face of the snow lost its dazzling whiteness as the thaw 
 went on as disease steals away the beauty of those we love, 
 
LOVE IN THE LIB PART. 51 
 
 but it was only in the distance, where the sun threw a 
 shadow into the irregular pits of the dissolving surface. 
 Near to the eye (as the dying one pressed to the bosom) , it 
 was still of its original beauty, unchanged and spotless. 
 And now you are tired of my loitering speculations, gentle 
 reader, and we will return (please Heaven, only on paper!) 
 to Edith Linsey. 
 
 The roads were at last reduced to what is expressively 
 called, in New England, slosJi (in New York, posJi, but 
 equally descriptive) ; and Fred received a hint from the judge 
 that the mail had arrived in the usual time, and his beaux 
 jours were at an end. 
 
 A slighter thing than my departure would have been suffi 
 cient to stagger the tottering spirits of Edith. We were sit 
 ting at table when the letters came in, and the dates were 
 announced that proved the opening of the roads ; and I 
 scarce dared to turn my eyes upon the pale face that I could 
 just see had dropped upon her bosom. The next instant 
 there was a general confusion, and she was carried lifeless 
 to her chamber. 
 
 A note, scarce legible, was put into my hand in the course 
 of the evening, requesting me to sit up for her in the library. 
 She would come to me, she said, if she had strength. 
 
 It was a night of extraordinary beauty. The full moon 
 was high in the heavens at midnight ; and there had been a 
 slight shower soon after sunset, which, with the clearing-up 
 wind, had frozen thinly into a most fragile rime, and glazed 
 every thing open to the sky with transparent crystal. The 
 distant forest looked serried with metallic trees, dazzlingly 
 and unspeakably gorgeous ; and as the night- wind stirred 
 through them, and shook their crystal points in the moonlight, 
 the aggregated stars of heaven springing from their Maker s 
 hand to the spheres of their destiny, or the march of the host 
 of the Archangel Michael with their irradiate spear-points 
 
52 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 glittering in the air, or the diamond beds of central earth 
 thrust up to the sun in some throe of the universe, would 
 each or all have been well bodied forth by such similitude. 
 
 It was an hour after midnight when Edith was supported 
 in by her maid, and, choosing her own position, sunk into 
 the broad window-seat, and lay with her head on my bosom, 
 and her face turned outward to the glittering night. Her 
 eyes had become, I thought, unnaturally bright ; and she 
 spoke with an exhausted faintness that gradually strength 
 ened to a tone of the most thrilling and melodious sweetness. 
 I shall never get that music out of my brain ! 
 
 "Philip," she said. 
 
 " I listen, dear Edith." 
 
 " I am dying." 
 
 And she looked it, and I believed her ; and my heart sunk 
 to its deepest abyss of wretchedness with the conviction. 
 
 She went on to talk of death. It was the subject that 
 pressed most upon her mind, and she could scarce fail to be 
 eloquent on any subject. She was very eloquent on this. 
 I was so impressed with the manner in which she seemed 
 almost to rhapsodize between the periods of her faintness, as 
 she lay in my arms that night, that every word she uttered 
 is still fresh in my memory. She seemed to forget my pres 
 ence, and to commune with her own thoughts aloud. 
 
 "I recollect," she said, "when I was strong and well 
 (years ago, dear Philip), I left my books on a morning 
 in May, and, looking up to find the course of the wind, 
 started off alone for a walk into its very eye. A moist, 
 steady breeze came from the south-west, driving before it 
 fragments of the dispersed clouds. The air was elastic and 
 clear ; a freshness that entered freely at every pore was 
 coming up, mingled with the profuse perfume of grass and 
 flowers ; the colors of the new, tender foliage were particu 
 larly soothing to an eye pained with close attention ; and 
 
LOVE IN THE L1BEAEY. 53 
 
 the just perceptible murmur of the drops shaken from the 
 trees, and the peculiarly soft rustle of the wet leaves, made 
 as much music as an ear accustomed to the silence of solitude 
 could well relish. Altogether, it was one of those rarely 
 tempered days when every sense is satisfied, and the mind is 
 content to lie still with its common thoughts, and simply 
 enjoy. 
 
 " I had proceeded perhaps a mile, my forehead held up 
 to the wind, my hair blowing back, and the blood glowing in 
 my cheeks with the most vivid flush of exercise and health, 
 when I saw coming toward me a man apparently in middle 
 life, but wasted by illness to the extremest emaciation. His 
 lip was colorless, his skin dry and white, and his sunken eyes 
 had that expression of inquiring earnestness which comes 
 always with impatient sickness. He raised his head, and 
 looked steadily at me as I came on. My lips were open, and 
 my whole air must have been that of a person in the most 
 exulting enjoyment of health. I was just against him, glid 
 ing past with an elastic step, when, with his eye still fixed 
 on me, he half turned, and in a voice of inexpressible mean 
 ing exclaimed, Merciful Heaven ! how icell she is I I 
 passed on, with his voice still ringing in my ear. It haunted 
 me like a tone in the air. It was repeated in the echo of my 
 tread, in the panting of my heart. I felt it in the beating 
 of the strong pulse in my temples. As if it was strange 
 that I should be so well ! I had never before realized that 
 it could be otherwise. It seemed impossible to me that my 
 strong limbs should fail me, or the pure blood I felt bound 
 ing so bravely through my veins could be reached and tainted 
 by disease. How should it come? If I ate, would it not 
 nourish me? If I slept, would it not refresh me? If I 
 came out in the cool free air, would not my lungs heave, and 
 my muscles spring, and my face feel its grateful freshness? 
 I held out my arm, for the first time in my life, with a doubt 
 
54 FEOSE WETTINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 of its strength. I closed my hand unconsciously, with a fear 
 it would not obey. I drew a deep breath, to feel if it was 
 difficult to breathe ; and even my bounding step, that was as 
 elastic then as a fawn s, seemed to my excited imagination 
 already to have become decrepit and feeble. 
 
 " I walked on, and thought of death. I had never before 
 done so definitely : it was like a terrible shape that had 
 always pursued me dimly, but which I had never before 
 turned and looked steadily on. Strange ! that we can live 
 so constantly with that threatening hand hung over us, and 
 not think of it always ! Strange ! that we can use a limb, 
 or enter with interest into any pursuit of time, when we 
 know that our continued life is almost a daily miracle ! 
 
 " How difficult it is to realize death ! How difficult it is to 
 believe that the hand with whose every vein you are familiar 
 will ever lose its motion and its warmth ; that the quick 
 eye, which is so restless now, will settle and grow dull ; 
 that the refined lip, which now shrinks so sensitively from 
 defilement, will not feel the earth lying upon it, and the tooth 
 of the feeding worm ; that the free breath will be choked, 
 and the forehead be pressed heavily on by the decaying coffin, 
 and the light and air of heaven be shut quite out ; and this 
 very body, warm and breathing and active as it is now, will 
 not feel uneasiness or pain ! I could not help looking at 
 my frame as these thoughts crowded on me ; and I confess 
 I almost doubted my own convictions, there was so much 
 strength and quickness in it, my hand opened so freely, 
 and my nostrils expanded with such a satisfied thirst to the 
 moist air. Ah ! it is hard to believe at first that we must 
 die ; harder still to believe and realize the repulsive circum 
 stances that follow that terrible change. It is a bitter 
 thought, at the lightest. There is little comfort in knowing 
 that the soul will not be there, that the sense and the mind 
 that feel and measure suffering will be gone. The separa- 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBRARY. 55 
 
 tion is too great a mystery to satisfy fear. It is the body 
 that we k)iow. It is this material frame in which the affec 
 tions have grown up. The spirit is a mere thought, a 
 presence that we are told of, but do not see. Philosophize 
 as we will, the idea of existence is connected indissolubly 
 with the visible body, and its pleasant and familiar senses. 
 We talk of, and believe, the soul s ascent to its Maker ; but 
 it is not ourselves, it is not our own conscious breathing 
 identity, that we send up in imagination through the invisible 
 air. It is some phantom that is to issue forth mysteriously, 
 and leave us gazing on it in wonder. We do not understand, 
 we cannot realize it. 
 
 "At the time I speak of, my health had been always 
 unbroken. Since then I have known disease in many forms, 
 and have had, of course, more time and occasion for the con 
 templation of death. I have never, till late, known resigna 
 tion. With my utmost energy I was merely able, in other 
 days, to look upon it with quiet despair, as a terrible, un 
 avoidable evil. I remember once, after severe suffering for 
 weeks, I overheard the physician telling my mother that I 
 must die ; and from that moment the thought never left me. 
 A thin line of light came in between the shutters of the 
 south window ; and with this one thought fastened on my 
 mind, like the vulture of Prometheus, I lay and watched it, 
 day after day, as it passed with its imperceptible progress 
 over the folds of my curtains. The last faint gleam of sun 
 set never faded from its damask edge, without an inexpressi 
 ble sinking of my heart, and a belief that I should see its 
 pleasant light no more. I turned from the window when 
 even imagination could find the daylight no longer there, and 
 felt my pulse, and lifted my head, to try my remaining 
 strength. And then every object, yes, even the meanest, 
 grew unutterably dear to me ; my pillow, and the cup with 
 which my lips were moistened, and the cooling amber which 
 
56 PROSE WHITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 I had held in my hand and pressed to my burning lips when 
 the fever was on me, every thing that was connected with 
 life, and that would remain among the living when I was 
 gone. 
 
 4 It is strange, but with all this clinging to the world my 
 affection for the living decreased sensibly. I grew selfish in 
 my weakness. I could not bear that they should go from 
 my chamber into the fresh air, and have no fear of sickness 
 and no pain. It seemed unfeeling that they did not stay and 
 breathe the close atmosphere of my room, at least, till I 
 was dead. . How could they walk round so carelessly, and 
 look on a fellow-creature dying helplessly and unwillingly, 
 and never shed a tear! And then the passing courtesies 
 exchanged with the family at the door, and the quickened 
 step on the sidewalk, and the wandering looks about my 
 room, even while I was answering with my difficult breath 
 their cold inquiries ! There was an inhuman carelessness in 
 all this that stung me to the soul. 
 
 "I craved sympathy as I did life, and yet I doubted it 
 all. There was not a word spoken by the friends who were 
 admitted to see me, that I did not ponder over when they 
 were gone, and always with an impatient dissatisfaction. 
 The tone, and the manner, and the expression of face, all 
 seemed forced ; and often, in my earlier sickness, when I 
 had pondered for hours on the expressed sympathy of some 
 one I had loved, the sense of utter helplessness which 
 crowded on me with my conviction of their insincerity quite 
 overcame me. I have lain night after night, and looked at 
 my indifferent watchers ; and oh, how I hated them for their 
 careless ease, and their snatched moments of repose ! I 
 could scarce keep from dashing aside the cup they came to 
 give me so sluggishly. 
 
 "It is singular, that, with all our experience of sickness, 
 we do not attend more to these slight circumstances. It can 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBRARY. 57 
 
 scarce be conceived how an ill-managed light, or a sup 
 pressed whispering, or a careless change of attitude, in the 
 presence of one whose senses are so sharpened and whose 
 mind is so sensitive as a sick person s, irritate and annoy. 
 And, perhaps, more than these to bear, is the affectedly 
 subdued tone of condolence. I remember nothing which I 
 endured so impatiently. 
 
 "Annoyances like these, however, scarcely diverted for a 
 moment the one great thought of death. It became at last 
 familiar, but, if possible, more dreadfully horrible from that 
 very fact. It was giving it a new character. I realized it 
 more. The minute circumstances became nearer and more 
 real. I tried the position in which I should lie in my coffin ; 
 I lay with my arms to my side, and my feet together, and, 
 with the cold sweat standing in large drops on my lip, com 
 posed my features into a forced expression of tranquillity. 
 
 4 I awoke on the second morning after the hope of my 
 recovery had been abandoned. There was a narrow sun 
 beam lying in a clear crimson line across the curtain ; and 
 I lay and watched the specks of lint sailing through it, like 
 silver- winged insects, and the thin dust quivering and dis 
 appearing on its definite limit, in a dream of wonder. I had 
 thought not to see another sun, and my mind was still fresh 
 with the expectation of an immediate change ; I could not 
 believe that I was alive. The dizzy throb in my temples 
 was done ; my limbs felt cool and refreshed ; my mind had 
 that feeling of transparency which is common after healthful 
 and sweet sleep ; and an indefinite sensation of pleasure 
 trembled in every nerve. I thought that this might be death, 
 and that, with this exquisite feeling of repose, I was to 
 linger thus consciously with the body till the last day ; and I 
 dwelt on it pleasantly with my delicious freedom from pain. 
 I felt no regret for life, none for a friend even : I was will 
 ing, quite willing, to lie thus for ages. Presently the physi- 
 
58 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 cian entered ; he came and laid his fingers on my pulse, and 
 his face brightened. You will get well, he said, and I 
 heard it almost without emotion. Gradually, however, the 
 love of life returned ; and as I realized it fully, and all the 
 thousand chords which bound me to it vibrated once more, 
 the tears came thickly to my eyes, and a crowd of delightful 
 thoughts pressed cheerfully and glowingly on me. No lan 
 guage can do justice to the pleasure of convalescence from 
 extreme sickness. The first step upon the living grass, the 
 first breath of free air, the first unsuppressed salutation of a 
 friend, my fainting heart, dear Philip, rallies and quickens 
 even now with the recollection." 
 
 I have thrown into a continuous strain what was murmured 
 to me between pauses of faiutness, and with difficulty of 
 breath that seemed overpowered only by the mastery of the 
 eloquent spirit apparently trembling on its departure. I 
 believed Edith Liusey would die that night ; I believed my 
 self listening to words spoken almost from heaven ; and if 
 I have wearied you, dear reader, with what must be more 
 interesting to me than to you, it is because every syllable 
 was burnt like enamel into my soul, in my boundless rever 
 ence and love. 
 
 It was two o clock, and she still lay breathing painfully in 
 my arms. I had thrown up the window, and the soft south 
 wind, stirring gently among the tinkling icicles of the trees, 
 came in, warm and genial ; and she leaned over to inhale it, 
 as if it came from the source of life. The stars burned 
 gloriously in the heavens ; and, in a respite of her pain, she 
 lay back her head, and gazed up at them with an inarticulate 
 motion of her lips, and eyes so unnaturally kindled, that I 
 thought reason had abandoned her. 
 
 "How beautiful are the stars to-night, Edith!" I said, 
 with half a fear that she would answer me in madness. 
 
 "Yes," she said, putting my hand (that pressed her 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBRARY. 59 
 
 closer, involuntarily, to my bosom) first to her lips, " yes ; 
 and, beautiful as they are, they are all accurately numbered 
 and governed ; and just as they burn now have they burned 
 since the creation, never faint in their watches, and never 
 absent from their place. How glorious they are! How 
 thrilling it is to see them stand with such a constant silence 
 in the sky, unsteadied and unsupported, obeying the great 
 law of their Maker ! What pure and silvery light it is ! 
 How steadily it pours from those small fountains, giving every 
 spot of earth its due portion ! The hovel and the palace are 
 shone upon equally, and the shepherd gets as broad a beam 
 as the king ; and these few rays that are now streaming into 
 my feverish eyes were meant and lavished only for me ! I 
 have often thought has it never occurred to you, dear 
 Philip ? bow ungrateful we are to call ourselves poor, when 
 there is so much that no poverty can take away ! Clusters 
 of silver rays from every star in these heavens are mine. 
 Every breeze that breaks on my forehead was sent for my 
 refreshment. Every tinkle and ray from those stirring and 
 glistening icicles, and the invigorating freshness of this un 
 seasonable and delicious wind, and moonlight, and sunshine, 
 and the glory of the planets, are all gifts that poverty could 
 not take away. It is not often that I forget these treasures ; 
 for I have loved nature, and the skies of night and day, in 
 all their changes, from my childhood, and they have been 
 unspeakably dear to me ; for in them I see the evidence of 
 an almighty Maker, and in the excessive beauty of the stars 
 and the unfading and equal splendor of their steadfast fires, 
 I see glimpses of an immortal life, and find an answer to the 
 eternal questioning within me. 
 
 "Three! The village clock reaches us to-night. Nay, 
 the wind cannot harm me now. Turn me more to the win 
 dow, for I would look nearer upon the stars : it is the last 
 time, I am sure of it, the very last! Yet to-morrow 
 
60 PEOSE WAITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 night those stars will all be there ; not one missing from the 
 sky, nor shining one ray the less because I am dead ! It is 
 strange that this thought should be so bitter; strange that 
 the companionship should be so close between our earthly 
 affections and those spiritual worlds ; and stranger yet, that, 
 satisfied as we must be that we shall know them nearer and 
 better when released from our flesh, we still cling so fondly 
 to our earthly and imperfect vision. I feel, Philip, that 
 I shall traverse hereafter every star in those bright heavens. 
 If the course of that career of knowledge, which I believe 
 in my soul it will be the reward of the blessed to run, be 
 determined in any degree by the strong desires that yearn so 
 sickeningly within us, I see the thousand gates of my future 
 heaven shining at this instant above me. There they are ! 
 the clustering Pleiades, with their sweet influences ; and 
 the morning star, melting into the east with its transcendent 
 lambency and whiteness ; and the broad galaxy, with its 
 myriads of bright spheres, dissolving into each other s light 
 and belting the heavens like a girdle. I shall see them all ! 
 I shall know them and their inhabitants as the angels of God 
 know them ; the mystery of their order, and the secret of 
 their wonderful harmony, and the duration of their appointed 
 courses, all will be made clear ! " 
 
 I have trespassed again, most indulgent reader, on the 
 limits of these Procrustean papers. I must defer the 
 "change" that "came o er the spirit of my dream" till 
 another mood and time. Meanwhile, you may consider 
 Edith, if you like, the true heart she thought herself (and 
 I thought her) during her nine deaths in the library ; and 
 you will have leisure to imagine the three years over which 
 we shall skip with this finale, during which I made a journey 
 to the North, and danced out a winter in your own territories 
 at Quebec, a circumstance I allude to, no less to record the 
 
LOVE IN THE LIBRARY. 61 
 
 hospitalities of the garrison at that time (this was in 27 
 were you there?) than to pluck forth from Time s hinder- 
 most wallet a modest copy of verses I addressed thence to 
 Edith. She sent them back to me considerably mended ; 
 but I give you the original draught, scorning her finger in 
 my poesies. 
 
 TO EDITH, FROM THE NORTH. 
 
 As, gazing on the Pleiades, 
 
 We count each fair and starry one, 
 Yet wander from the light of these 
 
 To muse upon the " Pleiad gone ;" 
 As, bending o er fresh-gathered flowers, 
 
 The rose s most enchanting hue 
 Reminds us but of other hours, 
 
 Whose roses were all lovely too, 
 So, dearest, when I rove among 
 
 The bright ones of this Northern sky, 
 And mark the smile, and list the song, 
 
 And watch the dancers gliding by, 
 The fairer still they seem to be, 
 The more it stirs a thought of thee. 
 
 The sad, sweet bells of twilight chime, 
 
 Of many hearts may touch but one, 
 And so this seeming careless rhyme 
 
 Will whisper to thy heart alone. 
 I give it to the winds. The bird, 
 
 Let loose, to his far nest will flee; 
 And love, though breathed but on a word, 
 
 Will find thee over land and sea. 
 Though clouds across the sky have driven, 
 
 We trust the star at last will shine ; 
 And like the very light of heaven, 
 
 I trust thy love trust thou in mine I 
 
TRENTON FALLS. 
 
 N or fifteen years ago, the existence of Trenton Falls 
 was not known. It was discovered, like Paestum, by a 
 wandering artist, when there was a town of ten thousand 
 inhabitants, a canal, a theatre, a liberty-pole, and forty 
 churches, within fourteen miles of it. It may be mentioned 
 to the credit of the Americans, that, in the "hardness" of 
 character of which travellers complain, there is the soft trait 
 of a passion for scenery ; and before the fact of its discovery 
 had got well into the " Cahawba Democrat" and " Go-the- 
 whole-hog Courier," there was a splendid wooden hotel on 
 the edge of the precipice, with a French cook, soda-water, 
 and olives, and a law was passed by the Kentucky Travel 
 lers Club, requiring a hanging-bird s nest from the trees 
 "frowning down the awful abysm" (so expressed in the 
 regulation) as a qualification for membership. Thencefor 
 ward to the present time it has been a place of fashionable 
 resort during the summer solstice ; and, the pine woods in 
 which the hotel stands being impervious to the sun, it is pre 
 scribed by oculists for gentlemen and ladies with weak eyes. 
 If the luxury of corn-cutters had penetrated to the United 
 States, it might be prescribed for tender feet as well ; the soft 
 floor of pine-tassels spread under the grassless woods being 
 considered an improvement upon Turkey carpets and green 
 sward. 
 
 Trenton Falls is rather a misnomer. I scarcely know 
 what you would call it ; but the wonder of nature which bears 
 
 *** From " Edith Linsey." 
 62 
 
TRENTON FALLS. 63 
 
 the name is a tremendous torrent, whose bed, for several 
 miles, is sunk fathoms deep into the earth, a roaring and 
 dashing stream, so far below the surface of the forest in 
 which it is lost, that you would think, as you come suddenly 
 upon the edge of its long precipice, that it was a river in 
 some inner world (coiled within ours, as we in the outer 
 circle of the firmament), and laid open by some Titanic 
 throe that had cracked clear asunder the crust of this " shal 
 low earth." The idea is rather assisted if you happen to 
 see below you, on its abysmal shore, a party of adventurous 
 travellers ; for at that vast depth, and in contrast with the 
 gigantic trees and rocks, the same number of well-shaped 
 pismires, dressed in the last fashions, and philandering upon 
 your parlor floor, would be about of their apparent size and 
 distinctness. 
 
 They showed me at Eleusis the well by which Proserpine 
 ascends to the regions of day on her annual visit to the 
 plains of Thcssaly ; but with the genius loci at my elbow in 
 the shape of a Greek girl as lovely as Phryne, my memory 
 reverted to the bared axle of the earth in the bed of this 
 American river, and I was persuaded (looking the while at 
 the feroni&re of gold sequins on the Phidian forehead of my 
 Katinka), that, supposing Hades in the centre of the earth, 
 you are nearer to it by some fathoms at Trenton. I confess 
 I have had, since my first descent into those depths, an 
 uncomfortable doubt of the solidity of the globe how the 
 deuce it can hold together with such a crack in its bottom ! 
 
 It was a night to play Endymion, or do any tomfoolery 
 that could be laid to the charge of the moon ; for a more 
 omnipresent and radiant atmosphere of moonlight never 
 sprinkled the wilderness with silver. It was a night in 
 which to wish it might never be day again ; a night to be 
 enamoured of the stars, and bid God bless them, like human 
 creatures, on their bright journey ; a night to love in, to dis- 
 
64 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 solve in, to do every thing but what night is made for, 
 sleep. Oh, heaven ! when I think how precious is life in such 
 moments, how the aroma, the celestial bloom and flower of 
 the soul, the yearning and fast-perishing enthusiasm of youth, 
 waste themselves in the solitude of such nights on the sense 
 less and unanswering air ; when I wander alone, unloving 
 and unloved, beneath influences that could inspire me with 
 the elevation of a seraph, were I at the ear of a human 
 creature that could summon forth and measure my limitless 
 capacity of devotion, when I think this and feel this, and 
 so waste my existence in vain yearnings, I could extinguish 
 the divine spark within me, like a lamp on an unvisited 
 shrine, and thank Heaven for an assimilation to the animals 
 I walk among. And that is the substance of a speech I 
 made to Job as a sequitur of a well-meant remark of his own, 
 that " it was a pity Edith Linsey was not there." He took 
 the clause about the animals to himself, and I made an 
 apology for the same a year after. We sometimes give our 
 friends, quite innocently, such terrible knocks in our rhap 
 sodies ! 
 
 Most people talk of the sublimity of Trenton, but I have 
 haunted it by the week together for its mere loveliness. The 
 river, in the heart of that fearful chasm, is the most varied 
 and beautiful assemblage of the thousand forms and shapes 
 of running water that I know in the world. The soil and 
 the deep-striking roots of the forest terminate far above you, 
 looking like a black rim on the enclosing precipices ; the bed 
 of the river and its sky-sustaining walls are of solid rock, 
 and, with the tremendous descent of the stream, forming for 
 miles one continuous succession of falls and rapids, the 
 channel is worn into curves and cavities, which throw the 
 clear waters into forms of inconceivable brilliancy and variety. 
 It is a sort of half-twilight below, with here and there a long 
 beam of sunshine reaching down to kiss the lip of an eddy, 
 
TRENTON FALLS. 65 
 
 or form a rainbow over a fall ; and the reverberating and 
 changing echoes, 
 
 " Like a ring of bells whose sound the wind still alters," 
 
 maintain a constant and most soothing music, varying at 
 every step with the varying phase of the current. Cascades 
 of from twenty to thirty feet, over which the river flies with 
 a single and hurrying leap (not a drop missing from the 
 glassy and bending sheet), occur frequently as you ascend ; 
 and it is from these that the place takes its name. But the 
 falls, though beautiful, are only peculiar from the dazzling 
 and unequalled rapidity with which the waters come to the 
 leap. If it were not for the leaf which drops wavering down 
 into the abysm from trees apparently painted on the sky, and 
 which is caught away by the flashing current as if the light 
 ning had suddenly crossed it, you would think the vault of 
 the steadfast heavens a flying element as soon. The spot in 
 that long gulf of beauty that I best remember is a smooth 
 descent of some hundred yards, where the river, in full and 
 undivided volume, skims over a plane as polished as a table 
 of scagliola, looking, in its invisible speed, like one mirror of 
 gleaming but motionless crystal. Just above there is a sud 
 den turn in the glen, which sends the water, like a catapult, 
 against the opposite angle of the rock ; and in the action 
 of years it has worn out a cavern of unknown depth, into 
 which the whole mass of the river plunges with the abandon 
 ment of a flying fiend into hell, and, re-appearing like the 
 angel that has pursued him, glides swiftly, but with divine 
 serenity, on its way. (I am indebted for that last figure to 
 Job, who travelled with a Milton in his pocket, and had a 
 natural redolence of " Paradise Lost" in his conversation.) 
 Much as I detest water in small quantities (to drink), I 
 have a hydromania in the way of lakes, rivers, and waterfalls. 
 It is, by much, the belle in the family of the elements. Earth 
 
66 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 is never tolerable unless disguised in green ; Air is so thin 
 as only to be visible when she borrows drapery of water ; and 
 Fire is so staringly bright as to be unpleasant to the eyesight. 
 But Water ! soft, pure, graceful Water ! there is no shape 
 into which you can throw her that she does not seem lovelier 
 than before. She can borrow nothing of her sisters. Earth 
 has no jewels in her lap so brilliant as her own spray pearls 
 and emeralds ; Fire has no rubies like what she steals from 
 the sunset ; Air has no robes like the grace of her fine-woven 
 and ever-changing drapery of silver. A health (in wine) to 
 WATER ! 
 
 Who is there that did not love some stream in his youth ? 
 Who is there in whose vision of the past there does not 
 sparkle up, from every picture of childhood, a spring or a 
 rivulet woven through the darkened and torn woof of first 
 affections, like a thread of unchanged silver? How do you 
 interpret the instinctive yearning with which you search for 
 the river-side or the fountain in every scene of nature, the 
 clinging unaware to the river s course, when a truant in the 
 fields in June ; the dull void you find in every landscape of 
 which it is not the ornament and the centre ? For myself, I 
 hold with the Greek : Water is the first principle of all 
 things : we were made from it, and we shall be resolved into 
 it." 1 
 
 1 The Ionic philosophy, supported by Thalea. 
 
TOM FANE AND I. 
 
 " Common as light is love, 
 And its familiar voice wearies not ever." SHELLEY. 
 
 TOM FANE S four Canadian ponies were whizzing his 
 light phaeton through the sand at a rate that would 
 have put spirits into any thing but a lover absent from his 
 mistress. The " heaven-kissing " pines towered on every 
 side like the thousand and one columns of the Palaeologi at 
 Constantinople ; their flat and spreading tops shutting out 
 the light of heaven almost as effectually as the world of 
 Mussulmans, mosques, kiosks, bazaars, and Giaours, sus 
 tained on those innumerable capitals, darkens the subterranean 
 wonder of Stamboul. An American pine-forest is as like a 
 temple, and a sublime one, as any dream that ever entered 
 into the architectural brain of the slumbering Martin. The 
 Yankee Methodists, in their camp-meetings, have but fol 
 lowed an irresistible instinct to worship God in the religious 
 dimness of these interminable aisles of the wilderness. 
 
 Tom Fane and I had stoned the storks together in the 
 palace of Croesus at Sardis. We had read Anastasius on a 
 mufti s tomb in the Nekropolis of Scutari. We had burned 
 with fig-fevers in the same caravansary at Smyrna. We had 
 cooled our hot foreheads, and cursed the Greeks in emulous 
 Romaic, in the dim tomb of Agamemnon at Argos. We had 
 been grave at Paris, and merry at Rome, and we had pic 
 nicked with the beauties of the Fanar in the Valley of Sweet 
 Waters in pleasant Roumelia ; and when, after parting in 
 France, he had returned to England and his regiment, and I 
 
 67 
 
68 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 to New England and law, whom should I meet in a summer s 
 
 trip to the St. Lawrence but Capt. Tom Fane of the th, 
 
 quartered at the cliff-perched and doughty garrison of Que 
 bec, and ready for any "lark" that would vary the monotony 
 of duty ! 
 
 Having eaten seven mess-dinners, driven to the Falls of 
 Montmorenci, and paid my respects to Lord Dalhousie, the 
 hospitable and able governor of the Canadas, Quebec had no 
 longer a temptation ; and obeying a magnet, of which more 
 anon, I announced to Fane that my traps were packed, and 
 my heart sent on, d Vavant-courier, to Saratoga. 
 
 " Is she pretty ? " said Tom. 
 
 " As the starry-eyed Circassian we gazed at through the 
 grill in the slave-market at Constantinople ! (Heaven and my 
 mistress forgive me for the comparison ! but it conveyed more 
 to Tom Fane than a folio of more respectful similitudes.) 
 
 "Have you any objection to be drawn to your lady-love by 
 four cattle that would buy the soul of Osbaldiston ? 
 
 " Objection! quotha?" 
 
 The next morning, four double-jointed and well-groomed 
 ponies were munching their corn in the bow of a steamer 
 upon the St. Lawrence, wondering, possibly, what in the 
 name of Bucephalus had set the hills and churches flying at 
 such a rate down the river. The hills and churches came to a 
 standstill with the steamer opposite Montreal ; and the ponies 
 were landed, and put to their mettle for some twenty miles, 
 where they were destined to be astonished by a similar flying 
 phenomenon in the mountains girding the lengthening waters 
 of Lake Champlain. Landed at Ticonderoga, a few miles 
 trot brought them to Lake George and a third steamer ; and, 
 with a winding passage among green islands and overhanging 
 precipices loaded like a harvest-wagon with vegetation, we 
 made our last lauding on the edge of the pine-forest, where 
 our story opens. 
 
TOM FANE AND I. 69 
 
 " Well, I must object," says Tom, setting his whip in the 
 socket, and edging round upon his driving-box, " I must 
 object to this republican gravity of yours. I should take it 
 for melancholy, did I not know it was the 4 complexion of 
 your never-smiling countrymen." 
 
 " Spare me, Tom ! I see a hand you cannot see. Talk 
 to your ponies, and let me be miserable, if you love me." 
 
 For what, in the name of common-sense ? Are you not 
 within five hours of your mistress? Is not this cursed sand 
 your natal soil? Do not 
 
 * The pine-boughs sing 
 Old songs with new gladness ? 
 
 and in the years that we have dangled about, 4 here-and-there- 
 ians together, were you ever before grave, sad, or sulky? 
 and will you without a precedent, and you a lawyer, inflict 
 your stupidity upon me for the first time in this waste and 
 being-less solitude ? Half an hour more of the dread silence 
 of this forest, and it will not need the horn of Astolpho to 
 set me irremediably mad ! " 
 
 44 If employment will save your wits, you may invent a 
 scheme for marrying the son of a poor gentleman to the ward 
 of a rich trader in rice and molasses." 
 
 44 The programme of our approaching campaign, I pre 
 sume ? 
 
 44 Simply." 
 
 44 Is the lady willing?" 
 
 44 1 would fain believe so." 
 
 44 Is Mr. Popkins unwilling?" 
 
 44 As the most romantic lover could desire." 
 
 44 And the state of the campaign ? " 
 
 44 Why, thus: Mr. George Washington Jefferson Frump, 
 whom you have irreverently called Mr. Popkins, is sole 
 guardian to the daughter of a dead West-Indian planter, of 
 
70 PROSE WRITINGS OF JST. P. WILLIS. 
 
 whom he was once the agent. I fell in love with Kate Lori- 
 mer from description, when she was at school with my sister, 
 saw her by favor of a garden-wall, and after the usual 
 vows 
 
 " Too romantic for a Yankee, by half ! " 
 - " Proposed by letter to Mr. Frump." 
 
 "Oh, bathos!" 
 
 " He refused me." 
 
 " Because " 
 
 " Imprimis, I was not myself in the sugar line ; and in 
 secundis, my father wore gloves, and did nothing for a liv 
 ing, two blots in the eyes of Mr. Frump, which all the 
 waters of Niagara would never wash from my escutcheon." 
 
 "And what the devil hindered you from running off with 
 her?" 
 
 "Fifty shares in the Manhattan Insurance Company, a 
 gold-mine in Florida, Heaven knows how many hogsheads of 
 treacle, and a million of acres on the banks of the Missouri." 
 
 " Pluto s flame-colored daughter defend us! what a 
 living El Dorado ! " 
 
 "All of which she forfeits if she marries without old 
 Frump s consent." 
 
 "I see, I see ! And this lo and her Argus are now drink 
 ing the waters at Saratoga? " 
 
 "Even so." 
 
 " I ll bet you my four-in-hand to a sonnet, that I get her 
 for you before the season is over." 
 
 "Money and all?" 
 
 " Mines, molasses, and Missouri acres ! " 
 
 " And if you do, Tom, I ll give you a team of Virginian 
 bloods that would astonish Ascot, and throw you into the 
 bargain a forgiveness for riding over me with your camel on 
 the banks of the Hermus." 
 
 4 Santa Maria ! do you remember that spongy foot stepping 
 
TOM FANE AND I. 71 
 
 over your frontispiece ? I had already cast my eyes up to 
 Mont Sipylus to choose a clean niche for you out of the rock- 
 hewn tombs of the kings of Lydia. I thought you would 
 sleep with Alyattis, Phil ! " 
 
 We dashed on through dark forest and open clearing, 
 through glens of tangled cedar and wild vine, over log 
 bridges, corduroy marshes, and sand-hills, till, toward even 
 ing, a scattering shanty or two, and an occasional sound of a 
 woodman s axe, betokened our vicinity to Saratoga. A turn 
 around a clump of tall pines brought us immediately into the 
 broad street of the village ; and the flaunting shops, the over 
 grown, unsightly hotels, riddled with windows like honey 
 combs, the fashionable idlers out for their evening lounge to 
 the waters, the indolent smokers on the colonnades, and the 
 dusty and loaded coaches driving from door to door in search 
 of lodgings, formed the usual evening picture of the Bath of 
 America. 
 
 As it was necessary to Tom s plan that my arrival at 
 Saratoga should not be known, he pulled up at a small tavern 
 at the entrance of the street, and, dropping me and my bag 
 gage, drove on to Congress Hall, with my best prayers, and 
 a letter of introduction to my sister, whom I had left on 
 her way to the Springs with a party at my departure for 
 Montreal. Unwilling to remain in such a tantalizing vicinity, 
 I hired a chaise the next morning, and, despatching a note to 
 Tom, drove to seek a retreat at Barhydt s, a spot that 
 cannot well be described in the tail of a paragraph. 
 
 Herr Barhydt is an old Dutch settler, who, till the mineral- 
 springs of Saratoga were discovered some five miles from 
 his door, was buried in the depth of a forest solitude, un 
 known to all but the prowling Indian. The sky is supported 
 above him (or looks to be) by a wilderness of straight, col 
 umnar pine shafts, gigantic in girth, and with no foliage 
 except at the top, where they branch out like round tables 
 
72 PROSE WHITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 spread for a banquet in the clouds. A small, ear-shaped 
 lake, sunk as deep into the earth as the firs shoot above it, 
 black as Erebus in the dim shadow of its hilly shore, and the 
 obstructed light of the trees that nearly meet over it, and 
 clear and unbroken as a mirror, save the pearl-spots of the 
 thousand lotuses holding up their cups to the blue eye of 
 heaven that peers through the leafy vault, sleeps beneath his 
 window ; and around him in the forest lies, still unbroken, 
 the elastic and brown carpet of the faded pine-tassels, depos 
 ited in yearly layers since the continent rose from the flood, 
 and rotted a foot beneath the surface to a rich mould that 
 would fatten the Symplegades to a flower-garden. With his 
 black tarn well stocked with trout, his bit of a farm in the 
 clearing near by, and an old Dutch Bible, Herr Barhydt lived 
 a life of Dutch musing, talked Dutch to his geese and chick 
 ens, sung Dutch psalms to the echoes of the mighty forest, 
 and, except on his far-between visits to Albany, which grew 
 rarer and rarer as the old Dutch inhabitants dropped faster 
 away, saw never a white human face from one maple-blossom 
 ing to another. 
 
 A roving mineralogist tasted the waters of Saratoga ; and, 
 like the work of a lath-and-plaster Aladdin, up sprung a 
 thriving village around the fountain s lip, and hotels, tin 
 tumblers, and apothecaries multiplied in the usual proportion 
 to each other, but out of all precedent with every thing else 
 for rapidity. Libraries, newspapers, churches, livery-stables, 
 and lawyers followed in their train ; and it was soon estab 
 lished, from the Plains of Abraham to the savannas of 
 Alabama, that no person of fashionable taste or broken con 
 stitution could exist through the months of July and August 
 without a visit to the chalybeate springs and populous village 
 of Saratoga. It contained seven thousand inhabitants before 
 Herr Barhydt, living in his wooded seclusion only five miles 
 off, became aware of its existence. A pair of lovers, phi- 
 
TOM FANE AND L 73 
 
 landering about the forest on horseback, popped in upon him 
 one June morning ; and thenceforth there was no rest for 
 the soul of the Dutchman. Everybody rode down to eat 
 his trout, and make love in the dark shades of his mirrored 
 lagoon ; and at last, in self-defence, he added a room or two 
 to his shanty, enclosed his cabbage-garden, and put a price 
 upon his trout-dinners. The traveller nowadays, who has 
 not dined at Barhydt s, with his own champagne cold from 
 the tarn, and the white-headed old settler " gargling " Dutch 
 about the house, in his manifold vocation of cook, hostler, 
 and waiter, may as well not have seen Niagara. 
 
 Installed in the back chamber of the old man s last addi 
 tion to his house, with Barry Cornwall and Elia (old fellow- 
 travellers of mine), a rude chair, a ruder but clean bed, 
 and a troop of thoughts so perpetually from home, that it 
 mattered very little what was the complexion of any thing 
 about me, I waited Tom s operations with a lover s usual 
 patience. Barhydt s visitors seldom arrived before two or 
 three o clock ; and the long, soft mornings, quiet as a 
 shadowy Elysium on the rim of that ebon lake, were as soli 
 tary as a melancholy man could desire. Didst thou but 
 know, O gentle Barry Cornwall ! how gratefully thou hast 
 been read and mused upon in those dim and whispering 
 aisles of the forest, three thousand and more miles from thy 
 smoky whereabout, methinks it would warm up the flush of 
 pleasure around thine eyelids, though the "golden-tressed 
 Adelaide " were waiting her good-night kisses at thy knee ! 
 
 I could stand it no longer. On the second evening of my 
 seclusion, I made bold to borrow old Barhydt s superannuated 
 roadster, and, getting up the steam with infinite difficulty in 
 his rickety engine, higgled away, with a pace to which I could 
 not venture to affix a name, to the gay scenes of Saratoga. 
 
 It was ten o clock when I dismounted at the stable in 
 Congress Hall, and giving Der Teufel, as the old man ambi- 
 
74 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 tiously styled his steed, to the hands of the hostler, stole 
 round through the garden to the eastern colonnade. 
 
 I feel called upon to describe " Congress Hall." Some 
 fourteen or fifteen millions of white gentlemen and ladies 
 consider that wooden and windowed Babylon as the proper 
 palace of Delight, a sojourn to be sighed for, and sacri 
 ficed for, and economized for ; the birthplace of Love, the 
 haunt of Hymen, the arena of Fashion ; a place without 
 which a new lease of life were valueless, for which, if the 
 conjuring cap of King Erricus itself could not furnish a 
 season-ticket, it might lie on a lady s toilet as unnoticed as 
 a bride s nightcap a twelvemonth after marriage. I say to 
 myself sometimes, as I pass the window at White s, and see 
 a world-sick worldling with the curl of satiety and disgust on 
 his lip, wondering how the next hour will come to its death, 
 "If you but knew, my friend, what a campaign of pleasure 
 you are losing in America, what belles than the bluebells 
 slighter and fairer, what hearts than the dewdrops fresher 
 and clearer, are living their pretty hour, like gems undived 
 for in the ocean ; what loads of foliage, what Titans of trees, 
 what glorious wildernesses of rocks and waters, are lavishing 
 their splendors on the clouds that sail over them ; and all 
 within the magic circle of which Congress Hall is the centre, 
 and which a circling dove would measure to get an appetite 
 for his breakfast, if you but knew this, my lord, as I know 
 it, you would not be gazing so vacantly on the steps of 
 Crockford s, nor consider the graybeard such a laggard in 
 his hours." 
 
 Congress Hall is a wooden building, of which the size and 
 capacity could never be definitely ascertained. It is built on 
 a slight elevation, just above the strongly impregnated spring 
 whose name it bears ; with little attempt at architecture, save 
 a spacious and vine-covered colonnade, serving as a prome 
 nade, on either side, and two wings, the extremities of which 
 
TOM FANE AND I. 75 
 
 are lost in the distance. A relic or two of the still-astonished 
 forest towers above the chimneys, in the shape of a melan 
 choly group of firs ; and, five minutes walk from the door, 
 the dim old wilderness stands looking down on the village in 
 its primeval grandeur, like the spirits of the wronged Indians 
 whose tracks are scarce vanished from the sand. In the 
 strength of the summer solstice, from five hundred to a 
 thousand people dine together at Congress Hall ; and, after 
 absorbing as many bottles of the best wines of the world, a 
 sunset promenade plays the valve to the sentiment thus gen 
 erated, and, with a cup of tea, the crowd separates to dress 
 for the nightly ball. There are several other hotels in the 
 village, equally crowded and equally spacious ; and the ball 
 is given alternately at each. Congress Hall is the " crack " 
 place, however ; and I expect that Mr. Westcott, the obliging 
 proprietor, will give me the preference of rooms, on my next 
 annual visit, for this just and honorable mention. 
 
 The dinner-tables were piled into an orchestra, and draped 
 with green baize and green wreaths ; the floor of the immense 
 hall was chalked with American flags and the initials of all 
 the heroes of the Revolution ; and the band were playing a 
 waltz in a style that made the candles quiver, and the pines 
 tremble audibly in their tassels. The ballroom was on the 
 ground floor ; and the colonnade upon the garden side was 
 crowded with spectators, a row of grinning black fellows 
 edging the cluster of heads at every window, and keeping 
 time with their hands and feet in the irresistible sympathy of 
 their music-loving natures. Drawing my hat over my eyes, 
 I stood at the least-thronged window, and, concealing my face 
 in the curtain, waited impatiently for the appearance of the 
 dancers. 
 
 The bevy in the drawing-room was sufficiently strong at 
 last ; and the lady patronesses, handed in by a State governor 
 or two, and here and there a member of Congress, achieved 
 
76 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 the entree with their usual intrepidity. Followed beaux, and 
 followed belles. Such belles ! Slight, delicate, fragile-look 
 ing creatures, elegant as Retzsch s angels, warm-eyed as 
 Mohammedan houries, yet timid as the antelope whose hazel 
 orbs they eclipse, limbed like nothing earthly except an 
 American woman I would rather not go on. When I 
 speak of the beauty of my countrywomen, my heart swells. 
 I do believe the New World has a newer mould for its 
 mothers and daughters. I think I am not prejudiced. I 
 have been years away. I have sighed in France ; I have 
 loved in Italy ; I have bargained for Circassians in an East 
 ern bezestein ; and I have lounged at Howell and James s on 
 a sunny day in the season ; and my eye is trained, and my 
 perceptions quickened : but I do think (honor bright ! and 
 Heath s "Book of Beauty" forgiving me) that there is no 
 such beautiful work of God under the arch of the sky as an 
 American girl in her bellehood. 
 
 Enter Tom Fane in a Stultz coat and Sparding tights, 
 looking as a man who had been the mirror of Bond Street 
 might be supposed to look, a thousand leagues from his club 
 house. She leaned on his arm. I had never seen her half 
 so lovely. Fresh and calm from the seclusion of her cham 
 ber, her transparent cheek was just tinged with the first 
 mounting blood from the excitement of lights and music. 
 Her lips were slightly parted, her fine-lined eyebrows were 
 arched with a girlish surprise, and her ungloved arm lay care 
 lessly and confidingly within his, as white, round, and slender 
 as if Canova had wrought it in Parian for his Psyche. If 
 you have never seen a beauty of Northern blood nurtured in 
 a Southern clime, the cold fairness of her race warmed up as 
 if it had been steeped in some golden sunset, and her deep 
 blue eye darkened and filled with a fire as unnaturally resplen 
 dent as the fusion of chrysoprase into a diamond ; and if you 
 have never known the corresponding contrast in the charac- 
 
TOM FANE AND I. 77 
 
 ter, the intelligence and constancy of the North kindling 
 with the enthusiasm and impulse, the passionateness, and the 
 abandon of a more burning latitude, you have seen nothing, 
 let me insinuate, though you " have been i the Indies twice," 
 that could give you an idea of Kate Lorimer. 
 
 She waltzed, and then Tom danced with my sister; and 
 then, resigning her to another partner, he offered his arm 
 again to Miss Lorimer, and left the ballroom with several 
 other couples for a turn in the fresh air of the colonnade. I 
 was not jealous, but I felt unpleasantly at his returning to 
 her so immediately. He was the handsomest man, out of all 
 comparison, in the room ; and he had dimmed my star too 
 often in our rambles in Europe and Asia not to suggest a 
 thought, at least, that the same pleasant eclipse might occur 
 in our American astronomy. I stepped off the colonnade, 
 and took a turn in the garden. 
 
 Those "children of eternity," as Walter Savage Landor 
 poetically calls the breezes, performed their soothing min 
 istry upon my temples ; and I replaced Tom in my confidence 
 with an heroic effort, and turned back. A swing hung be 
 tween two gigantic pines, just under the balustrade ; and, 
 flinging myself into the cushioned seat, I abandoned myself 
 to the musings natural to a person "in my situation." The 
 sentimentalizing promenaders lounged backward and forward 
 above me ; and, not hearing Tom s drawl among them, I 
 presumed he had returned to the ballroom. A lady and gen 
 tleman, walking in silence, stopped presently, and leaned 
 upon the railing opposite the swing. They stood a moment, 
 looking into the dim shadow of the pine-grove ; and then a 
 voice, that I knew better than my own, remarked in a low 
 and silvery tone upon the beauty of the night. 
 
 She was not answered ; and after a moment s pause, as if 
 resuming a conversation that had been interrupted, she turned 
 very earnestly to her companion, and asked, "Are you sure, 
 
78 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 quite sure, that you could venture to marry without a for 
 tune?" 
 
 " Quite, dear Miss Lorimer." 
 
 I started from the swing ; but, before the words of execra 
 tion that rushed choking from my heart could struggle to my 
 lips, they had mingled with the crowd, and vanished. 
 
 I strode down the garden- walk in a frenzy of passion. 
 Should I call him immediately to account? Should I rush 
 into the ballroom, and accuse him of his treachery to her 
 face? Should I drown myself in old Barhydt s tarn, or join 
 an Indian tribe, and make war upon the whites? Or should 
 I, could I, be magnanimous, and write him a note immedi 
 ately, offering to be his groomsman at the wedding ? 
 
 I stepped into the punch-room, asked for pen, ink, and 
 paper, and indited the following note : 
 
 DEAR TOM, If your approaching nuptials are to be sufficiently 
 public to admit of a groomsman, you will make me the happiest of 
 friends by selecting me for that office. 
 
 Yours ever truly, 
 
 PHIL. 
 
 Having despatched it to his room, I flew to the stable, 
 roused Der Teufel, who had gathered up his legs in the straw 
 for the night, flogged him furiously out of the village, and, 
 giving him the rein as he entered the forest, enjoyed the 
 scenery in the humor of mad old Hieronymo in the Spanish 
 tragedy, "the moon dark, the stars extinct, the winds 
 blowing, the owls shrieking, the toads croaking, the minutes 
 jarring, and the clock striking twelve." 
 
 Early the next day Tom s " tiger " dismounted at Barhydt s 
 door, with an answer to my note as follows : 
 
 DEAR PHIL, The Devil must have informed you of a secret I 
 supposed safe from all the world. Be assured I should have chosen 
 no one but yourself to support me, on the occasion; and however you 
 
TOM FANE AND I. 79 
 
 have discovered my design upon your treasure, a thousand thanks for 
 your generous consent. I expected no less from your noble nature. 
 Yours devotedly, 
 
 TOM. 
 
 P.S. I shall endeavor to be at Barhydt s, with materials for the 
 fifth act of our comedy, to-morrow morning. 
 
 " Comedy ! call you this, Mr. Fane? " I felt my heart 
 turn black as I threw down the letter. After a thousand 
 plans of revenge formed and abandoned, borrowing old Bar 
 hydt s rifles, loading them deliberately, and discharging them 
 again into the air, I flung myself exhausted on the bed, and 
 reasoned myself back to my magnanimity. I would be his 
 groomsman ! 
 
 It was a morning like the burst of a millennium on the 
 world. I felt as if I should never forgive the birds for their 
 mocking enjoyment of it. The wild heron swung up from 
 the reeds, the lotuses shook out their dew into the lake as the 
 breeze stirred them, and the senseless old Dutchman sat 
 fishing in his canoe, singing one of his unintelligible psalms 
 to a quick measure that half-maddened me. I threw myself 
 upon the yielding floor of pine-tassels on the edge of the lake, 
 and, with the wretched school philosophy, "/Si grams est, 
 brevis est," endeavored to put down the tempest of my 
 feelings. 
 
 A carriage rattled over the little bridge, mounted the as 
 cent rapidly, and brought up at Barhydt s door. 
 
 " Phil ! " shouted Tom, " Phil ! " 
 
 I gulped down a choking sensation in my throat, and rushed 
 up the bank to him. A stranger was dismounting from his 
 horse. 
 
 " Quick ! " said Tom, shaking my hand hurriedly, " there 
 is no time to lose. Out with your inkhorn, Mr. Poppletree, 
 and have your papers signed while I tie up my ponies." 
 
 " What is this, sir? " said I, starting back as the stranger 
 
80 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 deliberately presented me with a paper, in which my own 
 name was written in conspicuous letters. 
 
 The magistrate gazed at me with a look of astonishment. 
 " A contract of marriage, I think, between Mr. Philip 
 Slingsby and Miss Katherine Lorimer, spinster. Are you 
 the gentleman named in that instrument, sir? " 
 
 At this moment my sister, leading the blushing girl by the 
 hand, came and threw her arms about my neck, and, drawing 
 her within my reach, ran off and left us together. 
 
 There are some pure moments in this life that description 
 would only profane. 
 
 We were married by the village magistrate, in that mag 
 nificent sanctuary of the forest, old Barhydt and his lotuses 
 the only indifferent witnesses of vows as passionate as ever 
 trembled upon human lips. 
 
 I had scarce pressed her to my heart and dashed the tears 
 from my eyes, when Fane, who had looked more at my sister 
 than at the bride during the ceremony, left her suddenly, and, 
 thrusting a roll of parchment into my pocket, ran off to bring 
 up his ponies. I was on the way to Saratoga, a married 
 man, and my bride on the seat beside me, before I had 
 recovered from my astonishment. 
 
 " Pray," said Tom, " if it be not an impertinent question, 
 and you can find breath in your ecstasies, how did you find 
 out that your sister had done me the honor to accept the 
 offer of my hand ? 
 
 The resounding woods rung with his unmerciful laughter 
 at the explanation. 
 
 "And pray," said I, in my turn, " if it is not an impertinent 
 question, and you can find a spare breath in your ecstasies, 
 by what magic did you persuade old Frump to trust his ward 
 and her title-deeds in your treacherous keeping? " 
 
 " It is a long story, my dear Phil, and I will give you the 
 particulars when you pay me the Virginia bloods you wot 
 
TOM FANE AND I. 81 
 
 of. Suffice it for the present, that Mr. Frump believes Mr. 
 Tom Fane (alias Jacob Phipps, Esq., sleeping partner of a 
 banking-house at Liverpool) to be the accepted of his fair 
 ward. In his extreme delight at seeing her in so fair a way 
 to marry into a bank, he generously made her a present of her 
 own fortune, signed over his right to control it by a document 
 in your possession, and will undergo as agreeable a surprise 
 in about five minutes as the greatest lover of excitement 
 could desire." 
 
 The ponies dashed on. The sandy ascent by the Pavilion 
 Spring was surmounted, and in another minute we were at 
 the door of Congress Hall. The last stragglers from the 
 breakfast- table were lounging down the colonnade, and old 
 Frump sat reading the newspaper under the portico. 
 
 "Aha! Mr. Phipps," said he, as Tom drove up, "back 
 so soon, eh? Why, I thought you and Kitty would be billing 
 it till dinner-time ! 
 
 " Sir ! " said Tom very gravely, " you have the honor of 
 
 addressing Capt. Thomas Fane, of His Majesty s th Fusi- 
 
 leers ; and whenever you have a moment s leisure, I shall be 
 happy to submit to your perusal a certificate of the marriage 
 of Miss Katherine Lorimer to the gentleman I have the 
 pleasure to present to you. Mr. Frump, Mr. Slingsby ! " 
 
 At the mention of my name, the blood in Mr. Frump s 
 ruddy complexion turned suddenly to the color of the Tiber. 
 Poetry alone can express the feeling pictured in his counte 
 nance : 
 
 "If every atom of a dead man s flesh 
 Should creep, each one with a particular life, 
 Yet all as cold as ever, twas just so; 
 Or had it drizzled needle-points of frost 
 Upon a feverish head made suddenly bald." 
 
 George Washington Jefferson Frump, Esq., left Congress 
 Hall the same evening, and has since ungraciously refused 
 
82 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 an invitation to Captain Fane s wedding possibly from his 
 having neglected to invite him on a similar occasion at Sara 
 toga. This last, however, I am free to say, is a gratuitous 
 supposition of my own. 
 
F. SMITH. 
 
 "Nature had made for him some other planet, 
 And pressed his soul into a human shape 
 By accident or malice." COLERIDGE. 
 
 "I ll have you chronicled, and chronicled, and cut-and-chronicled, and sung in all- 
 to-be-praised sonnets, and graved in new brave ballads, that all tongues shall troule 
 you." PHILASTEB. 
 
 I. 
 
 IF you can imagine a buried Titan lying along the length 
 of a continent, with one arm stretched out into the midst 
 of the sea, the place to which I would transport you, reader 
 mine, would lie, as it were, in the palm of the giant s hand. 
 The small promontory to which I refer, which becomes an 
 island in certain states of the tide, is at the end of one of 
 the long capes of Massachusetts, and is still called by its 
 Indian name, Nalmnt. Not to make you uncomfortable, I 
 beg to introduce you at once to a pretentious hotel, " squat 
 like a toad " upon the unsheltered and highest point of this 
 citadel in mid-sea, and a very great resort for the metropoli 
 tan New-Englanders. Nahant is perhaps, liberally meas- 
 used, a square half-mile ; and it is distant from what may 
 fairly be called mainland, perhaps a league. 
 
 Road to Nahant there is none. The oi polloi go there by 
 steam ; but when the tide is down you may drive there with 
 a thousand chariots over the bottom of the sea. As I sup 
 pose there is not such another place in the known world, my 
 tale will wait while I describe it more fully. If the Bible 
 had been a fiction (not to speak profanely), I should have 
 thought the idea of the destruction of Pharaoh and his host 
 had its origin in some such wonder of nature. 
 
 83 
 
84 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 Nahant is so far out into the ocean that what is called the 
 "ground-swell" the majestic heave of its great bosom 
 going on forever like respiration, though its face may be 
 like a mirror beneath the sun, and a wind may not have 
 crisped its surface for days and weeks is as broad and 
 powerful within a rood of the shore as it is a thousand miles 
 at sea. 
 
 The promontory itself is never wholly left by the ebb ; but 
 from its western extremity there runs a narrow ridge, scarce 
 broad enough for a horse-path, impassable for the rocks and 
 seaweed of which it is matted, and extending, at just high- 
 water mark, from Nahant to the mainland. Seaward from 
 this ridge, which is the only connection of the promontory 
 with the continent, descends an expanse of sand, left bare 
 six hours out of the twelve by the retreating sea, as smooth 
 and hard as marble, and as broad and apparently as level as 
 the plain of the Hermus. For three miles it stretches away 
 without shell or stone, a surface of white, fine-grained sand, 
 beaten so hard by the eternal hammer of the surf, that 
 the hoof of a horse scarce marks it, and the heaviest wheel 
 leaves it as printless as a floor of granite. This will be 
 easily understood when you remember the tremendous rise 
 and fa 1 of the ocean swell, from the very bosom of which, 
 in all its breadth and strength, roll in the waves of the flow 
 ing tide, breaking down on the beach, every one, with the 
 thunder of a host precipitated from the battlements of a 
 castle. Nothing could be more solemn and anthem-like than 
 the succession of these plunging surges. And when the 
 "tenth wave" gathers far out at sea, and rolls onward to 
 the shore, first with a glassy and heaving swell as if some 
 mighty monster were lurching inland beneath the water, and 
 then bursting up into foam, with a front like an endless and 
 sparry crystal wall, advances and overwhelms every thing in 
 its progress, till it breaks with a centupled thunder on the 
 
F. SMITH. 85 
 
 beach, it has seemed to me, standing there, as if thus 
 might have beaten the first surge on the shore after the fiat 
 which "divided sea and land." I am no Cameronian, but 
 the sea (myself on shore) always drives me to Scripture for 
 an illustration of my feelings. 
 
 The promontory of Nahant must be based on the earth s 
 axle, else I cannot imagine how it should have lasted so 
 long. In the mildest weather, the ground-swell of the sea 
 gives it a fillip at every heave that would lay the cas 
 tled crag of Drachenfels " as low as Memphis. The wine 
 trembles in your beaker of claret as you sit after dinner at 
 the hotel ; and if you look out at the eastern balcony (for it 
 is a wooden pagoda, with Balconies, verandas, and colon 
 nades ad libitum) , you will see the grass breathless in the 
 sunshine upon the lawn, and the ocean as polished and calm 
 as Miladi s brow beyond, and yet the spray and foam dash 
 ing fifty feet into the air between, and enveloping the 
 " Devil s Pulpit " (a tall rock split off from the promontory s 
 front) in a perpetual kaleidoscope of mist and rainbows. 
 Take the trouble to transport yourself there. I will do the 
 remaining honors on the spot. A cavern as cool (not as 
 silent) as those of Trophonius lies just under the brow of 
 yonder precipice, and the waiter shall come after us with our 
 wine. You have dined with the Borromeo in the grotto of 
 Isola Bella, I doubt not, and know the perfection of art : I 
 will show you that of nature. (I should like to transport 
 you, for a similar contrast, from Terni to Niagara, or from 
 San Giovanni Laterano to an aisle in a forest of Michigan ; 
 but the Daedalian mystery, alas ! is unsolved. We " fly not 
 yet.") 
 
 Here we are, then, in the " Swallow s Cave." The floor 
 descends by a gentle declivity to the sea ; and from the long 
 dark cleft stretching outward you look forth upon the broad 
 Atlantic, the shore of Ireland the first terra firma in the 
 
86 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 path of your eye. Here is a dark pool left by the retreating 
 tide for a refrigerator ; and with the champagne in the midst, 
 we will recline about it like the soft Asiatics of whom we 
 learned pleasure in the East, and drink to the small-featured 
 and purple-lipped " Mignons " of Syria, those fine-limbed 
 and fiery slaves, adorable as Peris, and by turns languish 
 ing and stormy, whom you buy for a pinch of piastres (say 
 bl. 5s.) in sunny Damascus. Your drowsy Circassian, faint 
 and dreamy, or your crockery Georgian, fit dolls for the 
 sensual Turk, is, to him who would buy soul, dear at a para 
 the hecatomb. 
 
 We recline, as it were, in an ebon pyramid, with a hun 
 dred feet of floor and sixty of wall, and the fourth side open 
 to the sky. The light comes in mellow and dim, and the 
 sharp edges of the rocky portal seem let into the pearly arch 
 of heaven. The tide is at half-ebb, and the advancing and 
 retreating waves, which at first just lifted the fringe of 
 crimson dulse at the lip of the cavern, now dash their spray- 
 pearls on the rock below, the " tenth" surge alone rallying 
 as if in scorn of its retreating fellows, and, like the chieftain 
 of Culloden Moor, rushing back singly to the contest. And 
 now that the waters reach the entrance no more, come for 
 ward and look on the sea. The swell lifts : would you not 
 think the bases of the earth rising beneath it ? It falls : 
 would you not think the foundation of the deep had given 
 way ? A plain broad enough for the navies of the world to 
 ride at large heaves up evenly and steadily, as if it would 
 lie against the sky, rests a moment spell-bound in its place, 
 and falls again as far; the respiration of a sleeping child 
 not more regular and full of slumber. It is only on the 
 shore that it chafes. Blessed emblem ! it is at peace with 
 itself. The rocks war with a nature so unlike their own, 
 and the hoarse din of their border onsets resounds through 
 the caverns they have rent open ; but beyond, in the calm 
 
F. SMITH. 87 
 
 bosom of the ocean, what heavenly dignity! what godlike 
 unconsciousness of alarm ! I did not think we should stum 
 ble on such a moral in the cave. 
 
 By the deeper bass of its hoarse organ, the sea is now 
 playing upon its lowest stops, and the tide is down. Hear ! 
 how it rushes in beneath the rocks, broken and stilled in its 
 tortuous way, till it ends with a washing and dull hiss among 
 the seaweed ; and, like a myriad of small tinkling bells, the 
 dripping from the crags is audible. There is fine music in 
 the sea. 
 
 And now the beach is bare. The cave begins to cool and 
 darken, and the first gold tint of sunset is stealing into the 
 sky ; and the sea looks of a changing opal, green, purple, 
 and white, as if its floor were paved with pearl, and the 
 changing light struck up through the waters. And there 
 heaves a ship into the horizon, like a white- winged bird lying 
 with dark breast on the waves, abandoned of the sea-breeze 
 within sight of port, and repelled even by the spicy breath 
 that comes with a welcome off the shore. She comes from 
 " merry England. * She is freighted with more than mer 
 chandise. The homesick exile will gaze on her snowy sail 
 as she sets in with the morning breeze, and bless it ; for the 
 wind that first filled it on its way swept through the green 
 valley of his home. What links of human affection brings 
 she over the sea? How much comes in her that is not in 
 her " bill of lading," yet worth, to the heart that is waiting 
 for it, a thousand times the purchase of her whole venture ! 
 
 Mais montons nous ! I hear the small hoofs of Thalaba ; 
 my stanhope waits : we will leave this half-bottle of cham 
 pagne, that " remainder biscuit," and the echoes of our phi 
 losophy, to the naiads who have lent us their drawing-room. 
 Undine, or Egeria ! Lurly, or Arethusa ! whatever thou art 
 called, nymph of this shadowy cave, adieu ! 
 
 Slowly, Thalaba! Tread gingerly down this rocky de- 
 
88 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 scent ! So ! Here we are on the floor of the vasty deep ! 
 What a glorious race-course! The polished and printless 
 sand spreads away before you as far as the eye can see ; the 
 surf comes in below breast-high ere it breaks, and the white 
 fringe of the sliding wave shoots up the beach, but leaves 
 room for the marching of a Persian phalanx on the sands it 
 has deserted. Oh, how noiselessly runs the wheel, and how 
 dreamily we glide along, feeling our motion but in the resist 
 ance of the wind, and by the trout-like pull of the ribbons by 
 the excited animal before us. Mark the color of the sand, 
 white at high-water mark, and thence deepening to a silvery 
 gray as the water has evaporated less ; a slab of Egyptian 
 granite in the obelisk of St. Peter s not more polished and 
 unimpressible. Shell or rock, weed or quicksand, there is 
 none ; and, mar or deface its bright surface as you will, it 
 is ever beaten down anew, and washed even of the dust 
 of the foot of man, by the returning sea. You may write 
 upon its fine-grained face with a crow-quill : you may course 
 over its dazzling expanse with a troop of chariots. 
 
 Most wondrous and beautiful of all, within twenty yards 
 of the surf, or for an hour after the tide has left the sand, it 
 holds the water without losing its firmness, and is like a gray 
 mirror, bright as the bosom of the sea. (By your leave, 
 Thalaba.) And now lean over the dasher, and see those 
 small fetlocks striking up from beneath, the flying mane, the 
 thoroughbred action, the small and expressive head, as per 
 fect in the reflection as in the reality: like Wordsworth s 
 swan, he 
 
 " Trots double, horse and shadow." 
 
 You would swear you were skimming the surface of the sea ; 
 and the delusion is more complete as the white foam of the 
 "tenth wave" skims in beneath wheel and hoof, and you 
 urge on with the treacherous element gliding away visibly 
 beneath you. 
 
F. SMITH. 89 
 
 We seem not to have driven fast : yet three miles fairly 
 measured are left behind, and Thalaba s blood is up. Fine 
 creature ! I would not give him 
 
 " For the best horse the Sun has in his stable." 
 
 We have won champagne ere now, Thalaba and I, trotting 
 on this silvery beach ; and if ever old age comes on me, 
 and I intend it never shall on aught save my mortal coil (my 
 spirit vowed to perpetual youth) , I think these vital breezes 
 and a trot on these exhilarating sands would sooner renew 
 my prime than a rock in St. Hilary s cradle, or a dip in the 
 well of Kanathos. May we try the experiment together, 
 gentle reader ! 
 
 I am not settled in my own mind whether this description 
 of one of my favorite haunts in America was written most to 
 introduce the story that is to follow, or the story to introduce 
 the description. Possibly the latter ; for, having consumed 
 my callow youth in wandering " to and fro in the earth" 
 like Sathanas of old, and looking on my country now with 
 an eye from which all the minor and temporary features have 
 gradually faded, I find my pride in it (after its glory as a 
 republic) settling principally on the superior handiwork of 
 nature in its land and water. When I talk of it now, it is 
 looking through another s eyes, his who listens. I do not 
 describe it after my own memory of what it was once to me, 
 but according to my idea of what it will seem now to a 
 stranger. Hence I speak not of the friends I made, ram 
 bling by lake or river. The lake and the river are there, but 
 the friends are changed to themselves and me. I speak 
 not of the lovely and loving ones that stood by me, looking 
 on glen or waterfall. The glen and the waterfall are roman 
 tic still, but the form and the heart that breathed through it 
 are no longer lovely or loving. I should renew my joys by 
 the old mountain and river ; for, all they ever were I should 
 
90 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 find them still, and never seem to myself grown old, or can 
 kered of the world, or changed in form or spirit, while they 
 reminded me but of my youth, with their familiar sunshine 
 and beauty. But the friends that I knew as I knew them 
 are dead. They look no longer the same : they have 
 another heart in them ; the kindness of the eye, the smiling- 
 ness of the lip, are no more there. Philosophy tells me the 
 material and living body changes and renews, particle by 
 particle, with time ; and Experience cold-blooded and stony 
 monitor tells me, in his frozen monotone, that heart and 
 spirit change with it and renew. But the name remains, 
 mockery that it is ! and the memory sometimes ; and so these 
 apparitions of the past that we almost fear to question 
 when they encounter us, lest the change they have undergone 
 should freeze our blood stare coldly on us, yet call us by 
 name, and answer, though coldly, to their own, and have 
 that terrible similitude to what they were, mingled with their 
 unsympathizing and hollow mummery, that we wish the grave 
 of the past, with all that it contained of kind or lovely, had 
 been sealed forever. The heart we have lain near before 
 our birth (so read I the book of human life) is the only one 
 that cannot forget that it has loved us. Saith well and affec 
 tionately an American poet, in some birthday-verses to his 
 mother, 
 
 "Mother! dear mother! the feelings nurst 
 As I hung at thy bosom, clung round thee first; 
 Twas the earliest link in love s warm chain, 
 Tis the only one that will long remain; 
 And as year by year, and day by day, 
 Some friend, still trusted, drops away, 
 Mother ! dear mother ! oh, dost thou see 
 IIow the shortened chain brings me nearer thee!" 
 
F. SMITH. 91 
 
 II. 
 
 I have observed, that, of all the friends one has in the 
 course of his life, the truest and most attached is exactly 
 the one who, from his dissimilarity to yourself, the world 
 finds it very odd you should fancy. We hear sometimes of 
 lovers who " are made for each other," but rarely of the 
 same natural match in friendship. It is no great marvel. 
 In a world like this, where we pluck so desperately at the 
 fruit of pleasure, we prefer for company those who are not 
 formed with precisely the same palate as ourselves. You 
 will seldom go wrong, dear reader, if you refer any human 
 question about which you are in doubt to that icy oracle 
 selfishness. 
 
 My shadow for many years was a gentle monster, whom I 
 have before mentioned, baptized by the name of Forbearance 
 Smith. He was a Vermontese, a descendant of one of the 
 Puritan Pilgrims, and the first of his family who had left the 
 Green Mountains since the flight of the regicides to America. 
 We assimilate to what we live among ; and Forbearance was 
 very green, and very like a mountain. He had a general 
 resemblance to one of Thorwaldsen s unfinished apostles, 
 larger than life, and just hewn into outline. My acquaint 
 ance with him commenced during my first year at the uni 
 versity. He stalked into my room one morning with a 
 hair-trunk on his back, and handed me the following note 
 from the tutor : 
 
 SIR, The faculty have decided to impose upon you the fine of 
 ten dollars and damages, for painting the president s horse on sabbath 
 night while grazing on the college green. They, moreover, have re 
 moved Freshman Wilding from your rooms, and appoint as your future 
 chum the studious and exemplary bearer, Forbearance Smith, to 
 whom you are desired to show a becoming respect. 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 ERASMUS SNUFFLEGREEK. 
 To FRESHMAN SLINGSBY. 
 
92 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 Rather relieved by my lenient sentence (for, till the next 
 shedding of his well-saturated coat, the sky-blue body and 
 red mane and tail of the president s once gray mare would 
 interfere with that esteemed animal s usefulness), I received 
 Mr. Smith with more politeness than he expected. He 
 deposited his hair-trunk in the vacant bedroom, remarked 
 with a good-humored smile that it was a cold morning, and, 
 seating himself in my easiest chair, opened his Euclid, and 
 went to work upon a problem, as perfectly at home as if he 
 had furnished the room himself, and lived in it from his 
 matriculation. I had expected some preparatory apology at 
 least, and was a little annoyed ; but being upon my good 
 behavior, I bit my lips, and resumed the "Art of Love," 
 upon which I was just then practising my nascent Latinity, 
 instead of calculating logarithms for recitation. In about 
 an hour, my new chum suddenly vociferated "Eureka!" 
 shut up his book, and having stretched himself (a very un 
 necessary operation), coolly walked to my dressing-table, 
 selected my best hair-brush, redolent of Macassar, and used 
 it with the greatest apparent satisfaction. 
 
 "Have you done with that hair-brush?" I asked, as he 
 laid it in its place again. 
 
 "Oh, yes!" 
 
 " Then perhaps you will do me the favor to throw it out of 
 the window." 
 
 He did it without the slightest hesitation. He then re 
 sumed his seat by the fire, and I went on with my book in 
 silence. Twenty minutes had elapsed, perhaps, when he 
 rose very deliberately, and, without a word of preparation, 
 gave me a cuff that sent me flying into the wood-basket in 
 the corner behind me. As soon as I could pick myself out, 
 I flew upon him ; but I might as well have grappled with 
 a boa-constrictor. He held me off at arm s length till I 
 was quite exhausted with rage ; and at last, when I could 
 
F. SMITH. 93 
 
 struggle no more, I found breath to ask him what the devil 
 he meant. 
 
 "To resent what seemed to me, on reflection, to be an 
 insult," he answered in the calmest tone, "and now to ask 
 your pardon for a fault of ignorance. The first was due to 
 myself, the second to you." 
 
 Thenceforth, to the surprise of everybody, and Bob Wild 
 ing and the tutor, we were inseparable. I took Bruin (by 
 a double elision Forbearance became " 6ear," and by para 
 phrase Bruin, and he answered to the name) , I took him, I 
 say, to the omnium shop, and presented him with a dressing- 
 case, and other appliances for his outer man ; and, as my 
 inner man was relatively as much in need of his assistance, 
 we mutually improved. I instructed him in poetry and po 
 liteness, and he returned the lesson in problems and politics. 
 My star was never in more fortunate conjunction. 
 
 Four years had woven their threads of memory about us, 
 and there was never woof more free from blemish. Our 
 friendship was proverbial. All that much care and Macassar 
 could do for Bruin had been done ; but there was no abating 
 his seven feet of stature, nor reducing the size of his feet 
 proper, nor making the muscles of his face answer to their 
 natural wires. At his most placid smile, a strange waiter 
 would run for a hot towel and the doctor (colic was not more 
 like itself than that like colic) ; and for his motions oh, 
 Lord ! a skeleton, with each individual bone appended to its 
 neighbor with a "string, would execute a pas seul with the 
 same expression. His mind, however, had none of the awk 
 wardness of his body. A simplicity and truth amounting 
 to the greatest naivete, and a fatuitous unconsciousness of 
 the effect on beholders of his outer man, were its only 
 approaches to fault or foible. With the finest sense of the 
 beautiful, the most unerring judgment in literary taste, the 
 purest romance, a fervid enthusiasm, constancy, courage, 
 
94 PBOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 and good temper, he walked about the world in a mask, an 
 admirable creature, in the guise and seeming of a ludicrous 
 monster. 
 
 Bruin was sensitive on but one point. He never could for 
 give his father and mother for the wrong they had entailed 
 on him at his baptism. "Forbearance Smith!" he would 
 say to himself sometimes, in unconscious soliloquy: "they 
 should have given me the virtue as well as the name." And 
 then he would sit with a pen, and scrawl " F. Smith " on a 
 sheet of paper by the hour together. To insist upon know 
 ing his Christian name, was the one impertinence he never 
 
 forgave. 
 
 III. 
 
 My party at Nahant consisted of Thalaba, Forbearance, 
 and myself. The place was crowded ; but I passed my time 
 very much between my horse and my friend, and was as 
 certain to be found on the beach when the tide was down, 
 as the sea to have left the sands. Job (a synonyme for For 
 bearance, which became at this time his common sobriquet) 
 was, of course, in love. Not the least to the prejudice, how 
 ever, of his last faithful passion ; for he was as fond of the 
 memory of an old love, as he was tender in the presence of 
 the new. I intended to have had him dissected after his 
 death, to see whether his organization was not peculiar. I 
 strongly incline to the opinion that we should have found a 
 mirror in the place of his heart. Strange how the same man 
 who is so fickle in love will be so constant in friendship ! But 
 is it fickleness ? Is it not rather a superftu of tenderness in 
 the nature, which overflows to all who approach the fountain? 
 I have ever observed that the most susceptible men are the 
 most remarkable for the finer qualities of character. They 
 are more generous, more delicate, and of a more chivalrous 
 complexion altogether, than other men. It was surprising 
 
F. SMITH. 95 
 
 how reasonably Bruin would argue upon this point. Be 
 cause I was happy at Niagara," he was saying one day, as 
 we sat upon the rocks, " shall I take no pleasure in the Falls 
 of Montmorenci? Because the sunset was glorious yester 
 day, shall I find no beauty in that of to-day ? Is my fancy 
 to be used but once, and the key turned upon it forever? 
 Is the heart like a bonbon, to be eaten up by the first favorite, 
 and thought of no more? Are our eyes blind, save to one 
 shape of beauty ? Are our ears insensible to the music save 
 of one voice ? 
 
 " But do you not weaken the heart, and become incapable 
 of a lasting attachment, by this habit of inconstancy? " 
 
 44 How long, my dear Phil, will you persist in talking as 
 if the heart was material, and held so much love, as a cup 
 so much water, and had legs to be weary, or organs to grow 
 dull ? How is my sensibility lessened, how my capacity en 
 feebled? What would I have done for my first love, that 
 I would not do for my last ? I would have sacrificed my life 
 to secure the happiness of one you wot of in da} 7 s gone by : 
 I would jump into the sea, if it would make Blanche Carroll 
 happier to-morrow." 
 
 41 Sautez-doncI" said a thrilling voice behind; and, as if 
 the utterance of her name had conjured her out of the ground, 
 the object of all Job s admiration, and a little of my own, 
 stood before us. She had a work-basket in her hand, a 
 gypsy-hat tossed carelessly on her head, and had preceded 
 a whole troop of belles and matrons who were coming out to 
 while away the morning, and breathe the invigorating sea-air 
 on the rocks. 
 
 Blanche Carroll was what the women would call 4 a little 
 love," but that phrase of endearment would not at all express 
 the feeling with which she inspired the men. She was small, 
 and her face and figure might have been framed in fairy-land 
 for bewitching beauty ; but with the manner of a spoiled 
 
96 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 child, and apparently the most thoughtless playfulness of 
 mind, she was as veritable a little devil as ever took the 
 shape of woman. Scarce seventeen at this time, she had a 
 knowledge of character that was like an instinct, and was an 
 accomplished actress in any part it was necessary for her pur 
 pose to play. No grave Machiavel ever managed his cards 
 with more finesse than that little intriguante the limited world 
 of which she was the star. She was a natural master-spirit 
 and plotter ; and the talent that would have employed itself 
 in the deeper game of politics, had she been born a woman 
 of rank in Europe, displayed itself, in the simple society of 
 a republic, in subduing to her power every thing in the shape 
 of a single man that ventured to her net. I have nothing to 
 tell of her at all commensurate with the character I have 
 drawn, for the disposal of her own heart (if she has one) 
 must of course be the most important event of her life ; but 
 I merely pencil the outline of the portrait in passing, as a 
 specimen of the material that exists even in the simplest 
 society for the dramatis personal of a court. 
 
 We followed the light-footed beauty to the shelter of one 
 of the caves opening on the sea, and seated ourselves about 
 her upon the rocks. Some one proposed that Job or myself 
 should read. 
 
 "O Mr. Smith," interrupted the belle, "where is my 
 bracelet? and where are my verses? " 
 
 At the ball the night before, she had dropped a bracelet in 
 the waltz ; and Job had been permitted to take care of the 
 fragments, on condition of restoring them, with a sonnet, the 
 next morning. She had just thought of it. 
 
 "Read them out! read them out!" she cried, as Job, 
 blushing a deep blue, extracted a tri-cornered pink document 
 from his pocket, and tried to give it to her unobserved with 
 the packet of jewelry. Job looked at her imploringly ; and 
 she took the verses from his hand, and ran her eye through 
 them. 
 
F. SMITH. 97 
 
 "Pretty well!" she said; "but the last line might be 
 improved. Give me a pencil, some one!" And bending 
 over it till her luxuriant hair concealed her fairy fingers in 
 their employment, she wrote a moment upon her knee, and, 
 tossing the paper to me, bade me read it out with the emenda 
 tion. Bruin had, meantime, modestly disappeared, and I 
 read with the more freedom : 
 
 " Twas broken in the gliding dance, 
 
 When thou wert in the dream of power; 
 When shape and motion, tone and glance, 
 
 Were glorious all, the woman s hour! 
 The light lay soft upon thy brow, 
 
 The music melted in thine ear, 
 And one perhaps forgotten now 
 
 With wildered thoughts stood listening near, 
 Marvejling not that links of gold 
 A pulse like thine had not controlled. 
 
 " Tis midnight now. The dance is done, 
 
 And thou, in thy soft dreams, asleep; 
 And I, awake, am gazing on 
 
 The fragments given me to keep. 
 I think of every glowing vein 
 
 That ran beneath these links of gold, 
 And wonder if a thrill of pain 
 
 Made those bright channels ever cold! 
 With gifts like thine, I cannot think 
 Grief ever chilled this broken link. 
 
 " Good-night ! Tis little now to thee 
 
 That in my ear thy words were spoken, 
 And thou wilt think of them and me 
 
 As long as of the bracelet broken. 
 For thus is riven many a chain 
 
 That thou hast fastened but to break, 
 And thus thou It sink to sleep again, 
 
 As careless that another wake : 
 The only thought thy heart can rend 
 Is what the fellow II charge to mend!" 
 
98 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 Job s conclusion was more pathetic, but probably less true. 
 He appeared after the applause had ceased, and resumed his 
 place at the lady s feet, with a look in his countenance of 
 having deserved an abatement of persecution. The beauty 
 spread out the fragments of the broken bracelet on the rock 
 beside her. 
 
 "Mr. Smith," said she, in her most conciliating tone. 
 
 Job leaned toward her with a look of devoted inquiry. 
 
 "Has the tide turned?" 
 
 " Certainly. Two hours since." 
 
 " The beach is passable, then? " 
 
 "Hardly, I fear." 
 
 " No matter. How many hours drive is it to Salem? " 
 
 " Mr. Slingsby drives it in two." 
 
 "Then you ll get Mr. Slingsby to lend you his stanhope, 
 drive to Salem, have this bracelet mended, and bring it back 
 in time for the ball. I have spoken, as the Grand Turk says. 
 Mezt" 
 
 " But, my dear Miss Carroll " 
 
 She laid her hand on his mouth as he began to remonstrate ; 
 and, while I made signs to him to refuse, she said something 
 to him which I lost in a sudden dash of the waters. He 
 looked at me for my consent. 
 
 "Oh, you can have Mr. Slingsby s horse," said the beauty, 
 as I hesitated whether my refusal would not check her tyr 
 anny, " and I ll drive him out this evening for his reward. 
 N est-ce pas? you cross man ! " 
 
 So, with the sun hot enough to fry the brains in his skull, 
 and a quivering reflection on the sands that would burn his 
 face to a blister, exit Job, with the broken bracelet in his 
 bosom. 
 
 " Stop, Mr. Slingsby," said the imperious little belle, as I 
 was making up a mouth, after his departure, to express my 
 disapprobation of her measures, "no lecture, if you please. 
 
F. SMITH. 99 
 
 Give me that book of plays, and I ll read you a precedent. 
 Because you are virtuous, shall we have no more cakes and 
 ale? Ecoutez! " And, with an emphasis and expression that 
 would have been perfect on the stage, she read the following 
 passage from " The Careless Husband : " 
 
 " Lady Betty. The men of sense, my dear, make the best fools in 
 the world : their sincerity and good breeding throw them so entirely 
 into one s power, and give one such an agreeable thirst of using them 
 ill, to show that power, tis impossible not to quench it. 
 
 " Lady Easy. But my Lord Morelove 
 
 "Lady B. Pooh! my Lord Morelove s a mere Indian damask: 
 one can t wear him out; o my conscience, I must give him to my 
 woman at last. I begin to be known by him; had I not best leave 
 him off, my dear ? 
 
 " Lady E. Why did you ever encourage him ? 
 
 " Lady B. Why, what would you have one do ? For my part, I 
 could no more choose a man by my eye than a shoe : one must draw 
 them on a little, to see if they are right to one s foot. 
 
 "Lady E. But I d no more fool on with a man I could not like, 
 than wear a shoe that pinched me. 
 
 " Lady B. Ay; but then a poor wretch tells one he ll widen em, 
 or do any thing, and is so civil and silly, that one does not know how 
 to turn such a trifle as a pair of shoes, or a heart, upon a fellow s 
 hands again. 
 
 " Lady E. And there s my Lord Foppington. 
 
 "Lady B. My dear! fine fruit will have flies about it; but, poor 
 things ! they do it no harm ; for, if you observe, people are generally 
 most apt to choose that the flies have been busy with. Ha, ha ! 
 
 " Lady E. Thou art a strange, giddy creature! 
 
 "Lady B. That may be from too much circulation of thought, 
 my dear." 
 
 " Pray, Miss Carroll," said I, as she threw aside the book 
 with a theatrical air, " have you any precedent for broiling a 
 man s brains, as well as breaking his heart? For, by this 
 time, my friend Forbearance has a coup de soleilj and is hiss 
 ing over the beach like a steam-engine." 
 
100 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 " How tiresome you are ! Do you really think it will kill 
 him?" 
 
 "It might injure him seriously, let alone the danger of 
 driving a spirited horse over the beach, with the tide quarter- 
 down." 
 
 " What shall I do to be taken out of the corner, Mr. 
 Slingsby?" 
 
 " Order your horses an hour sooner, and drive to Lynn to 
 meet him half way on his return. I will resume my stanhope, 
 and give him the happiness of driving back with you." 
 
 "And I shall be gentle Blanche Carroll, and no ogre, if 
 I do?" 
 
 " Yes ; Mr. Smith surviving." 
 
 "Take the trouble to give my orders, then; and come 
 back immediately, and read to me till it is time to go. Mean 
 time, I shall look at myself in this black mirror." And the 
 spoilt but most lovely girl bent over a dark pool in the 
 corner of the cave, forming a picture on its shadowy back 
 ground that drew a murmur of admiration even from the 
 neglected group who had been the silent and disapproving 
 witnesses of her caprice. 
 
 IY. 
 
 A thunder-cloud strode into the sky with the rapidity which 
 marks that common phenomenon of a breathless summer 
 afternoon in America ; darkened the air for a few minutes, so 
 that the birds betook themselves to their nests ; and then 
 poured out its refreshing waters with the most terrific flashes 
 of lightning, and crashes of thunder, which for a moment 
 seemed to still even the eternal bass of the sea. With the 
 same fearful rapidity, the black roof of the sky tore apart, 
 and fell back, in rolling and changing masses, upon the 
 horizon ; the sun darted with intense brilliancy through the 
 clarified and transparent air ; the light-stirring breeze came 
 
F. SMITH. 
 
 freighted with delicious coolness ; and the heavy sea-birds, 
 who had lain brooding on the waves while the tumult of the 
 elements went on, rose on their cimeter-like wings, and fled 
 away, with incomprehensible instinct, from the beautiful and 
 freshened land. The whole face of earth and sky had been 
 changed in an hour. 
 
 Oh, of what fulness of delight are even the senses capable ! 
 What a nerve there is sometimes in every pore ! What love 
 for all living and all inanimate things may be born of a sum 
 mer shower ! How stirs the fancy, and brightens hope, and 
 warms the heart, and sings the spirit within us, at the mere 
 animal joy with which the lark flees into heaven ! And yet, 
 of this exquisite capacity for pleasure we take so little care ! 
 We refine our taste, we elaborate and finish our mental per 
 ception, we study the beautiful that we may know it when 
 it appears : yet the senses by which these faculties are ap 
 proached, the stops by which this fine instrument is played, 
 are trifled with and neglected. We forget that a single excess 
 blurs and confuses the music written on our minds ; we forget 
 that an untimely vigil weakens and bewilders the delicate 
 minister to our inner temple ; we know not, or act as if we 
 knew not, that the fine and easily jarred harmony of health 
 is the only interpreter of nature to our souls : in short, we 
 drink too much claret, and eat too much pdte foie gras. Do 
 you understand me, gourmand et gourmet? 
 
 Blanche Carroll was a beautiful whip, and the two bay 
 ponies in her phaeton were quite aware of it. La Bruyere 
 says, with his usual wisdom, " Une belle femme qui a les 
 qualite s d un honnete homme est ce qu il y a au monde d un 
 commerce plus d&icieux ; " and, to a certain degree, mas 
 culine accomplishments too are very winning in a woman 
 if pretty : if plain, she is expected not only to be quite fem 
 inine, but quite perfect. Foibles are as hateful in a woman 
 who does not possess beauty, as they are engaging in a 
 
,102-; I \.\EkOSfi Tn?777xY3S OF JV. P. WILLIS. 
 
 woman who does. Clouds are only lovely when the heavens 
 are bright. 
 
 She looked loveliest while driving, did Blanche Carroll, for 
 she was born to rule, and the expression native to her lip was 
 energy and nerve ; and as she sat with her little foot pressed 
 against the dasher, and reined in those spirited horses, the 
 finely pencilled mouth, usually playful or pettish, was pressed 
 together in a curve as warlike as Minerva s, and twice as cap 
 tivating. She drove, too, as capriciously as she acted. At 
 one moment her fleet ponies fled over the sand at the top of 
 their speed, and at the next they were brought down to a walk, 
 with a suddenness which threatened to bring them upon their 
 haunches ; now far up on the dry sand, cutting a zigzag to 
 lengthen the way, and again below at the tide edge, with the 
 waves breaking over her seaward wheel ; all her powers at one 
 instant engrossed in pushing them to their fastest trot, and in 
 another the reins lying loose on their backs while she dis 
 cussed some sudden flight of philosophy. " Be his fairy, his 
 page, his every thing that love and poetry have invented/ 
 said Roger Ascham to Lady Jane Grey, just before her mar 
 riage ; but Blanche Carroll was almost the only woman I ever 
 saw capable of the beau ideal of fascinating characters. 
 
 Between Miss Carroll and myself, there was a safe and 
 cordial friendship. Besides loving another better, she was 
 neither earnest nor true nor affectionate enough to come at 
 all within the range of my possible attachments, and, though 
 I admired her, she felt that the necessary sympathy was 
 wanting for love ; and, the idea of fooling me with the rest 
 once abandoned, we were the greatest of allies. She told me 
 all her triumphs, and I listened and laughed without thinking 
 it worth while to burden her with ni} T confidence in return ; 
 and you may as well make a memorandum, gentle reader, 
 that that is a very good basis for a friendship. Nothing bores 
 women or worldly persons so much as to return their secrets 
 with your own. 
 
F. SMITH. 103 
 
 As we drew near the extremity of the beach, a boy rode 
 up on horseback, and presented Miss Carroll with a note. I 
 observed that it was written on a very dirty slip of paper, 
 and was waiting to be enlightened as to its contents, when 
 she slipped it into her belt, took the whip from the box, and, 
 flogging her ponies through the heavy sand of the outer beach, 
 went off, at a pace which seemed to engross all her attention, 
 on her road to Lynn. We reached the hotel, and she had not 
 spoken a syllable ; and, as I made a point of never inquiring 
 into any thing that seemed odd in her conduct, I merely stole 
 a glance at her face, which wore the expression of mis 
 chievous satisfaction which I liked the least of its common 
 expressions ; and descended from the phaeton with the simple 
 remark, that Job could not have arrived, as I saw nothing of 
 my stanhope in the yard. 
 
 " Mr. Slingsby." It was the usual preface to asking some 
 particular favor. 
 
 "Miss Carroll." 
 
 " Will you be so kind as to walk to the library, and select 
 me a book to your own taste, and ask no questions as to 
 what I do with myself meantime? " 
 
 " But, my dear Miss Carroll your father " 
 
 " Will feel quite satisfied when he hears that Cato was 
 with me. Leave the ponies to the groom, Cato, and follow 
 me." I looked after her as she walked down the village 
 street with the old black behind her, not at all certain of the 
 propriety of my acquiescence, but feeling that there was no 
 help for it. 
 
 I lounged away a half-hour at the library, and found Miss 
 Carroll waiting for me on my return. There were no signs 
 of Bruin ; and, as she seemed impatient to be off, I jumped 
 into the phaeton, and away we flew to the beach as fast as 
 her ponies could be driven under the whip. As we de 
 scended upon the sands, she spoke for the first time : 
 
104 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 "It is so civil of you to ask no questions, Mr. Slingsby ! 
 but you are not offended with me? " 
 
 "If you have got into no scrape while under my charge, 
 I shall certainly be too happy to shake hands upon it to 
 morrow." 
 
 " Are you quite sure? " she asked archly. 
 
 " Quite sure." 
 
 " So am not I," she said with a merry laugh ; and in her 
 excessive amusement she drove down to the sea, till the surf 
 broke over the nearest pony s back, and filled the bottom of 
 the phaeton with water. Our wet feet were now a fair apology 
 for haste ; and, taking the reins from her, I drove rapidly 
 home, while she wrapped herself in her shawl, and sat appar 
 ently absorbed in the coming of the twilight over the sea. 
 
 I slept late after the ball, though I had gone to bed ex 
 ceedingly anxious about Bruin, who had not yet made his 
 appearance. The tide would prevent his crossing the beach 
 after ten in the morning, however ; and I made myself tol 
 erably easy till the sands were passable with the evening ebb. 
 The high-water mark was scarcely deserted by the waves, 
 when the same boy who had delivered the note to Miss 
 Carroll the day before rode up from the beach on a panting 
 horse, and delivered me the following note : 
 
 DEAR PHILIP, You will be surprised to hear that I am in the 
 Lynn jail on a charge of theft and utterance of counterfeit money. I 
 do not wait to tell you the particulars. Please come and identify 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 F. SMITH. 
 
 I got upon the boy s horse, and hurried over the beach 
 with whip and spur. I stopped at the justice s office, and 
 that worthy seemed uncommonly pleased to see me. 
 
 " We have got him, sir," said he. 
 
 " Got whom? " I asked rather shortly. 
 
 " Why, the fellow that stole your stanhope and Miss Car- 
 
F. SMITH. 105 
 
 roll s bracelet, and passed a twenty-dollar counterfeit bill. 
 Ha n t you beam on t? " 
 
 The justice s incredulity, when I told him it was probably 
 the most intimate friend I had in the world, would have 
 amused me at any other time. 
 
 " Will you allow me to see the prisoner? " I asked. 
 4 Be sure I will. I let Miss Carroll have a peep at him 
 yesterday, and what do you think ? O Lord ! he wanted to 
 make her believe she knew him. Good, wasn t it? Ha, 
 ha ! And such an ill-looking fellow ! Why, I d know him 
 for a thief anywhere. Your intimate friend, Mr. Slingsby ! 
 O Lord ! when you come to see him ! Ha, ha ! " 
 
 We were at the prison-door. The grating bolts turned 
 slowly, the door swung rustily on its hinges as if it was not 
 often used ; and in the next minute I was enfolded in Job s 
 arms, who sobbed and laughed, and was quite hysterical with 
 his delight. I scarce wondered at the justice s prepossessions 
 when I looked at the figure he made. His hat knocked in, 
 his coat muddy, his hair full of the dust of straw, the natu 
 ral hideousness of poor Job had every possible aggravation. 
 
 We were in the stanhope, and fairly on the beach, before 
 he had sufficiently recovered to tell me the story. He hud 
 arrived quite overheated at Lynn ; but, in a hurry to execute 
 Miss Carroll s commission, he merely took a glass of soda- 
 water, had Thalaba s mouth washed, and drove on. A mile 
 on his way, he was overtaken by a couple of hostlers on 
 horseback, who very roughly ordered him back to the inn. 
 He refused ; and a fight ensued, which ended in his being tied 
 .^iuto the stanhope, and driven back as a prisoner. The large 
 caiote which he had given for his soda-water, it appeared, 
 (was a counterfeit ; and placards offering a reward for the 
 ir detection of a villain, described in the usual manner as an 
 <j ill-looking fellow, had been sticking up for some days in the 
 <j village. He was taken before the justice, who declared at 
 
106 PROSE WHITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 first sight that he answered the description in the advertise 
 ment. His stubborn refusal to give the whole of his name 
 (he would rather have died, I suppose), his possession of my 
 stanhope, which was immediately recognized, and, lastly, the 
 bracelet found in his pocket, of which he refused indignantly 
 to give any. account, were circumstances enough to leave no 
 doubt on the mind of the worthy justice. He made out his 
 mittimus forthwith, granting Job s request that he might be 
 allowed to write a note to Miss Carroll (who, he knew, would 
 drive over the beach toward evening) , as a very great favor. 
 She arrived as he expected. 
 
 " And what in heaven s name did she say? " said I, inter 
 ested beyond my patience at this part of the story. 
 
 "Expressed the greatest astonishment when the justice 
 showed her the bracelet, and declared she never saw me be 
 fore hi her life!" 
 
 That Job forgave Blanche Carroll in two days, and gave 
 her a pair of gloves with some verses on the third, will sur 
 prise only those who have not seen that lady. It would seem 
 incredible ; but here are the verses, as large as life : 
 
 " Slave of the snow-white hand! I fold 
 
 My spirit in thy fabric fair; 
 And when that dainty hand is cold, 
 
 And rudely comes the wintry air, 
 Press in thy light and straining form 
 Those slender fingers soft and warm; 
 
 And, as the fine- traced veins within 
 Quicken their bright and rosy flow, 
 
 And gratefully the dewy skin 
 Clings to the form that warms it so, 
 
 Tell her my heart is hiding there, / 
 
 Trembling to be so closely prest, 
 
 Yet feels how brief its moments are, 
 And saddens even to be blest, 
 Fated to serve her for a day, 
 And then, like thee, be flung away." 
 
THE FEMALE WAED. 
 
 MOST men have two or more souls ; and Jem Thalimer 
 was a doublet, with sets of manners corresponding. 
 Indeed, one identity could never have served the pair of him. 
 When sad, that is to say, when in disgrace or out of 
 money, he had the air of a good man with a broken heart. 
 When gay, flush in pocket, and happy in his little ambitions, 
 you would have thought him a dangerous companion for his 
 grandmother. The last impression did him more injustice 
 than the first, for he was really very amiably disposed when 
 depressed, and not always wicked when gay ; but he made 
 friends in both characters. People seldom forgive us for 
 compelling them to correct their first impressions of us ; and 
 as this was uniformly the case with Jem, whether he had 
 begun as saint or sinner, he was commonly reckoned a deep- 
 water fish ; and, where there were young ladies in the case, 
 early warned off the premises. The remarkable exception 
 to this rule, in the incident I am about to relate, arose, as 
 may naturally be supposed, from his appearing, during a 
 certain period, in one character only. 
 
 To begin my story fairly, I must go back for a moment to 
 our junior year in college, showing, by a little passage in our 
 adventures, how Thalimer and I became acquainted with the 
 confiding gentleman to be referred to. 
 
 A college suspension, very agreeably timed in June, left 
 my friend Jem and myself masters of our travels for an un 
 certain period ; and as our purse was always in common, like 
 our shirts, love-letters, and disgraces, our several borrowings 
 
 107 
 
108 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 were thrust into a wallet, which was sometimes in his pocket, 
 sometimes in mine, as each took the turn to be paymaster. 
 With the (intercepted) letters in our pockets, informing the 
 governors of our degraded position, we travelled very pros 
 perously on, bound to Niagara, but very ready to fall into 
 any obliquity by the way. We arrived at Albany, Thalimer 
 chancing to be purser ; and as this function tacitly conferred 
 on the holder all other responsibilities, I made myself com 
 fortable at the hotel for the second day and the third, up to 
 the seventh, rather wondering at Jem s depressed spirits and 
 the sudden falling-off of his enthusiasm for Niagara, but 
 content to stay if he liked, and amusing myself in the side- 
 hill city passably well. It was during my rambles without 
 him in this week that he made the acquaintance of a bilious- 
 looking person, lodging at the same hotel, a Louisianian 
 on a tour of health. This gentleman, whom he introduced 
 to me by the name of Dauchy, seemed to have formed a 
 sudden attachment to my friend ; and as Jem had a " secret 
 sorrow" unusual to him, and the other an unusual secretion 
 of bile, there was, of course, between them that "secret 
 sympathy" which is the basis of many tender friendships. 
 I rather liked Mr. Dauchy. He seemed one of those clriv- 
 alric, polysyllabic Southerners, incapable of a short word or 
 a mean action ; and, interested that Jem should retain his 
 friendship, I was not sorry to find our departure follow close 
 on the recovery of his spirits. 
 
 We went on toward Niagara, and in the irresistible confi 
 dence of canal-travelling I made out the secret of my fidus 
 achates. He had attempted to alleviate the hardship of a 
 deck passage for a bright-eyed girl on board the steamer, 
 and, on going below to his berth, left her his greatcoat for 
 a pillow. The stuffed wallet, which somewhat distended the 
 breast-pocket, was probably in the way of her downy cheek, 
 and Jem supposed that she simply forgot to return the 
 
THE FEMALE WARD. 109 
 
 " removed deposit;" but he did not miss his money till 
 twelve hours after, and then, between lack of means to 
 pursue her, and shame at the sentiment he had wasted, he 
 kept the disaster to himself, and passed a melancholy week 
 in devising means for replenishing. Through this penseroso 
 vein, however, lay his way out of the difficulty ; for he thus 
 touched the soul and funds of Mr. Dauchy. The corre 
 spondence (commenced by the repayment of the loan) was 
 kept up stragglingly for several years, bolstered somewhat 
 by barrels of marmalade, boxes of sugar, hominy, etc., till, 
 finally, it ended in the unlooked-for consignment which forms 
 the subject of my story. 
 
 Jem and myself had been a year out of college, and were 
 passing through that " tight place " in life commonly under 
 stood in New England as "the going-in at the little end of 
 the horn." Expected by our parents to take to money- 
 making like ducks to swimming, deprived at once of college 
 allowance, called on to be men because our education was 
 paid for, and frowned upon at every manifestation of a lin 
 gering taste for pleasure, it was not surprising that we some 
 times gave tokens of feeling " crowded," and obtained 
 somewhat the reputation of "bad subjects" (using this 
 expressive phrase quite literally). Jem s share of this odor 
 of wickedness was much the greater, his unlucky deviltry of 
 countenance doing him its usual disservice ; but, like the 
 gentleman to whom he was attributed as a favorite protegt, 
 he was " not so black as he was painted." 
 
 We had been so fortunate as to find one believer in the 
 future culmination of our clouded stars, Gallagher, " mine 
 host ; " and for value to be received when our brains should 
 fructify, his white soup and " red-string Madeira," his game, 
 turtle, and all the forthcomings of the best restaurant of our 
 epoch, were served lovingly and charged moderately. Peace 
 be with the ashes of William Gallagher! "The brains" 
 
110 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 have fructified, and " the value " has been received ; but his 
 name and memory are not "filed away" with the receipt; 
 and, though years have gone over his grave, his modest 
 welcome, and generous dispensation of entertainment and 
 service, are, by one at least of those who enjoyed them, 
 gratefully and freshly remembered. 
 
 We were to dine as usual at Gallagher s at six, one May 
 day which I well remember. I was just addressing myself 
 to my day s work, when Jem broke into my room with a 
 letter in his hand, and an expression on his face of mingled 
 embarrassment and fear. 
 
 " What the deuce to do with her?" said he, handing me 
 the letter. 
 
 "A new scrape, Jem?" I asked, as I looked for an instant 
 at the Dauchy coat-of-arms on a seal as big as a dollar. 
 
 " Scrape? yes, it is a scrape ! for I shall never get out of 
 it reputably. What a dunce old Dauchy must be, to send 
 me a girl to educate ! I a young lady s guardian ! Why, I 
 shall be the laugh of the town ! What say? Isn t it a good 
 one?" 
 
 I had been carefully perusing the letter while Thalimer 
 walked soliloquizing about the room. It was from his old 
 friend of marmalades and sugars ; and in the most confiding 
 and grave terms, as if Jem and he had been a couple of 
 contemporaneous old bachelors, it consigned to his guardian 
 ship and friendly counsel Miss Adelmine Lasacque, the only 
 daughter of a neighboring planter! Mr. Lasacque, having 
 no friends at the North, had applied to Mr. Dauchy for his 
 guidance in the selection of a proper person to superintend 
 her education ; and as Thalimer was the only correspondent 
 with whom Mr. Dauchy had relations of friendship, and was, 
 moreover, " fitted admirably for the trust by his impressive 
 and dignified address " (?), he had " taken the liberty," etc., 
 etc. 
 
THE FEMALE WARD. Ill 
 
 "Have you seen her?" I asked, after a long laugh, in 
 which Jim joined but partially. 
 
 " No, indeed ! She arrived last night in the New Orleans 
 packet ; and the captain brought me this letter at daylight, 
 with the young lady s compliments. The old sea-dog looked 
 a little astounded when I announced myself. Well he might, 
 faith ! I don t look like a young lady s guardian, do I? " 
 
 " Well, you are to go on board and fetch her : is that it? " 
 
 " Fetch her ! Where shall I fetch her? Who is to take a 
 young lady of my fetching? I can t find a female academy 
 that I can approve 
 
 I burst into a roar of laughter ; for Jem was in earnest 
 with his scruples, and looked the picture of unhappiness. 
 
 "I say I can t find one in a minute, don t laugh, you 
 blackguard ! and where to lodge her meantime ? What 
 should I say to the hotel-keepers ? They all know me I It 
 looks devilish odd, let me tell you, to bring a young girl, 
 without matron or other acquaintances than myself , and lodge 
 her at a public house." 
 
 " Your mother must take your charge off your hands." 
 
 " Of course that was the first thing I thought of. You 
 know my mother ! She don t half believe the story, in the 
 first place. If there is such a man as Mr. Dauchy, she says, 
 and if this is a Miss Lasacque, all the way from Louisiana, 
 there is but one thing to do, send her back in the packet 
 she came in ! She ll have nothing to do with it. There s 
 more in it than I am willing to explain. I never mentioned 
 this Mr. Dauchy before. Mischief will come of it ! Ab 
 duction s a dreadful thing ! If I will make myself notorious, 
 I need not think to involve my mother and sisters ! That s 
 the way she talks about it." 
 
 "But couldn t we mollify your mother? for, after all, her 
 countenance in the matter will be expected." 
 
 " Not a chance of it!" 
 
112 PROSE WRITINGS OF JV. P. WILLIS. 
 
 " The money part of it is all right? " 
 
 "Turn the letter over. Credit for a large amount on the 
 Robinsons, payable to my order only. " 
 
 "Faith, it s a very hard case if a nice girl with plenty of 
 money can t be permitted to land in Boston ! You didn t 
 ask the captain if she was pretty? " 
 
 " No, indeed ! But, pretty or plain, I must get her ashore, 
 and be civil to her. I must ask her to dine. I must do 
 something besides hand her over to a boarding-school. Will 
 you come down to the ship with me ? 
 
 My curiosity was quite aroused, and I dressed immediately. 
 On our way down we stopped at Gallagher s to request a 
 little embellishment to our ordinary dinner. It was quite 
 clear, for a variety of reasons, that she must dine with her 
 guardian there, or nowhere. Gallagher looked surprised, to 
 say the least, at our proposition to bring a young lady to 
 dine with us, but he made no comment beyond a respectful 
 remark that " No. 2 was very private. " 
 
 We had gone but a few steps from Devonshire Street 
 when Jem stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. 
 
 We have not decided yet what we are to do with Miss 
 Lasacque all day, nor where we shall send her baggage, nor 
 where she is to lodge to-night. For heaven s sake, suggest 
 something ! " added Jem, quite out of temper. 
 
 "Why, as you say, it would be heavy work to walk her 
 about the streets from now till dinner-time, eight hours or 
 more ! Gallagher s is only an eating-house, unluckily, and 
 you are so well known at all the hotels, that to take her to 
 one of them without a chaperon, would, to say the least, 
 give occasion for remark. But here, around the corner, is 
 one of the best boarding-houses in town, kept by the two old 
 Misses Smith. You might offer to put her under their pro 
 tection. Let s try." 
 
 The Misses Smith were a couple of reduced gentlewomen, 
 
THE FEMALE WAED. 113 
 
 who charged a very good price for board and lodging, and 
 piqued themselves on entertaining only very good company. 
 Begging Jem to assume the confident tone which the virtuous 
 character Of his errand required, I rang at the door ; and, in 
 answer to our inquiry for the ladies of the house, we were 
 shown into the basement parlor, where the eldest Miss Smith 
 sat with her spectacles on, adding new vinegar to some pots 
 of pickles. Our business was very briefly stated. Miss 
 Smith had plenty of spare room. Would we wait a moment 
 till she tied on the covers to her pickle-jars? 
 
 The cordiality of the venerable demoiselle evidently put 
 Thalimer in spirits. He gave me a glance which said very 
 plainly, " You see we needn t have troubled our heads about 
 this ! " But the sequel was to come. 
 
 Miss Smith led the way to the second story, where were 
 two very comfortable unoccupied bedrooms. 
 
 44 A single lady? " she asked. 
 
 u Yes," said Jem, " a Miss Lasacque of Louisiana." 
 
 44 Young, did you say ? " 
 
 " Seventeen or thereabout, I fancy." (This was a guess, 
 but Jem chose to appear to know all about her.) 
 
 44 And ehem ! and quite alone ? " 
 
 44 Quite alone ; she is come here to go to schooL" 
 
 44 Oh, to go to school ! Pray, will she pass her vacations 
 with your mother? " 
 
 4 No," said Jem, coughing, and looking rather embar 
 rassed. 
 
 "Indeed! She is with Mrs. Thalimer at present, I 
 presume." 
 
 4 No; she is still on shipboard. Why, my dear madam, 
 she only arrived from New Orleans this morning." 
 
 44 And your mother has not had time to see her? I under 
 stand. Mrs. Thalimer will accompany her here, of course." 
 
 Jem began to see the end of the old maid s catechism, and 
 
114 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 thought it best to volunteer the remainder of the informa 
 tion. 
 
 "My mother is not acquainted with this young lady s 
 friends," he said ; " and, in fact, she comes introduced only 
 to myself." 
 
 " She has a guardian, surely?" said Miss Smith, drawing 
 back into her Elizabethan ruff with more dignity than she 
 had hitherto worn. 
 
 "I am her guardian," replied Jem, looking as red and 
 guilty as if he had really abducted the young lady, and was 
 ashamed of his errand. 
 
 The spinster bit her lips, and looked out of the window. 
 
 "Will you walk down stairs for a moment, gentlemen," 
 she resumed, " and let me speak to my sister. I should have 
 told you that the rooms might possibly be engaged. I am 
 not quite sure, indeed ehem pray walk down, and be 
 seated a moment." 
 
 Very much to the vexation of my discomfited friend, I 
 burst into a laugh as we closed the door of the basement 
 parlor behind us. 
 
 "You don t realize my confoundedly awkward position," 
 said he. " I am responsible for every step I take, to the 
 girl s father in the first place, and then to my friend Dauchy, 
 one of the most chivalric old cocks in the world, who, at the 
 same time, could never understand why there was any diffi 
 culty in the matter. And it does seem strange, that, in a city 
 with eighty thousand inhabitants, it should be next to impos 
 sible to find lodging for a virtuous lady, a stranger ! " 
 
 I was contriving how to tell Thalimer that " there was no 
 objection to the camel but for the dead cat hung upon its 
 neck," when a maid-servant opened the door with a message : 
 " Miss Smith s compliments, and she was very sorry she had 
 no room to spare." 
 
 " Pleasant ! " said Jem, " very pleasant ! I suppose every 
 
THE FEMALE WAED. 115 
 
 other keeper of a respectable house will be equally sorry. 
 Meantime, it s getting on toward noon, and that poor girl is 
 moping on shipboard, wondering whether she is ever to be 
 taken ashore. Do you think she might sleep at Galla 
 gher s?" 
 
 * Certainly not. He has probably no accommodations 
 for a lady ; and to lodge in a restaurant, after dining with 
 you there, would be an indiscreet first step in a strange city, 
 to say the least. But let us make our visit to your fair ward, 
 my dear Jem. Perhaps she has a face innocent enough to 
 tell its own story, like the lady who walked through Erin 
 4 with the snow-white wand. 
 
 The vessel had lain in the stream all night, and was just 
 hauling up to the wharf with the moving tide. A crowd of 
 spectators stood at the end of her mooring-cable ; and, as 
 she warped in, universal attention seemed to be given to a 
 single object. Upon a heap of cotton-bales, the highest 
 point of the confused lumber of the deck, sat a lady under 
 a sky-blue parasol. Her gown was of pink silk ; and, by the 
 volume of this showy material which was presented to the 
 eye, the wearer, when standing, promised to turn out of 
 rather conspicuous stature. White gloves, a pair of superb 
 amethyst bracelets, a string of gold beads on her neck, and 
 shoulders quite naked enough for a ball, were all the dis 
 closures made for a while by the envious parasol, if we except 
 a little object in blue, which seemed the extremity of some 
 thing she was sitting on, held in her left hand, and which 
 turned out to be her right foot in a blue satin slipper. 
 
 I turned to Thalimer. He was literally pale with conster 
 nation. 
 
 " Hadn t you better send for a carriage to take your ward 
 away? " I suggested. 
 
 "You don t believe that to be Miss Lasacque, surely!" 
 exclaimed Jem, turning upon me with an imploring look. 
 
116 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 "Such is my foreboding," I replied; "but wait a mo 
 ment. Her face may be pretty ; and you, of course, in your 
 guardian capacity, may suggest a simplification of her toilet. 
 Consider, the poor girl was never before off the plantation : 
 at least, so says old Dauchy s letter." 
 
 The sailors now began to pull upon the sternline ; and, as 
 the ship came round, the face of the unconscious object of 
 curiosity stole into view. Most of the spectators, after a 
 single glance, turned their attention elsewhere with a smile ; 
 and Jem, putting his hands into his two coat-pockets behind 
 him, walked off toward the end of the pier, whistling to him 
 self very energetically. She was an exaggeration of the 
 peculiar physiognomy of the South, lean rather than slight, 
 sallow rather than pale. Yet I thought her eyes fine. 
 
 Thalimer joined me as the ship touched the dock, and we 
 stepped on board together. The cabin-boy confirmed our 
 expectations as to the lady s identity ; and, putting on the 
 very insinuating manner which was part of his objectionable 
 exterior, Jem advanced, and begged to know if he had the 
 honor of addressing Miss Lasacque. 
 
 Without loosing her hold upon her right foot, the lady 
 nodded. 
 
 "Then, madam," said Jem, "permit me to introduce to 
 you your guardian, Mr. Thalimer." 
 
 "What, that old gentleman coming this way?" asked 
 Miss Lasacque, fixing her eyes on a custom-house officer who 
 was walking the deck. 
 
 Jem handed the lady his card. 
 
 " That is my name," said he, " and I should be happy to 
 know how I can begin the duties of my office." 
 
 "Dear me!" said the astonished damsel, dropping her 
 foot to take his hand, " isn t there an older Mr. James 
 Thalimer? Mr. Dauchy said it was a gentleman near his 
 own age." 
 
THE FEMALE WARD. 117 
 
 "I grow older, as you know me longer," Jem replied 
 apologetically ; but his ward was too well satisfied with his 
 appearance, to need even this remarkable fact to console her. 
 She came down with a slide from her cotton-bag elevation, 
 called to the cook to bring the bandbox with the bonnet in it, 
 and meantime gave us a brief history of the inconveniences 
 she had suffered in consequence of the loss of her slave 
 Dinah, who had died of sea-sickness three days out. This, 
 to me, was bad news ; for I had trusted to a " lady s maid " 
 for the preservation of appearances, and the scandal threat 
 ening Jem s guardianship looked, in consequence, very im 
 minent. 
 
 "I am dying to get my feet on land again," said Miss 
 Lasacque, putting her arm in her guardian s, and turning 
 toward the gangway, her bonnet not tied, nor her neck 
 covered, and thin blue satin slippers though her feet ivere 
 small showing forth in contrast with her pink silk gown 
 with frightful conspicuousness. Jem resisted the shoreward 
 pull, and stood motionless and aghast. 
 
 " Your baggage," he stammered at last. 
 
 "Here, cook!" cried the lady, "tell the captain, when 
 he comes aboard, to send my trunks to Mr. Thalimer s. 
 They are down in the hold, and he told me he couldn t get 
 at em till to-morrow," she added, by way of explanation to 
 Thalimer. 
 
 I felt constrained to come to the rescue. 
 
 "Pardon me, madam," said I: "there is a little pecul 
 iarity in our climate, of which you probably are not advised. 
 An east wind commonly sets in about noon, which makes a 
 shawl very necessary. In consequence, too, of the bronchitis 
 which this sudden change is apt to give people of tender con 
 stitutions, the ladies of Boston are obliged to sacrifice what 
 is becoming, and wear their dresses very high in the throat." 
 
 " La ! " said the astonished damsel, putting her hand upon 
 
118 PROSE WHITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 her bare neck, "is it sore throat that you mean? I m very 
 subject to it, indeed ! Cook, bring me that fur-tippet out of 
 the cabin. I m so sorry my dresses are all made so low, 
 and I haven t a shawl unpacked either ! Dear, dear ! " 
 
 Jem and I exchanged a look of hopeless resignation, as 
 the cook appeared with the chinchilla tippet. A bold man 
 might have hesitated to share the conspicuousness of such 
 a figure in a noon promenade ; but we each gave her an arm 
 when she had tied the soiled ribbon around her throat, and 
 silently set forward. 
 
 It was a bright and very warm day, and there seemed 
 a conspiracy among our acquaintances to cross our path. 
 Once in the street, it was not remarkable that they looked at 
 us, for the towering height at which the lady carried her very 
 showy bonnet, the flashy material of her dress, the jewels, and 
 the chinchilla tippet formed an ensemble which caught the 
 eye like a rainbow ; and truly people did gaze, and the boys, 
 spite of the unconscious look which we attempted, did give 
 rather disagreeable evidence of being amused. I had various 
 misgivings, myself, as to the necessity for my own share in 
 the performance, and, at every corner, felt sorely tempted to 
 bid guardian and ward good-morning; but friendship and 
 pity prevailed. By streets and lanes not calculated to give 
 Miss Lasacque a very favorable first impression of Boston, 
 we reached Washington Street, and made an intrepid dash 
 across it, to the Maiiborough Hotel. 
 
 Of this public house, Thalimer had asked my opinion 
 during our walk, by way of introducing an apology to Miss 
 Lasacque for not taking her to his own home. She had 
 made it quite clear that she expected this ; and Jem had noth 
 ing for it but to draw such a picture of the decrepitude of 
 Mr. Thalimer senior, and the bedridden condition of his 
 mother (as stout a couple as ever plodded to church), as 
 would satisfy the lady for his shortcomings in hospitality. 
 
THE FEMALE WAED. 119 
 
 This had passed off very smoothly ; and Miss Lasacque en 
 tered the Marlborough, quite prepared to lodge there, but very 
 little aware (poor girl !) of the objections to receiving her as 
 a lodger. 
 
 Mr. , the proprietor, had stood in the archway as we 
 
 entered. Seeing no baggage in the lady s train, however, 
 he had not followed us in, supposing, probably, that we were 
 callers on some of his guests. Jem left us in the drawing- 
 room, and went upon his errand to the proprietor ; but, after 
 half an hour s absence, came back, looking very angry, and 
 informed us that no rooms were to be had. Instead of taking 
 the rooms without explanation, he had been unwise enough 
 
 to "make a clean breast" to Mr. ; and the story of 
 
 the lady s being his " ward," and come from Louisiana to go 
 to school, rather staggered that discreet person s credulity. 
 
 Jem beckoned me out, and we held a little council of war 
 in the entry. Alas ! I had nothing to suggest. I knew the 
 Puritan metropolis very well; I knew its phobia was "the 
 appearance of evil." In Jem s care-for-nothing face lay 
 the leprosy which closed all doors against us. Even if we 
 had succeeded, by a coup-de-main, in lodging Miss Lasacque 
 at the Marlborough, her guardian s daily visits would have 
 procured for her, in the first week, some intimation that she 
 could no longer be accommodated. 
 
 " We had best go and dine upon it," said I. " Worst come 
 to the worst, we can find some sort of dormitory for her at 
 Gallagher s ; and to-morrow she must be put to school, out 
 of the reach of your pleasant but wrong society. 
 
 " I hope to heaven she ll stay put, " said Jem, with a 
 long sigh. 
 
 We got Miss Lasacque again under way, and, avoiding the 
 now crowded pave of Washington Street, made a short cut 
 by Theatre Alley to Devonshire Street and Gallagher s. 
 Safely landed in "No. 2," we drew a long breath of relief. 
 Jem rang the bell. 
 
120 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 "Dinner, waiter, as soon as possible." 
 
 " The same that was ordered at six, sir? " 
 
 44 Yes, only more champagne, and bring it immediately. 
 Excuse me, Miss Lasacque," added Jem, with a grave bow, 
 44 but the non-appearance of that east wind my friend spoke 
 of has given me an unnatural thirst. Will you join me in 
 some champagne after your hot walk? " 
 
 44 No, thank you," said the lady, untying her tippet, 44 but, 
 if you please, I will go to my room before dinner." 
 
 Here was trouble again ! It had never occurred to either 
 of us, that ladies must go to their rooms before bedtime. 
 
 44 Stop ! " cried Jem, as she laid her hand on the bell to 
 ring for the chambermaid. 4 Excuse me I must first speak 
 to the landlord. The room the room is not ready, proba 
 bly !" 
 
 He seized his hat, and made his exit, probably wishing all 
 confiding friends, with their neighbors daughters, in a bet 
 ter world ! He had to do with a man of sense, however. 
 Gallagher had but one bedroom in the house which was not 
 a servant s room, and that was his own. In ten minutes it 
 was ready, and at the lady s service. A black scullion was 
 promoted for the nonce to the post of chambermaid; and, 
 fortunately, the plantation-bred girl had not been long enough 
 from home to be particular. She came to dinner as radiant 
 as a summer-squash. 
 
 With the door shut, and the soup before us, Thalimer s 
 spirits and mine flung off their burthens together. Jem was 
 the pleasantest table- companion in the world ; and he chatted 
 and made the amiable to his ward, as if he owed her some 
 amends for the awkward position of which she was so bless 
 edly unconscious. Your 4t dangerous man " (such as he was 
 voted) inspires, of course, no distrust in those to whom he 
 chooses to be agreeable. Miss Lasacque grew, every min 
 ute, more delighted with him. She, too, improved on ac- 
 
THE FEMALE WARD. 121 
 
 quaintance. Come to look at her closely, nature meant her 
 for a fine, showy creature ; and she was " out of condition," 
 as the jockeys say, that was all. Her features were good, 
 though gamboged by a Southern climate ; and the fever and 
 ague had flattened what should be round and ripe lips, and 
 reduced to the mere frame what should be the bust and neck 
 of a Di Vernon. I am not sure I saw all this at the time. 
 Her subsequent chrysalis, and emergence into a beautiful 
 woman, naturally color my description now. But I did see 
 then that her eyes were large and lustrous, and that natu 
 rally she had high spirit, good abilities, and was a thorough 
 woman in sentiment; though deplorably neglected, for, at 
 the age of twenty, she could hardly read and write. It was 
 not surprising that she was pleased with us ! She was the 
 only lady present, and we were the first coxcombs she had 
 ever seen, and the day was summery, and the dinner in Gal 
 lagher s best style. We treated her like a princess ; and the 
 more agreeable man of the two being her guardian, and 
 responsible for the propriety of the whole affair, there was 
 no chance for a failure. We lingered over our coffee, and 
 we lingered over our cliassecafe, and we lingered over our 
 tea ; and, when the Old South struck twelve, we were still at 
 the table in "No. 2," quite too much delighted with each 
 other to have thought of separating. It was the venerated 
 guardian who made the first move ; and after ringing up the 
 waiter, to discover that the scullion had six hours before 
 made her nightly disappearance, the lady was respectfully 
 dismissed with only a candle for her chambermaid, and 
 Mr. Gallagher s room for her destination wherever that 
 might be ! 
 
 We dined together every successive day for a week, and 
 during this time the plot rapidly thickened. Thalimer, of 
 course, vexed soul and body to obtain for Miss Lasacque a 
 less objectionable lodging ; urged scarcely more by his sense 
 
122 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 of propriety than by a feeling for her good-natured host, 
 who, meantime, slept on a sofa. But the unlucky first step 
 of dining and lodging a young lady at a restaurant, inevitable 
 as it was, gave a fatal assurance to the predisposed scandal 
 of the affair ; and every day s events heightened its glaring 
 complexion. Miss Lasacque had ideas of her own, and very 
 independent ones, as to the amusement of her leisure hours. 
 She had never been before where there were shops ; and she 
 spent her first two or three mornings in perambulating Wash 
 ington Street, dressed in a style perfectly amazing to be 
 holders, and purchasing every description of gay trumpery ; 
 the parcels, of course, sent to Gallagher s, and the bills to 
 James Thalimer, Esq. To keep her out of the street, Jem 
 took her, on the third day, to the riding-school, leaving her 
 (safely enough, he thought) in charge of the authoritative 
 Mr. Roulstone, while he besieged some schoolmistress or 
 other to undertake her ciphering and geography. She was 
 all but born on horseback, however, and soon tired of riding 
 round the ring. The street-door was set open for a moment, 
 leaving exposed a tempting tangent to the circle ; and out 
 flew Miss Lasacque, saving her " Leghorn flat" by a bend to 
 the saddle-bow that would have done credit to a dragoon ; 
 and no more was seen, for hours, of the u bomiie black 
 mare " and her rider. 
 
 The deepening of Miss Lasacque s passion for Jem would 
 not interest the reader. She loved like other women, timidly 
 and pensively. Young as the passion was, however, it came 
 too late to affect her manners before public opinion had pro 
 nounced on them. There was neither boarding-house nor 
 "private female academy" within ten miles, into which 
 "Mr. Thalimer s young lady" would have been permitted to 
 set her foot, small as was the foot, and innocent as was the 
 pulse to which it stepped. 
 
 Uncomfortable as was this state of suspense, and anxious 
 
THE FEMALE WARD. 123 
 
 as we were to fall into the track marked "virtuous," if virtue 
 would only permit, public opinion seemed to think we were 
 enjoying ourselves quite too prosperously. On the morning 
 of the seventh day of our guardianship, I had two calls after 
 breakfast, one from poor Gallagher, who reported that he 
 had been threatened with a prosecution of his establishment 
 as a nuisance ; and another from poorer Jem, whose father 
 had threatened to take the lady out of his hands, and lodge 
 her in the insane-asylum. 
 
 " Not that I don t wish she was there," added Jem, " for 
 it is a very fine place, with a nice garden, and luxuries 
 enough for those who can pay for them. And faith, I believe 
 it s the only lodging-house I ve not applied to." 
 
 I must shorten my story. Jem anticipated his father, by 
 riding over, and showing his papers constituting him the 
 guardian of Miss Lasacque, in which capacity he was, of 
 course, authorized to put his ward under the charge of keep 
 ers. Everybody who knows Massachusetts knows that its 
 insane-asylums are sometimes brought to bear on irregular 
 morals, as well as on diseased intellects ; and, as the presid 
 ing officer of the institution was quite well assured that Miss 
 Lasacque was well qualified to become a patient, Jem had no 
 course left but to profit by the error. The poor girl was 
 invited, that afternoon, to take a drive in the country ; and 
 we came back and dined without her, in abominable spirits, 
 I must say. 
 
 Provided with the best instruction, the best of care taken 
 of her health, and the most exemplary of matrons interesting 
 herself in her patient s improvement, Miss Lasacque rapidly 
 improved ; more rapidly, no doubt, than she ever could have 
 done by control less rigid and inevitable. Her father, by the 
 advice of the matron, was not informed of her location for a 
 year ; and at the end of that time he came on, accompanied 
 by his friend Mr. Dauchy. He found his daughter suffl- 
 
124 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 ciently improved in health, manners, and beauty, to be quite 
 satisfied with Jem s discharge of his trust ; and we all dined 
 very pleasantly in " No. 2," Miss Lasacque declining, with 
 a blush, my invitation to her to make one of the party. 
 
PASQUALI> THE TAILOR OF VENICE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 GIANNINO PASQUALI was a smart tailor, some five 
 years ago, occupying a cool shop on one of the smaller 
 canals of Venice. Four pairs of suspenders, a print of the 
 fashions, and a motley row of the gay-colored trousers worn 
 by the gondoliers, ornamented the window looking on the dark 
 alley in the rear ; and, attached to the post of the water-gate 
 on the canal side, floated a small black gondola, the pos 
 session of which afforded the same proof of prosperity of 
 the Venetian tailor which is expressed by a horse and buggy 
 at the door of a snip in London. The place-seeking trav 
 eller, who, nez en / air, threaded the tangled labyrinth of 
 alleys and bridges between the Rialto and St. Mark s, would 
 scarce have observed the humble shop-window of Pasquali ; 
 yet he had a consequence on the Piazza, and the lagoon had 
 seen his triumphs as an amateur gondolier. Giannino was 
 some thirty years of age ; and his wife Fiametta, whom he 
 had married for her zeccliini, was on the shady side of fifty. 
 If the truth must be told, Pasquali had discovered, that, 
 even with a bag of sequins for eye-water, Fiametta was not 
 always the most lovely woman in Venice. Just across the 
 canal lived old Donna Bentoccata the nurse, whose daughter 
 Turturilla was like the blonde in Titian s picture of the 
 Marys ; and to the charms of Turturilla, even seen through 
 the leaden light of poverty, the unhappy Pasquali was far 
 from insensible. 
 
 125 
 
126 PEOSE WETTINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 The festa of San Antonio arrived after a damp week of 
 November ; and, though you would suppose the atmosphere 
 of Venice not liable to any very sensible increase of moist 
 ure, Fiametta, like people who live on land, and who have 
 the rheumatism as a punishment for their age and ugliness, 
 was usually confined to her brazero of hot coals till it was 
 dry enough on the Lido for the peacocks to walk abroad. 
 On this festa, however, San Antonio being, as every one 
 knows, the patron saint of Padua, the Padovese were to 
 come down the Brenta, as was their custom, and cross over 
 the sea to Venice to assist in the celebration ; and Fiametta 
 once more thought Pasquali loved her for herself alone when 
 he swore by his rosary, that, unless she accompanied him 
 to the festa in her wedding-dress, he would not turn an oar 
 in the race, nor unfasten his gondola from the door-post. 
 Alas ! Fiametta was married in the summer solstice, and her 
 dress was permeable to the wind as a cobweb or gossamer. 
 Is it possible you could have remembered that, O wicked 
 Pasquali? 
 
 It was a day to puzzle a barometer, now bright, now 
 rainy ; now gusty as a corridor in a novel, and now calm as 
 a lady after a fit of tears. Pasquali was up early, and 
 waked Fiametta with a kiss ; and by way of unusual tender 
 ness, or by way of insuring the wedding-dress, he chose to 
 play dressing-maid, and arranged with his own hands her 
 jupon and fezzoletta. She emerged from her chamber look 
 ing like a slice of orange-peel in a flower-bed, but smiling 
 and nodding, and vowing the day warm as April, and the 
 sky without a cloud. The widening circles of an occasional 
 drop of rain in the canal were nothing but the bubbles burst 
 ing after a passing oar, or perhaps the last flies of summer. 
 Pasquali swore it was weather to win down a Peri. 
 
 As Fiametta stepped into the gondola, she glanced her eyes 
 over the way, and saw Turturilla, with a face as sorrowful as 
 
rASQUALI, THE TAILOR OF VENICE. 127 
 
 the first clay in Lent, seated at her window. Her lap was full 
 of work, and it was quite evident that she had not thought of 
 being at the festa. Fiametta s heart was already warm, and 
 it melted quite at the view of the poor girl s loneliness. 
 
 " Pasquali mio," she said in a deprecating tone, as if she 
 were uncertain how the proposition would be received, "I 
 think we could make room for poor Turturilla." 
 
 A gleam of pleasure, unobserved by the- confiding sposa, 
 tinted faintly the smooth olive cheek of Pasquali. 
 
 "Eh! diavolo!" he replied, so loud that the sorrowful 
 seamstress heard, and hung down her head still lower. 
 "Must you take pity on every cheese-paring of a regezza 
 who happens to have no lover ? Have reason ! have reason ! 
 The gondola is narrower than your brave heart, my fine 
 Fiametta." And away he pushed from the water-steps. 
 
 Turturilla rose from her work, and stepped out upon the 
 rusty gratings of the balcony to see them depart. Pasquali 
 stopped to grease the notch of his oar ; and, between that and 
 some other embarrassments, the gondola was suffered to float 
 directly under her window. The compliment to the generous 
 nature of Fiametta was, meantime, working ; and, as she 
 was compelled to exchange a word or two with Turturilla 
 while her husband was getting his oar into the socket, it 
 resulted (as he thought it very probable it would) in the 
 good wife s renewing her proposition, and making a point of 
 sending the deserted girl for her holiday bonnet. Pasquali 
 swore through all the saints and angels by the time she had 
 made herself ready, though she was but five minutes gone 
 from the window ; and, telling Fiametta in her ear that she 
 must consider it as the purest obligation, he backed up to the 
 steps of old Donna Bentoccata, helped in her daughter with 
 a better grace than could have been expected, and, with one 
 or two short and deep strokes, put forth into the Grand Canal 
 with the velocity of a lance-fly. 
 
128 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 A gleam of sunshine lay along the bosom of the broad 
 silver sheet ; and it was beautiful to see the gondolas with 
 their gay-colored freights all hastening in one direction and 
 with swift track to the festa. Far up and down they rippled 
 the smooth water, here gliding out from below a palace- 
 arch, there from a narrow and unseen canal, the steel beaks 
 curved and flashing, the water glancing on the oar-blades, 
 the curtains moving, and the fair women of Venice leaning 
 out and touching hands as they neared neighbor or acquaint 
 ance in the close-pressing gondolas. It was a beautiful 
 sight, indeed. And three of the happiest hearts in that 
 swift-gliding company were in Pasquali s gondola ; though 
 the bliss of Fiametta, I am compelled to say, was entirely 
 owing to the bandage with which Love is so significantly 
 painted. Ah, poor Fiametta ! 
 
 From the Lido, from Fusina, from under the Bridge of 
 Sighs, from all quarters of the lagoon, and from all points 
 of the floating city of Venice, streamed the flying gondolas 
 to the Giudecca. The narrow walk along the edge of the 
 long and close-built island was thronged with booths and 
 promenaders ; and the black barks by hundreds bumped 
 their steel noses against the pier, as the agitated water rose 
 and fell beneath them. The gondolas intended for the race 
 pulled slowly up and down, close to the shore, exhibiting 
 their fairy-like forms and their sinewy and gayly-dressed 
 gondoliers to the crowds on land and water ; the bands of 
 music, attached to different parties, played here and there a 
 strain ; the criers of holy pictures and gingerbread made the 
 air vocal with their lisping and soft Venetian ; and all over 
 the scene, as if it was the light of the sky or some other 
 light as blessed but less common, shone glowing black eyes, 
 black as night, and sparkling as the stars on night s darkest 
 bosom. He who thinks lightly of Italian beauty should 
 have seen the women of Venice on St. Antonio s Day, 32, or 
 
PASQUALI, THE TAILOR OF VENICE. 129 
 
 on any day, or at any hour when their pulses are beating high 
 and their eyes alight, for they are neither one nor the other 
 always. The women of that fair clime, to borrow the simile 
 of Moore, are like lava-streams, only bright when the vol 
 cano kindles. Their long lashes cover lustreless eyes, and 
 their blood shows dully through the cheek in common and 
 listless hours. The calm, the passive tranquillity in which 
 the delicate graces of colder climes find their element, are to 
 them a torpor of the heart, when the blood scarce seems 
 to flow. They are wakeful only to the energetic, the passion 
 ate, the joyous movements of the soul. 
 
 Pasquali stood erect in the prow of his gondola, and stole 
 furtive, glances at Turturilla, while he pointed away with his 
 finger to call off the sharp eyes of Fiametta. But Fiametta 
 was happy and unsuspicious. Only when now and then the 
 wind came up chilly from the Adriatic, the poor wife shivered, 
 and sat closer to Turturilla, who, in her plainer but thicker 
 dress, to say nothing of younger blood, sat more comfortably 
 on the black cushion, and thought less about the weather. 
 An occasional drop of rain fell on the nose of poor Fia 
 metta ; but, if she did not believe it was the spray from 
 Pasquali s oar, she at least did her best to believe so. And 
 the perfidious tailor swore by St. Anthony that the clouds 
 were as dry as her eyelashes. I never was very certain that 
 Turturilla was not in the secret of this day s treacheries. 
 
 The broad centre of the Giudecca was cleared, and the 
 boats took their places for the race. Pasquali ranged his 
 gondola with those of the other spectators ; and, telling 
 Fiametta in her ear that he should sit on the other side of 
 Turturilla as a punishment for their malapropos invitation, 
 he placed himself on the small remainder of the deep cushion, 
 on the farthest side from his now penitent spouse ; and, 
 while he complained almost rudely of the narrowness of his 
 seat, he made free to hold on by Turturilla s waist, which, 
 
130 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 no doubt, made the poor girl s mind more easy on the sub 
 ject of her intrusion. 
 
 Who won and who lost the race, what was the device of 
 each flag, and what bets and bright eyes changed owners by 
 the result, no personage of this tale knew or cared save 
 Fiametta. She looked on eagerly. Pasquali and Turturilla, 
 as the French say, trouvaient autres chats d, f rotter. 
 
 After the decision of the grand race, St. Antonio being 
 the protector more particularly of the humble ("patron of 
 pigs" in the saints calendar), the seignoria and the grand 
 people generally pulled away for St. Mark s, leaving the 
 crowded Giudecca to the people. Pasquali, as was said 
 before, had some renown as a gondolier. Something that 
 would be called in other countries a scrub-race, followed the 
 departure of the winning boat ; and several gondolas, holding 
 each one person only, took their places for the start. The 
 tailor laid his hand on his bosom, and, with the smile that 
 had first stirred the heart and the sequins of Fiametta, 
 begged her to gratify his love by acting as his make- weight 
 while he turned an oar for the pig of St. Antonio. The 
 prize, roasted to an appetizing crisp, stood high on a platter 
 in front of one of the booths on shore ; and Fiametta 
 smacked her lips, overcame her tears with an effort, and 
 told him, in accents as little as possible like the creak of a 
 dry oar in the socket, that he might set Turturilla on shore. 
 
 A word in her ear, as he handed her over the gunwale, 
 reconciled Donna Bentoccata s fair daughter to this conjugal 
 partiality ; and, stripping his manly figure of its upper dis 
 guises, Pasquali straightened out his fine limbs, and drove 
 his bark to the line in a style that drew applause from even 
 his competitors. As a mark of their approbation they 
 offered him an outside place, where his fair dame would be 
 less likely to be spattered with the contending oars ; but he 
 was too generous to take advantage of this considerate offer, 
 
PASQUALI, THE TAILOR OF VENICE. 131 
 
 and crying out, as he took the middle, " ben pronto, signori! " 
 gave Fiametta a confident look, and stood like a hound in 
 the leash. 
 
 Off they went, at the tap of the drum ; poor Fiametta 
 holding her breath, and clinging to the sides of the gondola, 
 and Pasquali developing skill and muscle not for Fia- 
 metta s eyes only. It was a short, sharp race, without 
 jockeying or management ; all fair play and main strength ; 
 and the tailor shot past the end of the Giudecca a boat s- 
 leugth ahead. Much more applauded than a king at a coro 
 nation, or a lord-mayor taking water at London stairs, he 
 slowly made his way back to Turturilla ; and it was only 
 when that demure damsel rather shrunk from sitting down in 
 two inches of water, that he discovered how the disturbed 
 element had quite filled up the hollow of the leather cushion, 
 and made a peninsula of the uncomplaining Fiametta. She 
 was as well watered as a favorite plant in a flower-garden. 
 
 " Pasquali mio ! " she said in an imploring tone, holding 
 up the skirt of her dress with the tips of her thumb and 
 finger, u could you just take me home while I change my 
 dress?" 
 
 One moment, Fiametta cara ! they are bringing the 
 
 pig.- 
 
 The crisp and succulent trophy was solemnly placed in the 
 prow of the victor s gondola, and preparation was made to 
 convoy him home with a triumphant procession. A half- 
 hour before it was in order to move, an hour in first making 
 the circuit of the Grand Canal, and an hour more in drink 
 ing a glass and exchanging good wishes at the stairs of the 
 Rialto, and Donna Fiametta had sat too long by two hours 
 and a half with scarce a dry thread on her body. What 
 afterward befell will be seen in the more melancholy sequel. 
 
132 PROSE WHITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE hospital of St. Girolamo is attached to the convent 
 of that name, standing on one of the canals which put forth 
 on the seaward side of Venice. It is a long building, with 
 its low windows and latticed doors opening almost on the 
 level of the sea ; and the wards for the sick are large and 
 well aired, but, except when the breeze is stirring, impreg 
 nated with a saline dampness from the canal, which, as Pas- 
 quali remarked, was good for the rheumatism. It was not 
 so good for the patient. 
 
 The loving wife, Fiametta, grew worse and worse after 
 the fatal festa ; and the fit of rheumatism brought on by the 
 slightness of her dress, and the spattering he had given her 
 in the race, had increased by the end of the week to a rheu 
 matic fever. Fiametta was old and tough, however, and 
 struggled manfully (woman as she was) with the disease ; but 
 being one night a little out of her head, her loving husband 
 took occasion to shudder at the responsibility of taking care 
 of her, and, jumping into his gondola, he pulled across to 
 St. Girolamo, and bespoke a dry bed and a sister of charity, 
 and brought back the pious father Gasparo and a comfort 
 able litter. Fiametta was dozing when they arrived ; and the 
 kind-hearted tailor, willing to spare her the pain of knowing 
 that she was on her way to the hospital for the poor, set out 
 some meat and wine for the monk, and, sending over for 
 Turturilla and the nurse to mix the salad, they sat and ate 
 away the hours till the poor dame s brain should be wan 
 dering again. 
 
 Toward night the monk and Dame Bentoccata were com 
 fortably dozing with each other s support (having fallen 
 asleep at table) , and Pasquali, with a kiss from Turturilla, 
 
PASQUALI, TEE TAILOR OF VENICE. 133 
 
 stole softly up stairs. Fiametta was muttering unquietly, 
 and working her fingers in the palms of her hands, and on 
 feeling her pulse he found the fever was at its height. She 
 took him, besides, for the prize pig of the festa, for he knew 
 her wits were fairly abroad. He crept down stairs, gave the 
 monk a strong cup of coffee to get him well awake, and, 
 between the four of them, they got poor Fiametta into the 
 litter, drew the curtains tenderly around, and deposited her 
 safely in the bottom of the gondola. 
 
 Lightly and smoothly the winner of the pig pulled away with 
 his loving burden, and gliding around the slimy corners of 
 the palaces, and hushing his voice as he cried out " right ! " 
 or " left! " to guard the coming gondoliers of his vicinity, 
 he arrived, like a thought of love to a maid s mind in sleep, 
 at the door of St. Girolamo. The abbess looked out and 
 said, " Benedicite I " and the monk stood firm on his brown 
 sandals to receive the precious burden from the arms of 
 Pasquali. Believing firmly that it was equivalent to commit 
 ting her to the hand of St. Peter, and of course abandoning 
 all hope of seeing her again in this world, the soft-hearted 
 tailor wiped his eye as she was lifted in, and receiving a 
 promise from Father Gasparo that he would communicate 
 faithfully the state of her soul in the last agony, he pulled, 
 with lightened gondola and heart, back to his widower s home 
 and Turturilla. 
 
 For many good reasons, and apparent as good, it is a rule 
 in the hospital of St. Girolamo, that the sick under its holy 
 charge shall receive the visit of neither friend nor relative. 
 If they recover, they return to their abodes to earn candles 
 for the altar of the restoring saint. If they die, their clothes 
 are sent to their surviving friends, and this affecting memo 
 rial, besides communicating the melancholy news, affords all 
 the particulars and all the consolation they are supposed to 
 require upon the subject of their loss. 
 
134 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 Waiting patiently for Father Gasparo and his bundle, 
 Pasquali and Turturilla gave themselves up to hopes, which 
 on the tailor s part (we fear it must be admitted) , augured a 
 quicker recovery from grief than might be credited to an 
 elastic constitution. The fortune of poor Fiametta was 
 sufficient to warrant Pasquali in neglecting his shop to cele 
 brate every festa that the church acknowledged, and for ten 
 days subsequent to the committal of his wife to the tender 
 mercies of St. Girolamo, five clays out of seven was the 
 proportion of merry holidays with his new betrothed. 
 
 They were sitting one evening in the open piazza of St. 
 Mark, in front of the most thronged cafe of that matchless 
 square. The moon was resting her silver disk on the point 
 of the Campanile, and the shadows of thousands of gay 
 Venetians fell on the immense pavement below, clear and 
 sharply drawn as a black cartoon. The four extending sides 
 of the square lay half in shades half in light, with their 
 innumerable columns and balconies and sculptured work, and, 
 frowning down on all, in broken light and shadow, stood the 
 arabesque structure of St. Mark s itself, dizzying the eyes 
 with its mosaics and confused devices, and thrusting forth 
 the heads of her four golden-collared steeds into the moon 
 beams, till they looked on that black relief, like the horses 
 of Pluto issuing from the gates of Hades. In the centre of 
 the square stood a tall woman, singing, in rich contralto, an 
 old song of the better days of Venice ; and against one of 
 the pillars, Polichinello had backed his wooden stage, and 
 beat about his puppets with an energy worthy of old Dandolo 
 and his helmeted galley-men. To those who wore not the 
 spectacles of grief or discontent, the square of St. Mark s 
 that night was like some cozening tableau. I never saw any 
 thing so gay. 
 
 Everybody who has " swam in a gondola/* knows how the 
 cafes of Venice thrust out their checkered awnings over a 
 
PASQUALI, THE TAILOR OF VENICE. 135 
 
 portion of the square, and rilled the shaded space below with 
 chairs and marble tables. In a corner of the shadow thug 
 afforded, with ice and coffee on a small round slab between 
 them, and the flat pavement of the public promenade under 
 their feet, sat our two lovers. With neither hoof nor wheel 
 to drown or interrupt their voices (as in cities whose streets 
 are stones, not water) , they murmured their hopes and wishes 
 in the softest language under the sun, and with the sotto voce 
 acquired by all the inhabitants of this noiseless city. Tur- 
 turilla had taken ice to cool her and coffee to take off the 
 chill of her ice, and a bicchiere del perfetto amore to reconcile 
 these two antagonists in her digestion, when the slippers of a 
 monk glided by, and in a moment the recognized Father Gas- 
 paro made a third in the shadowy corner. The expected 
 bundle was under his arm, and he was on his way to Pas- 
 quali s dwelling. Having assured the disconsolate tailor that 
 she had unction and wafer as became the wife of a citizen 
 of Venice like himself, he took heart and grew content that 
 she was in heaven. It was a better place, and Turturilla 
 for so little as a gold ring, would supply her place in his 
 bosom. 
 
 The moon was but a brief week older when Pasquali and 
 Turturilla stood in the Church of our Lady of Grief, and 
 Father Gasparo within the palings of the altar. She was as 
 fair a maid as ever bloomed in the garden of beauty beloved 
 of Titian, and the tailor was nearer worth nine men to look 
 at, than the fraction of a man considered usually the expo 
 nent of his profession. Away mumbled the good father upon 
 the matrimonial service, thinking of the old wine and rich 
 pastries that were holding their sweetness under cork and 
 crust only till he had done his ceremony, and quicker by 
 some seconds than had ever been achieved before by priest 
 or bishop, he arrived at the putting on of the ring. His 
 hand was tremulous, and (oh unlucky omen !) he dropped it 
 
136 PROSE WETTINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 within the gilded fence of the chancel. The choristers were 
 called, and Father Gasparo dropped on his knees to look for 
 it but if the devil had not spirited it away, there was no 
 other reason why that search was in vain. Short of an errand 
 to the goldsmith on the Rialto, it was at last determined the 
 wedding could not proceed. Father Gasparo went to hide 
 his impatience within the restiary, and Turturilla knelt down 
 to pray against the arts of Sathanas. Before they had set 
 tled severally to their pious occupations, Pasquali was half 
 way to the Rialto. 
 
 Half an hour elapsed, and then instead of the light graz 
 ing of a swift-sped gondola along the church stairs, the splash 
 of a sullen oar was heard, and Pasquali stepped on shore. 
 They hastened to the door to receive him monk, chor 
 isters and bride and to their surprise and bewilderment, he 
 waited to hand out a woman in a strange dress, who seemed 
 disposed, bridegroom as he was, to make him wait her leisure. 
 Her clothes fitted her ill, and she carried in her hand a pair 
 of shoes it was easy to see were never made for her. She 
 rose at last, and as her face became visible, down dropped 
 Turturilla and the pious father, and motionless and aghast 
 stood the simple Pasquali. Fiametta stepped on shore ! 
 
 In broken words Pasquali explained. He had landed at the 
 stairs near the fish market, and with two leaps reaching the 
 top, sped off past the buttress in the direction of the gold 
 smith, when his course was arrested by encountering at full 
 speed, the person of an old woman. Hastily raising her up, 
 he recognized his wife, who, fully recovered, but without a 
 gondola, was threading the zigzag alleys on foot, on her way 
 to her own domicile. After the first astonishment was over, 
 her dress explained the error of the good father and the 
 extent of his own misfortune. The clothes had been hung 
 
 O 
 
 between the bed of Fiametta and that of a smaller woman 
 who had been long languishing of a consumption. She died, 
 
PASQUALI, THE TAILOR OF VENICE. 137 
 
 and Fiametta s clothes, brought to the door by mistake, were 
 recognized by Father Gasparo and taken to Pasquali. 
 
 The holy monk, chop-fallen and sad, took his solitary way 
 to the convent, but with the first step he felt something slide 
 into the heel of his sandal. He sat down on the church 
 stairs, and absolved the devil from theft it was the lost 
 ring, which had fallen upon his foot and saved Pasquali the 
 tailor from the pains of bigamy. 
 
THE GYPSY OF SARDIS. 
 
 .... "And thou art far, 
 Asia! who, when my being overflowed, 
 Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine, 
 Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust." 
 
 SHELLEY S PROMETHEUS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 OUR tents were pitched in the vestibule of the house of 
 Croesus, on the natural terrace which was once the 
 imperial site of Sardis. A humpbacked Dutch artist, who 
 had been in the service of Lady Hester Stanhope as a 
 draughtsman, and who had lingered about between Jerusa 
 lem and the Nile till he was as much at home in the East as 
 a Ilajji or a crocodile ; an Englishman qualifying himself 
 for "The Travellers ; * a Smyrniote merchant in figs and 
 opium ; Job Smith (my inseparable shadow) and myself, 
 composed a party at this time (August, 1834), rambling 
 about Asia Minor in turbans and Turkish saddles, and pitch 
 ing our tents, and cooking our pilau, wherever it pleased 
 Heaven and the inexorable suridji who was our guide and 
 caterer. 
 
 I thought at the time that I would compound to abandon 
 all the romance of that renowned spot, for a clean shirt and 
 something softer than a marble frustrum for a pillow ; but 
 in the distance of memory, and myself at this present in a 
 deep morocco chair in the library at "The Travellers ," 
 the same scene in the ruins of Sardis does not seem destitute 
 of interest. 
 138 
 
THE GYPSY OF SAKDIS. 139 
 
 It was about four in the lazy summer afternoon. We had 
 arrived at Sardis at mid-day, and after a quarrel whether 
 we should eat immediately or wait till the fashionable hour 
 of three, the wooden dish containing two chickens buried in 
 a tumulus of rice, shaped (in compliment to the spirit of the 
 spot) like the Mound of Alyattis in the plain below, was 
 placed in the centre of a marble pedestal ; and with Job and 
 the Dutchman seated on the prostrate column dislodged for 
 our benefit, and the remainder of the party squatted in the 
 high grass, which grew in the royal palace as if it had no 
 memory of the footprints of the kings of Lydia, we spooned 
 away at the saturated rice, and pulled the smothered chickens 
 to pieces with an independence of knives and forks that was 
 .worthy of the " certain poor man in Attica." Old Solon 
 himself, who stood, we will suppose, while reproving the 
 ostentatious monarch, at the base of that very column now 
 ridden astride by an inhabitant of a country of which he 
 never dreamed (at least it strikes me there is no mention 
 of the Yankees in his philosophy) the old graybeard of 
 the Academy himself, I say, would have been edified at the 
 primitive simplicity of our repast. The salt (he would have 
 asked if it was Attic) was contained in a ragged playbill, 
 which the Dutchman had purloined as a specimen of modern 
 Greek, from the side of a house in Corfu ; the mustard was 
 in a cracked powder-horn, which had been slung at the breast 
 of old Whalley the regicide, in the American Revolution, 
 and which Job had brought from the Green Mountains, and 
 held, till its present base uses, in religious veneration ; the 
 ham (I should have mentioned that respectable entremet 
 before) was half enveloped in a copy of the "Morning 
 Post ; " and the bread, which had been seven days out from 
 Smyrna, and had been kept warm in the suridji s saddle 
 bags twelve hours in the twenty-four, lay in disjecta membra 
 around the marble table, with marks of vain but persevering 
 
140 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 attacks in its nibbled edges. The luxury of our larder was 
 comprised in a flask which had once held Harvey s sauce, 
 and though the last drop had served as a condiment to a 
 roasted kid some three months before, in the Acropolis at 
 Athens, we still clung to it with affectionate remembrance, 
 and it was offered and refused daily around the table for the 
 melancholy pleasure of hearing the mention of its name. 
 It was unlucky that the only thing which the place afforded 
 of the best quality, and in sufficient quantities, was precisely 
 the one thing in the world for which no individual of the 
 party had any particular relish water ! It was brought in 
 a gourd from the bed of the "golden-sanded Pactolus," 
 rippling away to the plain within pistol-shot of the dining- 
 room ; but, to the shame of our simplicity I must record, 
 that a high-shouldered jug of the rough wine of Samos, 
 trodden out by the feet of the lovely slaves of the JEgean, 
 and bought for a farthing the bottle, went oftener to the 
 unclassical lips of the company. Methinks, now (the wind 
 east in London, and the day wet and abominable), I could 
 barter the dinner that I shall presently discuss, with its suite 
 of sherries and anchovy, to kneel down by that golden river 
 in the sunshine, and drink a draught of pure lymph under 
 the sky of effeminate Asia. Yet, when I was there so 
 rarely do we recognize happiness till she is gone I wished 
 myself (where I had never been) in "merry England." 
 "Merry" quotha? Scratch it out, and write comfortable. 
 I have seen none " merry " in England, save those who have 
 most cause to be sad, the abandoned of themselves and 
 the world ! 
 
 Out of the reach of ladies and the laws of society, the 
 most refined persons return very much to the natural instincts 
 from which they have departed in the progress of civilization. 
 Job rolled off the marble column when there was nothing 
 more to eat, and went to sleep with the marks of the Samian 
 
THE GYPSY OF SARDIS. 141 
 
 wine turning up the corners of his mouth like the salacious 
 grin of a satyr. The Dutchman got his hump into a hollow, 
 and buried his head in the long grass with the same obedi 
 ence to the prompting of nature, and idem the suridji and 
 the fig-merchant, leaving me seated alone among the promis 
 cuous ruins of Sardis and the dinner. The dish of philoso 
 phy I had with myself on that occasion will appear as a 
 rechauffe in my novel (I intend to write one) ; but meantime 
 I may as well give you the practical inference ; that, as 
 sleeping after dinner is evidently Nature s law, Washington 
 Irving is highly excusable for the practice, and he would be 
 a friend of reason who should introduce couches and coffee 
 at that somnolent period, the digestive nap taking the place 
 of the indigestible politics usually forced upon the company 
 on the disappearance of the ladies. Why should the world 
 be wedded forever to these bigoted inconveniences ! 
 
 The grand track from the south and west of Asia Minor 
 passes along the plain between the lofty Acropolis of Sardis 
 and the tombs of her kings ; and, with the snore of travellers 
 from five different nations in my ear, I sat and counted the 
 camels in one of the immense caravans never out of sight 
 in the valley of the Hermus. The long procession of those 
 brown monsters wound slowly past on their way to Smyrna, 
 their enormous burthens covered with colored trappings and 
 swaying backward and forward with their disjointed gait, 
 and their turbaned masters dozing on the backs of the small 
 asses of the east, leading each a score by the tether at his 
 back ; the tinkling of their hundred bells swarmed up through 
 the hot air of the afternoon with the drowsiest of monotones ; 
 the native oleanders, slender-leaved and tall, and just now 
 in all their glory, with a color in their bright flowers stolen 
 from the bleeding lips of Houris, brightened the plains of 
 Lydia like the flush of sunset lying low on the earth ; the 
 black goats of uncounted herds browsed along the ancient 
 
142 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 Sarabat, with their bearded faces turned every one to the 
 faintly coming wind : the eagles (that abound now in the 
 mountains from which Sardis and a hundred silent cities 
 once scared their bold progenitors) sailed slowly and fear 
 lessly around the airy citadel that flung open its gates to the 
 Lacedaemonian ; and, gradually, as you may have lost your 
 self in this tangled paragraph, dear reader, my senses be 
 came confused among the objects it enumerates, and I fell 
 asleep with the speech of Solon in my ears, and my back to 
 the crumbling portico of CIXESUS. 
 
 The Dutchman was drawing my picture when I awoke, the 
 sun was setting, and Job and the suridji were making tea. 
 I am not a very picturesque object, generally speaking, but 
 done as a wild Arab lying at the base of a column, in a white 
 turban, with a stork s nest over my head, I am not so ill- 
 looking as you would suppose. As the Dutchman drew for 
 gelt, and hoped to sell his picture to some traveller at Smyrna 
 who would take that opportunity to affirm in his book that 
 he had been at Sardis (as vide his own sketch), I do not 
 despair of seeing myself yet in lithograph. And, talking of 
 pictures, I would give something now if I had engaged that 
 humpbacked draughtsman to make me a sketch of Job, squat 
 on his hams before a fire in the wall, and making tea in a 
 tin pot, with a " malignant and turbaned Turk" feeding the 
 blaze with the dry thorn of Syria. 1 It would have been con 
 solation to his respectable mother, whom he left in the Green 
 Mountains (wondering what he could have to do with follow 
 ing such a scapegrace as myself through the world), to have 
 seen him in the turban of a Hajji taking his tea quietly in 
 ancient Lydia. The green turban, the sign of the Hajji, 
 belonged more properly to myself ; for though it was Job 
 
 1 It has the peculiarity of a hooked thorn alternating with the straight, and it is 
 difficult to touch it without lacerating the hands. It is the common thorn of the 
 East, and it is supposed that our Saviour s crown at his crucifixion was made of it. 
 
THE GYPSY OF SARDIS. 143 
 
 who went bodily to Jerusalem (leaving me ill of a fig-fever 
 at Smyrna) , the sanctity of the pilgrimage by the Moham 
 medan law falls on him who provides the pilgrim with scallop- 
 shell and sandals, aptly figured forth in this case, we will 
 suppose, by the sixty American dollars paid by myself for 
 his voyage to Jaffa and back. The suridji was a Hajji, too, 
 and it was amusing to see Job, who respected every man s 
 religious opinions, and had a little vanity besides in sharing 
 with the Turk 1 the dignity of a pilgrimage to the sacred city, 
 washing his knees and elbows at the hour of prayer, and 
 considerately, but very much to his own inconvenience, trans 
 ferring the ham of the unclean beast from the Mussulman s 
 saddle-bags to his own. It was a delicate sacrifice to a 
 pagan s prejudices, worthy of Socrates or a Christian. 
 
 II. 
 
 In all simple states of society, sunset is the hour of better 
 angels. The traveller in the desert remembers his home ; 
 the sea-tossed boy, his mother and her last words ; the Turk 
 talks, for a wonder, and the chattering Greek is silent, for the 
 same; the Italian forgets his mustache, and hums la patria ; 
 and the Englishman delivers himself of the society of his 
 companions, and "takes a walk." It is something in the 
 influences of the hour, and I shall take trouble, some day, to 
 maintain that morn, noon, and midnight have their ministry 
 as well, and exercise each an unobserved but salutary and 
 peculiar office on the feelings. 
 
 We all separated u after tea ; " the suridji was off to find 
 a tethering place for his horses ; the Englishman strolled 
 away by himself to a group of the "tents of Kedar " far 
 
 1 The Mussulmans make pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and pray at all the places 
 consecrated to our Saviour and the Virgin, except only the tomb of Christ, which they 
 do not acknowledge. They believe that Christ did not die, but ascended alive into 
 heaven, leaving the likeness of his face to Judas, who was crucified for him. 
 
144 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 down in the valley with their herds and herdsmen ; the Smyr- 
 niote merchant sat by the camel-track at the foot of the hill 
 waiting for the passing of a caravan ; the Green-Mountaineer 
 was wandering around the ruins of the apostolic church ; the 
 Dutchman was sketching the two Ionic shafts of the fair 
 temple of Cybele ; and I, with a passion for running water 
 which I have elsewhere alluded to, idled by the green bank 
 of the Pactolus, dreaming sometimes of Gyges and Alexan 
 der, and sometimes of you, dear Mary ! 
 
 I passed Job on my way, for the four walls over which the 
 " Angel of the Church of Sardis " kept his brooding watch 
 in the days of the Apocalypse stand not far from the swell 
 ing bank of the Pactolus, and nearly in a line between it 
 and the palace of Croesus. I must say that my heart almost 
 stood still with awe as I stepped over the threshold. In the 
 next moment, the strong and never-wasting under-current of 
 early religious feeling rushed back on me, and I involuntarily 
 uncovered my head, and felt myself stricken with the spell 
 of holy ground. My friend, who was never without the 
 Bible that was his mother s parting gift, sat on the end of 
 the broken wall of the vestibule with the sacred volume open 
 at the Revelation in his hand. 
 
 " I think, Philip," said he, as I stood looking at him in 
 silence, " I think my mother will have been told by an angel 
 that I am here." 
 
 He spoke with a solemnity that, spite of every other feel 
 ing, seemed to me as weighty and true as prophecy. 
 
 "Listen, Philip," said he, "it will be something to tell 
 your mother as well as mine, that we have read the Apoca 
 lypse together in the Church of Sardis." 
 
 I listened with what I never thought to have heard in Asia 
 my mother s voice loud at my heart, as I had heUrd it in 
 prayer in my childhood : 
 
 Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not 
 
TUE GYPSY OF SAEDIS. 145 
 
 defiled their garments ; and they shall walk with me in white : 
 for they are worthy. 
 
 I strolled on. A little farther up the Pactolus stood the 
 Temple of Cybele. The church to which "He" spoke 
 "who hath the seven spirits of God and the seven stars," 
 was a small and humble ruin of brick and mortar ; but, of 
 the temple of the heathen mother of the world, remained 
 two fair columns of marble with their curiously carved capi 
 tals, and the earth around was strewn with the gigantic 
 frusta of an edifice, stately even in the fragments of its 
 prostration. I saw for a moment the religion of Jupiter and 
 of Christ with the eyes of Croesus and the philosopher from 
 Athens ; and then I turned to the living nations that I had 
 left to wander among these dead empires, and looking still 
 on the eloquent monuments of what these religions were, 
 thought of them as they are, in wide-spread Christendom. 
 
 We visit Rome and Athens, and walk over the ruined 
 temples of their gods of wood and stone, and take pride to 
 ourselves that our imaginations awake the 4 spirit of the 
 spot." But the primitive church of Christ, over which an 
 angel of God kept watch; whose undefiled members, if 
 there is truth in Holy Writ, are now "walking with him 
 in white before the face of the Almighty ; a spot on which 
 the Saviour and his apostles prayed, and for whose weal, 
 with the other churches of Asia, the sublime revelation was 
 made to John ; this, the while, is an unvisited shrine, and 
 the "classic" of pagan idolatry is dearer to the memories 
 of men than the holy antiquities of a religion they profess ! 
 
 III. 
 
 The Ionic capitals of the two fair columns of the fallen 
 temple were still tinged with rosy light on the side toward 
 the sunset, when the full moon, rising in the east, burnished 
 the other like a shaft of silver. The two lights mingled 
 in the sky in a twilight of opal. 
 
146 PROSE WHITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 " Job," said I, stooping to reach a handful of sand as we 
 strolled up the western bank of the river, can you resolve 
 im> why the poets have chosen to call this pretty stream the 
 1 golden-sanded Pactolus ? Did you ever see sand of a 
 duller gray? " 
 
 " As easy as give you a reason," answered Job, u why we 
 found the turbidus Hermus, yesterday, the clearest stream 
 we have forded ; why I am no more beautiful than before, 
 though I have bathed like Venus in the Scamander ; why 
 the pumice of Naxos no longer reduces the female bust to its 
 virgin proportions ; and why Smyrna and Malta are not the 
 best places for figs and oranges ! 
 
 "And why the old king of Lydia, who possessed the in 
 visible ring, and kept a devil in his dog s collar, lies quietly 
 under the earth in the plain below us, and his ring and his 
 devil were not bequeathed to his successors. What a pleas 
 ant auxiliary to sin must have been that invisible ring ! 
 Spirit of Gyges, thrust thy finger out of the earth, and com 
 mit it once more to a mortal ! Sit down, my dear monster, 
 and let us speculate in this bright moonshine on the enormi 
 ties we would commit ! 
 
 As Job was proceeding, in a cautious periphrasis, to rebuke 
 my irreverent familiarity with the prince of darkness and 
 his works, the twilight had deepened, and my eye was caught 
 by a steady light twinkling far above us in the- ascending 
 bed of the river. The green valley wound down from the 
 rear of the Acropolis, and the single frowning tower stood 
 in broken and strong relief against the sky ; and from the 
 mass of shadow below peered out, like a star from a cloud- 
 rack, the steady blaze of a lamp. 
 
 "Allons! Job!" said I, making sure of an adventure, 
 " let us see for whose pleasure a lamp is lit in the solitude 
 of this ruined city." 
 
 "I could not answer to your honored mother," said my 
 
THE GYPST OF SAEDIS. 147 
 
 scrupulous friend, " if I did not remind you that this is a 
 spot much frequented by robbers, and that probably no 
 honest man harbors at that inconvenient altitude." 
 
 I made a leap over a half-buried frieze that had served me 
 as a pillow, and commenced the ascent. 
 
 "I could as ill answer to your anxious parent," said Job, 
 following with uncommon alacrity, "if I did not partake 
 your dangers when they are inevitable." 
 
 We scrambled up with some difficulty in the darkness, now 
 rolling into an unseen hollow, now stumbling over a block of 
 marble ; held fast one moment by the lacerating hooked 
 thorn of Syria, and the next brought to a stand-still by im 
 penetrable thickets of brushwood. With a half-hour s toil, 
 however, we stood on a clear platform of grass, panting and 
 hot ; and, as I was suggesting to Job that we had possibly 
 got too high, he laid his hand on my arm, and, with a sign 
 of silence, drew me down on the grass beside him. 
 
 In a small fairy amphitheatre, half encircled by a bend 
 of the Pactolus, and lying a few feet below the small plat 
 form from which we looked, lay six low tents, disposed in a 
 crescent opposite to that of the stream, and enclosing a cir 
 cular area of bright and dewy grass, of scarce ten feet in 
 diameter. The tents were round, and laced neatly with 
 wicker-work, with their curtain-doors opening inward upon 
 the circle. In the largest one, which faced nearly down the 
 valley, hung a small iron lamp of an antique shape, with a 
 wick alight in one of its two projecting extremities, and 
 beneath it swung a basket-cradle suspended between two 
 stakes, and kept in motion by a woman apparently of about 
 forty, whose beauty, but for another more attractive object, 
 would have rewarded us alone for our toil. The other tents 
 were closed, and seemed unoccupied ; but the curtain of the 
 one into which our eyes were now straining with intense 
 eagerness, was looped entirely back to give admission to the 
 
148 PBOSE WETTINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 cool night air ; and, in and out, between the light of the lamp 
 and the full moon, stole on naked feet a girl of fifteen, whose 
 exquisite symmetry and unconscious but divine grace of 
 movement filled my sense of beauty as it had never been 
 filled by the divinest chisel of the Tribune. She was of the 
 height and mould of the younger water-nymph in Gibson s 
 Hylas, 1 with limbs and lips that, had I created and warmed 
 her to life like Pygmalion, I should have just hesitated 
 whether or not they wanted another half-shade of fulness. 
 The large shawl of the East, which was attached to her 
 girdle, and in more guarded hours concealed all but her eyes, 
 hung in loose folds from her waist to her heels, leaving her 
 bust and smoothly-rounded shoulders entirely bare ; and, in 
 strong relief even upon her clear brown skin, the flakes of 
 her glossy and raven hair floated over her back, and swept 
 around her with the grace of a cloud in her indolent motions. 
 A short petticoat of striped Brusa silk stretched to her 
 knees, and below appeared the full trouser of the East, of 
 the same material, narrowed at the ankle, and bound with 
 what looked in the moonlight an anklet of silver. A pro 
 fusion of rings on her fingers, and a gold sequin on her 
 forehead, suspended from a colored fillet, completed her 
 dress, and left nothing to be added by the prude or the 
 painter. She was at that ravishing and divinest moment of 
 female life, when almost the next hour would complete her 
 womanhood like the lotus ere it lays back to the prying 
 moonlight the snowy leaf nearest its heart. 
 
 She was employed in filling a large jar which stood at the 
 back of the tent, with water from the Pactolus, and as she 
 turned with her empty pitcher, and came under the full blaze 
 
 1 A group that will be immortal in the love and wonder of the world, when the 
 divine hand of the English Praxiteles has long passed from the earth. Two more 
 exquisite shapes of women than those lily-crowned nymphs never lay in the womb 
 of marble or human mother. Rome is brighter for them. 
 
THE GYPSY OF SAEDIS. 149 
 
 of the lamp in her way outward, treading lightly lest she 
 should disturb the slumber of the child in the cradle, and 
 pressing her two round hands closely to the sides of the ves 
 sel, the gradual compression of my arm by the bony hand 
 which still held it for sympathy, satisfied me that my own 
 leaping pulse of admiration found an answering beat in the 
 bosom of my friend. A silent nod from the woman, whose 
 Greek profile was turned to us under the lamplight, informed 
 the lovely water-bearer that her labors were at an end ; and 
 with a gesture expressive of heat, she drew out the shawl 
 from her girdle, untied the short petticoat, and threw them 
 aside, and then tripping out into the moonlight with only the 
 full silken trousers from her waist to her ankles, she sat 
 down on the brink of the small stream, and with her feet in 
 the water, dropped her head on her knees, and sat as motion 
 less as marble. 
 
 " Gibson should see her now," I whispered to Job, " with 
 the glance of the moonlight on that dimpled and polished 
 back, and her almost glittering hair veiling about her in such 
 masses, like folds of gossamer ! " 
 
 "And those slender fingers clasped over her knees, and 
 the air of melancholy repose which is breathed into her 
 attitude, and which seems inseparable from those indolent 
 Asiatics. She is probably a gypsy." 
 
 The noise of the water dashing over a small cascade a 
 little farther up the stream had covered our approach and ren 
 dered our whispers inaudible. Job s conjecture was probably 
 right, and we had stumbled on a small encampment of gypsies 
 the men possibly asleep in those closed tents, or possibly 
 absent at Smyrna. After a little consultation, I agreed with 
 Job that it would be impolitic to alarm the camp at night, 
 and resolving on a visit in the morning, we quietly and un 
 observed withdrew from our position, and descended to our 
 own tents in the ruins of the palace. 
 
150 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The suridji had given us our spiced coffee in the small 
 china cups and filagree holders, and we sat discussing, to the 
 great annoyance of the storks over our heads, whether we 
 should loiter another day at Sardis, or eat melons at noon at 
 Casabar on our way to Constantinople. To the very great 
 surprise of the Dutchman, who wished to stay to finish his 
 drawings, Job and myself voted for remaining a view of 
 the subject which was in direct contradiction to our vote 
 of the preceding evening. The Englishman, who was always 
 in a hurry, flew into a passion, and went off with the phleg 
 matic suridji to look after his horse ; and having disposed of 
 our Smyrniote, by seeing a caravan (which was not to be 
 seen) coming southward from Mount Tmolus, I and my 
 monster started for the encampment of the gypsies. 
 
 As we rounded the battered wall of the Christian church, 
 a woman stepped out from the shadow ; through a tattered 
 dress, and under a turban of soiled cotton set far over her 
 forehead, and throwing a deep shadow into her eyes, I recog 
 nized at once the gypsy woman whom we had seen sitting by 
 the cradle. 
 
 11 Buon giorno, signori," she said, making a kind of sa 
 laam, and relieving me at once by the Italian salutation of 
 my fears of being unintelligible. 
 
 Job gave her the good-morning, but she looked at him with 
 a very unsatisfactory glance, and coming close to my ear, she 
 wished me to speak to her out of the hearing of il mio 
 domestico! " 
 
 "Amicopiu tosto!" I added immediately with a consider 
 ation for Job s feelings, which, I must do myself the justice 
 to say, I always manifested, except in very elegant society. 
 I gave myself the greater credit in this case, as, in my im 
 patience to know the nature of the gypsy s communication, I 
 
THE GYPSY OF SAEDIS. 151 
 
 might be excused for caring little at the moment whether my 
 friend was taken for a gentleman or a gentleman s gentleman. 
 The gypsy looked vexed at her mistake, and with a half- 
 apologetic inclination to Job, she drew me into the shade of 
 the ruin, and perused my face with great earnestness. " The 
 same to yourself, * thought I, as I gave back her glance, and 
 searched for her meaning in two as liquid and loving eyes as 
 ever looked out of the gates of the Prophet s paradise for 
 the coming of a young believer. It was a face that had been 
 divine, and in the hands of a lady of fashion would have 
 still made a bello rifacimento. 
 " Inglese? " she said at last. 
 "No, madre Americano," 
 She looked disappointed. 
 " And where are you going, JHio mio?" 
 "To Stamboul." 
 
 "Benissimo!" she answered, and her face brightened. 
 " Do you want a servant? " 
 " Unless it is yourself, no ! " 
 " It is my son." 
 
 It was on my lips to ask if he was like her daughter, but 
 an air of uneasiness and mystery in her manner put me on 
 the reserve, and I kept my knowledge to myself. She per 
 severed in her suit, and at last the truth came out, that her 
 boy was bound on an errand to Constantinople, and she 
 wished safe conduct for him. The rest of the troop, she 
 said, were at Smyrna, and she was left in care of the tents 
 with the boy and an infant child. As she did not mention 
 the girl, who, from the resemblance, was evidently her 
 daughter, I thought it unwise to allude to our discovery : 
 and promising that, if the boy was mounted, every possible 
 care should be taken of him, I told her the hour on the 
 following morning when we should be in the saddle, and rid 
 myself of her with the intention of stealing a march on the 
 camp. 
 
152 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 I took rather a circuitous route ; but the gypsy was there 
 before me, and apparently alone. She had sent the boy to 
 the plains for a horse, and though I presumed that the love 
 liest creature in Asia was concealed in one or the other of 
 those small tents, the curtains were closely tied, and I could 
 find no apology for intruding either my eyes or my inquiries. 
 The handsome Zingara, too, began to look rather becomingly 
 Jire; and as I had left Job behind, and was always natur 
 ally afraid of a woman, I reluctantly felt myself under the 
 necessity of comprehending her last injunction, and with a 
 promise that the boy should join us before we reached the 
 foot of Mount Sipylus, she fairly bowed me off the premises. 
 I could have forsworn my complexion and studied palmistry 
 for a gypsy, had the devil then tempted me ! 
 
 Y. 
 
 We struck our tents at sunrise, and were soon dashing on 
 through the oleanders upon the broad plain of the Hermus, 
 the dew lying upon their bright vermeil flowers like the pel 
 lucid gum on the petals of the ice-plant, and nature, and my 
 five companions, in their gayest humor. I was not. My 
 thoughts were of moonlight and the Pactolus, and two round 
 feet ankle-deep in running water. Job rode up to my side. 
 
 44 My dear Phil ! take notice that you are nearing Mount 
 Sipylus, in which the magnetic ore was first discovered." 
 
 44 Jt acts negatively on me, my dear chum ! for I drag a 
 lengthening chain from the other direction." 
 
 Silence once more, and the bright red flowers still fled back 
 ward in our career. Job rode up again. 
 
 44 You must excuse my interrupting your revery, but I 
 thought you would like to know that the town where we sleep 
 to-night is the residence of the 4 beys of Oglou, mentioned 
 in the 4 Bride of Abydos. " 
 
 No answer, and the bright red blossoms still flew scattered 
 
TIIE GYPSY OF SARDIS. 153 
 
 in our path as our steeds flew through the coppice, and the 
 shovel-like blades of the Turkish stirrups cut into them right 
 and left in the irregular gallop. Job rode again to my side. 
 
 " My dear Philip, did you know that this town of Mag 
 nesia was once the capital of the Turkish empire the city 
 of Timour the Tartar?" 
 
 "Well!" 
 
 " And did you know that when Themistocles was in exile, 
 and Artaxerxes presented him with the tribute of three cities 
 to provide the necessaries of life, Magnesia 1 found him in 
 bread?" 
 
 " And Lampascus in wine. Don t bore me, Job." 
 
 We sped on. As we neared Casabar toward noon, and 
 (spite of romance) I was beginning to think with compla 
 cency upon the melons, for which the town is famous, a 
 rattling of hoofs behind put our horses upon their mettle, 
 and in another moment a boy dashed into the midst of our 
 troop, and, reining up with a fine display of horsemanship, 
 put the promised token into my hand. He was mounted on 
 a small Arabian mare, remarkable for nothing but a thin and 
 fiery nostril, and a most lavish action, and his jacket and 
 turban were fitted to a shape and head that could not well 
 be disguised. The beauty of the gypsy-camp was beside 
 me ! 
 
 It was as well for my self-command, that I had sworn Job 
 to secrecy in case of the boy s joining us, and that I had 
 given the elder gypsy, as a token, a very voluminous and 
 closely- written letter of my mother s. In the twenty minutes 
 which the reading of so apparently "lengthy" a document 
 would occupy, I had leisure to resume my self-control, and 
 resolve on my own course of conduct toward the fair mas- 
 querader. My travelling companions were not a little aston- 
 
 1 Not pronounced as in the apothecary s shop. It is a fine large town at the foot 
 of Mount Sipylus. 
 
154 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 ished to see me receive a letter by courier in the heart of 
 Asia, but that was for their own digestion. All the infor 
 mation I condescended to give, was that the boy was sent to 
 my charge on his road to Constantinople ; and as Job dis 
 played no astonishment, and entered simply into my arrange 
 ments, and I was the only person in the company who could 
 communicate with the suridji (I had picked up a little modern 
 Greek in the Morea), they were compelled (the Dutchman, 
 John Bull, and the fig-merchant) to content themselves with 
 such theories on the subject as Heaven might supply them 
 withal. 
 
 How Job and I speculated apart on what could be the 
 errand of this fair creature to Constantinople ; how beauti 
 fully she rode, and sustained her character as a boy ; how I 
 requested her, though she spoke Italian like her mother, 
 never to open her lips in any Christian language to my com 
 panions ; how she slept at my feet at the khans, and rode at 
 my side on the journey, and, at the end of seven days, arriv 
 ing at Scutari, and beholding across the Bosphorus the golden 
 spires of Stamboul, how she looked at me with tears in her 
 unfathomable eyes, and spurred her fleet Arab to his speed 
 to conceal her emotion, and how I felt that I could bury 
 myself with her in the vizier s tomb we were passing at the 
 moment, and be fed on rice with a ghoul s bodkin, if so alone 
 we might not be parted, all these are matters which would 
 make sundry respectable chapters in a novel, but of which 
 you are spared the particulars in a true story. There was a 
 convenience both to the dramatist and the audience in the 
 "cetera intus agentur" of the Romans. 
 
 YI. 
 
 We emerged from the pinnacled cypresses of the cemetery 
 overlooking Constantinople, and dismounting from my horse, 
 I climbed upon the gilded turban crowning the mausoleum 
 
THE GYPSY OF SAEDIS. 155 
 
 of a royal Ichoglan (a sultan s page, honored more in his 
 burial than in his life), and feasted my eyes on the dese 
 crated but princely fair birthright of the Palseologi. The 
 Nekropolis the city of the dead on the outermost tomb 
 of whose gloomy precincts I had profanely mounted, stands 
 high and black over the Bosphorus on one side, while on the 
 other, upon similar eminences, stand the gleaming minarets 
 and latticed gardens of the matchless city of the living 
 as if, while Europe flung up her laughing and breathing child 
 to the sun, expiring Asia, the bereaved empress of the 
 world, lifted her head to the same heavens in majestic and 
 speechless sorrow. 
 
 But oh ! how fairer than Venice in her waters, than Flor 
 ence and Rome in their hills and habitations, than all the 
 cities of the world in that which is most their pride and glory, 
 is this fairest metropolis of the Mahomets ! With its two 
 hundred mosques, each with a golden sheaf of minarets lay 
 ing their pointed fingers against the stars, and encircled with 
 the fretted galleries of the callers to prayer, like the hand of 
 a cardinal with its costly ring; with its seraglio gardens 
 washed on one side by the sea, and on the other by the gentle 
 stream that glides out of the " Valley of Sweet Waters," 
 men-of-war on one side, flaunting their red pennants over the 
 nightingale s nest which sings for the delight of a princess, 
 and the swift caique on the other gliding in protected waters, 
 where the same imprisoned fair one might fling into it a 
 flower (so slender is the dividing cape that shuts in the bay) ; 
 with its Bosphorus, its radiant and unmatched Bosphorus, 
 the most richly-gemmed river within the span of the sun, ex 
 tending with its fringe of palaces and castles from sea to sea, 
 and reflecting in its glassy eddies a pomp and sumptuousness 
 of costume and architecture which exceeds even your boyish 
 dreams of Bagdad and the caliphs. Constantinople, I say, 
 with its turbaned and bright-garmented population, its swarm- 
 
156 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 ing sea and rivers, its columns and aqueducts, and strange 
 ships of the East, its impenetrable seraglio and its close- 
 shuttered harems, its bezestein and its Hippodrome, Con 
 stantinople lay before me ! If the star I had worshipped had 
 descended to my hand out of the sky ; if my unapproachable 
 and yearning dream of woman s beauty had been bodied forth 
 warm and real ; if the missing star in the heel of Serpentarius, 
 and the lost sister of the Pleiades had waltzed back together 
 to their places ; if poets were once more prophets, not felons, 
 and books were read for the good that is in them, not for the 
 evil ; if love and truth had been seen again, or any impossible 
 or improbable thing had come to pass, I should not have 
 felt more thrillingly than now the emotions of surprise and 
 wonder ! 
 
 While I stood upon the marble turban of the Ichoglan, my 
 companions had descended the streets of Scutari, and I was 
 left alone with the gypsy. She sat on her Arab with her 
 head bowed to his neck, and when I withdrew my eye from 
 the scene I have faintly described, the tear-drops were glis 
 tening in the flowing mane, and her breast was heaving under 
 her embroidered jacket with uncontrollable grief. I jumped 
 to the ground, and, taking her head between my hands, 
 pressed her wet cheek to my lips. 
 
 " We part here, signor," said she, winding around her 
 head the masses of hair that had escaped from her turban, 
 and raising herself in the saddle as if to go on. 
 
 " I hope not, Maimuna ! " 
 
 She bent her moist eyes on me with a look of earnest 
 inquiry. 
 
 You are forbidden to intrust me with your errand to 
 Constantinople, and you have kept your word to your mother. 
 But whatever that errand may be, I hope it does not involve 
 your personal liberty? " 
 
 She looked embarrassed, but did not answer. 
 
THE GYPSY OF SARDIS. 157 
 
 4 You are very young to be trusted so far from your 
 mother, Maimuna ! " 
 
 "Signor, si! " 
 
 " But I think she can scarce have loved you so well as I 
 do, to have suffered you to come here alone ! " 
 
 " She intrusted me to you, signor." 
 
 I was well reminded of my promise. " I had given my 
 word to the gypsy that I would leave her child at the Persian 
 fountain of Tophana. Maimuna was evidently under a col - 
 trol stronger than the love I half hoped and half feared I 
 had awakened. 
 
 " Andiamo ! " she said, dropping her head upon her bosom 
 with the tears pouring once more over it like rain ; and driv 
 ing her stirrups with abandoned energy into the sides of 
 her Arabian, she dashed headlong down the uneven streets 
 of Scutari, and in a few minutes we stood on the limit of 
 Asia. 
 
 We left our horses in the " silver city," * crossing to the 
 "golden" in a caique; and with Maimuna in my bosom, 
 and every contending emotion at work in my heart, the scene 
 about me still made an indelible impression on my memory. 
 The star-shaped bay, a mile perhaps in diameter, was one 
 swarm of boats of every most slender and graceful form, 
 the caikjis in their silken shirts and vari-colored turbans 
 driving them through the water with a speed and skill which 
 put to shame the gondolier of Venice, and almost the Indian 
 in his canoe ; the gilded lattices and belvideres of the se 
 raglio, and the cypresses and flowering trees that mingle 
 their gay and sad foliage above them, were already so near 
 that I could count the roses upon the bars, and see the mov 
 ing of the trees in the evening wind ; the muezzins were 
 calling to sunset-prayer, their voices coming clear and pro- 
 
 i Qalata, the suburb on the European side, was the Chryaopolis, and Scutari, ou 
 the Asian, the Argentopolis of the ancients. 
 
158 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 longed over the water ; the men-of-war in the mouth of the 
 Bosphorus were lowering their blood-red flags ; the shore we 
 were approaching was thronged with veiled women, and 
 bearded old men, and boys with the yellow slipper and red 
 skull-cap of the East; and, watching our approach, stood 
 apart, a group of Jews and Armenians, marked by their 
 costume for an inferior race, but looking to my cosmopolite 
 eye as noble in their black robes and towering caps as the 
 haughty Mussulman that stood aloof from their company. 
 
 We set foot in Constantinople. It was the suburb of 
 Tophana ; and the suridji pointed out to Maimuna, as we 
 landed, a fountain of inlaid marble and brass, around whose 
 projecting frieze were traced inscriptions in the Persian. 
 She sprang to my hand. 
 
 "Remember, Maimuna!" I said, "that I offer you a 
 mother and a home in another and a happier land. I will 
 not interfere with your duty, but when your errand is done 
 you may find me if you will. Farewell." 
 
 With a passionate kiss in the palm of my hand, and one 
 beaming IOOK of love and sorrow in her large and lustrous 
 eyes, the gypsy turned to the fountain, and striking suddenly 
 to the left around the mosque of Sultan Selim, she plunged 
 into the narrow street running along the water-side to Galata. 
 
 VII. 
 
 We had wandered out from our semi-European, semi- 
 Turkish lodgings on the third morning after our arrival at 
 Constantinople, and picking our way listlessly over the bad 
 pavement of the suburb of Pera, stood at last in the small 
 burying-ground at the summit of the hill, disputing amicably 
 upon what quarter of the fair city beneath us we should 
 bestow our share in the bliss of that June morning. 
 
 "It is a heavenly day," said Job, sitting down unthink 
 ingly upon a large sculptured turban that formed the head- 
 
THE GYPSY OF SABDIS. 159 
 
 stone to the grave of some once- wealthy pagan, and looking 
 off wistfully toward the green summit of Bulgurlu. 
 
 The difference between Job and myself was a mania on 
 his part for green fields, and on mine for human faces. I 
 knew very well that his remark was a leader to some propo 
 sition for a stroll over the wilder hills of the Bosphorus, and 
 I was determined that he should enjoy, instead, the pleasure 
 of sympathy in my never-tiring amusement of wandering in 
 the crowded bazaars on the other side of the water. The 
 only way to accomplish it was to appear to yield the point, 
 and then rally upon his generosity. I had that delicacy for 
 his feelings (I had brought him all the way from the Green 
 Mountains at my own expense) , never to carry my measures 
 too ostentatiously. 
 
 Job was looking south, and my face was as resolutely 
 turned north. We must take a caique in any case at Galata 
 (lying just below us), but if we turned the prow south in 
 the first instance, farewell at every stroke to the city ! 
 whereas a northern course took us straight up the Golden 
 Horn, and I could appear to change my mind at any moment, 
 and land immediately in a street leading to the bazaars. 
 Luckily, while I was devising an errand to go up the channel 
 instead of down, a small red flag appeared gliding through 
 the forest of masts around the curve of the water-side at 
 Tophana, and in a moment more a high-pooped vessel, with 
 the carved railings and outlandish rigging of the ships from 
 the far East, shot out into the middle of the bay with the 
 strong current of the Bosphorus, and squaring her lateen 
 sail, she rounded a vessel lying at anchor with the flag of 
 Palestine, and steered with a fair wind up the channel of the 
 Golden Horn. A second look at her deck disclosed to me a 
 crowd of people, mostly women, standing amidships ; and 
 the supposition with which I was about inducing Job to take 
 a caique and pull up the harbor after her seemed to me now 
 almost a certainty. 
 
160 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 "It is a slave-ship from Trebizond, ten to one, my dear 
 Job!" 
 
 He slid off the marble turban which he had profaned so 
 unscrupulously ; and the next minute we passed the gate that 
 divides the European from the commercial suburb, and were 
 plunging down the steep and narrow straits of Galata with a 
 haste that, to the slippered and shuffling Turks we met or 
 left behind, seemed probably little short of madness. Of a 
 hundred slender and tossing caiques lying in the disturbed 
 waters of the bay, we selected the slenderest and best- 
 manned ; and getting Job in with the usual imminent danger 
 of driving his long legs through the bottom of the egg-shell 
 craft, we took in one of the obsequious Jews who swarm 
 about the pier as interpreters, coiled our legs under us in the 
 hollow womb of the ca ique, and shot away like a nautilus 
 after the slaver. 
 
 The deep-lying river that coils around the throbbing heart 
 of Constantinople is a place of as delicate navigation as a 
 Venetian lagoon on a festa, or a soiree of middling authors. 
 The Turk, like your plain-spoken friend, rows backward ; and 
 with ten thousand egg-shells swarming about him in every 
 direction, and his own prow rounded off in a pretty iron 
 point, an extra piastre for speed draws down curses on the 
 caikji and the Christian dogs who pay him for the holes he 
 lets into his neighbors boats, which are only equalled in bit 
 terness and profusion by the execrations which follow what 
 is called "speaking your mind." The Jew laughed, as 
 Jews do since Shylock, at the misfortunes of his oppressors ; 
 and, in the exercise of his vocation, translated us the oaths 
 as they came in right and left ; most of them very gratuitous 
 attacks on those (as Job gravely remarked) of whom they 
 could know very little, our respected mothers. 
 
 The slackening vessel lost her way as she got opposite the 
 bazaar of dried fruits; and as her yards came down by 
 
THE GYPST OF SABDIS. 161 
 
 the run, she put up her helm, and ran her towering prow 
 between a piratical-looking Egyptian craft, and a black and 
 bluff English collier inscribed appropriately on the stern as 
 the " Snowdrop " from Newcastle. Down plumped her 
 anchor, and in the next moment the Jew hailed her by our 
 orders, and my conjecture was proved to be right. She was 
 from Trebizond, with slaves and spices. 
 
 " What would they do if we were to climb up her side? " 
 I asked the Israelite. 
 
 He stretched up his crouching neck till his twisted beard 
 hung clear off like a waterfall from his chin, and looked 
 through the carved railing very intently. 
 
 " The slaves are Georgians," he answered, after a while ; 
 "and if there were no Turkish purchasers on board, they 
 might simply order you down again." 
 
 " And if there were " 
 
 "The women would be considered damaged by a Christian 
 eye, and the slave-merchant might shoot you or pitch you 
 overboard. 
 
 " Is that all? " said Job, evolving his length very deliber 
 ately from his coil, and offering me a hand the next moment 
 from the deck of the slaver. Whether the precedence he 
 took in all dangers arose from affection for me, or from a 
 praiseworthy indifference to the fate of such a trumpery col 
 lection as his own body and limbs, I have never decided to 
 my own satisfaction. 
 
 In the confusion of port-officers and boats alongside, all 
 hailing and crying out together, we stood on the outer side 
 of the deck unobserved ; and I was soon intently occupied 
 in watching the surprise and wonder of the pretty toys who 
 found themselves for the first time in the heart of a great 
 city. The owner of their charms, whichever of a dozen vil- 
 lanous Turks I saw about them it might be, had no time to pay 
 them very particular attention, and dropping their dirty veils 
 
102 PROSE WETTINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 about their shoulders, they stood open-mouthed and staring, 
 ten or twelve rosy damsels in their teens, with eyes as deep 
 as a well, and almost as large and liquid. Their features 
 were all good, their skins without a flaw, hair abundant, and 
 figures of a healthy plumpness ; looking, with the exception 
 of their eyes, which were very oriental and magnificent, like 
 the great, fat, pie-eating, yawning boarding-school misses 
 one sees over a hedge at Hampstead. It was delicious to 
 see their excessive astonishment at the splendors of the 
 Golden Horn, they from the desert mountains of Georgia 
 or Circassia, and the scene about them (mosques, minarets, 
 people, and men-of-war, all together) probably the most 
 brilliant and striking in the world. I was busy following 
 their eyes and trying to divine their impressions, when Job 
 seized me by the arm. An old Turk had just entered the 
 vessel from the land side, and was assisting a closely veiled 
 female to mount after him. Half a glance satisfied me that 
 it was the gypsy of Sardis, the lovely companion of our 
 journey to Constantinople. 
 
 "Maimuna ! " I exclaimed, darting forward on the instant. 
 
 A heavy hand struck me back as I touched her ; and as I 
 returned the blow, the swarthy crew of Arabs closed about 
 us, and we were hurried with a most unceremonious haste to 
 the side of the vessel. I scarce know, between my indigna 
 tion and the stunning effect of the blow I had received, how 
 I got into the caique ; but we were pulling fast up the Golden 
 Horn by the time I could speak, and in half an hour were set 
 ashore on the green bank of the Barbyses, bound on a soli 
 tary ramble up the Valley of Sweet Waters. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The art of printing was introduced into the Mohammedan 
 empire in the reigns of Achmet III. and Louis XV. I seldom 
 state a statistical fact, but this is one I happen to know, and 
 
THE GPPSY OF SARDIS. 163 
 
 I mention it because the most fanciful and romantic abode 
 with which I am acquainted in the world was originally built 
 to contain the first printing-press brought from the court 
 of Versailles by Mehemet Effendi, ambassador from the 
 " Brother of the Sun." It is now a maison de plaisance for 
 the sultan s favorite women ; and in all the dreams of 
 perfect felicity which visit those who have once seen it, it 
 rises as the paradise of retreats from the world. 
 
 The serai of Khyat-Khana is a building of gold and mar 
 ble dropped down un fenced upon the greensward in the 
 middle of a long emerald valley, more like some fairy vision, 
 conjured and forgotten to be dissolved, than a house to live 
 in, real, weather-proof, and to be seen for the value of one 
 and sixpence. The Barbyses falls over the lip of a sea-shell 
 (a marble cascade sculptured in that pretty device), sending 
 up its spray and its perpetual music close under the gilded 
 lattice of the sultana ; and, following it back with the eye, 
 like a silver thread in a broidery of green velvet, it comes 
 stealing down through miles of the tenderest verdure, without 
 tree or shrub upon its borders, but shut in with the seclusion 
 of an enchanted stream and valley by mountains which rise 
 in abrupt precipices from the edges of its carpet of grass, 
 and fling their irregular shadows across it at every hour save 
 high noon sacred in the East to the sleep of beauty and 
 idleness. 
 
 In the loving month of May, it is death to set foot in 
 the Khyat-Khana. The ascending caique is stopped in the 
 Golden Horn, and on the point of every hill is stationed a 
 mounted eunuch with drawn sabre. The Arab steeds of the 
 sultan are picketed on the low-lying grass of the valley ; and 
 his hundred Circassians come from their perfumed chambers 
 in the seraglio, and sun their untold loveliness on the velvet 
 banks of the Barbyses. From the Golden Horn to Belgrade, 
 twelve miles of greensward (sheltered like a vein of ore in 
 
164 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 the bosom of the earth, and winding away after the course 
 of that pebbly river, unseen save by the eye of the sun and 
 stars) are sacred in this passion-born month from the foot 
 of man ; and riding in their scarlet arubas, with the many- 
 colored ribbons floating back from the horns of their bul 
 locks, and their own snowy veils dropped from their guarded 
 shoulders and deep-dyed lips, wander, from sunrise to sunset, 
 these caged birds of a sultan s delight, longing as wildly 
 (who shall doubt?) to pass that guarded barrier into the 
 forbidden world, as we, who sigh for them without, to fly 
 from falsehood and wrong, and forget that same world in 
 their bosoms ! 
 
 How few are content ! How restless are even the most 
 spoiled children of fortune ! How inevitably the heart sighs 
 for that which it has not, even though its only want is a cloud 
 on its perpetual sunshine ! We were not of those, Job 
 and I, for we were of that school of philosophers 1 who 
 "had little, and wanted nothing;" but we agreed, as we 
 sat upon the marble bridge sprung like a wind-lifted cobweb 
 over the Barbyses, that the envy of a human heart would 
 poison even the content of a beggar ! He is a fool who is 
 sheltered from hunger and cold, and still complains of for 
 tune ; but he is only not a slave or a seraph, who, feeling on 
 the innermost fibre of his sensibility the icy breath of malice, 
 utters his eternal malison on the fiend who can neither be 
 grappled with nor avoided. I could make a paradise with 
 loveliness and sunshine, if envy could be forbidden at the 
 gate ! 
 
 We had walked around the serai, and tried all its entrances 
 in vain, when Job spied, under the shelter of the southern 
 hill, a blood-red flag flying at the top of a small tent of the 
 Prophet s green, doubtless concealing the kervas, who kept 
 
 1 With a difference. " Nihil est t nihil deest," was their motto. 
 
THE GYPSY OF SAEDIS. 165 
 
 his lonely guard over the precincts. I sent my friend with 
 a "pinch of piastres" to tempt the trousered infidel to our 
 will ; and he soon came shuffling in his unmilitary slippers 
 with keys, which, the month before, were guarded like the 
 lamp of Aladdin. We entered. We rambled over the cham 
 bers of the chosen houries of the East ; we looked through 
 their lattices, and laid the palms of our hands on the silken 
 cushions dimmed in oval spots by the moisture of their cheeks 
 as they slept ; we could see by the tarnished gold, breast-high 
 at the windows, where they had pressed to the slender lattices 
 to look forth upon the valley ; and Job, more watchfully alive 
 to the thrilling traces of beauty, showed me in the diamond- 
 shaped bars the marks of their moist fingers and the stain as 
 of lips between, betraying where they had clung, and laid 
 their faces against the trellis in the indolent attitude of gazers 
 from a wearisome prison. Mirrors and ottomans were the 
 only furniture ; and never, for me, would the wand of Cor 
 nelius Agrippa have been more welcome than to wave back 
 into those senseless mirrors the images of beauty they had 
 lost. 
 
 I sat down on a raised corner of the divan, probably the 
 privileged seat of the favorite of the hour. Job stood with 
 his lips apart, brooding in speechless poeticalness on his own 
 thoughts. 
 
 " Do you think, after all," said I, reverting to the matter- 
 of-fact vein of my own mind, which was paramount usually to 
 the romantic, " do you think really, Job, that the Zuleikas 
 and Fatimas who have by turns pressed this silken cushion 
 with their crossed feet, were not probably inferior in attrac 
 tion to the most third-rate belle of New England ? How long 
 would you love a woman that could neither read nor write, 
 nor think five minutes on any given theme? The utmost 
 exertion of intellect in the loveliest of these deep-eyed 
 Circassians is probably the language of flowers ; and, good 
 
166 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 heavens ! think how one of your detta Cruscan sentiments 
 would be lost upon her ! And yet here you are, ready to go 
 mad with romantic fancies about women that were never 
 taught even their letters." 
 
 Job began to hum a stave of his favorite song, which was 
 always a sign that he was vexed and disenchanted of himself. 
 
 "How little women think," said I, proceeding with my 
 unsentimental vein, while Job looked out of the window, and 
 the kervas smoked his pipe on the sultana s ottoman, "how 
 little women think that the birch and the dark closet, and the 
 thumbed and dog-eared spelling-book (or whatever else, more 
 refined, torments their tender years in the shape of educa 
 tion), was, after all, the groundwork and secret of their fas 
 cination over men. What a process it is to arrive at love ! 
 1 D-o-g, dog c-a-t, cat ! If you had not learned this, 
 bright Lady Melicent, I fear Captain Augustus Fitz-Somerset 
 would never have sat, as I saw him last night, cutting your 
 initials with a diamond ring on the purple claret-glass which 
 had just poured a bumper to your beauty ! " 
 
 "You are not far wrong," said Job, after a long pause, 
 during which I had delivered myself, unheard, of the above 
 practical apostrophe, "you are not far wrong, quoad the 
 women of New England. They would be considerable bores 
 if they had not learned, in their days of bread-and-butter, 
 to read, write, and reason. But, for the women of the softer 
 South and East, I am by no means clear that education would 
 not be inconsistent with the genius of the clime. Take your 
 self back to Italy, for example, where, for two mortal years, 
 you philandered up and down between Venice and Amalfi, 
 never out of the sunshine or away from the feet of women, 
 and, in all that precious episode of your youth, never guilty, 
 I will venture to presume, of either suggesting or expressing 
 a new thought. And the reason is, not that the imagination 
 is dull, but that nobody thinks, except upon exigency, in these 
 
THE GYPSY OF SARDIS. 167 
 
 latitudes. It would be violent, and inapt to the spirit of the 
 hour. Indolence, voluptuous indolence of body and mind 
 (the latter at the same time lying broad awake in its chamber, 
 and alive to every pleasurable image that passes uncalled 
 before its windows) is the genius, the only genius, of the 
 night and day. What would be so discordant as an argument 
 by moonlight in the Coliseum ? What so ill-bred and atro 
 cious as the destruction by logic of the most loose-spun 
 theory, by the murmuring fountains of the Pamfili ? To live 
 is enough in these lands of the sun. But merely to live, in 
 ours, is to be bound, Prometheus-like, to a rock, with a vul- 
 tuie at our vitals. Even in the most passionate intercourse 
 of love in your Northern clime, you read to your mistress, or 
 she sings to you, or you think it necessary to drive or ride ; 
 but I know nothing that would more have astonished your 
 Venetian bionda than, when the lamp was lit in the gondola 
 that you might see her beauty on the lagoon in the starless 
 night, to have pulled a book from your pocket, and read even 
 a tale of love from Boccaccio. And that is why I could be 
 more content to be a pipe-bearer in Asia, than a schoolmaster 
 in Vermont ; or, sooner than a judge s ermine in England, to 
 wear a scrivener s rags, and sit in the shade of a portico, 
 writing love-letters for the peasant-girls of Rome. Talk of 
 republics ! your only land of equality is that in which to 
 breathe is the supreme happiness. The monarch throws 
 open his window for the air that comes to him past the brow 
 of a lazzaroni, and the wine on the patrician s lip intoxicates 
 less than the water from the fountain that is free to all, 
 though it gush from the marble bosom of a nymph. If I 
 were to make a world, I would have the climate of Greece, 
 and no knowledge that did not come by intuition. Men and 
 women should grow wise enough, as the flowers grow fair 
 enough, with sunshine and air ; and they should follow their 
 instincts like the birds, and go from sweet to sweet with as 
 
168 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 little reason or trouble. Exertion should be a misdemeanor, 
 and desire of action, if it were not too monstrous to require 
 legislation, should be treason to the state." 
 " Long live King Job ! " 
 
 PART II. 
 
 I HAD many unhappy thoughts about Maimuna : the glance 
 I had snatched on board the Trebizond slaver left in my 
 memory a pair of dark eyes full of uneasiness and doubt, 
 and I knew her elastic motions so well that there was some 
 thing in her single step as she came over the gangway which 
 assured me that she was dispirited and uncertain of her 
 errand. Who was the old Turk who dragged her up the 
 vessel s side with so little ceremony? What could the child 
 of a gypsy be doing on the deck of a slaver from Trebizond ? 
 
 With no very definite ideas as to the disposal of this lovely 
 child should I succeed in my wishes, I had insensibly made 
 up my mind that she could never be happy without me, and 
 that my one object in Constantinople was to get her into 
 my possession. I had a delicacy in communicating the full 
 extent of niy design to Job ; for, aside from the grave view 
 he would take of the morality of the step and her probable 
 fate as a woman, he would have painful and just doubts of 
 my ability to bear this additional demand upon my means. 
 Though entirely dependent himself, Job had that natural 
 contempt for the precious metals, that he could not too freely 
 assist any one to their possession who happened to set a 
 value on the amount in his pocket ; and this, I may say, was 
 the one point which, between my affectionate monster and 
 myself, was not discussed as harmoniously as the loves of 
 
THE GYPSY OF SARDIS. 169 
 
 Corydon and Alexis. The account of his expenditure, which 
 I regularly exacted of him before he tied on his bandanna at 
 night, was always more or less unsatisfactory ; and though 
 he would not have hesitated to bestow a whole scudo un 
 thinkingly on the first dirty dervish he should meet, he was 
 still sufficiently impressed with the necessity of economy to 
 remember it in an argument of any length or importance : 
 and for this and some other reasons I reserved my confidence 
 upon the intended addition to my suite. 
 
 Not far from the Burnt Column, in the very heart of 
 Stamboul, lived an old merchant in attar and jessamine, 
 called Mustapha. Every one who has been at Constantinople 
 will remember him and his Nubian slave in a small shop on 
 the right, as you ascend to the Hippodrome. He calls him 
 self essence-seller to the sultan, but his principal source of 
 profit is the stranger who is brought to his divans by the 
 interpreters in his pay ; and to his credit be it said, that, for 
 the courtesy of his dealings, and for the excellence of his 
 extracts, the stranger could not well fall into better hands. 
 
 It had been my fortune, on my first visit to Mustapha, to 
 conciliate his good-will. I had laid in my small stock of 
 spice- woods and essences on that occasion, and the call which 
 I made religiously every time I crossed the Golden Horn was 
 purely a matter of friendship. In addition to one or two 
 trifling presents, which (with a knowledge of human nature) 
 I had returned in the shape of two mortal sins, a keg of 
 brandy and a flask of gin, bought out of the English collier 
 lying in the bay, in addition to his kind presents, I say, 
 my large-trousered friend had made me many pressing offers 
 of service. There was little probability, it was true, that 
 I should ever find occasion to profit by them ; but I never 
 theless believed that his hand was laid upon his heart in 
 earnest sincerity, and, in the course of my reflections upon 
 the fate of Maimuna, it had occurred to me more than once 
 
170 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 that he might be of use in clearing up the mystery of her 
 motions. 
 
 " Job ! " said I, as we were dawdling along the street of 
 confectioners with our Jew behind us one lovely morning, 
 44 I am going to call at Mustapha s." 
 
 We had started to go to the haunt of the opium-eaters, 
 and he was rather surprised at my proposition ; but, with his 
 usual amiableuess (very inconvenient and vexatious in this 
 particular instance), he stepped over the gutter without say 
 ing a word, and made for the first turning to the right. It 
 was the first time since we had left New England that I 
 wished myself rid of his company. 
 
 " But, Job," said I, calling him back to the shady side of 
 the street, and giving him a great lump of candy from the 
 nearest stall (its Oriental name, by the way, is " peace- to- 
 your- throat "), "I thought you were bent on eating opium 
 to-day ?" 
 
 My poor friend looked at me for a minute, as if to compre 
 hend the drift of my remark ; and, as he arrived by regular 
 deduction at the result, I read very clearly in his hideous 
 physiognomy the painful embarrassment it occasioned him. 
 It was only the day before, that, in descending the Bospho- 
 rus, we had seen a party of the summary administrators of 
 justice quietly suspending a Turkish woman and her Greek 
 paramour from the shutters of a chamber- window, inter 
 course with a Christian, in that country of liberal legislation, 
 being punishable without trial or benefit of dervish. From 
 certain observations on my disposition in the course of my 
 adventures, Job had made up his mind, I well knew, that 
 my danger was more from Delilah than the Philistines ; and 
 while these victims of love were kicking their silken trousers 
 in the air, I saw by the look of tender anxiety he cast upon 
 me from the bottom of the caique, that the moral in his 
 mind would result in an increased vigilance over my motions. 
 
THE GYPSY OF SAEDIS. 171 
 
 While he stood with his teeth stuck full of ; peace- to-your- 
 throat," therefore, forgetting even the instinct of mastication 
 in his surprise and sorrow, I well understood what picture 
 was in his mind, and what construction he put upon my 
 sudden desire to solitude. 
 
 "My dear Philip!" he began, speaking with difficulty 
 from the stickiness of the candy in his teeth, "your respected 
 mother 
 
 At this instant a kervas, preceding a Turk of rank, jostled 
 suddenly against him ; and as the mounted Mussulman, with 
 his train of runners and pipe-bearers, came sweeping by, I 
 took the opportunity of Job s surprise to slip past with the 
 rest, and, turning down an alley, quietly mounted one of the 
 saddle-horses standing for hire at the first mosque, and pur 
 sued my way alone to the shop of the attar-merchant. To 
 dismount, and hurry Mustapha into his inner and private 
 apartment, with an order to the Nubian to deny me to every 
 body who should inquire, was the work of a minute, but 
 it was scarcely done before I heard Job breathless at the 
 door. 
 
 44 Ha visto il siynore?" he exclaimed, getting to the back 
 of the shop with a single stride. 
 
 li Ejfendi, no!" said the imperturbable Turk, and he laid 
 his hand on his heart, as he advanced, and offered him with 
 grave courtesy the pipe from his lips. 
 
 The Jew had come puffing into the shop with his slippers 
 in his hand, and dropping upon his hams near the door, he 
 took off his small gray turban, and was wiping the perspira 
 tion from his high and narrow forehead, when Job darted 
 again into the street with a sign to him to follow. The look 
 of despair and exhaustion with which he shook out his baggy 
 trousers, and made after the striding Yankee, was too much 
 even for the gravity of Mustapha. He laid aside his pipe, 
 and, as the Nubian struck in with the peculiar cackle of his 
 
172 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 race, I joined myself in their merriment with a heartiness to 
 which many a better joke might have failed to move me. 
 
 While Mustapha was concluding his laugh between the 
 puffs of his amber pipe, I had thrown myself along the 
 divan, and was studying with some curiosity the inner apart 
 ment in which I had been concealed. A curtain of thick but 
 tarnished gold cloth (as sacred from intrusion in the East as 
 the bolted and barred doors of Europe) separated from the 
 outer shop a small octagonal room, that, in size and furni 
 ture, resembled the Turkish boudoirs which, in the luxurious 
 palaces of Europe, sometimes adjoin a lady s chamber. The 
 slippered foot was almost buried in the rich carpets laid but 
 not fitted to the floor. The divans were covered with the 
 flowered and lustrous silk of Brusa, and piled with vari 
 colored cushions. A perpetual spice-lamp sent up its thin 
 wreaths of smoke to the black and carved ceiling, diffusing 
 through the room a perfume which, while it stole to the 
 innermost fibres of the brain with a sense of pleasure, 
 weighed on the eyelids and relaxed the limbs ; and as the 
 eye became more accustomed to the dim light which struggled 
 in from a window in the arched ceiling, and dissolved in the 
 luxurious and spicy atmosphere, heaps of the rich shawls of 
 the East became distinguishable with their sumptuous dyes, 
 and in a corner stood a cluster of crystal narghiles, faintly 
 reflecting the light in their dim globes of rose-water, while 
 costly pipes, silver-mounted pistols, and a rich Damascus 
 sabre in a sheath of red velvet, added gorgeousness to the 
 apartment. 
 
 Mustapha was a bit of a philosopher in his way, and he 
 had made his own observations on the Europeans who came 
 to his shop. The secluded and Oriental luxuriousness of 
 the room I have described was one of his lures to that pas 
 sion for the picturesque which he saw in every traveller ; and 
 another was his gigantic Nubian, who, with bracelets and 
 
THE GYPSY OF SARDIS. 173 
 
 anklets of gold, a white turban, and naked legs and arms, 
 stood always at the door of his shop, inviting the passers-by 
 not to buy essences and pastilles, but to come in and take 
 sherbet with his master. You will have been an hour upon 
 his comfortable divans, have smoked a pipe or two, and 
 eaten a snowy sherbet or a dish of rice-paste and sugar, 
 before Mustapha nods to his slave, and produces his gold- 
 rimmed jars of essences, from which, with his fat forefinger, 
 he anoints the palm of your hand, or, with a compliment to 
 the beauty of your hair, throws a drop into the curl on your 
 temples. Meanwhile, as you smoke, the slave lays in the 
 bowl of your pipe a small pastille wrapped in gold-leaf, from 
 which presently arrives to your nostrils a perfume that might 
 delight a sultan ; and then, from the two black hands which 
 are held to you full of cubical-edged vials with gilded stop 
 pers, you arc requested with the same bland courtesy to 
 select such as in size or shape suite your taste and conven 
 ience the smallest of them, when filled with attar, worth 
 near a gold piaster. 
 
 This is not very ruinous ; and your next temptation comes 
 in the shape of a curiously wrought censer, upon the filagree 
 grating of which are laid strips of odorent wood which, with 
 the heat of the coals beneath, give out a perfume like gums 
 from Araby. This, Mustapha swears to you by his beard, 
 has a spell in its spicy breath provocative as a philter, and 
 is to be burnt in your lady s chamber. It is worth its weight 
 in gold, and for a handful of black chips you are persuaded 
 to pay a price which would freight a caique with cinnamon. 
 Then come bracelets and amulets and purses, all fragrant 
 and precious ; and while you hesitate, the Nubian brings you 
 coffee that would open the heart of Shylock, and you drink 
 and purchase. And when you have spent all your money, 
 you go away delighted with Mustapha, and quite persuaded 
 that you are vastly obliged to him. And, all things con 
 sidered, so you are ! 
 
174 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 When Mustapha had finished his prayers (did I say that 
 it was noon ?) , he called in the Nubian to roll up the sacred 
 carpet, and then, closing the curtain between us and the shop, 
 listened patiently to my story of the gypsy, which I told him 
 faithfully from the beginning. When I arrived at the inci 
 dent on board the slaver, a sudden light seemed to strike 
 upon his mind. 
 
 "Pekhe, filio mio ! pekhe ! " he exclaimed, running his 
 forefinger down the middle of his beard, and pouring out a 
 volume of smoke from his mouth and nostrils which obscured 
 him for a moment from my sight. 
 
 (I dislike the introduction of foreign words into a story, 
 but the Turkish dissyllable in the foregoing sentence is as 
 constantly on an Eastern lip as the amber of the pipe.) 
 
 He clapped his hands as I finished my narration, and the 
 Nubian appeared. Some conversation passed between them 
 in Turkish, and the slave tightened his girdle, made a salaam, 
 and, taking his slippers at the outer door, left the shop. 
 
 " We shall find her at the slave-market," said Mustapha. 
 
 I started. The thought had once or twice passed through 
 my mind, but I had as often rejected it as impossible. A 
 freeborn Zingara, and on a confidential errand from her own 
 mother ! I did not see how her freedom, if there were dan 
 ger, should have been so carelessly put in peril. 
 
 "And if she is there ! " said I, remembering first, that it 
 was against the Mohammedan law for a Christian to purchase 
 a slave ; and next, that the price, if it did not ruin me at 
 once, would certainly leave me in a situation rather to lessen 
 than increase my expenses. 
 
 " I will buy her for you," said Mustapha. 
 
 The Nubian returned at this moment, and laid at my feet 
 a bundle of wearing apparel. He then took from a shelf a 
 shaving apparatus, with which he proceeded to lather my 
 forehead and temples ; and after a short argument with 
 
THE GYPSY OF SAKDIS. 175 
 
 Mustapha, in which I pleaded in vain for two very seducing 
 clusters of curls, those caressed minions dropped into the 
 black hand of the slave, and nothing was left for the petits 
 soins of my thumb and forefinger in their leisure hours save 
 a well-coaxed and rather respectable mustache. A skull-cap 
 and turban completed the transformation of my head ; and 
 then, with some awkwardness, I got into a silk shirt, big 
 trowsers, jacket, and slippers, and stood up to look at my 
 self in the mirror. I was as like one of the common Turks 
 of the street as possible, save that the European cravat and 
 stockings had preserved an unoriental whiteness in my neck 
 and ankles. This was soon remedied with a little brown 
 juice ; and, after a few cautions from Mustapha as to my 
 behavior, I settled my turban, and followed him into the 
 street. 
 
 It is a singular sensation to be walking about in a strange 
 costume, and find that nobody looks surprised. I could not 
 avoid a slight feeling of mortification at the rude manner with 
 which every dirty Mussulman took the wall of me. After 
 long travel in foreign lauds, the habit of everywhere excit 
 ing notice as a stranger, and the species of consequence at 
 tached to the person and movements of a traveller, become 
 rather pleasures than otherwise, and it is not without pain 
 that one finds one s self once more like common people. I 
 have not yet returned to my own land (Slingsby is an Ameri 
 can, gentle reader), and cannot judge, therefore, how far 
 this feeling is modified by the pleasures of a recovered home ; 
 but I was vexed not to be stared at when playing the Turk 
 at Constantinople ; and, amusing as it was to be taken for 
 an Englishman on first arriving in England (different as it is 
 from every laud I have seen, and still more different from 
 my own), I must confess to have experienced again a feeling 
 of lessened consequence, when, on my first entrance into an 
 hotel in London, I was taken for an Oxonian " come up for 
 
176 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 a lark" in term-time. Perhaps I have stumbled in this re 
 mark upon one of those unconfessed reasons why a returned 
 traveller is proverbially discontented with his home. 
 
 Whether Mustapha wished to exhibit his new pipe-bearer 
 to his acquaintances, or whether there was fun enough in 
 his obese composition to enjoy my difficulties in adapting 
 myself to my new circumstances, I cannot precisely say ; but 
 I soon found that we were not going straight to the slave- 
 market. I had several times forgotten my disguise so far as 
 to keep the narrow walk till I stood face to face with the 
 bearded Mussulmans, who were only so much astonished at 
 my audacity that they forgot to kick me over the gutter ; and 
 passing, in the bazaar of saddle-cloths, an English officer of 
 my acquaintance, who belonged to the corvette lying in the 
 Bosphorus, I could not resist the temptation of whispering 
 in his ear the name of his sweetheart (which he had confided 
 to me over a bottle at Smyrna) , though I rather expected to 
 be seized by the turban the next moment, with the pleasant 
 consequences of a mob and an exposure. My friend was so 
 thoroughly amazed, however, that I was deep in the crowd 
 before he had drawn breath ; and I look daily now for his 
 arrival in England (I have not seen him since) with a curi 
 osity to know how he supposes a " blackguard Turk " knew 
 any thing of the lock of hair he carried in his waistcoat- 
 pocket. 
 
 The essence-seller had stopped in the book-bazaar, and was 
 condescendingly smoking a pipe, with his legs crossed on the 
 counter of a venerable Armenian, who sat buried to the chin 
 in his own wares, when who should come pottering along (as 
 Mrs. Butler would say) but Job with his Jew behind him ! 
 Mustapha (probably unwilling to be seen smoking with an 
 Armenian) had ensconced himself behind a towering heap of 
 folios, and his vexed and impatient pipe-bearer had taken 
 his more humble position on the narrow base of one of the 
 
THE GYPSY OF SARDIS. 177 
 
 checkered columns which are peculiar to the bazaar devoted 
 to the bibliopolists. As my friend came floundering along, 
 " all abroad " with his legs and arms, as usual, I contrived, 
 by an adroit insertion of one of my feet between his, to spread 
 him over the musty tomes of the Armenian in a way calcu 
 lated to derange materially the well-ordered sequence of the 
 volumes. 
 
 4 Allah ! Mashallah !" exclaimed Mustapha, whose spread 
 ing lap was filled with black-letter copies of the Koran, 
 while the bowl of his pipe was buried in the fallen pyramid. 
 
 "Bestia Inglese ! " muttered the Armenian, as Job put 
 one hand in the inkstand in endeavoring to rise, and with the 
 next effort laid his blackened fingers on a heap of choice 
 volumes bound in snowy vellum. 
 
 The officious Jew took up the topmost copy, marked like a 
 cinq-foil with his spreading thumb and fingers, and quietly 
 asked the Armenian what il signore would be expected to 
 pay. As I knew he had no money in his pocket, I calculated 
 safely on his new embarrassment to divert his anger from 
 the original cause of his overthrow. 
 
 " Tre colonati," said the bookseller. 
 
 Job opened the book, and his well-known guttural of sur 
 prise and delight assured me that I might come out from 
 behind the column and look over his shoulder. It was an 
 illuminated copy of Hafiz, with a Latin translation, a treas 
 ure which his heart had been set upon from our first arrival 
 in the East, and for which I well knew he would sell his coat 
 off his back without hesitation. The desire to give it him 
 passed through my mind, but I could see no means, under 
 my present circumstances, either of buying the book or 
 relieving him from his embarrassment ; and as he buried his 
 nose deeper between the leaves, and sat down on the low 
 counter, forgetful alike of his dilemma and his lost friend, I 
 nodded to Mustapha to get off as quietly as possible, and, 
 
1 1 8 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 fortunately slipping past both him and the Jew unrecognized, 
 left him to finish the loves of Gulistan and settle his account 
 with the incensed Armenian. 
 
 II. 
 
 As we entered the gates of the slave-market, Mustapha 
 renewed his cautions to me with regard to my conduct ; 
 reminded me that, as a Christian, I should see the white 
 female slaves at the peril of my life ; and immediately 
 assumed, himself, a sauntering and poco-curante manner, 
 equally favorable to concealment and to his interests as a 
 purchaser. I followed close at his heels with his pipe, and 
 as he stopped to chat with his acquaintances, I now and then 
 gave a shove with the bowl between his jacket and girdle, 
 rendered impatient to the last degree by the sight of the 
 close lattices on every side of us, and the sounds of the chat 
 tering voices within. 
 
 I should have been interested, had I been a mere specta 
 tor, in the scene about me ; but Mustapha s unnecessary and 
 provoking delay while (as I thought possible, if she really 
 were in the market) Maimuna might be bartered for at that 
 moment within, wound my rage to a pitch at last scarcely 
 endurable. 
 
 We had come up from a cellar to which one of Mustapha s 
 acquaintances had taken him to see a young white lad he was 
 about to purchase, and I was hoping that my suspense was 
 nearly over, when a man came forward into the middle of 
 the court, ringing a hand-bell, and followed by a black girl 
 covered with a scant blanket. Like most of her race (she 
 was an Abyssinian), her head was that of a brute, but never 
 were body and limbs more exquisitely moulded. She gazed 
 about without either surprise or shame, stepping after the 
 crier with an elastic, leopard-like tread, her feet turned in 
 ike those of the North American Indian, her neck bent 
 
THE GYPSY OF SARDIS. 179 
 
 gracefully forward, and her shoulders and hips working with 
 that easy play so lost in the constrained dress and motion 
 of civilized women. The Mercury of Giovanni di Bologna 
 springs not lighter from the jet of the fountain than did this 
 ebon Venus from the ground on which she stood. 
 
 I ventured to whisper to Mustapha that, under cover of 
 the sale of the Abyssinian, we might see the white slaves 
 more unobserved. 
 
 A bid was made for her. 
 
 " Fifteen piasters," said the attar-seller, wholly absorbed 
 in the sale, and not hearing a syllable I said to him. " She 
 would be worth twice as much to gild my pastilles ! " And 
 handing me his pipe, he waddled into the centre of the court, 
 lifted the blanket from the slave s shoulders, turned her 
 round and round like a Venus on a pivot, looked at her 
 teeth and hands, and, after a conversation aside with the 
 crier, he resumed his pipe, and the black disappeared from 
 the ground. 
 
 u I have bought her ! " he said with a salacious grin, as I 
 handed him his tobacco-bag, and muttered a round Italian 
 execration in his ear. 
 
 The idea that Maimuna might have become the property 
 of that gross and sensual monster just as easily as the pretty 
 negress he had bought, sent my blood boiling for an instant 
 to my cheek. Yet I had seen this poor savage of seventeen 
 sold without a thought save mental congratulation that she 
 would be better fed and clad. What a difference one s pri 
 vate feelings make in one s sympathies ! 
 
 I was speculating, in a kind of tranquil despair, on the 
 luxurious evils of slavery, when Mustapha called to him an 
 Egyptian in a hooded blue cloak, whom I remembered to 
 have seen on board the Trebizondian. He was a small- 
 featured, black-lipped, willowy Asiatic, with heavy-lidded 
 eyes, and hands as dry and rusty as the claws of a harpy. 
 
180 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 After a little conversation, he rose from the platform on 
 which he had crossed his legs, and, taking my pro-tempore 
 master by the sleeve, traversed the quadrangle to a closed 
 door in the best-looking of the miserable houses that sur 
 rounded the court. I followed close upon his heels with a 
 beating heart. It seemed to me as if every eye in the 
 crowded market-place must penetrate my disguise. He 
 knocked, and, answering to some one who spoke from within, 
 the door was opened ; and the next moment I found myself 
 in the presence of a dozen veiled women, seated in various 
 attitudes on the floor. At the command of our conductor, 
 carpets were brought for Mustapha and himself ; and, as 
 they dropped upon their hams, every veil was removed, and 
 a battery of staring and unwinking eyes was levied full upon 
 us. 
 
 "Is she here?" said Mustapha to me in Italian, as I 
 stooped over to hand him his eternal pipe. 
 
 " Dio mio! no! " 
 
 I felt insulted that, with half a glance at the Circassian 
 and Georgian dolls sitting before us, he could ask me the 
 question. Yet they were handsome. Red cheeks, white 
 teeth, black eyes, and youth could scarce compose a plain 
 woman ; and thus much of beauty seemed equally bestowed 
 on all. 
 
 "Has he no more?" I asked, stooping to Mustapha s 
 ear. 
 
 I looked around while he was getting the information I 
 wanted in his own deliberate way, and, scarce knowing what 
 I did, applied my eye to a crack in the wall, through which 
 had been coming for some time a strong aroma of coffee. I 
 saw at first only a small dim room, in the midst of which 
 stood a Turkish manghal or brazier of coals sustaining the 
 coffee-pot, from which came the agreeable perfume I had 
 inhaled. As my eye became accustomed to the light, I could 
 
THE GYPSY OF SAEDIS. 181 
 
 distinguish a heap of what 1 took to be shawls lying in the 
 centre of the floor ; and, presuming it was the dormitory of 
 one of the slave-owners, I was about turning my head away, 
 when the coffee on the manghal suddenly boiled over, and at 
 the same instant started from the heap, at which I had been 
 gazing, the living form of Maimuna ! 
 
 "Mustapha!" I cried, starting back, and clasping my 
 hands before him. 
 
 Before I could utter another word, a grasp upon my ankle, 
 that drew blood with every nail, restored me to my self- 
 possession. The Circassians began to giggle ; and the wary 
 old Turk, taking no apparent notice of my agitation, or 
 dered me, in a stern tone, to fill his pipe, and went on con 
 versing with the Egyptian. 
 
 I leaned with an effort at carelessness against the wall, and 
 looked once more through the crevice. She stood by the 
 manghal, filling a cup with a small filagree holder from the 
 coffee-pot, and by the light of the fire I could see every fea 
 ture of her face as distinctly as daylight. She was alone, and 
 had been sitting with her head on her knees, and the shawl, 
 which had now fallen to her shoulders, drawn over her till it 
 concealed her feet. A narrow carpet was beneath her, and 
 as she moved from the fire a slight noise drew my attention 
 downward, and I saw that she was chained by the ankle to 
 the floor. I stooped to the ear of Mustapha, told him in a 
 whisper of my discovery, and implored him, for the love of 
 Heaven, to get admission into her apartment. 
 
 " Peklie ! peklie ! filio mio ! " was the unsatisfactory answer 
 to my impatience, while the Egyptian rose and proceeded to 
 turn around, in the light of the window, the fattest of the 
 fair Circassians, from whom he had removed every article of 
 dress save her slippers and trousers. 
 
 I returned to the crevice. Maimuna had drunk her coffee, 
 and stood, with her arms folded, thoughtfully gazing on the 
 
182 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 fire. The expression in her beautiful and youthful face was 
 one I could scarcely read to my satisfaction. The slight lips 
 were firmly but calmly compressed, the forehead untroubled, 
 the eye alone strained, and unnaturally fixed and lowering. 
 I looked at her with the heart beating like a hammer in my 
 bosom, and the impatience in my trembling limbs which it 
 required every consideration of prudence to suppress. She 
 moved slowly away at last, and, sinking again to her carpet, 
 drew out the chain from beneath her, and drawing the shawl 
 once more over her head, lay down, and sunk apparently to 
 sleep. 
 
 Mustapha left the Circassian, whose beauties he had risen 
 to examine more nearly, and came to my side. 
 
 "Are you sure that it is she?" he asked, in an almost 
 inaudible whisper. 
 
 "Si/" 
 
 He took the pipe from my hand, and requested me, in the 
 same suppressed voice, to return to his shop. 
 
 " And Maimuna " 
 
 His only answer was to point to the door ; and thinking it 
 best to obey his orders implicitly, I made the best of my way 
 out of the slave-market, and was soon drinking a sherbet in 
 his inner apartment, and listening to the shuffle of every 
 passing slipper for the coming of the light step of the gypsy. 
 
 III. 
 
 The rules of good-breeding discountenance in society what 
 is usually called "a scene." I detest it as well on paper. 
 There is no sufficient reason, apparent to me, why my sensi 
 bilities should be drawn upon at sight, as I read, any more 
 than when I please myself by following my own devices in 
 company. Violent sensations are, abstractly as well as con 
 ventionally, ill-bred. They derange the serenity, fluster the 
 manner, and irritate the complexion. It is for this reason 
 
THE GYPSY OF SAEDIS. 183 
 
 that I forbear to describe the meeting between Maimuna and 
 myself after she had been bought for forty pounds by the 
 wily and worthy seller of essences and pastilles. How she 
 fell on my neck when she discovered that I, and not Mus- 
 tapha, was her purchaser and master ; how she explained, 
 between her hysterical sobs, that the Turk who had sold her 
 to the slave-dealer was a renegade gypsy, and her mother s 
 brother (to whom she had been on an errand of affection) ; 
 and how she sobbed herself to sleep with her face in the 
 palms of my hands, and her masses of raven hair covering 
 my knees and feet like the spreading fountains of San Pietro ; 
 and how I pressed my lips to the starry parting of those 
 raven tresses on the top of her fairest head, and blessed the 
 relying child as she slept, are circumstances, you will allow, 
 my dear madam ! that could not be told passably well with 
 out moving your amiable tenderness to tears. You will con 
 sider this paragraph, therefore, less as an ingenious manner 
 of disposing of the awkward angles of my story, than as a 
 polite and praiseworthy consideration of your feelings and 
 complexion. Flushed eyelids are so very unbecoming ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 My confidential interviews with Job began to take rather 
 an unpleasant coloring. The forty pounds I had paid for 
 Maimuna s liberty, with the premium to Mustapha, the suit 
 of European clothes necessary to disguise my new compan 
 ion, and the addition of a third person in our European 
 lodgings at Pera, rather drove my finances to the wall. Job 
 cared very little for the loss of his allowance of pocket- 
 money, and made no resistance to eating kibaubs at a meat- 
 shop, instead of his usual silver fork and French dinner at 
 Madame Josepino s. He submitted with the same resigna 
 tion to a one-oared caique on the Bosphorus, and several 
 minor reductions in his expenses, thinking nothing a hard- 
 
184 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 ship, in short, which I shared cheerfully with them. He 
 would have donned the sugar-loaf hat of a dervish, and 
 begged his way home by Jerusalem or Mecca, so only I was 
 content. But the morality of the thing ! 
 
 "What will you do with this beautiful girl when you get 
 to Rome? how will you dispose of her in Paris? how will 
 your friends receive a female, already arrived at the age of 
 womanhood, who shall have travelled with you two or three 
 years on the Continent? how will you provide for her? how 
 educate her? how rid yourself of her, with any Christian 
 feeling of compassion, when she has become irrevocably 
 attached to you?" 
 
 We were pulling up to the Symplegades while my plain- 
 spoken Mentor thrust me these home questions, and Maimuna 
 sat coiled between my feet in the bottom of the caique, gaz 
 ing into my face with eyes that seemed as if they would 
 search my very soul for the cause of my emotion. We sel 
 dom spoke English in her presence, for the pain it gave her 
 when she felt excluded from the conversation amounted in 
 her all-expressive features to a look of anguish that made it 
 seem to me a cruelty. She dared not ask me, in words, why 
 I was vexed; but she gathered from Job s tone that there 
 was reproof in what he said, and flashing a glance of inquir 
 ing anger at his serious face, she gently stole her hand under 
 the cloak to mine, and laid the back of it softly in my palm. 
 There was a delicacy and a confidingness in the motion that 
 started a tear into my eye ; and as I smiled through it, and 
 drew her to me, and impressed a kiss on her forehead, I in 
 wardly resolved, that, as long as that lovely creature should 
 choose to eat of my bread, it should be free to her in all 
 honor and kindness, and, if need were, I would supply to 
 her, with the devotion of my life, the wrong and miscon 
 struction of the world. As I turned over that leaf in my 
 heart, there crept through it a breath of peace, and I felt 
 
THE GYPSY OF SARDIS. 185 
 
 that my good angel had taken me into favor. Job began to 
 fumble for the lunch, and the dancing caique shot forth 
 merrily into the Black Sea. 
 
 " My dearest chum ! " said I, as we sat round our brown 
 paper of kibaubs on the highest point of the Symplegades, 
 4 c you see yourself here at the outermost limit of your 
 travels." 
 
 His month was full, but as soon as he could conveniently 
 swallow, he responded with the appropriate sigh. 
 
 " Six thousand miles, more or less, lie between you and 
 your spectacled and respectable mother ; but nineteen thou 
 sand, the small remainder of the earth s circumference, ex 
 tending due east from this paper of cold meat, remain to 
 you untravelled." 
 
 Job fixed his eye on a white sea-bird apparently asleep on 
 the wing, but diving away eastward into the sky, as if it 
 were the heart within us sped onward with our boundless 
 wishes. 
 
 " Do you not envy him? " he asked enthusiastically. 
 
 "Yes; for nature pays his travelling expenses, and I 
 would our common mother were as considerate to me. How 
 soon, think you, he will see Trebizond, posting at that 
 courier speed ? 
 
 " And Shiraz, and Ispahan, and the Valley of Cashmere ! 
 To think how that stupid bird will fly over them, and spite 
 of all that Hafiz and Saadi and Tom Moore have written 
 on the lands that his shadow may glide through, will return, 
 as wise as he went, to Marmora ! To compound natures 
 with him were a nice arrangement, now ! " 
 
 " You would be better-looking, my dear Job ! " 
 
 " How very unpleasant you are, Mr. Slingsby ! But really, 
 Philip, to cast the slough of this expensive and il-locomotive 
 humanity, and find yourself afloat with all the necessary 
 apparatus of life stowed snugly into breast and tail, your 
 
186 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 legs tucked quietly away under you, and instead of coat 
 and unmentionables to be put off and on, and renewed at 
 such inconvenient expense, a self-renewing tegument of 
 cleanly feathers, brushed and washed in the common course 
 of nature by wind and rain, no valet to be paid and drilled, 
 no dressing-case to be supplied and left behind, no tooth 
 brushes to be mislaid, no tight boots, no corns, no pass 
 ports, nor post-horses! Do you know, Phil, on reflection, I 
 find this l mortal coil a very inferior and inconvenient 
 apparatus ! 
 
 " If you mean your own, I quite agree with you." 
 
 "I am surprised, Mr. Slingsby, that you, who value your 
 self on knowing what is due from one highly civilized indi 
 vidual to another, should indulge in these very disagreeable 
 reflections ! 
 
 Maimuna did not quite comprehend the argument, but she 
 saw that the tables were turned ; and, without ill-will to Job, 
 she paid me the compliment of always taking my side. I 
 felt her slender arm around my neck, and as she got upon 
 her knees behind me, and put forward her little head to get a 
 peep at my lips, her clear bird-like laugh of enjoyment and 
 triumph added visibly to m} 7 friend s mortification. A com 
 punctious visiting stole over me, and I began to feel that I 
 should scarce have revenged myself for what was, after all, 
 but a kind severity. 
 
 " Do you know, Job," said I (anxious to restore his self- 
 complacency without a direct apology for my rudeness), " do 
 you know there is a very deep human truth hidden in the 
 familiar story of Beauty and the Beast ? I really am of 
 opinion that, between the extremes of hideousness and the 
 highest perfection of loveliness, there is no face which, after 
 a month s intercourse, does not depend exclusively on its 
 expression (or, in other words, on the amiable qualities of 
 the individual) for the admiration it excites. The plainest 
 
THE GYPSY OF SAUDIS. 187 
 
 features become handsome unaware when associated only 
 with kind feelings, and the loveliest face disagreeable when 
 linked with ill-humor or caprice. People should remember 
 this when selecting a face which they are to see every morn 
 ing across the breakfast-table for the remainder of their 
 natural lives. " 
 
 Job was appeased by the indirect compliment contained in 
 this speech ; and, gathering up our kibaubs, we descended to 
 the caique, and pulling around the easternmost point of the 
 Symplegades, bade adieu to the Orient, and took the first 
 step westward with the smile of conciliation on our lips. 
 
 We were soon in the strong current of the Bosphorus, and 
 shot swiftly down between Europe and Asia, by the light of 
 a sunset that seemed to brighten the west for our return. It 
 was a golden path homeward. The east looked cold behind ; 
 and the welcome of our far-away kinsmen seemed sent to us 
 on those purpling clouds, winning us back. Beneath that 
 kindling horizon, below that departed sun, lay the fresh and 
 free land of our inheritance. The light of the world seemed 
 gone over to it. These, from which the day had declined, 
 were countries of memory ; ours, of hope. The sun that 
 was setting on these was dawning gloriously ou ours. 
 
 On ordinary occasions, Job would have given me a stave 
 of "Hail Columbia!" after such a burst of patriotism. 
 The cloud was on his soul, however. 
 
 41 We have turned to go ftacfc," he said, in a kind of mus 
 ing bitterness, " and see what we are leaving behind ! In 
 this fairy-shaped boat you are gliding like a dream down the 
 Bosphorus. The curving shore of Therapia yonder is fringed 
 for miles with the pleasure-loving inhabitants of this deli 
 cious land, who think a life too short, of which the highest 
 pleasure is to ramble on the edge of these calm waters with 
 their kinsmen and children. Is there a picture in the world 
 more beautiful than that palace-lined shore ? Is there a city 
 
188 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 so magnificent under the sun as that in which it terminates ? 
 Are there softer skies, greener hills, simpler or better people 
 to live among, than these ? O Philip ! ours, with all its 
 freedom, is a working-day land. There is no idleness 
 there ! The sweat is ever on the brow, the serpent of care 
 never loosened about the heart. I confess myself a wor 
 shipper of leisure : I would let no moment of my golden 
 youth go by unrecorded with a pleasure. Toil is ungodlike, 
 and unworthy of the immortal spirit, that should walk un 
 chained through the world. I love these idle Orientals. 
 Their sliding and haste-forbidding slippers, their flowing and 
 ungirded habiliments, are signs most expressive of their joy 
 in life. Look around, and see how on every hilltop stands a 
 maison de plaisance; how every hillside is shelved into those 
 green platforms, 1 so expressive of their habits of enjoy 
 ment ! Rich or poor, their pleasures are the same. The 
 open air, freedom to roam, a caique at the water-side, and a 
 sairgah on the hill, these are their means of happiness, and 
 they are within the reach of all. They are nearer Utopia than 
 we, my dear Philip! We shall be more like Turks than 
 Christians in Paradise!" 
 
 " Inglorious Job ! " 
 
 4 Why ? Because I love idleness ? Are there braver 
 people in the world than the Turks ? Are there people more 
 capable of the romance of heroism? Energy, though it 
 sound a paradox, is the child of idleness. All extremes are 
 natural and easy ; and the most indolent in peace is likely to 
 be the most fiery in war. Here we are, opposite the summer 
 serai of Sultan Mahmoud ; and who more luxurious and idle ? 
 Yet the massacre of the Janissaries was one of the boldest 
 
 1 All around Constantinople are seen what are called sairgahs, small green 
 sward platforms levelled in the side of a hill, and usually commanding some lovely 
 view, intended as spots on which those who are abroad for pleasure may spread 
 their carpets. I know nothing so expressive as this of the simple and natural livea 
 led by these gentle Orientals. 
 
TIIE GYPSY OF SARDIS. 189 
 
 measures in history. There is the most perfect orientalism 
 in the description of the Persian beauty by Hafiz : 
 
 Her heart is full of passion, and her eyes are full of sleep. 
 
 Perhaps nothing would be so contradictory as the true analy 
 sis of the character of what is called an indolent man. 
 With all the tastes I have just professed, my strongest feel 
 ing on leaving the Symplegades, for example, was, and is 
 still, an unwillingness to retrace my steps. 4 Onward ! on 
 ward ! is the perpetual cry of my heart. I could pass my 
 life in going from land to land, so only that every successive 
 one was new. Italy will be old to us ; France, Germany, 
 can scarce lure the imagination to adventure, with the knowl 
 edge we have : and England, though we have not seen it, is 
 so familiar to us from its universality that it will not seem, 
 even on a first visit, a strange country. We have satiety 
 before us, and the thought saddens me. I hate to go back. 
 I could start now, with Maimuna for a guide, and turn gypsy 
 in the wilds of Asia." 
 
 " Will you go with him, Maimuna? " 
 
 * Signor, no ! " 
 
 I am the worst of story-tellers, gentle reader ; for I never 
 get to the end. The truth is, that in these rambling papers 
 I go over the incidents I describe, not as they should be 
 written in a romance, but as they occurred in my travels : I 
 write what I remember. There are, of course, long intervals 
 in adventure, filled up sometimes by feasting or philosophy, 
 sometimes with idleness or love ; and, to please myself, I 
 must unweave the thread as it was woven. It is strange 
 how, in the memory of a traveller, the most wayside and 
 unimportant things are the best remembered. You may 
 have stood in the Parthenon ; and, looking back upon it 
 through the distance of years, a chance word of the com- 
 
100 PROSE WHITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 panion who happened to be with you, or the attitude of a 
 Greek seen in the plain below, may come up more vividly to 
 the recollection than the immortal sculptures on the frieze. 
 There is a natural antipathy in the human mind to fulfil 
 expectations. We wander from the thing we are told to 
 admire, to dwell on something we have discovered ourselves. 
 The child in church occupies itself with the fly on its prayer- 
 book, and " the child is father of the man." If I indulge 
 in the same perversity in story-telling, dear reader; if, in 
 the most important crisis of my tale, I digress to some tri 
 fling vein of speculation ; if, at the close even, the climax 
 seem incomplete, and the moral vain, I plead, upon all 
 these counts, an adherence to truth and nature. Life real 
 life is made up of half-finished romance. The most inter 
 esting procession of events is delayed, and travestied, and 
 mixed with the ridiculous and the trifling, and at the end, 
 oftenest left imperfect. Who ever saw, off the stage, a five- 
 act tragedy, with its proprieties and its climax ? 
 
 PART III. 
 
 I. 
 
 TEN o clock A.M., and the weather like the Prophet s 
 paradise, 
 
 " Warmth without heat, and coolness without cold." 
 
 Madame Josepino stood at the door of her Turco-Italian 
 boarding-house in the nasty and fashionable main street of 
 Pera, dividing her attention between a handsome Armenian 
 with a red button in the top of his black lamb s-wool cap, 1 
 
 1 The Armenians at Constantinople are despised by the Turks, and tacitly submit, 
 like the Jews, to occupy a degraded position as a people. A few, however, are 
 
THE GYPSY OF SARDIS. 191 
 
 and her three boarders, Job, Maimuna, and myself, at that 
 critical moment about mounting our horses for a gallop to 
 Belgrade. 
 
 We kissed our hands to the fat and fair Italian, and, with 
 a promise to be at home for supper, kicked our shovel-shaped 
 stirrups into the sides of our horses, and pranced away up 
 the street, getting many a glance of curiosity, and one or 
 two that might be more freely translated, from the dark eyes 
 that are seen day and night at the windows of the leaden- 
 colored houses of the Armenians. 
 
 We should have been an odd-looking cavalcade for the 
 Boulevard or Bond Street ; but, blessed privilege of the East ! 
 we were sufficiently comme il faut for Pera. To avoid the 
 embarrassment of Maimuna s sex, I had dressed her, from 
 an English "slop-shop" at Galata, in the checked shirt, 
 jacket, and trousers of a sailor-boy ; but as she was obstin 
 ately determined that her long black hair should not be 
 shorn, a turban was her only resource for concealment, 
 and the dark and glossy mass was hidden in the folds of 
 an Albanian shawl, forming altogether as inharmonious a 
 costume as could well be imagined. With the white duck 
 trousers tight over her hips, and the jacket, which was a 
 little too large for her, loose over her shoulders and breast, 
 the checked collar tied with a black silk cravat close round 
 her throat, and the silken and gold fringe of the shawl flow 
 ing coquettishly over her left cheek and ear, she was certainly 
 an odd figure on horseback ; and but for her admirable riding 
 and excessive grace of attitude, she might have been as much 
 a subject for a caricature as her companion. Job rode soberly 
 along at her side, in the green turban of a Hajji (which he 
 had persisted in wearing ever since his pilgrimage to Jeru- 
 
 employed as interpreters by the embassies, and these are allowed to wear the mark 
 of a red worsted button in the high black cap of the race, a distinction which just 
 serves to make them the greatest possible coxcombs. 
 
192 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 salem) ; and as he usually put it on askew, the gaillard and 
 rakish character of his head-dress, and the grave respecta 
 bility of his black coat and salt-and-pepper trousers, produced 
 a contrast which elicited a smile even from the admiriuo- 
 
 o 
 
 damsels at the windows. 
 
 Maimuua went caracoling along till the road entered the 
 black shadow of the cemetery of Pera ; and then, pulling up 
 her well-managed horse, she rode close to my side, with the 
 air of subdued respect which was more fitting to the spirit of 
 the scene. It was a lovely morning, as I said ; and the 
 Turks, who are early risers, were sitting on the graves of 
 their kindred with their veiled wives and children ; the marble 
 turbans in that thickly-sown nekropolis less numerous than 
 those of the living, who had come, not to mourn the dead 
 who lay beneath, but to pass a day of idleness and pleasure 
 on the spot endeared by their memories. 
 
 "I declare to you," said Job, following Maimuua s 
 example in waiting till I came up, t; that I think the Turks 
 the most misrepresented and abused people on earth. Look 
 at this scene ! Here are whole families seated upon graves 
 over which the grass grows green and fresh, the children 
 playing at their feet, and their own faces the pictures of 
 calm cheerfulness and enjoyment. They are the byword for 
 brutes, and there is not a gentler or more poetical race of 
 beings between the Indus and the Arkansas ! 
 
 It was really a scene of great beauty. The Turkish tombs 
 a iv as splendid as white marble can make them, with letters 
 and devices in red and gold, and often the most delicious 
 sculptures ; and with the crowded closeness of the monu 
 ments, the vast extent of the burial-ground over hill and 
 dale, and the cypresses (nowhere so magnificent) veiling all 
 in a deep religious >liadow, dim, and yet broken by spots of 
 the clearest sunshine, a more impressive and peculiar scene 
 could scarce be imagined. It might exist in other countries, 
 
THE GYPSY OF SAUDIS. 193 
 
 but it would be a desert. To the Mussulman, death is 
 not repulsive, and he makes it a resort when he would be 
 happiest. At all hours of the day you find the tombs of 
 Constantinople surrounded by the living. They spread their 
 carpets, and arrange their simple repast around the stone 
 which records the name and virtues of their own dead, and 
 talk of them as they do of the living and absent, parted 
 from them to meet again, if not in life, in paradise. 
 
 tk For my own part," continued Job, " I see nothing in 
 Scripture which contradicts the supposition that we shall 
 haunt, in the intermediate state between death and heaven, 
 the familiar places to which we have been accustomed. In 
 that case, how delightful are the habits of these people, and 
 how cheeringly vanish the horrors of the grave ! Death, 
 with us, is appalling ! The smile has scarce faded from our 
 lips, the light scarce dead in our eye, when we are thrust into 
 a noisome vault, and thought of but with a shudder and a 
 fear. We are connected thenceforth, in the memories of our 
 friends, with the pestilent air in which we lie, with the ver 
 min that infest the gloom, with dullness, with darkness, with 
 disease ; and, memento as it is of their own coming destiny, 
 what wonder if they chase us, and the forecast shadows of 
 the grave, with the same hurried disgust from their remem 
 brance? Suppose, for an instant (what is by no means im 
 probable) , that the spirits of the dead are about us, conscious 
 and watchful ! Suppose that they have still a feeling of 
 sympathy in the decaying form they have so long inhabited, 
 in its organs, its senses, its once-admired and long-cherished 
 grace and proportion ; that they feel the contumely and dis 
 gust with which the features we professed to love are cast 
 like garbage into the earth, and the indecent haste with which 
 we turn away from the solitary spot, and think of it but as 
 the abode of festering and revolting corruption ! " 
 
 At this moment we turned to the left, descending to the 
 
194 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 Bosphorus, and Maimuna, who had ridden a little in advance 
 during Job s unintelligible monologue, came galloping back 
 to tell us that there was a corpse in the road. We quick 
 ened our pace, and the next moment our horses started aside 
 from the bier, left in a bend of the highway with a single 
 individual, the grave-digger, sitting cross-legged beside it. 
 Without looking up a t our approach, the man mumbled some 
 thing between his teeth, and held up his luind as if to arrest 
 us in our path. 
 
 " What does he say? " I asked of Maimuna. 
 
 " He repeats a verse of the Koran," she replied, " which 
 promises a reward in paradise to him who bears the dead 
 forty steps on its way to the grave." 
 
 Job sprang instantly from his horse, threw the bridle 
 over the nearest tombstone, and made a sign to the grave- 
 digger that he would officiate as bearer. The man nodded 
 assent, but looked down the road without arising from his 
 seat. 
 
 " You are but three," said Maimuna, " and he waits for a 
 fourth." 
 
 I had dismounted by this time, not to be behind my friend 
 in the humanities of life ; and the grave-digger, seeing that 
 we were Europeans, smiled with a kind of pleased surprise, 
 and uttering the all-expressive l Pekhe ! resumed his look 
 out for the fourth bearer. 
 
 The corpse was that of a poor old man. The coffin was 
 without a cover, and he lay in it, in his turban and slippers, 
 his hands crossed over his breast, and the folds of his girdle 
 stuck full of flowers. He might have been asleep, for any 
 look of death about him. His lips were slightly unclosed, 
 and his long beard was combed smoothly over his breast. 
 The odor of the pipe and the pastille struggled with the per 
 fume of the flowers ; and there was in his whole aspect a 
 lifelikcncss and peace, that the shroud and the close coffin, 
 
THE GYPSY OF SAUDIS. 195 
 
 and the additional horrors of approaching death, perhaps, 
 combine, in other countries, utterly to do away. 
 
 " Hitherto," said Job, as he gazed attentively on the calm 
 old man, "I have envied the Scaligers their uplifted and 
 airy tombs in the midst of the cheerful street of Verona, 
 and, next to theirs, the sunny sarcophagus of Petrarch, 
 looking away over the peaceful Campagna of Lornbardy ; 
 but here is a Turkish beggar who will be buried still more 
 enviably. Is it not a paradise of tombs a kind of Utopia 
 of the dead?" 
 
 A young man with a load of vegetables for the market of 
 Pera came toiling up the hill behind his mule. Sure of his 
 assistance, the grave-digger arose, and, as we took our places 
 at the poles, the marketer quietly turned his beast out of the 
 road, and assisted us in lifting the dead on our shoulders. 
 The grave was not far off, and having deposited the corpse 
 on its border, we returned to our horses, and, soon getting 
 clear of the cemetery, galloped away with light hearts toward 
 the Valley of Sweet Waters. 
 
 II. 
 
 "We were taking breath on the silken banks of the Barby- 
 ses, Maimuna prancing along the pebbly bed, up to her 
 barb s girths in sparkling water, and Job and myself laugh 
 ing at her frolics from either side, when an old woman, bent 
 double with age, came hobbling toward us from a hovel in 
 the hillside. 
 
 "Maimuna," said Job, fishing out some trumpery paras 
 from the corner of his waistcoat pocket, "give this to that 
 good woman, and tell her that he who gives it is happy, and 
 would share his joy with her." 
 
 The gypsy spurred up the bank, dismounted at a short 
 distance from the decrepit creature, and, after a little con 
 versation, returned, leading her horse. 
 
196 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 w She is not a beggar, and wishes to know why you give 
 her money." 
 
 " Tell her, to buy bread for her children," said my patri 
 archal friend. 
 
 Mainuma went back, conversed with her again, and re 
 turned with the money. 
 
 44 She says she has no need of it. TJiere is no human 
 creature between her and Allah! " 
 
 The old woman hobbled on, Job pocketed his rejected 
 paras, and Maimuna rode between us in silence. 
 
 It was a gem of natural poetry that was worthy of the lips 
 of an angel. 
 
 III. 
 
 We kept up the Valley of Sweet Waters, tracing the 
 Barbyses through its bosom, to the hills ; and then, mounting 
 a steep ascent, struck across to the east, over a country 
 which, though so near the capital of the Turkish empire, is 
 as wild as the plains of the Hermus. Shrubs, forest-trees, 
 and wild grass cover the apparently illimitable waste, and, 
 save a half-visible horse-path which guides the traveller 
 across, there is scarce an evidence that you are not the first 
 adventurer in the wilderness. 
 
 What a natural delight is freedom ! What a bound gives 
 the heart at the sight of the unfenced earth, the unseparated 
 hill-sides, the unhedged and unharvested valleys ! How 
 thrilling it is unlike any other joy to spur a fiery horse 
 to the hilltop, and gaze away over dell and precipice to the 
 horizon, and never a wall between, nor a human limit to say, 
 44 Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther " ! Oh ! I think we 
 have an instinct, dulled by civilization, which is like the 
 caged eaglet s, or the antelope s that is reared in the Arab s 
 tent, an instinct of nature that scorns boundary and chain ; 
 that yearns to the free desert ; that would have the earth, 
 like the sea or the sky, unappropriated and open ; that 
 
THE GYPSY OF SAEDIS. 197 
 
 rejoices in immeasurable liberty of foot and dwelling-place, 
 and springs passionately back to its freedom even after years 
 of subduing method and spirit-breaking confinement ! I have 
 felt it on the sea, in the forests of America, on the desolated 
 plains of Asia and Roumelia ; I should feel it till my heart 
 burst, had I the wings of a bird ! 
 
 The house once occupied by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 
 stands on the descent of a hill in the little village of Bel 
 grade, some twelve or fourteen miles from Constantinople. 
 It is a commonplace two-story affair, but the best house of 
 the dozen that form the village, and overlooks a dell below 
 that reminds one of the "Emerald valleys of Cashmeer." 
 We wandered through its deserted rooms, discussed the 
 clever woman who has described her travels so graphically, 
 and then followed Maimuna to the narrow street in search of 
 kibaubs. The butcher s shop in Turkey is as open as the 
 trottoir to the street ; and with only an entire sheep hanging 
 between us and a dozen hungry beggars, attracted by the 
 presence of strangers, we crossed our legs on the straw 
 carpet, and, setting the wooden tripod in the centre, waited 
 patiently the movements of our feeder, who combined in his 
 single person the three vocations of butcher, cook, and 
 waiter. One must have travelled east of Cape Colonna to 
 relish a dinner so slightly disguised ; but, once rid of Euro 
 pean prejudices, there is nothing more simple than the fact 
 that it is rather an attractive mode of feeding, a traveller s 
 appetite subauditur. 
 
 Our friend was a wholesome-looking Turk, with a snow- 
 white turban, a black, well-conditioned beard, a mouth 
 incapable of a smile, yet honest, and a most trenchant and 
 janissaresque style of handling his cleaver. Having laid open 
 his bed of coals with a kind of conjuror s flourish of the 
 poker, he slapped the pendent mutton on the thigh in a fash 
 ion of encouragement, and waiting an instant for our adinira- 
 
198 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 tion to subside, he whipped his knife from its sheath, and 
 had out a dozen strips from the chine (as Job expressed it in 
 Vermontese) "in no time." With the same alacrity these 
 were cut into bits u of the size of a piece of chalk " (another 
 favorite expression of Job s), run upon a skewer, and laid on 
 the coals ; and in three minutes, more or less, they appeared 
 smoking on the trencher, half lost in a fine green salad, well 
 peppered, and of a most seducing and provocative savor. 
 If you have performed your four ablutions A.M., like a 
 devout Mussulman, it is not conceived in Turkey that you 
 have occasion for the medium of a fork ; and I frankly own 
 that I might have been seen at Belgrade, cross-legged in a 
 kibaub-skop, between my friend and the gypsy, and making a 
 most diligent use of my thumb and forefinger. I have dined 
 since at the Ilocher de Cancale and the Travellers with less 
 satisfaction. 
 
 Having paid something like sixpence sterling for our three 
 dinners (rather an over-charge, Maimuna thought), we un- 
 picketed our horses from the long grass, and bade adieu to 
 Belgrade, on our way to the ao^ieducts. We were to follow 
 down a verdant valley ; and exhilarated by a flask of Greek 
 wine (which I forgot to mention), and the ever-thrilling 
 circumstances of unlimited greensward, and horses that 
 wait not for the spur, we followed the daring little Asiatic 
 up hill and down, over bush and precipice, till Job cried 
 us mercy. We pulled up on the edge of a sheet of calm 
 water ; and the vast marble wall, built by the sultans in 
 the days of their magnificence and crossing the valley from 
 side to side, burst upon us like a scene of enchantment in 
 the wilderness. 
 
 Those same sultans must have lived a great deal at Bel 
 grade. Save these vast aqueducts, which are splendid monu 
 ments of architecture, there is little in the first aspect to 
 remind you that you are not in the wilds of Missouri ; but a 
 
THE GYPSY OF SARDIS. 199 
 
 further search discloses, in the recesses of the hidden wind 
 ings of the valley, circular staircases of marble leading to 
 secluded baths, now filled with leaves and neglected, but 
 evidently on a scale of the most imperial sumptuousness. 
 From the perishable construction of Turkish dwelling-houses, 
 all traces even of the most costly serai may easily have dis 
 appeared in a few years, when once abandoned to ruin ; and 
 I pleased myself with imagining, as we slackened bridle, 
 and rode slowly beneath the gigantic trees of the forest, the 
 gilded pavilions and gay scenes of oriental pleasure that must 
 have existed here in the days of the warlike yet effeminate 
 Selims. It is a place for the enchantments of the " Arabian 
 Nights " to have been realized. 
 
 I have followed the common error in giving these struc 
 tures in the forest of Belgrade the name of aqueducts. They 
 are rather walls built across the deep valleys, of different 
 altitudes, to create reservoirs for the supply of aqueducts, 
 but are built with all the magnificence and ornament of a 
 facade to a temple. 
 
 We rode on from one to the other, arriving at last at the 
 lowest, which divides the valley at its wildest part, forming a 
 giddy wall across an apparently bottomless ravine, as dark 
 and impracticable as the glen of the Cauterskill in America. 
 Our road lay on the other side ; but though with a steady eye 
 one might venture to cross the parapet on foot, there were 
 no means of getting our horses over, short of a return of 
 half a mile to the path we had neglected higher up the valley. 
 We might swim it, above the embankment, but the opposite 
 shore was a precipice. 
 
 " What shall we do? " I asked. 
 
 Job made no answer, but pulled round his beast, and 
 started off in a sober canter to return. 
 
 I stood a moment, gazing on the placid sheet of water 
 above, and the abyss of rock and darkness below, and then 
 
200 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 calling to Maimuna, who had ridden farther down the bank, 
 I turned my horse s head after him. 
 
 " Signore ! " cried the gypsy from below. 
 
 u What is it, Carissirna? " 
 
 u Maimuna never goes back ! " 
 
 " Silly child ! " I answered, " you are not going to cross 
 the ravine? " 
 
 4 Yes," was the reply, and the voice became more indis 
 tinguishable as she galloped away. "I will be over before 
 you." 
 
 I was vexed ; but I knew the self-will and temerity of the 
 wild Asiatic, and, very certain that if there were danger it 
 would be run before I could reach her, I drove the stirrups 
 into my horse s sides, and overtook Job at the descent into 
 the valley. We ascended again, and rode down the opposite 
 shore to the embankment, at a sharp gallop. Maimuna was 
 not there. 
 
 " She will have perished in the abyss," said Job. 
 
 I sprang from my horse to cross the parapet on foot in 
 search of her, when I heard her horse s footsteps, and the 
 next moment she dashed up the steep, having failed in her 
 attempt, and stood once more where we had parted. The 
 sun was setting, and we had ten miles to ride ; and, impatient 
 of her obstinacy, I sharply ordered her to go up the ravine 
 at speed, and cross as we had done. 
 
 I think I never shall forget, angry as I was at the moment, 
 the appearance of that lovely creature, as she resolutely re 
 fused to obey me. Her horse, the same fiery Arabian she 
 had ridden from Sardis (an animal that, except when she 
 was on his back, would scarce have sold for a gold sequin) 
 stood with head erect and panting nostrils, glancing down 
 with his wild eyes upon the abyss into which he had been 
 urged ; the whole group, horse and rider, completely relieved 
 against the sky from the isolated mound they occupied, and, 
 
THE GYPSY OF SAEDIS. 201 
 
 at this instant, the gold flood of the setting sun pouring full 
 on them through a break in the masses of the forest. Her 
 own fierce attitude, and beautiful and frowning face, the thin 
 lip curled resolutely, and the brown and polished cheek deep 
 ened with a rosy glow, her full and breathing bosom swelling 
 beneath its jacket, and her hair, which had escaped from the 
 turban, flowing over her neck and shoulders, and mingling 
 with the loosened fringes of red and gold in rich disorder 
 it was a picture which the pencil of Martin (and it would 
 have suited his genius) could scarce have exaggerated. The 
 stately half- Arabic, half-Grecian architecture of the aque 
 ducts, and the cold and frowning tints of the abyss and the 
 forest around, would have left him nothing to add to it as a 
 composition. 
 
 I was crossing the giddy edge of the parapet, looking well 
 to my feet, with the intention of reasoning with the obsti 
 nate being, who, vexed at my reproaches and her own failure, 
 was now in as pretty a rage as myself, when I heard the 
 trampling of horses in the forest. I stopped mid-way to 
 listen, and presently there sprang a horseman up the bank in 
 an oriental costume, with pistols and ataghan flashing in the 
 sun, and a cast of features that at once betrayed his origin. 
 
 " A Zingara ! " I shouted back to Job. 
 
 The gypsy, who was about nineteen, and as well-made and 
 gallant a figure for a man as Maimuna for a woman, seemed 
 as much astonished as ourselves, and sat in his saddle gaz 
 ing on the extraordinary figure I have described, evidently 
 recognizing one of his own race, but probably puzzled with 
 the mixture of costumes, and struck, at the same time, with 
 Maimuna s excessive beauty. Lovely as she always was, I 
 had never seen her to such advantage as now. She might 
 have come from fairy-land, for the radiant vision she seemed 
 in the gold of that buruing sunset. 
 
 I gazed on them both a moment, and was about finishing 
 
202 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 my traverse of the parapet, when a troop of mounted gypsies 
 and baggage-horses came up the bank at a quick pace, and 
 in another minute Maimuna was surrounded. I sprang to 
 her bridle, and, apprehensive of I scarce knew what danger, 
 gave her one of the two pistols I carried always in my bosom. 
 
 The gypsy chief (for such he evidently was) measured me 
 from head to foot with a look of dislike, and, speaking for 
 the first time, addressed Maimuna in his own language, with 
 a remark which sent the blood to her temples with a sudden 
 ness I had never before seen. 
 
 4 What does he say ? " I asked. 
 
 "It is no matter, signore, but it is false!" Her black 
 eyes were like coals of fire as she spoke. 
 
 "Leave your horse," I said to her in a low tone, " and 
 cross the parapet. I will prevent his following you, and will 
 join you on your own before you can reach Constantinople. 
 Turn the horses heads homeward ! " I continued in English 
 to Job, who was crying out to me from the other side to 
 come back. 
 
 Maimuna laid her hand on the pommel to dismount ; but 
 the gypsy, anticipating her motion, touched his horse with 
 the stirrup, and sprang, with a single leap, between her 
 and the parapet. The troop had gathered into a circle 
 behind us, and, seeing our retreat thus cut off, I presented 
 my pistol to the young chief, and demanded, in Italian, that 
 he should clear the way. 
 
 A blow from behind, the instant that I was pulling the 
 trigger, sent the discharged pistol into the ravine ; and, in 
 the same instant, Maimuna dashed her horse against the 
 unguarded gypsy, nearly overturning him into the abyss, and 
 spurred desperately upon the parapet. One cry from the 
 whole gypsy troop, and then all was as silent as the grave, 
 except the click of her horse s hoofs on the marble verge, as, 
 trembling palpably in every limb, the terrified animal crossed 
 
THE GYPSY OF SARD IS. 203 
 
 the giddy chasm at a half trot, and, in the next minute, 
 bounded up the opposite bank, and disappeared with a snort 
 of fear and delight amid the branches of the forest. 
 
 What with horror and wonder, and the shock of the blow 
 which had nearly broken my arm, I stood motionless where 
 Maimuna had left me, till the gypsy, recovering from his 
 amazement, dismounted, and put his pistol to my breast. 
 
 " Call her back ! " he said to me in very good Italian, and 
 with a tone in which rage and determination were strangely 
 mingled, " or you die where you stand ! " 
 
 Without regarding his threat, I looked at him with a new 
 thought stealing into my mind. He probably read the pacific 
 change in my feelings, for he dropped his arm, and the 
 frown on his own features moderated to a steadfast and 
 inquisitive regard. 
 
 " Zingara ! " I said, " Maimuna is my slave ! " 
 
 A clutch of his pistol-stock, and a fiery and impatient look 
 from his fine eyes, interrupted me for an instant. I proceeded 
 to tell him briefly how I had obtained possession of her, while 
 the troop gradually closed around, attracted by his excessive 
 look of interest in the tale, though they probably did not 
 understand the language in which I spoke, and all fixing 
 their wild eyes earnestly on my face. 
 
 "And now, Zingara," I said, "I will bring her back on 
 one condition, that, when the offer is fairly made her, if 
 she chooses still to go with me, she shall be free to do so. 
 I have protected her, and sworn still to protect her as long 
 as she should choose to eat of my bread. Though my slave, 
 she is pure and guiltless as when she left the tent of her 
 mother, and is worthy of the bosom of an emperor." 
 
 The Zingara took my hand, and put it to his lips. 
 
 " You agree to our compact, then? " I asked. 
 
 He put his hand on his forehead, and then laid it, with a 
 slight inclination, on his breast. 
 
204 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 " She cannot have gone far," I said, and stepping on the 
 mound above the parapet, I shouted her name till the woods 
 rang again with the echo. 
 
 A moment, and Job and Maimuna came riding to the verge 
 of the opposite hill, and, with a few words of explanation, 
 fastened their horses to a tree, and crossed to us by the 
 parapet. 
 
 The chief returned his pistols to his girdle, and stood 
 aside while I spoke to Maimuna. It was a difficult task, but 
 I felt that it was a moment decisive of her destiny, and the 
 responsibility weighed heavily on my breast. Though exces 
 sively attached to her; though she had been endeared to 
 me by sacrifices and by the ties of protection ; though, in 
 short, I loved her, not with a passion, but with an affection, 
 as a father more than as a lover, I still felt it to be my 
 duty to leave no means untried to induce her to abandon me, 
 to return to her own people, and remain in her own land of 
 the sun. What her fate would be in the state of society to 
 which I must else introduce her, had been eloquently depicted 
 by Job, and will readily be imagined by the reader. 
 
 After the first burst of incredulity and astonishment at 
 my proposal, she folded her arms on her bosom, and, with 
 the tears streaming like rain over her jacket, listened in 
 silence and with averted eyes. I concluded with represent 
 ing to her, in rather strong colors, the feelings with which 
 she might be received by my friends, and the difficulty she 
 would find in accommodating herself to the customs of people 
 to whom not only she must be inferior in the accomplish 
 ments of a woman, but who might find, even in the color of 
 that loveliest cheek, a reason to despise her. 
 
 Her lip curled for an instant, but the grief in her heart 
 was stronger than the scorn for an imaginary wrong, and 
 she bowed her head again, and her tears flowed on. 
 
 I was silent at last, and she looked up into my face. 
 
THE GYPSY OF SAUDIS. 205 
 
 "I am a burthen to you," she said. 
 
 " No, dearest Maimuna ! no ! but if I were to see you 
 wretched hereafter, you would become so. Tell me : the 
 chief will make you his wife ; will you rejoin your people?" 
 
 She flung herself upon the ground, and wept as if her 
 heart would break. I thought it best to let her feelings have 
 way, and, walking apart with the young gypsy, I gave him 
 more of the particulars of her history, and exacted a prom 
 ise that, if she should finally be left with the troop, he would 
 return with her to the tribe of her mother at Sardis. 
 
 Maimuna stood gazing fixedly into the ravine when we 
 turned back ; and there was an erectness in her attitude, and 
 ajierte in the air of her head, that, I must acknowledge, 
 promised more for my fears than my wishes. Her pride was 
 roused, it was easy with half a glance to see. 
 
 With the suddenness of oriental passion, the young chief 
 had become already enamoured of her ; and with a feeling 
 of jealousy which, even though I wished him success, I could 
 not control, I saw him kneel at her feet, and plead with her 
 in an inaudible tone. She had been less than woman if she 
 had been insensible to that passionate cadence, and the 
 imploring earnestness of the noble countenance on which 
 she looked. It was evident that she was interested, though 
 she began with scarce deigning to lift her eyes from the 
 ground. 
 
 I felt a sinking of the heart which I cannot describe when 
 
 C5 
 
 he rose to his feet, and left her standing alone. The troop 
 had withdrawn at his command, and Job, to whom the scene 
 was too painful, had recrossed the parapet, and stood by his 
 horse s head, waiting the result. The twilight had deepened, 
 the forest looked black around us, and a single star sprang 
 into the sky, while the west was still glowing in a fast- 
 purpling gold and crimson. 
 
 "Signore," said Maimuna, walking calmly to my hand, 
 
206 PEOSE WETTINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 which I stretched instinctively to receive her, " I am break 
 ing my heart ; I know not what to do." 
 
 At this instant a faint meteor shot over the sky, and drew 
 its reflection across the calm mirror whose verge we were 
 approaching. 
 
 "Stay! " she cried; "the next shall decide the fate of 
 Maimuna ! If it cross to the east, the will of Allah be 
 done! I will leave you!" 
 
 I called to the gypsy, and we stood on the verge of the 
 parapet in breathless expectation. The darkness deepened 
 around us, the abyss grew black and indistinguishable, and 
 the night-birds flitted past like audible shadows. I drew 
 Maimuna to my bosom, and, with my hands buried in her 
 long hair, pressed her to my heart, that beat as painfully and 
 as heavily as her own. 
 
 A sudden shriek ! She started from my bosom, and, as 
 she fell upon the earth, my eye caught, on the face of the 
 mirror from which I had forgetfully withdrawn my gaze, the 
 vanishing pencil of a meteor, drawn like a beam of the sun 
 set from west to east ! 
 
 I lifted the insensible child, impressed one long kiss on 
 her lips, and, flinging her into the arms of the gypsy, crossed 
 the parapet, and rode, with a speed that tried in vain to out 
 run my anguish, to Constantinople. 
 
A LOG IN THE ARCHIPELAGO. 
 
 THE American frigate, in which I had cruised as tlio ward 
 room guest for more than six months, had sailed for 
 winter quarters at Mahon, and my name was up at the pier 
 of Smyrna, as a passenger in the first ship that should leave 
 the port, whatever her destination. 
 
 The flags of all nations flew at the crowded peaks of the 
 merchantmen lying off the Marina, and among them lay two 
 small twin brigs loading with figs and opium for my native 
 town in America. They were owned by an old schoolfellow 
 of my own, one of the most distinguished and hospitable of 
 the Smyrniote merchants ; and, if nothing more adventurous 
 turned up, he had offered to laud me from one of his craft at 
 Malta or Gibraltar. 
 
 Time wore on, and I had loitered up and down the narrow 
 street u in melancholy idleness" by day, and smoked the 
 narghile with those " merchant princes " by night, till I knew 
 every paving-stone between the beach and the bazaar, and 
 had learned the thrilling events of the Greek persecution with 
 the particularity of a historian. My heart, too, unsusceptible 
 enough when "packed for travel," began to uncoil with 
 absence of adventure, and expose its sluggish pulses to the 
 " Greek fire " still burning in those Asiatic eyes ; and I felt 
 sensibly, that if, Telemachus-like, I did not soon throw my 
 self into the sea, I should yield, past praying for, to the cup 
 of some Smyrniote Circe. Darker eyes than are seen on 
 that Marina swim not in delight out of paradise ! 
 
 I was sitting on an opium-box in the counting-house of my 
 
 friend L u (the princely and hospitable merchant spoken 
 
 207 
 
208 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 of above), when enter a Yankee " skipper," whom I would 
 have clapped on the shoulder for a townsman if I had seen 
 him on the top cf the minaret of the mosque of Sultan Baja- 
 zet. His go-ashore black coat and trousers, worn only one 
 month in twelve, were of costly cloth, but of the fashion pre 
 vailing in the days of his promotion to be second mate of a 
 cod fisher ; his hat was of the richest beaver, but getting 
 ,ro\vn with the same paucity of wear, and exposure to the 
 corroding air of the ocean ; and on his hands were stretched 
 (and they had well need to be elastic) a pair of Woodstock 
 gloves that might have descended to him from Paul Jones 
 " the pilot." A bulge just over his lowest rib gave token of 
 the ship s chronometer ; and in obedience to the new fashion 
 of a guard, a fine chain of the softest auburn hair (doubtless 
 his wife s, and, I would have wagered my passage-money, as 
 pretty a woman as he would see in his v yage), a chain, I 
 say, braided of silken blond ringlets, passed around his neck, 
 and drew its glossy line over his broad-breasted white waist 
 coat ; the dewdrop on the lion s mane not more entitled to 
 be astonished. 
 
 A face of hard weather, but with an expression of care 
 equal to the amount of his invoice, yet honest and fearless as 
 the truck of his mainmast ; a round sailor s back, that looked 
 as if he would hoist up his deck if } ou battered him beneath 
 hatches against his will ; and teeth as white as his new fore 
 sail, completed the picture of the master of the brig Met- 
 
 amora. Jolly old II 1 ! I shall never feel the grip of an 
 
 honester hand, nor return one (as far as I can with the fist 
 you crippled at parting) with a more kindly pressure ! A 
 fair wind on your quarter, my old boy, wherever you may be 
 trading ! 
 
 "What sort of accommodations have you, captain?" I 
 asked, as my friend introduced me. 
 
 " Why, none to speak of, sir ! There s a starboard berth 
 
A LOG IN THE ARCHIPELAGO. 209 
 
 that a n t got much in it, a few boxes of figs, and the new 
 spritsail, and some of the mate s traps ; but I could stow 
 away a little, perhaps, sir." 
 
 " You sail to-morrow morning? " 
 
 " Off with the land-breeze, sir." 
 
 I took leave of the kindest of friends, laid in a few hasty 
 stores, and was on board at midnight. The next morning I 
 awoke with the water rippling beside me, and, creeping on 
 deck, I saw a line of foam stretching behind us far up the 
 gulf, and the ruins of the primitive church of Smyrna, min 
 gled with the turrets of a Turkish castle, far away in the 
 horizon. 
 
 The morning was cool and fresh, the sky of an oriental 
 purity, and the small low brig sped on like a nautilus. The 
 captain stood by the binnacle, looking off to the westward 
 with a glass, a tarpaulin hat over his black locks, a pair of 
 sail-cloth pumps on his feet, and trousers and roundabout 
 of an indefinable tarriness and texture. He handed me the 
 glass, and obeying his direction I saw, stealing from behind 
 a point of land shaped like a cat s back, the well-known 
 topsails of the two frigates that had sailed before us. 
 
 We were off Vourla ; and the commodore had gone to 
 pay his respects to Sir Pulteney Malcolm, then lying with his 
 fleet in this little bay, and waiting, we supposed, for orders 
 to force the Dardanelles. The frigates soon appeared on the 
 bosom of the gulf, and, heading down, nearecl our larboard 
 bow, and stood for the Archipelago. The Metamora kept 
 her way, but the "United States," the fleetest of our ships, 
 soon left us behind with a strengthening breeze ; and, follow 
 ing her with the glass till I could no longer distinguish the 
 cap of the officer of the deck, I breathed a blessing after 
 her, and went below to breakfast. It is strange how the 
 lessening in the distance of a ship in which one has cruised 
 in these southern seas, pulls on the heartstrings ! 
 
210 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 I sat on deck most of the clay, cracking pecan-nuts with 
 the captain, and gossiping about schooldays in our native 
 town, occasionally looking off over the hills of Asia Minor, 
 and trying to realize (the Ixion labor of the imagination in 
 travel) the history of which these barren lands have been the 
 scene. I know not whether it is easy for a native of old 
 countries to people these desolated lands from the past, but 
 for me, accustomed to look on the face of the surrounding 
 earth as mere vegetation, unstoried and unassociated, it is 
 with a constant mental effort alone that I can be classic 
 on classic ground, find Plato in the desert wastes of the 
 Academy, or Priam among the Turk-stridden and prostrate 
 columns of Troy. In my recollections of Athens, the Par 
 thenon and the Theseion and the solemn and sublime ruins by 
 the Fount of Callirhoe stand forth prominent enough ; but 
 when I was on the spot a biped to whom three meals a 
 day, a washerwoman, and a banker, were urgent necessities 
 I shame to confess that I sat dangling my legs over the 
 classic Pelasgicum, not " fishing for philosophers with gold 
 and figs," but musing on the mundane and proximate matters 
 of daily economy. I could see my six shirts hanging to dry, 
 close by the Temple of the Winds, and I knew my dinner was 
 cooking three doors from the crumbling capitals of the Agora. 
 
 As the sun set over Ephesus, we neared the mouth of the 
 Gulf of Smyrna, and the captain stood looking over the lee 
 ward bow rather earnestly. 
 
 " We shall have a snorter out of the nor east," he said, 
 taking hold of the tiller, and sending the helmsman forward. 
 " I never was up this sea but once afore ; and it s a dirty 
 passage through these islands in any weather, let alone a 
 Levanter. * 
 
 He followed up his soliloquy by jamming his tiller hard 
 a-port ; and in ten minutes the little brig was running her 
 nose, as it seemed to me, right upon an inhospitable rock at 
 
A LOG IN THE AECHIPELAGO. 211 
 
 the northern headland of the gulf. At the distance of a 
 biscuit- toss from the shore, however, the rock was dropped 
 to leeward, and a small passage appeared, opening with a 
 sharp curve into the miniature but sheltered bay of Fourgas. 
 "VVe dropped anchor off a small hamlet of forty or fifty 
 houses, and lay beyond the reach of Levanters in a circu 
 lar basin that seemed shut in by a rim of granite from the 
 sea. 
 
 The captain s judgment of the weather was correct, and, 
 after the sun set, the wind rose gradually to a violence which 
 sent the spray high over the barriers of our protected posi 
 tion. Congratulating ourselves that we were on the right side 
 of the granite wall, we got out our jolly-boat on the follow 
 ing morning, and ran ashore upon the beach half a mile from 
 town, proposing to climb first to the peak of the neighboring 
 hill, and then forage for a dinner in the village below. 
 
 We scrambled up the rocky mountain-side, with some loss 
 of our private stock of wind, and considerable increase from 
 the nor easter, and, getting under the lee of a projecting 
 shelf, sat looking over toward Lesbos, and ruminating in 
 silence; I, upon the old question, " an Sappho publica fae- 
 rit," and the captain probably on his wife at Cape Cod, and 
 his pecan-nuts, figs, and opium in the emerald-green brig 
 below us. I don t know why she should have been painted 
 green, by the by (and I never thought to suggest that to the 
 captain), being named after an Indian chief who was as red 
 as her copper bottom. 
 
 The sea toward Mitylene looked as wild as an eagle s wing 
 ruffling against the wind ; and there was that smoke in the 
 sky as if the blast was igniting with its speed, the look of 
 a gale in those seas when unaccompanied with rain. The 
 crazy-looking vessels of the Levant were scudding with mere 
 rags of sails for the gulf ; and while we sat on the rock, 
 eight or ten of those black and unsightly craft shot into the 
 
212 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 little bay below ns, and dropped anchor, blessing, no doubt, 
 every saint in the Greek calendar. 
 
 Having looked toward Lesbos an hour, and come to the 
 conclusion, that, admitting the worst with regard to the pri 
 vate character of Sappho, it would have been very pleasant 
 to have known her ; and the captain having washed his feet 
 in a slender tricklet oozing from a cleft in a rock, we de 
 scended the hill on the other side, and stole a march on the 
 rear to the town of Fourgas. Four or five Greek women 
 were picking up olives in a grove lying half way down the 
 hill, and on our coming in sight they made for us with such 
 speed that I feared the reverse of the Sabine rape not yet 
 having seen a man on this desolate shore ; they ran well, but 
 they resembled Atalanta in no other possible particular. We 
 should have taken them for the Furies, but there were five. 
 They wanted snuff and money, making signs easily for the 
 first, but attempting amicably to put their hands in our 
 pockets when we refused to comprehend the Greek for " Give 
 us a para." The captain pulled from his pocket an Ameri 
 can dollar-note (payable at Nantucket), and offered it to the 
 youngest of the women, who smelt at it and returned it to 
 him, evidently unacquainted with the Cape Cod currency. 
 On farther search he found a few of the tinsel paras of the 
 country, which he substituted for his " dollar-bill ; " a saving 
 of ninety-nine cents to him, if the bank has not broke when 
 he arrives at Massachusetts. 
 
 Fourgas is surrounded by a very old wall, very much bat 
 tered. "VYe passed under a high arch containing marks of 
 having once been closed with a heavy gate ; and disputing 
 our passage with cows, and men that seemed less cleanly and 
 civilized, penetrated to the heart of the town in search of 
 the barber s shop, cafe, and kibaub-shop, three conven 
 iences usually united in a single room, and dispensed by a 
 single Figaro in Turkish and Greek towns of this descrip- 
 
A LOG IN THE ARCHIPELAGO. 213 
 
 tion. The word cafe* is universal, and we needed only to 
 pronounce it to be led by a low door into a square apartment 
 of a ruinous old building, around which, upon a kind of 
 shelf, waist-high, sat as many of the inhabitants of the town 
 as could cross their legs conveniently. As soon as we were 
 discerned through the smoke by the omnifarious proprietor 
 of the establishment, two of the worst-dressed customers 
 were turned off the shelf unceremoniously to make room for 
 us, the fire beneath the coffee-pot was raked open, and the 
 agreeable flavor of the spiced beverage of the East ascended 
 refreshingly to our nostrils. With his baggy trousers tucked 
 up to his thigh, his silk shirt to his armpits, and his smoke- 
 dried but clean feet wandering at large in a pair of red 
 morocco slippers, our Turkish Ganymede presented the small 
 cups in their filagree holders ; and never was beverage more 
 delicious or more welcome. Thirsty with our ramble, and 
 unaccustomed to such small quantities as seem to satisfy the 
 natives of the East, the captain and myself soon became 
 objects of no small amusement to the wondering beards 
 about us. A large tablespoon holds rather more than a 
 Turkish coffee-cup, and one or at most two of these satis 
 fies the dryest clay in the Orient. To us, a dozen of them 
 was a bagatelle, and we soon exhausted the copper pot, and 
 intimated to the astonished cafidji that we should want 
 another. He looked at us a minute to see if we were in 
 earnest, and then laid his hand on his stomach, and, rolling 
 up his eyes, made some remark to his other customers which 
 provoked a general laugh. It was our last "lark" ashore 
 for some time, however ; and, spite of this apparent prophecy 
 of a colic, we smoked our narghiles, and kept him running 
 with his fairy cups for some time longer. One never gets 
 enough of that fragrant liquor. 
 
 The sun broke through the clouds as we sat on the high 
 bench, and, hastily paying our Turk, we hurried to the sea- 
 
214 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 side. The wind seemed to have lulled, and was blowing 
 lightly off shore ; and, impatient of loitering on his voyage, 
 the captain got up his anchor and ran across the bay, and in 
 half an hour was driving through a sea that left not a dry 
 plank on the deck of the Metamora. 
 
 The other vessels at Fourgas had not stirred, and the sky 
 in the north-east looked to my eye very threatening. It was 
 the middle of the afternoon ; and the captain crowded sail 
 and sped on like a sea-bird, though I could see by his face 
 when he looked in the quarter of the wind, that he had acted 
 more from impulse than judgment in leaving his shelter. 
 The heavy sea kicked us on our course, however, and the 
 smart little brig shot buoyantly over the crests of the waves 
 as she outran them, and it was difficult not to feel that the 
 bounding and obedient fabric beneath our feet was instinct 
 with self-confidence, and rode the waters like their master. 
 
 I well knew that the passage of the Archipelago was a 
 difficult one in a storm, even to an experienced pilot, and 
 with the advantage of daylight ; and I could not but remem 
 ber with some anxiety that we were entering upon it at 
 nightfall, and with a wind strengthening every moment, 
 while the captain confessedly had made the passage but once 
 before, and then in a calm sea of August. The skipper, 
 however, walked his deck confidently, though he began to 
 manage his canvas with a more wary care ; and, before 
 dark, we were scudding under a single sail, and pitching 
 onward with the heave of the sea at a rate that, if we were 
 to see Malta at all, promised a speedy arrival. As the night 
 closed in we passed a large frigate lying-to, which we after 
 ward found out was the Superbe, a French eighty-gun ship 
 (wrecked a few hours after on the island of Andros). The 
 two American frigates had run up by Mitylene, and were 
 still behind us ; and the fear of being run down in the night, 
 in our small craft, induced the captain to scud on, though he 
 
A LOG IN THE ARCHIPELAGO. 215 
 
 would else have lain- to with the Frenchman, and perhaps 
 have shared his fate. 
 
 I staid on deck an hour or two after dark, and before 
 going below satisfied myself that we should owe it to the 
 merest chance if we escaped striking in the night. The 
 storm had become so furious that we ran with bare poles 
 before it ; and though it set us pretty fairly on our way, the 
 course lay through a narrow and most intricate channel, 
 among small and rocky islands ; and we had nothing for it 
 but to trust to a providential drift. 
 
 The captain prepared himself for a night on deck, lashed 
 every thing that was loose, and filled the two jugs suspended 
 in the cabin, which, as the sea had been too violent for any 
 hope from the cook, were to sustain us through the storm. 
 We took a biscuit and a glass of Hollands and water, hold 
 ing on hard by the berths lest we should be pitched through 
 the skylight ; and as the captain tied up the dim lantern, I 
 got a look at his face, which would have told me, if I had 
 not known it before, that, though resolute and unmoved, he 
 knew himself to be entering on the most imminent hazard of 
 his life. 
 
 The waves now broke over the brig at every heave, and 
 occasionally the descent of the solid mass of water on the 
 quarter-deck seemed to drive her under like a cork. My 
 own situation was the worst on board, for I was inactive. 
 It required a seaman to keep the deck ; and, as there was 
 no standing in the cabin without great effort, I disembar 
 rassed myself of all that would impede a swimmer, and got 
 into my berth to await a wreck which I considered almost 
 inevitable. Braced with both hands and feet, I lay and 
 watched the imbroglio in the bottom of the cabin ; my own 
 dressing-case among other things emptied of its contents, and 
 swimming with some of my own clothes and the captain s, 
 and the water rushing down the companion-way with every 
 
216 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 wave that broke over us. The last voice I heard on deck 
 was from the deep throat of the captain, calling his men aft 
 to assist in lashing the helm, and then, in the pauses of the 
 gale, carne the awful crash upon deck, more like the descent 
 of a falling house than a body of water, and a swash 
 through the scuppers immediately after, seconded by the 
 smaller sea below, in which my coat and waistcoat were 
 undergoing a rehearsal of the tragedy outside. 
 
 At midnight the gale increased, and the seas that de 
 scended on the brig shook her to the very keel. We could 
 feel her struck under by the shock, and reel and quiver as 
 she recovered and rose again ; and, as if to distract my 
 attention, the little epitome of the tempest going on in the 
 bottom of the cabin grew more and more serious. The un 
 occupied berths were packed with boxes of figs and bags of 
 nuts, which " brought away" one after another, and rolled 
 from side to side with a violence which threatened to drive 
 them through the side of the vessel ; my portmanteau broke 
 its lashings, and shot heavily backward and forward with the 
 roll of the sea ; and if I was not to be drowned like a dog 
 in a locked cabin, I feared, at least, I should have my legs 
 broken by the leap of a fig-box into my berth. My situation 
 was wholly uncomfortable, yet half ludicrous. 
 
 An hour after midnight the captain came down, pale and 
 exhausted, and with no small difficulty managed to get a 
 tumbler of grog. 
 
 " How does she head? " I asked. 
 
 " Side to wind, drifting five knots an hour." 
 
 "Where are you?" 
 
 " God only knows. I expect her to strike every minute." 
 
 He quietly picked up the wick of the lamp as it tossed 
 to and fro, and, watching the roll of the vessel, gained the 
 companion-way, and mounted to the deck. The door was 
 locked, and I was once more a prisoner and alone. 
 
A LOG IN THE ARCHIPELAGO. 217 
 
 An hour elapsed ; the sea, it appeared to me, strengthen 
 ing in its heaves beneath us, and the wind howling and hissing 
 in the rigging like a hundred devils. An awful surge then 
 burst down upon the deck, racking the brig in every seam. 
 The hurried tread of feet overhead told me that they were 
 cutting the lashings of the helm ; the seas succeeded each 
 other quicker and quicker ; and, conjecturing from the short 
 ness of the pitch, that we were nearing a reef, I was half 
 out of my berth when the cabin-door was wrenched open, 
 and a deluging sea washed down the companion-way. 
 
 "On deck for your life!" screamed the hoarse voice of 
 the captain. 
 
 I sprang up through streaming water, barefoot and bare 
 headed ; but the pitch of the brig was so violent that I dared not 
 leave the ropes of the companion-ladder, and, almost blinded 
 with the spray and wind, I stood waiting for the stroke. 
 
 " Hard down ! " cried the captain in a voice I shall never 
 forget, and as the rudder creaked with the strain, the brig 
 fell slightly off, and, rising with a tremendous surge, I saw 
 the sky dimly relieved against the edge of a ragged precipice ; 
 and in the next moment, as if with the repulse of a catapult, 
 we were flung back into the trough of the sea by the retreat 
 ing wave, and surged heavily beyond the rock. The noise 
 of the breakers, and the rapid commands of the captain, 
 now drowned the hiss of the wind ; and in a few minutes we 
 were plunging once more through the uncertain darkness, 
 the long and regular heavings of the sea alone assuring us 
 that we were driving from the shore. 
 
 The wind was cold, and I was wet to the skin. Every 
 third sea broke over the brig, and added to the deluge in the 
 cabin ; and from the straining of the masts I feared they 
 would come down with every succeeding shock. I crept 
 once more below, and regained my berth, where, wet and 
 aching in every joint, I awaited fate or the daylight. 
 
218 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 Morning broke, but no abatement of the storm. The cap 
 tain came below, and informed me (what I had already pre 
 sumed) that we had run upon the southernmost point of 
 Negropont, and had been saved by a miracle from ship 
 wreck. The back wave had taken us off, and with the next 
 sea we had shot beyond it. We were now running in the 
 same narrow channel for Cape Colouna, and were surrounded 
 with dangers. The skipper looked beaten out ; his eyes 
 were protruding and strained, and his face seemed to me to 
 have emaciated in the night. He swallowed his grog, and 
 flung himself for half an hour into his berth, and then went on 
 deck again to relieve his mate, where, tired of my wretched 
 berth, I soon followed him. 
 
 The deck was a scene of desolation. The bulwarks were 
 carried clean away, the jolly-boat swept off, and the long 
 boat the only movable thing remaining. The men were 
 holding on to the shrouds, haggard and sleepy, clinging 
 mechanically to their support as the sea broke down upon 
 them ; and silent at the helm stood the captain and the 
 second mate, keeping the brig stern-on to the sea, and strain 
 ing their eyes for land through the thick spray before them. 
 
 The day crept on, and another night, and we passed it like 
 the last. The storm never slacked ; and all through the 
 long hours the same succession went on, the brig plunging 
 and rising, struggling beneath the overwhelming and over 
 taking waves, and recovering herself again, till it seemed to 
 me as if I had never known any other motion. The captain 
 came below for his biscuit and grog, and went up again 
 without speaking a word ; the mates did the same with the 
 same silence ; and at last the bracing and holding on to 
 prevent being flung from my berth became mechanical, and 
 I did it while I slept. Cold, wet, hungry, and exhausted, 
 what a blessing from Heaven were five minutes of forget- 
 f ulness ! 
 
A LOG IN THE ARCHIPELAGO. 219 
 
 How the third night wore on, I scarce remember. The 
 storm continued with unabated fury ; and when the dawn of 
 the third morning broke upon us, the captain conjectured 
 that we had drifted four hundred miles before the wind. 
 The crew were exhausted with watching; the brig labored 
 more and more heavily, and the storm seemed eternal. 
 
 At noon of the third day the clouds broke up a little, and 
 the wind, though still violent, slacked somewhat in its fury. 
 The sun struggled down upon the lashed and raging sea ; 
 and, taking our bearings, we found ourselves about two 
 hundred miles from Malta. With great exertions, the cook 
 contrived to get up a fire in the binnacle, and boil a little 
 rice ; and never gourmet sucked the brain of a woodcock 
 with the relish which welcomed that dark mess of pottage. 
 
 It was still impossible to carry more than a hand s-breadth 
 of sail, but we were now in open waters, and flew merrily 
 before the driving sea. The pitching and racking motion, 
 and the occasional shipping of a heavy wave, still forbade 
 all thoughts or hopes of comfort ; but the dread of shipwreck 
 troubled us no more, and I passed the day in contriving how 
 to stand long enough on my legs to get my wet traps from 
 my floating portmanteau, and go into quarantine like a 
 Christian. 
 
 The following day, at noon, Malta became visible from 
 the top of an occasional mountain wave ; and, still driving 
 under a reefed topsail before the hurricane, we rapidly 
 neared it, and I began to hope for the repose of terra Jirma. 
 The watch-towers of the castellated rock soon became dis 
 tinct through the atmosphere of spray ; and at a distance of 
 a mile, we took in sail, and waited for a pilot. 
 
 While tossing in the trough of the sea the following half- 
 hour, the captain communicated to me some embarrassment 
 with respect to my landing which had not occurred to me. 
 It appeared that the agreement to land me at Malta was not 
 
220 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 mentioned in his policy of insurance, and the underwriters 
 of course were not responsible for any accident that might 
 happen to the brig after a variation from his original plan of 
 passage. This he would not have minded if he could have 
 set me ashore in a half-hour, as he had anticipated ; but his 
 small boat was lost in the storm, and it was now a question 
 whether the pilot-boat would take ashore a passenger liable 
 to quarantine. To run his brig into harbor would be a great 
 expense, and positive loss of insurance ; and to get out the 
 long-boat with his broken tackle and exhausted crew was not 
 to be thought of. I knew very well that no passenger from 
 a plague port (such as Smyrna and Constantinople) was 
 permitted to land on any terms at Gibraltar ; and if the pilot 
 here should refuse to take me off, the alternative was clear, 
 I must make a voyage against my will to America ! 
 
 I was not in a very pleasant state of mind during the 
 delay which followed ; for though I had been three years 
 absent from my country, and loved it well, I had laid my 
 plans for still two years of travel on this side the Atlantic, 
 and certain moneys for my "charges" lay waiting my arrival 
 at Malta. Among lesser reasons, I had not a rag of clothes 
 dry or clean, and was heartily out of love with salt water 
 and the smell of figs. 
 
 As if to aggravate my unhappiness, the sun broke through 
 a rift in the clouds, and lit up the white and turreted battle 
 ments of Malta like an isle of the blessed, the only bright 
 spot within the limits of the stormy horizon. The mountain 
 waves on which we were tossing were tempestuous and black ; 
 the comfortless and battered brig with her weary crew looked 
 more like a wreck than a seaworthy merchantman ; and, no 
 pilot appearing, the captain looked anxiously seaward, as if 
 he grudged every minute of the strong wind rushing by on 
 his course. 
 
 A small speck at last appeared, making toward us from 
 
A LOG IN THE ARCHIPELAGO. 221 
 
 the shore, and, riding slowly over the tremendous waves, a 
 boat manned by four men came within bailing-distance. One 
 moment as high as our topmast, and another in the depths 
 of the gulf a hundred feet below us, it was like conversing 
 from two buckets in a well. 
 
 u Do you want a pilot? " screamed the Maltese in English, 
 as the American flag blew out to the wind. 
 
 "No!" roared the captain, like a thunder-peal, through 
 his tin trumpet. 
 
 The Maltese, without deigning another look, put up his 
 helm with a gesture of disappointment, and bore away. 
 
 " Boat ahoy ! " bellowed the captain. 
 
 " Ahoy ! ahoy ! " answered the pilot. 
 
 " Will you take a passenger ashore? " 
 
 4 Where from?" 
 
 "Smyrna!" 
 
 There was a sound of doom in the angry prolongation of 
 that detested monosyllable, that sunk to the bottom of my 
 heart like lead. 
 
 "Clear away the mainsail!" cried the captain, getting 
 round once more to the wind. "I knew how it would be, 
 sir," he continued to me, as I bit my lips in the effort to be 
 reconciled to an involuntary voyage of four thousand miles : 
 " it wasn t likely he d put himself and his boat s crew into 
 twenty days quarantine to oblige you and me." 
 
 I could not but own that it was an unreasonable expectation. 
 
 " Never mind, sir," said the skipper consolingly : " plenty 
 of salt fish in the locker, and I ll set you on Long Wharf in 
 no time." 
 
 " Brig ahoy ! " came a voice faintly across the waves. 
 
 The captain looked over his shoulder without losing a cap 
 ful of wind from his sail, and sent back the hail impatiently. 
 
 The pilot was running rapidly down upon us, and had 
 
222 PKOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 come back to offer to tow me ashore in the brig s jolly-boat 
 for a large sum of money. 
 
 "We ve lost our boat, and you re a bloody shark," an 
 swered the skipper, enraged at the attempt at extortion. 
 "Head your course!" he muttered gruffly to the man at 
 the helm, who had let the brig fall off that the pilot might 
 come up. 
 
 Irritated by this new and gratuitous disappointment, I 
 stamped on the deck in an ungovernable fit of rage, and 
 wished the brig at the Devil. 
 
 The skipper looked at me a moment, and instead of the 
 angry answer I expected, an expression of kind commisera 
 tion stole over his rough face. The next moment he seized 
 the helm, and put the brig away from the wind, and then, 
 making a trumpet of his two immense hands, he once more 
 hailed the returning pilot. 
 
 "I can t bear to see you take it so much to heart, sir,* 
 said the kind sailor, "and I ll do for you what I wouldn t 
 do for another man on the face o the arth. All hands 
 there!" 
 
 The men came aft ; and the captain in brief words stated 
 the case to them, and appealed to their sense of kindness for 
 a fellow-countryman, to undertake a task, which, in the sea 
 then running, and with their exhausted strength, was not a 
 service he could well demand in other terms. It was to get 
 out the long-boat, and wait off while the pilot towed me 
 ashore and returned with her. 
 
 "Ay, ay, sir!" was the immediate response from every 
 lip, and, from the chief mate to the black cabin-boy, every 
 man sprang cheerily to the lashings. It was no momentary 
 task, for the boat was as firmly set in her place as the main 
 mast, and stowed compactly with barrels of pork, extra rig 
 ging, and spars in short, all the furniture and provision of 
 the voyage. In the course of an hour, however, the tackle 
 
A LOG IN THE AECHIPELAGO. 223 
 
 was rigged on the fore and main yards, and, with a desperate 
 effort its immense bulk was heaved over the side, and lay 
 tossing on the tempestuous waters. I shook hands with the 
 men, who refused every remuneration beyond my thanks ; 
 and, following the captain over the side, was soon toiling 
 heavily on the surging waters, thanking Heaven for the gen 
 erous sympathies of home and country implanted in the 
 human bosom. Those who knew the reluctance with which 
 a merchant captain lays-to, even to pick up a man overboard, 
 in a fair wind, and those who understand the meaning of a 
 forfeited insurance, will appreciate this instance of difficult 
 generosity. I shook the hard fist of the kind-hearted skipper 
 on the quarantine stairs, and watched his heavy boat as she 
 crept out of the little harbor, with the tears in my eyes. I 
 shall travel far before I find again a man I honor more 
 heartily. 
 
A DINNER AT LADY BLESSINGTON S. 
 
 T^vINED at Lady Blessington s, in company with several 
 
 L^ authors, three or four noblemen, and a clever exquisite 
 or two. The authors were Bulwer the novelist, and his 
 brother the statist; Procter (better known as Barry Corn 
 wall) ; D Israeli, the author of Vivian Grey ; and Fonblanc, 
 of the Examiner. The principal nobleman was Lord Dur 
 ham ; and the principal exquisite (though the word scarce 
 applies to the magnificent scale on which nature has made 
 him, and on which he makes himself) was Count D Orsay. 
 There were plates for twelve. 
 
 I had never seen Procter, and with my passionate love for 
 his poetry, he was the person at table of the most interest 
 to me. He came late, and as twilight was just darkening 
 the drawing-room, I could only see that a small man followed 
 the announcement, with a remarkably timid manner, and a 
 very white forehead. 
 
 D Israeli had arrived before me, and sat in the deep 
 window, looking out upon Hyde Park, with the last rays of 
 daylight reflected from the gorgeous gold flowers of a splen 
 didly embroidered waistcoat. Patent-leather pumps, a white 
 stick, with a black cord and tassel, and a quantity of chains 
 about his neck and pockets, served to make him, even in the 
 dim light, rather a conspicuous object. 
 
 Bulwer was very badly dressed, as usual, and wore a flashy 
 waistcoat of the same description as D Israeli s. Count 
 D Orsay was very splendid, but very undefinable. He 
 
 *** From Pencillings by the Way. Letter cxviii. 
 224 
 
A DINNER AT LADY BLESSINGTON S. 225 
 
 seemed showily dressed till you looked to particulars, and 
 then it seemed only a simple thing, well fitted to a very mag 
 nificent person. Lord Albert Conyngham was a dandy of 
 common materials ; and my Lord Durham, though he looked 
 a young man, if he passed for a lord at all in America, 
 would pass for a very ill-dressed one. 
 
 For Lady Blessington, she is one of the most handsome, 
 and quite the best-dressed woman in London ; and, without 
 farther description, I trust the readers of the Mirror will 
 have little difficulty in imagining a scene that, taking a wild 
 American into the account, was made up of rather various 
 material. 
 
 The blaze of lamps on the dinner-table was very favorable 
 to my curiosity ; and as Procter and D Israeli sat directly 
 opposite me, I studied their faces to advantage. Barry 
 Cornwall s forehead and eye are all that would strike you in 
 his features. His brows are heavy; and his eye, deeply 
 sunk, has a quick, restless fire, that would have struck me, 
 I think, had I not known he was a poet. His voice has the 
 huskiness and elevation of a man more accustomed to think 
 than converse, and it was never heard except to give a brief 
 and very condensed opinion, or an illustration, admirably to 
 the point, of the subject under discussion. He evidently 
 felt that he was only an observer in the party. 
 
 D Israeli has one of the most remarkable faces I ever saw. 
 He is lividly pale, and but for the energy of his action, and 
 the strength of his lungs, would seem a victim to consump 
 tion. His eye is as black as Erebus, and has the most 
 mocking and lying-in-wait sort of expression conceivable. 
 His mouth is alive with a kind of working and impatient 
 nervousness ; and when he has burst forth, as he does con 
 stantly, with a particularly successful cataract of expression, 
 it assumes a curl of triumphant scorn that would be worthy 
 of a Mephistopheles. His hair is as extraordinary as his 
 
226 PEOSE WETTINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 taste in waistcoats. A thick heavy mass of jet-black ring 
 lets falls over his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, 
 while on the right temple it is parted and put away with the 
 smooth carefulness of a girl s, and shines most unctuously, 
 
 "With thy incomparable oil, Macassar!" 
 
 The anxieties of the first course, as usual, kept every 
 mouth occupied for a while, and then the dandies led off with 
 a discussion of Count D Orsay s rifle-match (he is the best 
 rifle-shot in England) and various matters as uninteresting 
 to transatlantic readers. The new poem, Philip Van Arte- 
 velde, came up after a while, and was very much over-praised 
 (me judice). Bulwer said, that as the author was the prin 
 cipal writer for the Quarterly Review, it was a pity it was 
 first praised in that periodical, and praised so unqualifiedly. 
 Procter said nothing about it, and I respected his silence ; 
 for, as a poet, he must have felt the poverty of the poem, 
 and was probably unwilling to attack a new aspirant in his 
 laurels. 
 
 The next book discussed was Beckford s Italy ; or rather 
 the next author, for the writer of Vathek is more original 
 and more talked of than his books, and just now occupies 
 much of the attention of London. Mr. Beckford has been 
 all his life enormously rich, has luxuriated in every country 
 with the fancy of a poet, and the refined splendor of a Syba 
 rite ; was the admiration of Lord Byron, who visited him 
 at Cintra ; was the owner of Fonthill ; and, plus fort encore, 
 his is one of the oldest families in England. What could 
 such a man attempt that would not be considered extraor 
 dinary ! 
 
 D Israeli was the only one at table who knew him, and 
 the style in which he gave a sketch of his habits and man 
 ners was worthy of himself. I might as well attempt to 
 gather up the foam of the sea as to convey an idea of the 
 
A DINNER AT LADY BLESSINGTON S. 227 
 
 extraordinary language in which he clothed his description. 
 There were at least five words in every sentence that must 
 have been very much astonished at the use they were put to, 
 and yet no others apparently could so well have conveyed 
 his idea. He talked like a race-horse approaching the win 
 ning-post, every muscle in action, and the utmost energy of 
 expression flung out in every burst. It is a great pity he is 
 not in parliament. 1 
 
 The particulars he gave of Beckford, though stripped of 
 his gorgeous digressions and parentheses, may be interesting. 
 He lives now at Bath, where he has built a house on two 
 sides of the street, connected by a covered bridge a la Ponte 
 de Sospiri at Venice. His servants live on one side, and he 
 and his sole companion on the other. This companion is a 
 hideous dwarf, who imagines himself, or is, a Spanish duke ; 
 and Mr. Beckford for many years has supported him in a 
 style befitting his rank, treats him with all the deference due 
 to his title, and has, in general, no other society (I should 
 not wonder, myself, if it turned out a woman). Neither of 
 them is often seen, and when in London, Mr. Beckford is 
 only to be approached through his man of business. If you 
 call, he is not at home. If you would leave a card or ad 
 dress him a note, his servant has strict orders not to take in 
 any thing of the kind. At Bath he has built a high tower, 
 which is a great mystery to the inhabitants. Around the 
 interior, to the very top, it is lined with books, approachable 
 with a light spiral staircase ; and in the pavement below, the 
 owner has constructed a double crypt for his own body, and 
 that of his dwarf companion, intending, with a desire for 
 human neighborhood which has not appeared in his life, to 
 
 1 I have been told that he stood once for a London borough. A coarse fellow 
 came up at the hustings, and said to him, "I should like to know on what ground 
 you stand here, sir? " " On my head, sir ! " answered D Israeli. The populace had 
 not read Vivian Grey, however, and he lost his election. 
 
228 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 leave the library to the city, that all who enjoy it shall pass 
 over the bodies below. 
 
 Mr. Beckford thinks very highly of his own books, and 
 talks of his early production (Vathek) in terms of unbounded 
 admiration. He speaks slightingly of Byron, and of his 
 praise, and affects to despise utterly the popular taste. It 
 appeared altogether, from D Israeli s account, that he is a 
 splendid egotist, determined to free life as much as possible 
 from its usual fetters, and to enjoy it to the highest degree 
 of which his genius, backed by an immense fortune, is capa 
 ble. He is reputed, however, to be excessively liberal, and 
 to exercise his ingenuity to contrive secret charities in his 
 neighborhood. 
 
 Victor Hugo and his extraordinary novels came next under 
 discussion ; and D Israeli, who was fired with his own elo 
 quence, started off, Apropos des bottes, with a long story of 
 an impalement he had seen in Upper Egypt. It was as 
 good, and perhaps as authentic, as the description of the 
 chow-chow-tow in Vivian Grey. He had arrived in Cairo 
 on the third day after the man was transfixed by two stakes 
 from hip to shoulder, and he was still alive ! The circum 
 stantiality of the account was equally horrible and amusing. 
 Then followed the sufferer s history, with a score of murders 
 and barbarities, heaped together like Martin s Feast of Bel- 
 shazzar, with a mixture of horror and splendor that was 
 unparalleled in my experience of improvisation. No mystic 
 priest of the Corybantes could have worked himself up into 
 a finer frenzy of language. 
 
 Count D Orsay kept up, through the whole of the conver 
 sation and narration, a running fire of witty parentheses, 
 half French and half English ; and, with champagne in all 
 the pauses, the hours flew on \>ery dashingly. Lady Bless- 
 ington left us toward midnight, and then the conversation 
 took a rather political turn, and something was said of 
 
A DINNER AT LADY BLESSINGTON S. 229 
 
 O Connell. D Israeli s lips were playing upon the edge of 
 a champagne-glass which he had just drained, and off he 
 shot again with a description of an interview he had had 
 with the agitator the day before ; ending in a story of an 
 Irish dragoon who was killed in the Peninsula. His name 
 was Sarsfield. His arm was shot off, and he was bleeding 
 to death. When told that he could not live, he called for a 
 large silver goblet, out of which he usually drank his claret. 
 He held it to the gushing artery, and filled it to the brim with 
 blood, looked at it a moment, turned it out slowly upon the 
 ground, muttering to himself, "If that had been shed for 
 old Ireland!" and expired. You can have no idea how 
 thrillingly this little story was told. Foublanc, however, 
 who is a cold political satirist, could see nothing in a man s 
 "decanting his claret," that was in the least sublime; and 
 so Vivian Grey got into a passion, and for a while was silent. 
 
 Bulwer asked me if there was any distinguished literary 
 American in town. I said Mr. Slidell, one of our best 
 writers, was here. 
 
 "Because," said he, "I received a week or more ago a 
 letter of introduction by some one from Washington Irving. 
 It lay on the table, when a lady came in to call on my wife, 
 who seized upon it as an autograph, and immediately left 
 town, leaving me with neither name nor address." 
 
 There was a general laugh, and a cry of " Pelham ! Pel- 
 ham ! " as he finished his story. Nobody chose to believe it. 
 
 " I think the name was Slidell," said Bulwer. 
 
 "Slidell!" said D Israeli, "I owe him two-pence, by 
 Jove ! " and he went on in his dashing way to narrate that 
 he had sat next Mr. Slidell at a bull-fight in Seville, that 
 he wanted to buy a fan to keep off the flies, and having 
 nothing but doubloons in his pocket, Mr. S. had lent him 
 a small Spanish coin of that value, which he owed him to 
 this day. 
 
230 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 There was another general laugh, and it was agreed that 
 on the whole the Americans were done. 
 
 Apropos to this, D Israeli gave us a description in a 
 gorgeous, burlesque, galloping style, of a Spanish bull-fight ; 
 and when we were nearly dead with laughter at it, some one 
 made a move, and we went up to Lady Blessington in the 
 drawing-room. Lord Durham requested her ladyship to 
 introduce him particularly to D Israeli (the effect of his elo 
 quence). I sat down in the corner with Sir Martin Shee, 
 the president of the Royal Academy, and had a long talk 
 about Allston and Harding and Cole, whose pictures he 
 knew ; and somewhere in the small hours we took our 
 leave, and Procter left me at my door in Cavendish Street, 
 weary, but in a better humor with the world than usual. 
 
A BREAKFAST WITH CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 TNVITED to breakfast with a gentleman in the Temple to 
 J- meet Charles Lamb and his sister, " Elia, and Bridget 
 Elia." I never in my life had an invitation more to my 
 taste. The essays of Elia are certainly the most charming 
 things in the world, and it has been for the last ten years my 
 highest compliment to the literary taste of a friend to pre 
 sent him with a copy. Who has not smiled over the humor 
 ous description of Mrs. Battle? Who that has read Elia 
 would not give more to see him than all the other authors of 
 his time put together? 
 
 Our host was rather a character. I had brought a letter 
 of introduction to him from Walter Savage Landor, the 
 author of Imaginary Conversations, living at Florence, with 
 a request that he would put me in a way of seeing one or 
 two men about whom I had a curiosity, Lamb more particu 
 larly. I could not have been recommended to a better per 
 son. Mr. R. is a gentleman who, everybody says, should 
 have been an author, but who never wrote a book. He is a 
 profound German scholar, has travelled much, is the intimate 
 friend of Southey, Coleridge, and Lamb, has breakfasted 
 with Goethe, travelled with Wordsworth through France and 
 Italy, and spends part of every summer with him, and knows 
 every thing and every body that is distinguished, in short, 
 is, in his bachelor s chambers in the Temple, the friendly 
 nucleus of a great part of the talent of England. 
 
 I arrived a half-hour before Lamb, and had time to learn 
 
 *** From Pencilling* by the Way. Letter cxvii. 
 
 231 
 
232 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 some of his peculiarities. He lives a little out of London, 
 and is very much of an invalid. Some family circumstances 
 have tended to depress him very much of late years, and 
 unless excited by convivial intercourse, he scarce shows a 
 trace of what he was. He was very much pleased with the 
 American reprint of his Elia, though it contains several 
 things which are not his written so in his style, however, 
 that it is scarce a wonder the editor should mistake them. 
 If I remember right, they were "Valentine s Day," the 
 "Nuns of Caverswell," and "Twelfth Night." He is ex 
 cessively given to mystifying his friends, and is never so 
 delighted as when he has persuaded some one into the belief 
 of one of his grave inventions. His amusing biographical 
 sketch of Liston was in this vein, and there was no doubt 
 in anybody s mind that it was authentic, and written in 
 perfectly good faith. Liston was highly enraged with it, 
 and Lamb was delighted in proportion. 
 
 There was a rap at the door at last, and enter a gentleman 
 in black small-clothes and gaiters, short and very slight in 
 his person, his head set on his shoulders with a thoughtful 
 forward bent, his hair just sprinkled with gray, a beautiful 
 deep-set eye, aquiline nose, and a very indescribable mouth. 
 Whether it expressed most humor or feeling, good-nature or 
 a kind of whimsical peevishness, or twenty other things which 
 passed over it by turns, I cannot in the least be certain. 
 
 His sister, whose literary reputation is associated very 
 closely with her brother s, and who, as the original of 
 "Bridget Elia," is a kind of object for literary affection, 
 came in after him. She is a small, bent figure, evidently a 
 victim to illness, and hears with difficulty. Her face has 
 been, I should think, a fine and handsome one, and her bright 
 gray eye is still full of intelligence and fire. They both 
 seemed quite at home in our friend s chambers, and as there 
 was to be no one else we immediately drew round the 
 
A BREAKFAST WITH CHARLES LAMB. 233 
 
 breakfast- table. I had set a large arm-chair for Miss Lamb. 
 "Don t take it, Mary," said Lamb, pulling it away from 
 her very gravely : "it appears as if you were going to have 
 a tooth drawn." 
 
 The conversation was very local. Our host and his guest 
 had not met for some weeks, and they had a great deal to 
 say of their mutual friends. Perhaps in this way, however, 
 I saw more of the author ; for his manner of speaking of 
 them, and the quaint humor with which he complained of one, 
 and spoke well of another, was so in the vein of his inimit 
 able writings, that I could have fancied myself listening to 
 an audible composition of a new Elia. Nothing could be 
 more delightful than the kindness and affection between the 
 brother and the sister, though Lamb was continually taking 
 advantage of her deafness to mystify her with the most 
 singular gravity upon every topic that was started. "Poor 
 Mary!" said he, "she hears all of an epigram but the 
 point." "What are you saying of me, Charles?" she 
 asked. "Mr. Willis," said he, raising his voice, "admires 
 your Confessions of a Drunkard very much ; and I was say 
 ing that it was no merit of yours, that you understood the 
 subject." We had been speaking of this admirable essay 
 (which is his own) half an hour before. 
 
 The conversation turned upon literature after a while ; and 
 our host, the Templar, could not express himself strongly 
 enough in admiration of Webster s speeches, which he said 
 were exciting the greatest attention among the politicians 
 and lawyers of England. Lamb said, "I don t know much 
 of American authors. Mary, there, devours Cooper s novels 
 with a ravenous appetite, with which I have no sympathy. 
 The only American book I ever read twice was the Journal 
 of Edward Woolman, a Quaker preacher and tailor, whose 
 character is one of the finest I ever met with. He tells a 
 story or two about negro slaves, that brought the tears into 
 
234 PEOSE WETTINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 my eyes. I can read no prose now, though Hazlitt some 
 times, to be sure but then, Hazlitt is worth all modern 
 prose-writers put together." 
 
 Mr. R. spoke of buying a book of Lamb s a few days 
 before ; and I mentioned my having bought a copy of Elia 
 the last day I was in America, to send as a parting gift to 
 one of the most lovely and talented women in our country. 
 
 " What did you give for it? " said Lamb. 
 
 "About seven and sixpence." 
 
 "Permit me to pay you that," said he, and with the 
 utmost earnestness he counted out the money upon the 
 table. 
 
 "I never yet wrote any thing that would sell," he con 
 tinued. "I am the publisher s ruin. My last poem won t 
 sell a copy. Have you seen it, Mr. Willis? " 
 
 I had not. 
 
 " It s only eighteen pence, and I ll give you sixpence 
 toward it ; " and he described to me where I should find it 
 sticking up in a shop- window in the Strand. 
 
 Lamb ate nothing, and complained in a querulous tone of 
 the veal-pie. There was a kind of potted fish (of which I 
 forget the name at this moment) which he had expected our 
 friend would procure for him. He inquired whether there 
 was not a morsel left perhaps in the bottom of the last pot. 
 Mr. R. was not sure. 
 
 " Send and see," said Lamb; "and if the pot has been 
 cleaned, bring me the cover. I think the sight of it would 
 do me good." 
 
 The cover was brought, upon which there was a picture 
 of the fish. Lamb kissed it with a reproachful look at his 
 friend, and then left the table, and began to wander round the 
 room with a broken, uncertain step, as if he almost forgot to 
 put one leg before the other. His sister rose after a while, 
 and commenced walking up and down very much in the same 
 
A BREAKFAST WITH CHARLES LAMB. 235 
 
 manner on the opposite side of the table ; and in the course 
 of half an hour they took their leave. 
 
 To any one who loves the writings of Charles Lamb with 
 but half my own enthusiasm, even these little particulars of 
 an hour passed in his company will have an interest. To 
 him who does not, they will seem dull and idle. Wreck as 
 he certainly is, and must be, however, of what he was, I 
 would rather have seen him for that single hour, than the 
 hundred and one sights of London put together. 
 
A WEEK AT GORDON CASTLE. 
 
 I TOOK two places in the coach at last (one for my leg) , 
 and bowled away seventy miles across the country, with 
 the delightful speed of these admirable conveyances, for 
 Gordon Castle. I arrived at Lochabers, a small town on the 
 estate of the Duke of Gordon, at three in the afternoon, 
 and immediately took a post-chaise for the castle, the gate 
 of which was a stone s-throw from the inn. 
 
 The immense iron gate surmounted by the Gordon arms, 
 the handsome and spacious stone lodges on either side, the 
 canonically fat porter in white stockings and gay livery lift 
 ing his hat as he swung open the massive portal, all bespoke 
 the entrance to a noble residence. The road within was 
 edged with velvet sward, and rolled to the smoothness of a 
 terrace-walk ; the winding avenue lengthened away before, 
 with trees of every variety of foliage ; light carriages passed 
 me, driven by ladies or gentlemen bound on their afternoon 
 airing ; a groom led up and down two beautiful blood-horses, 
 prancing along with side-saddles and morocco stirrups, and 
 keepers with hounds and terriers ; gentlemen on foot idling 
 along the walks, and servants in different liveries hurrying 
 to and fro, betokened a scene of busy gayety before me. I 
 had hardly noted these various circumstances before a sud 
 den curve in the road brought the castle into view, a vast 
 stone pile with castellated wings ; and in another moment 
 I was at the door, where a dozen lounging and powdered 
 menials were waiting on a party of ladies and gentlemen to 
 
 *** From Pencillings by the Way. Letters cxxviii. to cxxxi. 
 236 
 
A WEEK AT GORDON CASTLE. 237 
 
 their several carriages. It was the moment for the afternoon 
 drive. 
 
 The last phaeton dashed away, and my chaise advanced 
 to the door. A handsome boy in a kind of page s dress 
 immediately came to the window, addressed me by name, 
 and informed me that his grace was out deer-shooting, but 
 that my room was prepared, and he was ordered to wait on 
 me. I followed him through a hall lined with statues, deer s 
 horns, and armor, and was ushered into a large chamber 
 looking out on a park extending with its lawns and woods 
 to the edge of the horizon. A more lovely view never feasted 
 human eye. 
 
 " Who is at the castle? " I asked, as the boy busied him 
 self in unstrapping my portmanteau. 
 
 41 Oh, a great many, sir ! " He stopped in his occupation, 
 and began counting on his fingers. " There s Lord Aber 
 deen, and Lord Claud Hamilton and Lady Harriette Hamil 
 ton (them s his lordship s two step-children, you know, sir), 
 and the Duchess of Richmond, and Lady Sophia Lennox, 
 and Lady Keith, and Lord Mandeville, and Lord Aboyne, and 
 Lord Stormont and Lady Stormont, and Lord Morton and 
 Lady Morton, and Lady Alicia, and and and twenty 
 more, sir." 
 
 " Twenty more lords and ladies? " 
 
 " No, sir ! that s all the nobility." 
 
 " And you can t remember the names of the others? " 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 He was a proper page. He could not trouble his memory 
 with the names of commoners. 
 
 " And how many sit down to dinner? " 
 
 "Above thirty, sir, besides the duke and duchess." 
 
 " That will do." And off tripped my slender gentleman 
 with his laced jacket, giving the fire a terrible stir-up in his 
 way out, and turning back to inform me that the dinner hour 
 was seven precisely. 
 
238 PROSE WETTINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 It was a mild, bright afternoon, quite warm for the end of 
 an English September ; and with a fire in the room, and a 
 soft sunshine pouring in at the windows, a seat by the open 
 casement was far from disagreeable. I passed the time till 
 the sun set, looking out on the park. Hill and valley lay 
 between my eye and the horizon ; sheep fed in picturesque 
 flocks, and small fallow deer grazed near them ; the trees 
 were planted, and the distant forest shaped, by the hand of 
 taste ; and, broad and beautiful as was the expanse taken 
 in by the eye, it was evidently one princely possession. A 
 mile from the castle wall, the shaven sward extended in a 
 carpet of velvet softness, as bright as emerald, studded by 
 clumps of shubbery like flowers wrought elegantly on tap 
 estry ; and across it bounded occasionally a hare, and the 
 pheasants fed undisturbed near the thickets, or a lady with 
 flowing riding-dress and flaunting feather dashed into sight 
 upon her fleet blood-palfrey, and was lost the next moment 
 in the woods, or a boy put his pony to its mettle up the 
 ascent, or a gamekeeper idled into sight with his gun in the 
 hollow of his arm, and his hounds at his heels ; and all this 
 little world of enjoyment and luxury and beauty lay in the 
 hand of one man, and was created by his wealth in these 
 northern wilds of Scotland, a day s journey almost from the 
 possession of another human being. I never realized so 
 forcibly the splendid result of wealth and primogeniture. 
 
 The sun set in a blaze of fire among the pointed firs crown 
 ing the hills, and by the occasional prance of a horse s feet 
 on the gravel, and the roll of rapid wheels, and now and 
 then a gay laugh and merry voices, the different parties were 
 returning to the castle. Soon after, a loud gong sounded 
 through the gallery, the signal to dress ; and I left my mus 
 ing occupation unwillingly to make my toilet for an appear 
 ance in a formidable circle of titled aristocrats, not one of 
 whom I had ever seen, the duke himself a stranger to me 
 
A WEEK AT GORDON CASTLE. 239 
 
 except through the kind letter of invitation lying upon the 
 table. 
 
 I was sitting by the fire imagining forms and faces for the 
 different persons who had been named to me, when there 
 was a knock at the door, and a tall, white-haired gentleman 
 of noble physiognomy but singularly cordial address entered, 
 with the broad red ribbon of a duke across his breast, and 
 welcomed me most heartily to the castle. The gong sounded 
 at the next moment ; and in our way down, he named over 
 his other guests, and prepared me in a measure for the in 
 troductions which followed. The drawing-room was crowded 
 like a soiree. The duchess, a very tall and very handsome 
 woman, with a smile of the most winning sweetness, received 
 me at the door, and I was presented successively to every 
 person present. Dinner was announced immediately, and 
 the difficult question of precedence being sooner settled than 
 I had ever seen it before in so large a party, we passed 
 through files of servants to the dining-room. 
 
 It was a large and very lofty hall, supported at the ends 
 by marble columns, within which was stationed a band of 
 music playing delightfully. The walls were lined with full- 
 length family pictures from old knights in armor to the 
 modern dukes in kilt of the Gordon plaid ; and on the side 
 boards stood services of gold plate, the most gorgeously 
 massive and the most beautiful in workmanship I have ever 
 seen. There were, among the vases, several large coursing- 
 cups, won by the duke s hounds, of exquisite shape and 
 ornament. 
 
 I fell into my place between a gentleman and a very beau 
 tiful woman, of perhaps twenty-two, neither of whose names 
 I remembered, though I had but just been introduced. The 
 duke probably anticipated as much, and as I took my seat 
 he called out to me from the top of the table, that I had upon 
 my right, Lady , "the most agreeable woman in Scot- 
 
240 PEOSE WETTINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 land." It was unnecessary to say that she was the most 
 lovely. 
 
 I have been struck everywhere in England with the beauty 
 of the higher classes ; and as I looked around me upon the 
 aristocratic company at the table, I thought I never had seen 
 Heaven s image double-stamped as man and noble" so 
 unequivocally clear. There were two young men and four 
 or five young ladies of rank, and five or six people of more 
 decided personal attractions could scarcely be found ; the 
 style of form and face at the same time being of that cast of 
 superiority which goes by the expressive name of thorough 
 bred." There is a striking difference in this respect between 
 England and the countries of the Continent, the pay sans of 
 France and the contadini of Italy being physically far supe 
 rior to their degenerate masters ; while the gentry and nobility 
 of England differ from the peasantry in limb and feature as 
 the racer differs from the drayhorse, or the greyhound from 
 the cur. The contrast between the manners of English and 
 French gentlemen is quite as striking. The empressement, 
 the warmth, the shrug and gesture of the Parisian, and the 
 working eyebrow, dilating or contracting eye, and conspira 
 tor-like action of the Italian in the most common conversa 
 tion, are the antipodes of English high breeding. I should 
 say a North-American Indian, in his more dignified phase, 
 approached nearer to the manner of an English nobleman 
 than any other person. The calm repose of person and fea 
 ture, the self-possession under all circumstances, that incapa 
 bility of surprise or dtreglement, and that decision about the 
 slightest circumstance, and the apparent certainty that he is 
 acting absolutely comme il faut, is equally " gentlemanlike " 
 and Indiaulike. You cannot astonish an English gentleman. 
 If a man goes into a fit at his side, or a servant drops a 
 dish upon his shoulder, or he hears that the house is on 
 fire, he sets down his wineglass with the same deliberation. 
 
A WEEK AT GORDON CASTLE. 241 
 
 He has made up his mind what to do in all possible cases, 
 and he does it. He is cold at a first introduction, and may 
 bow stiffly (which he always does) in drinking wine with you, 
 but it is his manner ; and he would think an Englishman out 
 of his senses who should bow down to his very plate and 
 smile as a Frenchman does on a similar occasion. Rather 
 chilled by this, you are a little astonished when the ladies 
 have left the table, and he closes his chair up to you, to 
 receive an invitation to pass a month with him at his country- 
 house, and to discover that at the very moment he bowed so 
 coldly he was thinking how he should contrive to facilitate 
 your plans for getting to him, or seeing the country to advan 
 tage on the way. 
 
 The band ceased playing when the ladies left the table, 
 the gentlemen closed up, conversation assumed a merrier 
 cast, coffee and chasse-cafe were brought in when the wines 
 began to be circulated more slowly ; and at eleven there was 
 a general move to the drawing-room. Cards, tea, and music 
 filled up the time till twelve, and then the ladies took their 
 departure, and the gentlemen sat down to supper. I got to 
 bed somewhere about two o clock ; and thus ended an even 
 ing which I had anticipated as stiff and embarrassing, but 
 which is marked in my tablets as one of the most social and 
 kindly I have had the good fortune to record on my travels. 
 I have described it and shall describe others minutely, and 
 I hope there is no necessity of reminding any one that my 
 apology for thus disclosing scenes of private life has been 
 already made. Their interest as sketches by an American 
 of the society that most interests Americans, and the dis 
 tance at which they are published, justify them, I would 
 hope, from any charge of indelicacy. 
 
 I arose late on the first morning after my arrival at Gordon 
 Castle, and found the large party already assembled about 
 the breakfast- table. I was struck on entering with the dif- 
 
242 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 ferent air of the room. The deep windows opening out upon 
 the park had the effect of sombre landscapes in oaken frames ; 
 the troops of liveried servants, the glitter of plate, the music, 
 that had contributed to the splendor of the scene the night 
 before, were gone ; the duke sat laughing at the head of the 
 table, with a newspaper in his hand, dressed in a coarse 
 shooting- jacket and colored cravat ; the duchess was in a 
 plain morning-dress and cap of the simplest character ; and 
 the high-born women about the table, whom I had left glitter 
 ing with jewels and dressed in all the attractions of fashion, 
 appeared with the simplest coiffure and a toilet of studied 
 plainness. The ten or twelve noblemen present were en 
 grossed with their letters or newspapers over tea and toast ; 
 and in them, perhaps, the transformation was still greater. 
 The soigne man of fashion of the night before, faultless in 
 costume and distinguished in his appearance, in the full force 
 of the term, was enveloped now in a coat of fustian, with a 
 coarse waistcoat of plaid, a gingham cravat, and hob-nailed 
 shoes (for shooting) , and in place of the gay hilarity of the 
 supper-table, wore a face of calm indifference, and ate his 
 breakfast and read the paper in a rarely broken silence. I 
 wondered as I looked about me, what would be the impres 
 sion of many people in my own country, could they look in 
 upon that plain party, aware that it was composed of the 
 proudest nobility and the highest fashion of England. 
 
 Breakfast in England is a confidential and unceremonious 
 hour, and servants are generally dispensed with. This is to 
 me, I confess, an advantage it has over every other meal. 
 I detest eating with twenty tall fellows standing opposite, 
 whose business it is to watch me. The coffee and tea were 
 on the table, with toast, muffins, oat-cakes, marmalade, 
 jellies, fish, and all the paraphernalia of a Scotch breakfast ; 
 and on the sideboard stood cold meats for those who liked 
 them, and they were expected to go to it and help themselves. 
 
A WEEK AT GORDON CASTLE. 243 
 
 Nothing could be more easy, unceremonious, and affable 
 than the whole tone of the meal. One after another rose 
 and fell into groups in the windows, or walked up and down 
 the long room ; and, with one or two others, I joined the 
 duke at the head of the table, who gave us some interesting 
 particulars of the salmon-fisheries of the Spey. The privi 
 lege of fishing the river within his lands is bought of him at 
 the pretty sum of eight thousand pounds a year ! A salmon 
 was brought in for me to see, as of remarkable size, which 
 was not more than half the weight of our common American 
 salmon. 
 
 The ladies went off unaccompanied to their walks in the 
 park and other avocations ; those bound for the covers joined 
 the gamekeepers, who were waiting with their dogs in the 
 leash at the stables ; some paired off to the billiard-room, and 
 I was left with Lord Aberdeen in the breakfast-room alone. 
 The Toiy ex-minister made a thousand inquiries, with great 
 apparent interest, about America. When secretary for for 
 eign affairs in the Wellington cabinet, he had known Mr. 
 McLane intimately. He said he seldom had been so im 
 pressed with a man s honesty and straightforwardness, and 
 never did public business with any one with more pleas 
 ure. He admired Mr. McLane, and hoped he enjoyed his 
 friendship. He wished he might return as our minister to 
 England. One such honorable, uncompromising man, he 
 said, was worth a score of practised diplomatists. He spoke 
 of Gallatin and Rush in the same flattering manner, but 
 recurred continually to Mr. McLane, of whom he could 
 scarcely say enough. His politics would naturally lead him 
 to approve of the administration of General Jackson, but he 
 seemed to admire the president very much as a man. 
 
 Lord Aberdeen has the name of being the proudest and 
 coldest aristocrat of England. It is amusing to see the per 
 son who bears such a character. He is of the middle height, 
 
244 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 rather clumsily made, with an address more of sober dignity 
 than of pride or reserve. With a black coat much worn, 
 and always too large for him, a pair of coarse check trousers 
 very ill made, a waistcoat buttoned up to his throat, and a 
 cravat of the most primitive neglige, his aristocracy is cer 
 tainly not in his dress. His manners are of absolute simpli 
 city, amounting almost to want of style. He crosses his 
 hands behind him, and balances on his heels ; in conversation 
 his voice is low and cold, and he seldom smiles. Yet there 
 is a certain benignity in his countenance, and an indefinable 
 superiority and high breeding in his simple address, that 
 would betray his rank after a few minutes conversation to 
 any shrewd observer. It is only in his manner toward the 
 ladies of the party that he would be immediately distinguish 
 able from men of lower rank in society. 
 
 Still suffering from lameness, I declined all invitations to 
 the shooting-parties, who started across the park with the 
 dogs leaping about them in a frenzy of delight, and ac 
 cepted the duchess s kind offer of a pony-phaeton to drive 
 down to the kennels. The duke s breed, both of setters and 
 hounds, is celebrated throughout the kingdom. They occupy 
 a spacious building in the centre of a wood, a quadrangle 
 enclosing a court, and large enough for a respectable poor- 
 house. The chief huntsman and his family, and perhaps a 
 gamekeeper or two, lodge on the premises, and the dogs are 
 divided by palings across the court. I was rather startled to 
 be introduced into the small enclosure with a dozen gigantic 
 bloodhounds, as high as my breast, the keeper s whip in my 
 hand the only defence. I was not easier for the man s asser 
 tion that, without it, they would u hae the life oot o me in a 
 brack." They came around me very quietly, and one im 
 mense fellow, with a chest like a horse, and a head of the 
 finest expression, stood up and laid his paws on my shoul 
 ders, with the deliberation of a friend about to favor me 
 
A WEEK AT GORDON CASTLE. 245 
 
 with some grave advice. One can scarce believe these noble 
 creatures have not reason like ourselves. Those slender, 
 thorough-bred heads, large speaking eyes, and beautiful limbs 
 and graceful action, should be gifted with more than mere 
 animal instinct. The greyhounds were the beauties of the 
 kennel, however. I never had seen such perfect creatures. 
 "Dinna tak pains to caress em, sir," said the huntsman, 
 " they ll only be hangit for it!" I asked for an explana 
 tion ; and the man, with an air as if I was uncommonly ignor 
 ant, told me that a hound was hung the moment he betrayed 
 attachment to any one, or in any way showed signs of supe 
 rior sagacity. In coursing the hare, for instance, if the dog 
 abandoned the scent to cut across and intercept the poor ani 
 mal, he was considered as spoiling the sport. Greyhounds 
 are valuable only as they obey their mere natural instinct ; 
 and if they leave the track of the hare, either in their own 
 sagacity, or to follow their master, in intercepting it, they 
 spoil the pack, and are hung without mercy. It is an object, 
 of course, to preserve them what they usually are, the great 
 est fools as well as the handsomest of the canine species ; and 
 on the first sign of attachment to their master, their death- 
 warrant is signed. They are too sensible to live. The 
 duchess told me afterward that she had the greatest difficulty 
 in saving the life of the finest hound in the pack, who had 
 committed the sin of showing pleasure once or twice when 
 she appeared. 
 
 The setters were in the next division, and really they were 
 quite lovely. The rare tan and black dog of this race, with 
 his silky floss hair, intelligent muzzle, good-humored face 
 and caressing fondness (lucky dog ! that affection is per 
 mitted in his family !), quite excited my admiration. There 
 were thirty or forty of these, old and young ; and a friend 
 of the duke s would as soon ask him for a church living as 
 for the present of one of them. The former would be by 
 
246 PROSE WRITINGS OF JV. P. WILLIS. 
 
 much the smaller favor. Then there were terriers of four or 
 five breeds, of oue family of which (long-haired, long-bodied, 
 short-legged, and perfectly white little wretches) the keeper 
 seemed particularly proud. I evidently sunk in his opinion 
 for not admiring them. 
 
 I passed the remainder of the morning in threading the 
 lovely alleys and avenues of the park, miles after miles of 
 gravel-walk, extending away in every direction, with every 
 variety of turn and shade, now a deep wood, now a sunny 
 opening upon a glade, here along the bank of a stream, and 
 there around the borders of a small lagoon ; the little ponies 
 flying on over the smoothly rolled paths, and tossing their 
 mimicking heads, as if they too enjoyed the beauty of the 
 princely domain. This, I thought to myself, as I sped on 
 through light and shadow, is very like what is called happi 
 ness ; and this (if to be a duke were to enjoy it as I do with 
 this fresh feeling of novelty and delight) is a condition of 
 life it is not quite irrational to envy. And giving my little 
 steeds the rein, I repeated to myself Scott s graphic descrip 
 tion, which seems written for the park of Gordon Castle, and 
 thanked Heaven for one more day of unalloyed happiness. 
 
 " And there soft swept in velvet green, 
 The plain with many a glade between, 
 Whose tangled alleys far invade 
 The depths of the brown forest shade; 
 And the tall fern obscured the lawn, 
 Fair shelter for the sportive fawn. 
 There, tufted close with copse-wood green, 
 Was many a swelling hillock seen, 
 And all around was verdure meet 
 For pressure of the fairies feet. 
 The glossy valley loved the park, 
 The yew-tree lent its shadows dark, 
 And many an old oak worn and bare 
 With all its shivered boughs was there." 
 
A WEEK AT GORDON CASTLE. 247 
 
 The aim of Scotch hospitality seems to be, to convince you 
 that the house and all that is in it is your own, and you are 
 at liberty to enjoy it as if you were, in the French sense of 
 the French phrase, chez vous. The routine of Gordon Castle 
 was what each one chose to make it. Between breakfast 
 and lunch the ladies were generally invisible, and the gentle 
 men rode or shot, or played billiards, or kept their rooms. 
 At two o clock, a dish or two of hot game and a profusion 
 of cold meats were set on the small tables in the dining-room, 
 and everybody came in for a kind of lounging half -meal, 
 which occupied perhaps an hour. Thence all adjourned to 
 the drawing-room, under the windows of which were drawn 
 up carriages of all descriptions, with grooms, outriders, foot 
 men, and saddle-horses for gentlemen and ladies. Parties 
 were then made up for driving or riding, and from a pony- 
 chaise to a phaeton and four, there was no class of vehicle 
 which was not at your disposal. In ten minutes the carriages 
 were usually all filled, and away they flew, some to the banks 
 of the Spey or the seaside, some to the drives in the park, 
 and with the delightful consciousness that, speed where you 
 would, the horizon scarce limited the possession of your host, 
 and you were everywhere at home. The ornamental gates 
 flying open at your approach, miles distant from the castle ; 
 the herds of red deer trooping away from the sound of wheels 
 in the silent park ; the stately pheasants feeding tamely in 
 the immense preserves ; the hares scarce troubling themselves 
 to get out of the length of the whip ; the stalking game 
 keepers lifting their hats in the dark recesses of the forest, 
 there was something in this perpetual reminding of your privi 
 leges, which, as a novelty, was far from disagreeable. I 
 could not at the time bring myself to feel, what perhaps 
 would be more poetical and republican, that a ride in the wild 
 and unfenced forest of my own country would have been 
 more to my taste. 
 
LADY EAVELGOLD. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut 
 With diamonds? or to be smothered quick 
 With cassia, or be shot to death with pearls? " 
 
 DUCHESS or MALFY. 
 
 " I ve been i the Indies twice, and seen strange things 
 But two honest women ! One, I read of once ! " 
 
 RULE A WIFE. 
 
 IT was what is called by people on the Continent a Lon 
 don day." A thin gray mist drizzled down through the 
 smoke which darkened the long cavern of Fleet Street ; the 
 sidewalks were slippery and clammy ; the drays slid from 
 side to side on the greasy pavement, creating a perpetual 
 clamor among the lighter carriages with which they came in 
 contact ; the porters wondered that " gemmen " would carry 
 their umbrellas up when there was no rain, and the gentle 
 men wondered that porters should be permitted on the side 
 walks ; there were passengers in box-coats, though it was 
 the first of May, and beggars with bare breasts, though it 
 was chilly as November ; the boys were looking wistfully 
 into the hosier s windows who were generally at the pastry 
 cook s ; and there were persons who wished to know the 
 time, trying in vain to see the dial of St. Paul s through the 
 gamboge atmosphere. 
 
 It was twelve o clock, and a plain chariot with a simple 
 crest on the panels slowly picked its way through the choked 
 and disputed thoroughfare east of Temple Bar. The smart 
 glazed hat of the coachman, the well-fitted drab greatcoat 
 
 248 
 
LADY EAVELGOLD. 249 
 
 and gaiters of the footman, and the sort of half -submissive, 
 half-contemptuous look on both their faces (implying that 
 they were bound to drive to the devil if it were miladi s 
 orders, but that the rabble of Fleet Street was a leetle too 
 vulgar for their contact), expressed very plainly that the 
 lady within was a denizen of a more privileged quarter, but 
 had chosen a rainy day for some compulsory visit to the 
 city." 
 
 At the rate of perhaps a mile an hour, the well-groomed 
 night-horses (a pair of smart, hardy, twelve-mile cabs, all 
 bottom, but little style, kept for night-work and forced jour 
 neys) had threaded the tortuous entrails of London, and had 
 arrived at the arch of a dark court in Throgmorton Street. 
 The coachman put his wheels snug against the edge of the 
 sidewalk, to avoid being crushed by the passing drays, and 
 settled his many-caped benjamin about him ; while the foot 
 man spread his umbrella, and, making a balustrade of his 
 arm for his mistress s assistance, a closely-veiled lady 
 descended, and disappeared up the wet and ill-paved avenue. 
 
 The green-baize door of Firkins & Co. opened on its silent 
 hinges, and admitted the mysterious visitor, who, inquiring 
 of the nearest clerk if the junior partner were in, was shown 
 to a small inner room containing a desk, two chairs, a coal 
 fire, and a young gentleman. The last article of furniture 
 rose on the lady s entrance ; and as she threw off her veil he 
 made a low bow, with the air of a gentleman, who is neither 
 surprised nor embarrassed, and, pushing aside the door- 
 check, they were left alone. 
 
 There was that forced complaisance in the lady s manner 
 on her first entrance, which produced the slighest possible 
 elevation in a very scornful lip owned by the junior partner ; 
 but the lady was only forty-five, high-born, and very hand 
 some, and as she looked at the fine specimen of nature s 
 nobility, who met her with a look as proud and yet as gentle 
 
250 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 as her own, the smoke of Fleet Street passed away from her 
 memory, and she became natural and even gracious. The 
 effect upon the junior partner was simply that of removing 
 from his breast the shade of her first impression. 
 
 "I have brought you," said his visitor, drawing a card 
 from her reticule, " an invitation to the Duchess of Haut- 
 aigle s ball. She sent me half a dozen to fill up for what 
 she calls ornamentals ; and I am sure I shall scarce find 
 another who comes so decidedly under her grace s category." 
 
 The fair speaker had delivered this pretty speech in the 
 sweetest and best-bred tone of St. James s, looking the 
 while at the toe of the small brodequin which she held up to 
 the fire, perhaps thinking only of drying it. As she con 
 cluded her sentence, she turned to her companion for an 
 answer, and was surprised at the impassive politeness of his 
 bow of acknowledgment. 
 
 I regret that I shall not be able to avail myself of your 
 ladyship s kindness," said the junior partner, in the same 
 well-enunciated tone of courtesy. 
 
 "Then," replied the lady with a smile, " Lord Augustus 
 Fitz-Moi, who looks at himself all dinner-time in a spoon, 
 will be the Apollo of the hour. What a pity such a hand 
 some creature should be so vain ! By the way, Mr. Firkins, 
 you live without a looking-glass, I see." 
 
 " Your ladyship reminds me that this is merely a place of 
 business. May I ask at once what errand has procured me 
 the honor of a visit on so unpleasant a day ? " 
 
 A slight flush brightened the cheek and forehead of the 
 beautiful woman, as she compressed her lips, and forced her 
 self to say with affected ease, " The want of five hundred 
 pounds." 
 
 The junior partner paused an instant, while the lady 
 tapped with her boot upon the fender in ill-dissembled anx 
 iety, and then, turning to his desk, he filled up the check 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD. 251 
 
 without remark, presented it, and took his hat to wait on her 
 to her carriage. A gleam of relief and pleasure shot over 
 her countenance as she closed her small jewelled hand over 
 it, followed immediately by a look of embarrassed inquiry 
 into the face of the unquestioning banker. 
 
 I am in your debt already. 
 
 " Thirty thousand pounds, madam ! " 
 
 "And for this you think the securities on the estate of 
 Rockland" 
 
 " Are worth nothing, madam ! But it rains. I regret that 
 your ladyship s carriage cannot come to the door. In the 
 old-fashioned days of sedan-chairs, now, the dark courts of 
 Lothbury must have been more attractive. By the way, 
 talking of Lothbury, there is Lady Roseberry s/etec/iamp<^re 
 next week. If you should chance to have a spare card 
 
 Twenty, if you like ; I am too happy really, Mr. 
 Firkins" 
 
 "It s on the fifteenth; I shall have the honor of seeing 
 your ladyship there ! Good- morning. Home, coachman ! " 
 
 "Does this man love me?" was Lady Ravelgold s first 
 thought, as she sank back in her returning chariot. "Yet 
 no ! he was even rude in his haste to be rid of me. And I 
 would willingly have staid too, for there is something about 
 him of a mark that I like. Ay, and he must have seen it : 
 a lighter encouragement has been interpreted more readily. 
 Five hundred pounds ! really five hundred pounds ! And 
 thirty thousand at the back of it ! What does he mean ? 
 Heavens ! if he should be deeper than I thought ! If he 
 should wish to involve me first ! 
 
 And spite of the horror with which the thought was met 
 in the mind of Lady Ravelgold, the blush over her forehead 
 died away into a half smile and a brighter tint in her lips ; 
 and as the carriage wound slowly on through the confused 
 press of Fleet Street and the Strand, the image of the hand- 
 
252 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 some and haughty young banker shut her eyes from all sounds 
 without, and she was at her own door in Grosvenor Square 
 before she had changed position or wandered half a moment 
 from the subject of those busy dreams. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE morning of the fifteenth of May seemed to have been 
 appointed by all the flowers as a jubilee of perfume and 
 bloom. The birds had been invited, and sang in the summer 
 with a welcome as full-throated as a prima donna singing 
 down the tenor in a duet ; the most laggard buds turned out 
 their hearts to the sunshine, and promised leaves on the 
 morrow ; and that portion of London that had been invited 
 to Lady Roseberry s fete thought it a very fine day. That 
 portion which was not wondered how people would go swel 
 tering about in such a glare for a cold dinner ! 
 
 At about half-past two, a very elegant dark green cab 
 without a crest, and with a servant in whose slight figure and 
 plain blue livery there was not a fault, whirled out at the 
 gate of the Regent s Park, and took its way up the well- 
 watered road leading to Hampstead. The gentlemen whom 
 it passed or met turned to admire the performance of the 
 dark-gray horse, and the ladies looked after the cab as if 
 they could see the handsome occupant once more through its 
 leather back. Whether by conspiracy among the coach- 
 makers, or by an aristocracy of taste, the degree of elegance 
 in a turn-out attained by the cab just described is usually 
 confined to the acquaintances of Lady - ; that list being 
 understood to enumerate all "the nice young men" of the 
 West End, beside the guardsmen. (The ton of the latter, 
 in all matters that affect the style of the regiment, is looked 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD. 253 
 
 ufter by the club and the colonel.) The junior Firkins 
 seemed an exception to this exclusive rule. No " nice man " 
 
 could come from Lothbury, and he did not visit Lady ; 
 
 but his horse was faultless, and when he turned into the gate 
 of Rose-Eden, the policeman at the porter s lodge, though 
 he did not know him, thought it unnecessary to ask for his 
 name. Away he spattered up the hilly avenue, and, giving 
 the reins to his groom at the end of a green arbor leading to 
 the reception-lawn, he walked in and made his bow to Lady 
 Roseberry, who remarked, "How very handsome! Who 
 can he be?" and the junior partner walked on and dis 
 appeared down an avenue of laburnums. 
 
 Ah ! but Rose-Eden looked a paradise that day ! Hun 
 dreds had passed across the close-shaven lawn, with a bow 
 to the lady mistress of this fair abode. Yet the grounds 
 were still private enough for Milton s pair, so lost were they 
 in the green labyrinths of hill and dale. Some had descended 
 through heavily shaded paths to a fancy dairy, built over a 
 fountain in the bottom of a cool dell ; and here, amid her 
 milk-pans of old and costly china, the prettiest maid in the 
 country round pattered about upon a floor of Dutch tiles, 
 and served her visitors with creams and ices, already, as it 
 were, adapted to fashionable comprehension. Some had 
 strayed to the ornamental cottages in the skirts of the flower- 
 garden, poetical abodes, built from a picturesque drawing, 
 with imitation roughness ; thatch, lattice-window, and low 
 paling, all complete ; and inhabited by superannuated de 
 pendants of Lord Roseberry, whose only duties were to look 
 like patriarchs, and give tea and new cream-cheese to visitors 
 on fete-days. Some had gone to see the silver and gold 
 pheasants in their wire houses, stately aristocrats of the game 
 tribe, who carry their finely pencilled feathers like " Mar- 
 malet Madarus," strutting in hoop and farthingale. Some 
 had gone to the kennels, to see setters and pointers, hounds 
 
254 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 and terriers, lodged like gentlemen, each breed in its own 
 apartment, the puppies, as elsewhere, treated with most 
 attention. Some were in the flower-garden, some in the 
 greenhouses, some in the graperies, aviaries, and grottoes ; 
 and at the side of a bright sparkling fountain, in the recesses 
 of a fir-grove, with her foot upon its marble lip, and one 
 hand on the shoulder of a small Cupid who archly made a 
 drinking- cup of his wing, and caught the bright water as it 
 fell, stood Lady Imogen Ravelgold, the loveliest girl of 
 nineteen that prayed night and morning within the parish 
 of May Fair, listening to very passionate language from the 
 young banker of Lothbury. 
 
 A bugle on the lawn rang a recall. From every alley, and 
 by every path, poured in the gay multitude ; and the smooth 
 sward looked like a plateau of animated flowers, waked by 
 magic from a broidery on green velvet. Ah ! the beautiful 
 demi-toilettes ! so difficult to attain, yet, when attained, the 
 dress most modest, most captivating, most worthy the divine 
 grace of woman. Those airy hats, sheltering from the sun, 
 yet not enviously concealing a feature or a ringlet that a 
 painter would draw for his exhibition-picture ! Those sum 
 mery and shapeless robes, covering the person more to show 
 its outline better, and provoke more the worship, which, like 
 all worship, is made more adoring by mystery ! Those com 
 plexions which but betray their transparency in the sun ; 
 lips in which the blood is translucent when between you and 
 the light ; cheeks finer-grained than alabaster, yet as cool in 
 their virgin purity as a tint in the dark corner of a Ruysdael : 
 the human race was at less perfection in Athens in the days 
 of Lais, in Egypt in the days of Cleopatra, than that day 
 on the lawn of Rose-Eden. 
 
 Cartloads of ribbons, of every gay color, had been laced 
 through the trees in all directions ; and amid every variety 
 of foliage, and every shade of green, the tulip- tints shone 
 
LADY EAVELGOLD. 255 
 
 vivid and brilliant like an American forest after the first 
 frost. From the left edge of the lawn the ground suddenly 
 sunk into a dell, shaped like an amphitheatre, with a level 
 platform at its bottom, and all around, above and below, 
 thickened a shady wood. The music of a delicious band 
 stole up from the recesses of a grove, draped as an orches 
 tra and green-room on the lower side ; and while the audience 
 disposed themselves in the shade of the upper grove, a com 
 pany of players and dancing-girls commenced their theatri 
 cals. Imogen Ravelgold, who was separated by a pine-tree 
 only from the junior partner, could scarce tell you, when it 
 was finished, what was the plot of the play. 
 
 The recall-bugle sounded again, and the band wound away 
 from the lawn, playing a gay march ; followed Lady Rose- 
 berry and her suite of gentlemen, followed dames and their 
 daughters, followed all who wished to see the flight of my 
 lord s falcons. By a narrow path and a wicket-gate the 
 long, music-guided train stole out upon an open hill-side, 
 looking down on a verdant and spreading meadow. The 
 band played at a short distance behind the gay groups of 
 spectators, and it was a pretty picture to look down upon the 
 splendidly dressed falconer and his men, holding their fierce 
 birds upon their wrists, in their hoods and jesses, a fore 
 ground of old chivalry and romance ; while far beyond ex 
 tended, like a sea over the horizon, the smoke-clad pinnacles 
 of busy and every-day London. There are such contrasts for 
 the eyes of the rich ! 
 
 The scarlet hood was taken from the trustiest falcon, and 
 a dove, confined at first with a string, was thrown up, and 
 brought back, to excite his attention. As he fixed his eye 
 upon him, the frightened victim was let loose, and the falcon 
 flung off. Away skimmed the dove in a low flight over the 
 meadow ; and up to the very zenith, in circles of amazing 
 swiftness and power, sped the exulting falcon, apparently 
 
256 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 forgetful of his prey, and bound for the eye of the sun with 
 his strong wings and his liberty. The falconer s whistle and 
 cry were heard ; the dove circled round the edge of the 
 meadow in his wavy flight ; and down, with the speed of 
 lightning, shot the falcon, striking his prey dead to the earth 
 before the eye could settle on his form. As the proud bird 
 stood upon his victim, looking around with a lifted crest and 
 fierce eye, Lady Imogen Ravelgold heard, in a voice of 
 which her heart knew the music, "They who soar highest 
 strike surest : the dove lies in the falcon s bosom." 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE afternoon had, meantime, been wearing on, and at 
 six the "breakfast" was announced. The tents beneath 
 which the tables were spread were in different parts of the 
 grounds, and the guests had made up their own parties. 
 Each sped to his rendezvous, and as the last loiterers dis 
 appeared from the lawn a gentleman in a claret coat and a 
 brown study found himself stopping to let a lady pass who 
 had obeyed the summons as tardily as himself. In a white 
 chip hat, Hairbault s last, a few lilies of the valley laid 
 among her raven curls beneath, a simple white robe, the 
 chef-d ceuvre of Victotine in style and tournure, Lady Ravel- 
 gold would have been the belle of the fete, but for her 
 daughter. 
 
 "Well emerged from Lothbury ! " she said, courtesying, 
 with a slight flush over her features, but immediately taking 
 his arm ; " I have lost my party, and meeting you is oppor 
 tune. Where shall we breakfast? " 
 
 There was a small tent standing invitingly open on the 
 opposite side of the lawn, and by the fainter rattle of soup- 
 
LADY EAVELGOLD. 257 
 
 spoons from that quarter it promised to be less crowded than 
 the others. The junior partner would willingly have de 
 clined the proffered honor, but he saw at a glance that there 
 was no escape, and submitted with a grace. 
 
 " You know very few people here," said his fair creditor, 
 taking the bread from her napkin. 
 
 u Your ladyship, and one other." 
 
 u Ah ! we shall have dancing by and by, and I must intro 
 duce you to rny daughter. By the way, have you no name 
 from your mother s side ? Firkins sounds so very odd ! 
 Give me some prettier word to drink in this champagne." 
 
 " What do you think of Tremlet? " 
 
 "Too effeminate for your severe style of beauty but it 
 will do. Mr. Tremlet, your health ! Will you give me a 
 little of the pat& before you ? Pray, if it is not indiscreet, 
 how comes that classic profile, and, more surprising still, that 
 distinguished look of yours, to have found no gayer destiny 
 than the signing of Firkins & Co. to notes of hand? 
 Though I thought you became your den in Lothbury, upon 
 my honor you look more at home here." 
 
 And Lady Ravelgold fixed her superb eyes upon the beau 
 tiful features of her companion, wondering partly why he did 
 not speak, and partly why she had not observed before that 
 he was incomparably the handsomest creature she had ever 
 seen. 
 
 " I can regret no vocation," he answered after a moment, 
 "which procures me an acquaintance with your ladyship s 
 family." 
 
 "There is an arri&re penste in that formal speech, Mr. 
 Tremlet. You are insincere. I am the only one in my 
 family whom you know, and what pleasure have you taken in 
 my acquaintance ? And, now I think of it, there is a mys 
 tery about you, which, but for the noble truth written so 
 legibly on your features, I should be afraid to fathom. Why 
 
258 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 have you suffered me to overdraw my credit so enormously, 
 and without a shadow of a protest? " 
 
 When Lady Ravelgold had disburdened her heart of this 
 direct question, she turned half round, and looked her com 
 panion in the face with an intense interest, which produced 
 upon her own features an expression of earnestness very 
 uncommon upon their pale and impassive lines. She was 
 one of those persons of little thought, who care nothing for 
 causes or consequences, so that the present difficulty is re 
 moved, or the present hour provided with its wings ; but the 
 repeated relief she had received from the young banker, when 
 total ruin would have been the consequence of his refusal, 
 and the marked coldness in his manner to her, had stimulated 
 the utmost curiosity of which she was capable. Her vanity, 
 founded upon her high rank and great renown as a beauty, 
 would have argued that he might be willing to get her into 
 his power at that price, had he been less agreeable in his own 
 person, or more eager in his manner. But she had wanted 
 money sufficiently to know that thirty thousand pounds are 
 not a bagatelle, and her brain was busy till she discovered 
 the equivalent he sought for it. Meantime her fear that he 
 would turn out to be a lover grew rapidly into a fear that 
 he would not. 
 
 Lady Ravelgold had been the wife of a dissolute earl, who 
 had died leaving his estate inextricably involved. With no 
 male heir to the title or property, and no very near relation, 
 the beautiful widow shut her eyes to the difficulties by which 
 she was surrounded ; and at the first decent moment after 
 the death of her lord, she had re-entered the gay society of 
 which she had been the bright and particular star, and never 
 dreamed either of diminishing her establishment, or of cal 
 culating her possible income. The first heavy draft she had 
 made upon the house of Firkins & Co., her husband s bank 
 ers, had been returned with a statement of the Ravelgold 
 
LADY EAVELGOLD. 259 
 
 debt and credit on their books, by which it appeared that 
 Lord Ravelgold had overdrawn four or five thousand pounds 
 before his death, and that, from some legal difficulties, noth 
 ing could be realized from the securities given on his estates. 
 This bad news arrived on the morning of a fete to be given 
 by the Russian ambassador, at which her only child, Lady 
 Imogen, was to make her debut in society. With the facility 
 of disposition which was peculiar to her, Lady Ravelgold 
 thrust the papers into her drawer, and determining to visit her 
 banker on the following morning, threw the matter entirely 
 from her mind, and made preparations for the ball. With 
 the Russian government the house of Firkins & Co. had long 
 carried on very extensive fiscal transactions ; and in obedi 
 ence to instructions from the emperor, regular invitations 
 for the embassy fetes were sent to the bankers, accepted 
 occasionally by the junior partner only, who was generally 
 supposed to be a natural son of old Firkins. Out of the 
 banking-house he was known as Mr. Tremlet ; and it was by 
 this name, which was presumed to be his mother s, that he 
 was casually introduced to Lady Imogen on the night of the 
 fete, while she was separated from her mother in the dancing- 
 room. The consequence was a sudden, deep, ineffaceable 
 passion in the bosom of the young banker, checked and 
 silenced, but never lessened or chilled, by the recollection of 
 the obstacle of his birth. The impression of his subdued 
 manner, his worshipping yet most respectful tones, and the 
 bright soul that breathed through his handsome features with 
 his unusual excitement, was, to say the least, favorable upon 
 Lady Imogen ; and they parted on the night of the fete, 
 mutually aware of each other s preference. 
 
 On the following morning Lady Ravelgold made her pro 
 posed visit to the city ; and, inquiring for Mr. Firkins, was 
 shown in as usual to the junior partner, to whom the collo 
 quial business of the concern had long been intrusted. To 
 
260 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 her surprise she found no difficulty in obtaining the sum of 
 money which had been refused her on the preceding day, a 
 result which she attributed to her powers of persuasion, or 
 to some new turn in the affairs of the estate ; and for two 
 years these visits had been repeated at intervals of three or 
 four months, with the same success, though not with the 
 same delusion as to the cause. She had discovered that the 
 estate was worse than nothing, and the junior partner cared 
 little to prolong his tete-ti-tetes with her ; and, up to the visit 
 with which this tale opened, she had looked to every suc 
 ceeding one with increased fear and doubt. 
 
 During these two years, Tremlet had seen Lady Imogen 
 occasionally at balls and public places, and every look they 
 exchanged wove more strongly between them the subtle 
 threads of love. Once or twice she had endeavored to 
 interest her mother in conversation on the subject, with the 
 intention of making a confidence of her feelings ; but Lady 
 Ravelgold, when not anxious, was giddy with her own 
 success, and the unfamiliar name never rested a moment on 
 her ear. With this explanation to render the tale intelligible, 
 " let us," as the French say, " return to our muttons." 
 
 Of the conversation between Tremlet and her mother, 
 Lady Imogen was an unobserved and astonished witness. 
 The tent which they had entered was large, with a buffet in 
 the centre, and a circular table waited on by servants within 
 the ring ; and just concealed by the drapery around the pole, 
 sat Lady Imogen with a party of her friends, discussing 
 very seriously the threatened fashion of tight sleeves. 
 She had half risen, when her mother entered, to offer her a 
 seat by her side ; but the sight of Tremlet, who immediately 
 followed, had checked the words upon her lip, and to her 
 surprise they seated themselves on the side that was wholly 
 unoccupied, and conversed in a tone inaudible to all but 
 themselves. Not aware that her lover knew Lady Ravelgold, 
 
LADY EAVELGOLD. 261 
 
 she supposed that she might have been casually introduced, 
 till the earnestness of her mother s manner, and a certain 
 ease between them in the little courtesies of the table, as 
 sured her that this could not be their first interview. Trem- 
 let s face was turned from her, and she could not judge 
 whether he was equally interested ; but she had been so 
 accustomed to consider her mother as irresistible when she 
 chose to please, that she supposed it of course ; and very 
 soon the heightened color of Lady Ravelgold, and the un 
 wavering look of mingled admiration and curiosity which 
 she bent upon the handsome face of her companion, left no 
 doubt in her mind that her reserved and exclusive lover 
 was in the dangerous toils of a rival whose power she knew. 
 From the mortal pangs of a first jealousy, Heaven send thee 
 deliverance, fair Lady Imogen ! 
 
 " We shall find our account in the advances on your lady 
 ship s credit," said Tremlet, in reply to the direct question 
 that was put to him. "Meantime permit me to admire the 
 courage with which you look so disagreeable a subject in the 
 face." 
 
 4 For disagreeable subject, read Mr. Tremlet. I 
 show my temerity more in that. Apropos of faces, yours 
 would become the new fashion of cravat. The men at 
 Crockford s slip the ends through a ring of their lady-love s, 
 if they chance to have one, thus ! " And untying the loose 
 knot of his black satin cravat, Lady Ravelgold slipped over 
 the ends a diamond of small value, conspicuously set in 
 pearls. 
 
 "The men at Crockford s," said Tremlet, hesitating to 
 commit the rudeness of removing the ring, " are not of my 
 school of manners. If I had been so fortunate as to inspire 
 a lady with a preference for me, I should not advertise it on 
 my cravat." 
 
 "But suppose the lady were proud of her preference, as 
 
262 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 dames were of the devotion of their knights in the days of 
 chivalry, would you not wear her favor as conspicuously as 
 they?" 
 
 A flush of mingled embarrassment and surprise shot over 
 the forehead of Tremlet ; and he was turning the ring with 
 his fingers, when Lady Imogen, attempting to pass out of 
 the tent, was stopped by her mother. 
 
 Imogen, my daughter! this is Mr. Tremlet. Lady 
 Imogen Ravelgold, Mr. Tremlet! " 
 
 The cold and scarce perceptible bow which the wounded girl 
 gave to her lover betrayed no previous acquaintance to the 
 careless Lady Ravelgold. Without giving a second thought 
 to her daughter, she held her glass for some champagne to a 
 passing servant ; and as Lady Imogen and her friends crossed 
 the lawn to the dancing-tent, she resumed the conversation 
 which they had interrupted, while Tremlet, with his heart 
 brooding on the altered look he had received, listened and 
 replied almost unconsciously, yet, from this very circum 
 stance, in a manner which was interpreted by his companion 
 as the embarrassment of a timid and long-repressed passion 
 for herself. 
 
 While Lady Ravelgold and the junior partner were thus 
 playing at cross purposes over their champagne and bon-bons, 
 Grisi and Lablache were singing a duet from / Puritani to a 
 full audience in the saloon ; the drinking young men sat over 
 their wine at the nearly deserted tables ; Lady Imogen and 
 her friends waltzed to Collinet s band ; and the artisans 
 were busy below the lawn erecting the machinery for the 
 fire- works. Meantime every alley and avenue, grot and laby 
 rinth, had been dimly illuminated with colored lamps, show 
 ing like vari-colored glow-worms amid the foliage and shells ; 
 and if the bright scenery of Rose-Eden had been lovely by 
 day, it was fay-land and witchery by night. Fatal impulse 
 of our nature, that these approaches to paradise in the 
 
LADY EAVELGOLD. 263 
 
 " delight of the eye," stir only in our bosoms the passions 
 upon which law and holy writ have put ban and bridle ! 
 
 "Shall we stroll down this alley of crimson lamps?" 
 said Lady Ravelgold, crossing the lawn from the tent where 
 their coffee had been brought to them, and putting her slender 
 arm far into that of her now pale and silent companion. 
 
 A lady in a white dress stood at the entrance of that 
 crimson avenue, as Tremlet and his passionate admirer dis 
 appeared beneath the closing lines of the long perspective ; 
 and, remaining a moment gazing through the unbroken twin 
 kle of the confusing lamps, she pressed her hand hard upon 
 her forehead, drew up her form as if struggling with some 
 irrepressible feeling, and in another moment was whirling in 
 the waltz with Lord Ernest Fitzantelope, whose mother wrote 
 a complimentary paragraph about their performance for the 
 next Saturday s Court Journal. 
 
 The bugle sounded, and the band played a march upon the 
 lawn. From the breakfast- tents, from the coffee-rooms, 
 from the dance, from the card-tables, poured all who wished 
 to witness the marvels that lie in saltpetre. Gentlemen who 
 stood in a tender attitude in the darkness held themselves 
 ready to lean the other way when the rockets blazed up, 
 and mammas who were encouraging flirtations with eligibles 
 whispered a caution on the same subject to their less expe 
 rienced daughters. 
 
 Up sped the missiles, round spun the wheels, fair burned 
 the pagodas, swift flew the fire-doves off and back again on 
 their wires, and softly floated down through the dewy atmos 
 phere of that May night the lambent and many-colored stars 
 flung burning from the exploded rockets. Device followed 
 device, and Lady Imogen almost forgot, in her child s delight 
 at the spectacle, that she had taken into her bosom a green 
 serpent, whose folds were closing like suffocation about her 
 heart. 
 
264 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 The finale was to consist of a new light, invented by the 
 pyrotechnist, promised to Lady Roseberry to be several de 
 grees brighter than the sun comparatively with the quan 
 tity of matter. Before this last flourish came a pause ; and 
 while all the world were murmuring love and applause around 
 her, Lady Imogen, with her eyes fixed on an indefinite point 
 in the darkness, took advantage of the cessation of light to 
 feed her serpent with thoughts of passionate and uncon 
 trollable pain. A French attach^ Phillipiste to the very tips 
 of his mustache, addressed to her ear, meantime, the compli 
 ments he had found most effective in the Chamsee d Antin. 
 
 The light burst suddenly from a hundred blazing points, 
 clear, dazzling, intense, illuminating as by the instantane 
 ous burst of day the farthest corner of Rose-Eden. And 
 Monsieur Mangepoire, with a French contempt for English 
 fireworks, took advantage of the first ray to look into Lady 
 Imogen s eyes. 
 
 " jtfais, Miladi!" was his immediate exclamation, after 
 following their direction with a glance, u ce n est qu un ta 
 bleau vivant, cela ! Help, gentlemen ! Elle s 6vanouit. Some 
 salts! Misericords/ MonDieu! MonDieu!" And Lady 
 Imogen Ravelgold was carried fainting to Lady Roseberry s 
 chamber. 
 
 In a small opening at the end of a long avenue of lilacs, 
 extended from the lawn in the direction of Lady Imogen s 
 fixed and unconscious gaze, was presented, by the unex 
 pected illumination, the tableau vivant seen by her ladyship 
 and Monsieur Mangepoire at the same instant, a gentle 
 man drawn up to his fullest height, with his arms folded ; 
 and a lady kneeling on the ground at his feet, with her arms 
 stretched up to his bosom. 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD. 265 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A LITTLE after two o clock on the following Wednesday, 
 Tremlet s cabriolet stopped near the perron of Willis s rooms 
 in King Street ; and while he sent up his card to the lady 
 patronesses for his ticket to that night s Almack s, he busied 
 himself in looking into the crowd of carriages about him, 
 and reading on the faces of their fair occupants the hope 
 and anxiety to which they were a prey, till John the foot 
 man brought them tickets or despair. Drawn up on the 
 opposite side of the street, stood a family- carriage of the 
 old style, covered with half the arms of the herald s office, 
 and containing a fat dowager and three very over-dressed 
 daughters. Watching them, to see the effect of their appli 
 cation, stood upon the sidewalk three or four young men 
 from the neighboring club-house ; and at the moment Tremlet 
 was observing these circumstances, a foreign britzska, con 
 taining a beautiful woman of a reputation better understood 
 than expressed in the conclave above stairs, flew round the 
 corner of St. James s Street, and very nearly drove into the 
 open mouth of the junior partner s cabriolet. 
 
 "I will bet you a Ukraine colt against this fine bay of 
 yours," said the Russian secretary of legation, advancing 
 from the group of dandies to Tremlet, " that miladi yonder, 
 with all the best blood of England in her own and her 
 daughters red faces, gets no tickets this morning." 
 
 u I ll take a bet upon the lady who has nearly extinguished 
 me, if you like," answered Tremlet, gazing with admiration 
 at the calm, delicate, childlike-looking creature, who sat 
 before him in the britzska. 
 
 "No!" said the secretary, " for Almack s is a republic 
 of beauty, and she ll be voted in without either blood or 
 
266 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 virtue. Par exemple, Lady Ravelgold s voucher is good here, 
 though she does study tableaux in Lothbury eh, Tremlet? " 
 Totally unaware of the unlucky discovery by the fireworks 
 at Lady Roseberry s fete, Tremlet colored and was inclined 
 to take the insinuation as an affront ; but a laugh from the 
 dandies drew off his companion s attention, and he observed 
 the dowager s footman standing at her coach window with 
 his empty hands held up in most expressive negation, while 
 the three young ladies within sat aghast, in all the agonies 
 of disappointed hopes. The lumbering carriage got into 
 motion, its ineffective blazonry paled by the mortified blush 
 of its occupants, and as the junior partner drove away, 
 philosophizing on the arbitrary opinions and unprovoked 
 insults of polite society, the britzska shot by, showing him, 
 as he leaned forward, a lovely woman who bent on him the 
 most dangerous eyes in London, and an Almack s ticket 
 lying on the unoccupied cushion beside her. 
 
 The white relievo upon the pale blue wall of Almack s 
 showed every crack in its stucco flowers ; and the faded 
 chaperones who had defects of a similar description to 
 conceal took warning of the walls, and retreated to the 
 friendlier dimness of the tea-room. Collinet was beginning 
 the second set of quadrilles ; and among the fairest of the 
 surpassingly beautiful women who were moving to his 
 heavenly music, was Lady Imogen Ravelgold, the lovelier 
 to-night for the first heavy sadness that had ever dimmed 
 the roses in her cheek. Her lady-mother divided her 
 thoughts between what this could mean, and whether Mr. 
 Tremlet would come to the ball ; and when, presently after, 
 in the dos-a-dos, she forgot to look at her daughter on 
 seeing that gentleman enter, she lost a very good opportunity 
 for a guess at the cause of Lady Imogen s paleness. 
 
 To the pure and true eye that appreciates the divinity of 
 
LADY EAVELGOLD. 267 
 
 the form after which woman is made, it would have been a 
 glorious feast to have seen the perfection of shape, color, 
 motion, and countenance, shown that night on the bright 
 floor of Almack s. For the young and beautiful girls whose 
 envied destiny is to commence their woman s history in this 
 exclusive hall, there exist aids to beauty known to no other 
 class or nation. Perpetual vigilance over every limb from 
 the cradle up ; physical education of a perfection, discipline, 
 and judgment, pursued only at great expense and under great 
 responsibility ; moral education of the highest kind, habitual 
 consciousness of rank, exclusive contact with elegance and 
 luxury, and a freedom of intellectual culture which breathes 
 a soul through the face before passion has touched it with a 
 line or a shade, these are some of the circumstances which 
 make Almack s the cynosure of the world for adorable and 
 radiant beauty. 
 
 There were three ladies who had come to Almack s with a 
 definite object that night, each of whom was destined to be 
 surprised and foiled, Lady Ravelgold, who feared she had 
 been abrupt with the inexperienced banker, but trusted to 
 find him softened by a day or two s reflection ; Mrs. St. 
 Leger, the lady of the britzska, who had ordered supper for 
 two on her arrival at home from her morning s drive, and 
 intended to have the company of the handsome creature she 
 had nearly run over in King Street ; and Lady Imogen Ravel- 
 gold, as will appear in the sequel. 
 
 Tremlet stood in the entrance from the tea-room a moment, 
 gathering courage to walk alone into such a dazzling scene, 
 and then, having caught a glimpse of the glossy lines of Lady 
 Imogen s head at the farthest end of the room, he was 
 advancing toward her, when he was addressed by a lady 
 who leaned against one of the slender columns of the 
 orchestra. After a sweetly phrased apology for having 
 nearly knocked out his brains that morning with her horses 
 
268 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 forefeet, Mrs. St. Leger took his arm, and, walking deliber 
 ately two or three times up and down the room, took posses 
 sion at last of a banquette on the highest range, so far from 
 any other person that it would have been a marked rudeness 
 to have left her alone. Tremlet took his seat by her with 
 this instinctive feeling, trusting that some of her acquaint 
 ances would soon approach, and give him a fair excuse to 
 leave her ; but he soon became amused with her piquant 
 style of conversation, and, not aware of being observed, fell 
 into the attitude of a pleased and earnest listener. 
 
 Lady Ravelgold s feelings during this petit entretien were 
 of a very positive description. She had an instinctive knowl 
 edge, and consequently a jealous dislike, of Mrs. St. Leger s 
 character ; and, still under the delusion that the young 
 banker s liberality was prompted by a secret passion for 
 herself, she saw her credit in the city and her hold upon the 
 affections of Tremlet (for whom she had really conceived a 
 violent affection) melting away in every smile of the danger 
 ous woman who engrossed him. As she looked around for a 
 friend, to whose ear she might communicate some of the 
 suffocating poison in her own heart, Lady Imogen returned 
 to her from a galopade ; and, like a second dagger into the 
 heart of the pure-minded girl, went this second proof of her 
 lover s corrupt principle and conduct. Unwilling to believe 
 even her own eyes on the night of Lady Roseberry s fete, she 
 had summoned resolution on the road home to ask an ex 
 planation of her mother. Embarrassed by the abrupt ques 
 tion, Lady Ravelgold felt obliged to make a partial confidence 
 of the state of her pecuniary affairs ; and, to clear herself, 
 she represented Tremlet as having taken advantage of her 
 obligations to him to push a dishonorable suit. The scene 
 disclosed by the sudden blaze of the fireworks being thus 
 simply explained, Lady Imogen determined at once to give 
 up Tremlet s acquaintance altogether, a resolution which 
 
LADY EAVELGOLD. 269 
 
 his open flirtation with a woman of Mrs. St. Leger s char 
 acter served to confirm. She had, however, one errand with 
 him, prompted by her filial feelings, and favored by an acci 
 dental circumstance which will appear. 
 
 "Do you believe in animal magnetism? * asked Mrs. St. 
 Leger ; " for, by the fixedness of Lady Ravelgold s eyes in 
 this quarter, something is going to happen to one of us." 
 
 The next moment the Russian secretary approached and 
 took his seat by Mrs. St. Leger, and with diplomatic address 
 contrived to convey to Tremlet s ear that Lady Ravelgold 
 wished to speak with him. The banker rose, but the quick 
 wit of his companion comprehended the manoeuvre. 
 
 "Ah! I see how it is," she said, "but stay you ll sup 
 with me to-night? Promise me parole d honneur! " 
 
 "Parole!" answered Tremlet, making his way out be 
 tween the seats, half pleased and half embarrassed. 
 
 " As for you, Monsieur le Secretaire," said Mrs. St. 
 Leger, you have forfeited my favor, and may sup else 
 where. How dare you conspire against me? " 
 
 While the Russian was making his peace, Tremlet crossed 
 over to Lady Ravelgold ; but, astonished at the change in 
 Lady Imogen, he soon broke in abruptly upon her mother s 
 conversation, to ask her to dance. She accepted his hand 
 for a quadrille ; but as they walked down the room in search 
 of a vis-a-vis, she complained of heat, and asked timidly if 
 he would take her to the tea-room. 
 
 " Mr. Tremlet," she said, fixing her eyes upon the cup of 
 tea which he had given her, and which she found some diffi 
 culty in holding, " I have come here to-night to communicate 
 to you some important information, to ask a favor, and to 
 break off an acquaintance which has lasted too long." 
 
 Lady Imogen stopped, for the blood had fled from her 
 lips, and she was compelled to ask his arm for a support. 
 She drew herself up to her fullest height the next moment, 
 
270 PROSE WETTINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 looked at Tremlet, who stood in speechless astonishment, 
 and with a strong effort, commenced again in a low, firm 
 tone, 
 
 "I have been acquainted with you some time, sir, and 
 have never inquired, nor knew more than your name, up to 
 this day. I suffered myself to be pleased too blindly " 
 
 " Dear Lady Imogen ! " 
 
 " Stay a moment, sir ! I will proceed directly to my busi 
 ness. I received this morning a letter from the senior part 
 ner of a mercantile house in the city, with which you are 
 connected. It is written on the supposition that I have 
 some interest in you, and informs me you are not, as you 
 yourself suppose, the son of the gentleman who writes the 
 letter." 
 
 " Madam!" 
 
 "That gentleman, sir, as you know, never was married. 
 He informs me that in the course of many financial visits to 
 St. Petersburg, he formed a friendship with Count Man- 
 t euffel, then minister of finance to the emperor, whose tragi 
 cal end, in consequence of his extensive defalcations, is well 
 known. In brief, sir, you were his child, and were taken by 
 this English banker, and carefully educated as his own, in 
 happy ignorance, as he imagined, of your father s misfor 
 tunes and mournful death." 
 
 Tremlet leaned against the wall, unable to reply to this 
 astounding intelligence, and Lady Imogen went on, 
 
 " Your title and estates have been restored to you at the 
 request of your kind benefactor, and you are now the heir 
 to a princely fortune, and a count of the Russian empire. 
 Here is the letter, sir, which is of no value to me now. 
 Mr. Tremlet! one word more, sir." 
 
 Lady Imogen gasped for breath. 
 
 "In return, sir, for much interest given you heretofore 
 in return, sir, for this information " 
 
LADY EAVELGOLD. 271 
 
 " Speak, dear Lady Imogen ! " 
 " Spare my mother ! " 
 
 " Mrs. St. Leger s carriage stops the way," shouted a ser 
 vant at that moment, at the top of the stairs ; and as if there 
 were a spell in the sound to nerve her resolution anew, Lady 
 Imogen Ravelgold shook the tears from her eyes, bowed 
 coldly to Tremlet, and passed out into the dressing-room. 
 
 " If you please, sir," said a servant, approaching the 
 amazed banker, "Mrs. St. Leger waits for you in her 
 carriage." 
 
 "Will you come home and sup with us?" said Lady 
 Ravelgold at the same instant, joining him in the tea-room. 
 
 " I shall be only too happy, Lady Ravelgold." 
 
 The bold coachman of Mrs. St. Leger continued to " stop 
 the way," spite of policemen and infuriated footmen, for 
 some fifteen minutes. At the end of that time Mr. Tremlet 
 appeared, handing down Lady Ravelgold and her daughter, 
 who walked to their chariot, which was a few steps behind ; 
 and very much to Mrs. St. Leger s astonishment, the hand 
 some banker sprang past her horses heads a minute after, 
 jumped into his cabriolet, which stood on the opposite side 
 of the street, and drove after the vanishing chariot as if his 
 life depended on overtaking it. Still Mrs: St. Leger s car 
 riage u stopped the way." But, in a few minutes after, the 
 same footman who had summoned Tremlet in vain, returned 
 with the Russian secretary, doomed in blessed unconscious 
 ness to play the pis aller at her tete-d-tete supper in Spring 
 Gardens. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 IF Lady Ravelgold showed beautiful by the uncompromis 
 ing light and in the ornamented hall of Almack s, she was 
 
272 PROSE WHITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 radiant as she came through the mirror-door of her own 
 love-contrived and beauty-breathing boudoir. Tremlet had 
 been shown into this recess of luxury and elegance on his 
 arrival, and Lady Ravelgold and her daughter, who preceded 
 her by a minute or two, had gone to their chambers, the first 
 to make some slight changes in her toilet, and the latter 
 (entirely ignorant of her lover s presence in the house) to 
 be alone with a heart never before in such painful need of 
 self-abandonment and solitude. 
 
 Tremlet looked about him in the enchanted room in which 
 he found himself alone, and, spite of the prepossessed agi 
 tation of his feelings, the voluptuous beauty of every object 
 had the effect to divert and tranquillize him. The light was 
 profuse, but it came softened through the thinnest alabaster ; 
 and while every object in the room was distinctly and 
 minutely visible, the effect of moonlight was not more soft 
 and dreamy. The general form of the boudoir was an oval, 
 but within the pilasters of folded silk with their cornices of 
 gold, lay crypts containing copies exquisitely done in marble 
 of the most graceful statues of antiquity, one of which 
 seemed, by the curtain drawn quite aside and a small antique 
 lamp burning near it, to be the divinity of the place, the 
 Greek Antinoiis, with his drooped head and full, smooth 
 limbs, the most passionate and life-like representation of 
 voluptuous beauty that intoxicates the slumberous air of 
 Italy. Opposite this, another niche contained a few books, 
 whose retreating shelves swung on a secret door, and as it 
 stood half open, the nodding head of a snowy magnolia 
 leaned through, as if pouring from the lips of its broad chal 
 ice the mingled odors of the unseen conservatory it betrayed. 
 The first sketch in crayons of a portrait of Lady Ravelgold 
 by young Lawrence stood against the wall, with the frame 
 half buried in a satin ottoman ; and, as Tremlet stood before 
 it, admiring the clear, classic outline of the head and bust, 
 
LADY EAVELGOLD. 273 
 
 and wondering in what chamber of his brain the gifted artist 
 had found the beautiful drapery in which he had drawn her, 
 the dim light glanced faintly on the left, and the broad mirror 
 by which he had entered swung again on its silver hinges, 
 and admitted the very presentment of what he gazed on. 
 Lady Ravelgold had removed the jewels from her hair, and 
 the robe of wrought lace which she had worn that night over 
 a bodice of white satin laced loosely below the bosom. In 
 the place of this she had thrown upon her shoulders a flowing 
 wrapper of purple velvet, made open after the Persian fash 
 ion, with a short and large sleeve, and embroidered richly 
 with gold upon the skirts. Her admirable figure, gracefully 
 defined by the satin petticoat and bodice, showed against 
 the gorgeous purple as it flowed back in her advancing 
 motion, with a relief which would have waked the very soul 
 of Titian ; her complexion was dazzling and faultless in the 
 flattering light of her own rooms ; and there are those who 
 will read this who know how the circumstances which sur 
 round a woman luxury, elegance, taste, or the opposite of 
 these enhance or dim, beyond help or calculation, even the 
 highest order of woman s beauty. 
 
 Lady Ravelgold held a bracelet in her hand as she came 
 in. 
 
 " In my own house," she said, holding the glittering jewel 
 to Tremlet, "I have a fancy for the style antique. Tasse- 
 line, my maid, has gone to bed, and you must do the devoir 
 of a knight, or an abigail, and loop up this Tyrian sleeve. 
 Stay, look first at the model, that small statue of Cytheris, 
 yonder ! Not the shoulder, for you are to swear mine is 
 prettier, but the clasp. Fasten it like that. So ! Now 
 take me for a Grecian nymph the rest of the evening." 
 
 " Lady Ravelgold !" 
 
 " Hermione or Aglae, if you please ! But let us ring for 
 supper." 
 
274 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 As the bell sounded, a superb South American trulian 
 darted in from the conservatory, and, spreading his gorgeous 
 black and gold wings a moment over the alabaster shoulder 
 of Lady Ravelgold, as if he took a pleasure in prolonging 
 the first touch as he alighted, turned his large liquid eye 
 fiercely on Tremlet. 
 
 "Thus it is," said Lady Ravelgold, "we forget our old 
 favorites in our new. See how jealous he is ! " 
 
 " Supper is served, miladi ! " said a servant entering. 
 
 " A hand to each, then, for the present," she said, putting 
 one into Tremlet s, and holding up the trulian with the other. 
 " He who behaves best shall drink first with me." 
 
 "I beg your ladyship s pardon," said Tremlet, drawing 
 back, and looking at the servant, who immediately left the 
 room. " Let us understand each other ! Does Lady Imogen 
 sup with us to-night ? 
 
 "Lady Imogen has retired," said her mother in some 
 surprise. 
 
 " Then, madam, will you be seated one moment, and listen 
 tome?" 
 
 Lady Ravelgold sat down on the nearest ottoman with the 
 air of a person too high-bred to be taken by surprise ; but 
 the color deepened to crimson in the centre of her cheek, 
 and the bird on her hand betrayed, by one of his gurgling 
 notes, that he was held more tightly than pleased him. With 
 a calm and decisive tone, Tremlet went through the explana 
 tion given in the previous parts of this narration. He 
 declared his love for Lady Imogen, his hopes (while he had 
 doubts of his birth) that Lady Ravelgold s increasing obli 
 gations and embarrassments and his own wealth might weigh 
 against his disadvantages ; and now, his honorable descent 
 being established, and his rank entitling him to propose for 
 her hand, he called upon Lady Ravelgold to redeem her 
 obligations to him by an immediate explanation to her 
 
LADY EAVELGOLD. 275 
 
 daughter of his conduct toward herself, and by lending 
 her whole influence to the success of his suit. 
 
 Five minutes are brief time to change a lover into a son- 
 in-law ; and Lady Ravelgold, as we have seen in the course 
 of this story, was no philosopher. She buried her face in 
 her hands, and sat silent for a while after Tremlet had con 
 cluded ; but the case was a very clear one. Ruin and morti 
 fication were in one scale, mortification and prosperity in the 
 other. She rose pale but decided, and requesting Monsieur 
 le Conte Manteuffel to await her a few minutes, ascended to 
 her daughter s chamber. 
 
 " If you please, sir," said a servant, entering in about half 
 an hour, " miladi and Lady Imogen beg that you will join 
 them in the supper-room." 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE spirit of beauty, if it haunt in such artificial atmos 
 pheres as Belgrave Square, might have been pleased to sit 
 invisibly on the vacant side of Lady Ravelgold s table. 
 Tremlet had been shown in by the servant to a small apart 
 ment, built like a belvidere over the garden, half boudoir 
 in its character, yet intended as a supper-room ; and at the 
 long window (opening forth upon descending terraces laden 
 with flowers, and just now flooded with the light of a glorious 
 moon) stood Lady Imogen, with her glossy head laid against 
 the casement, and the palm of her left hand pressed close 
 upon her heart. If those two lights the moon faintly shed 
 off from the divine curve of her temple, and the stained rose- 
 lamp pouring its mellow tint full on the heavenly shape and 
 whiteness of her shoulder and neck if those two lights, 
 I say, could have been skilfully managed, Mr. Lawrence, 
 
276 PKOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 what a picture you might have made of Lady Imogen 
 Ravelgold ! 
 
 "Imogen, my daughter! Mr. Tremlet ! " said her mother 
 as he entered. 
 
 Without changing her position she gave him the hand she 
 had been pressing on her heart. 
 
 4 Mr. Tremlet," said Lady Ravelgold, evidently entering 
 into her daughter s embarrassment, " trouble yourself to come 
 to the table and give me a bit of this pheasant. Imogen, 
 George waits to give you some champagne." 
 
 "Can you forgive me?" said the beautiful girl, before 
 turning to betray her blushing cheek and suffused eyes to her 
 mother. 
 
 Tremlet stooped as if to pluck a leaf from the verbena at 
 her feet, and passed his lips over the slight fingers he held. 
 
 " Pretty trulian ! " murmured Lady Ravelgold to her bird, 
 as he stood on the edge of her champagne-glass, and curving 
 his superb neck nearly double, contrived to drink from the 
 sparkling brim, " pretty trulian ! you will be merry after 
 this ! What ancient Sybarite, think you, Mr. Tremlet, in 
 habits the body of this bright bird ? Look up, mignon, and 
 tell us if you were Hylas or Alcibiades ! Is the pheasant 
 good, Mr. Tremlet?" 
 
 "Too good to come from Hades, miladi. Is it true that 
 you have your table supplied from Crockford s? " 
 
 4 Tout bonnement ! I make it a principle to avoid all great 
 anxieties, and I can trust nobody but Ude. He sends my 
 dinners quite hot, and if there is a particular dish of game, 
 he drives round at the hour and gives it the last turn in my 
 own kitchen. I should die to be responsible for my dinners. 
 I don t know how people get on that have no grand artiste. 
 Pray, Mr. Tremlet (I beg pardon Monsieur le Conte, per 
 haps I should say?)." 
 
 44 No, no, I implore you ! 4 Tremlet has been spoken too 
 
LADY EAVELGOLD. 277 
 
 musically to be so soon forgotten. Tremlet or Charles, which 
 you will ! " 
 
 Lady Ravelgold put her hand in his, and looked from his 
 face to her daughter s with a smile, which assured him that 
 she had obtained a victory over herself. Shrinking imme 
 diately, however, from any thing like sentiment (with the 
 nervous dread of pathos so peculiar to the English), she 
 threw off her trulian, that made a circle and alighted on the 
 emerald bracelet of Lady Imogen, and rang the bell for 
 coffee. 
 
 "I flatter myself, Mr. Tremlet," she said, "that I have 
 made a new application of the homoeopathic philosophy. 
 Hahnemann, they say, cures fevers by aggravating the dis 
 ease ; and, when I cannot sleep, I drink coffee. J en suis 
 passaUement fibre ! You did not know I was a philosopher ? 
 
 " No, indeed!" 
 
 " Well, take some of this spiced Mocha. I got it of the 
 Turkish ambassador, to whom I made beaux yeux on purpose. 
 Stop ! you shall have it in the little tinsel cups he sent me. 
 George, bring those filagree things. Now, Mr. Tremlet, 
 imagine yourself in the serail du Bosphore, Imogen and I 
 two lovely Circassians, par exemple! Is it not delicious? 
 Talking of the Bosphorus, nobody was classical enough to 
 understand the device in my coiffure to-night." 
 
 "What was it?" asked Tremlet absently, gazing while 
 he spoke with eyes of envy at the trulian, who was whetting 
 his bill backward and forward on the clear, bright lips of 
 Lady Imogen. 
 
 " Do you think my profile Grecian? " asked Lady Ravel- 
 gold. 
 
 "Perfectly." 
 
 " And my hair is coiffed a la Grec?" 
 
 " Most becomingly." 
 
 4 But still you won t see my golden grasshopper! Do 
 
278 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 you happen to know, sir, that to wear the golden grasshopper 
 was the birthright of an Athenian? I saw it in a book. 
 Well ! I had to explain it to everybody. By-the-way, what 
 did that gambler, George Heriot, mean, by telling me that 
 its legs should be black? All Greeks have black legs, " 
 said he, yawning in his stupid way. What did he mean, 
 Mr. Tremlet?" 
 
 " Greeks and blacklegs are convertible terms. He 
 thought you were more au fait of the slang dictionary. Will 
 you permit me to coax my beautiful rival from your hand, 
 Lady Imogen ? 
 
 She smiled, and put forward her wrist, with a bend of its 
 slender and alabaster lines which would have drawn a sigh 
 from Praxiteles. The trulian glanced his fiery eyes from his 
 mistress s face to Tremlet s ; and, as the strange hand was 
 put out to take him from his emerald perch, he flew with the 
 quickness of lightning into the face of her lover, and buried 
 the sharp beak in his lip. The blood followed copiously ; 
 and Lady Imogen, startled from her timidity, sprang from 
 her chair, and pressed her hands one after the other upon 
 the wound, in passionate and girlish abandonment. Lady 
 Ravelgold hurried to her dressing-room for something to 
 stanch the wound ; and, left alone with the divine creature 
 who hung over him, Tremlet drew her to his bosom, and 
 pressed his cheek long and closely to hers, while to his lips, 
 as if to keep in life, clung her own crimsoned and trembling 
 fingers. 
 
 "Imogen!" said Lady Ravelgold, entering, "take him 
 to the fountain in the garden, and wash the wound ; then put 
 on this bit of goldbeater s skin. I will come to you when I 
 have locked up the trulian. Is it painful, Mr. Tremlet? " 
 
 Tremlet could not trust his voice to answer ; but, with his 
 arm still around Lady Imogen, he descended by the terrace 
 of flowers to the fountain. 
 
LADY EAVELGOLD. 279 
 
 They sat upon the edge of the marble basin, and the moon 
 light striking through the jet of the fountain descended upon 
 them like a rain of silver. Lady Imogen had recovered from 
 her fright, and buried her face in her hands, remembering 
 into what her feelings had betrayed her ; and Tremlet, some 
 times listening to the clear bell-like music of the descending 
 water, sometimes uttering the broken sentences which are 
 most eloquent in love, sat out the hours till the stars began 
 to pale, undisturbed by Lady Ravelgold, who, on the upper 
 stair of the terrace, read by a small lamp, which, in the calm 
 of that heavenly summer night, burned unflickeringly in the 
 open air. 
 
 It was broad daylight when Tremlet, on foot, sauntered 
 slowly past Hyde Park corner on his way to the Albany. 
 The lamps were still struggling with the brightening approach 
 to sunrise, the cabmen and their horses slept on the stand by 
 the Green Park ; and with cheerful faces the laborers went 
 to their work, and with haggard faces the night-birds of dis 
 sipation crept wearily home. The well-ground dust lay in 
 confused heel-marks on the sidewalk, a little dampened by 
 the night-dew ; the atmosphere in the street was clear, as it 
 never is after the stir of day commences. A dandy, steal 
 ing out from Crockford s, crossed Piccadilly, lifting up his 
 head to draw in long breaths of the cool air, after the close 
 ness of over-lighted rooms and excitement ; and Tremlet, 
 marking none of these things, was making his way through 
 a line of carriages slowly drawing up to take off their wearied 
 masters from a prolonged fete at Devonshire House, when a 
 rude hand clapped him on the shoulder. 
 
 " Monsieur Tremlet ! " 
 
 " Ah, Baron ! bien bon jour ! " 
 
 " Bien rencontre, monsieur! You have insulted a lady 
 to-night, who has confided her cause to my hands. Madame 
 
280 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 St. Leger, sir, is without a natural protector ; and you have 
 taken advantage of her position to insult her grossly, Mr. 
 Tremlet, grossly." 
 
 Tremlet looked at the Russian during this extraordinary 
 address, and saw that he was evidently highly excited with 
 wine. He drew him aside into Berkeley Street, and in the 
 calmest manner attempted to explain what was not very clear 
 to himself. He had totally forgotten Mrs. St. Leger. The 
 diplomate, though quite beyond himself with his excitement, 
 had sufficient perception left to see the weak point of his 
 statement, and, infuriated with the placid manner in which 
 he attempted to excuse himself, suddenly struck his glove 
 into his face, and turned upon his heel. They had been ob 
 served by a policeman ; and at the moment that Tremlet, 
 recovering from his astonishment, sprang forward to resent 
 the blow, the gray-coated guardian of the place laid his hand 
 upon his collar, and detained him till the baron had dis 
 appeared. 
 
 More than once on his way to the Albany, Tremlet sur 
 prised himself, forgetting both the baron and the insult, and 
 feeding his heart in delicious abandonment with the dreams 
 of his new happiness. He reached his rooms, and threw 
 himself on the bed, forcing from his mind, with a strong 
 effort, the presence of Lady Imogen, and trying to look 
 calmly on the unpleasant circumstance before him. A quar 
 rel which, the day before, he would have looked upon merely 
 as an inconvenience, or which, under the insult of a blow, 
 he would have eagerly sought, became now an almost insup 
 portable evil. When he reflected on the subject of the dis 
 pute, a contention about a woman of doubtful reputation 
 taking place in the same hour with a first avowal from the 
 delicate and pure Lady Imogen, when he remembered the 
 change in his fortunes, which he had as yet scarcely found 
 time to realize, on the consequences to her who was so newly 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD. 281 
 
 dear to him, and on all he might lose, now that life had 
 become invaluable, his thoughts were almost too .painful to 
 bear. How seldom do men play with an equal stake in the 
 game of taking life, and how strange it is that equality of 
 weapons is the only comparison made necessary by the laws 
 of honor ! 
 
 Tremlet was not a man to be long undecided. He rose, 
 after an hour s reflection, and wrote as follows : 
 
 BARON, Before taking the usual notice of the occurrence of this 
 morning, I wish to rectify one or two points in which our position is 
 false. I find myself, since last night, the accepted lover of Lady Imogen 
 Kavelgold, and the master of estates and title as a count of the Rus 
 sian empire. Under the etourdissement of such sudden changes in 
 feelings and fortune, perhaps my forgetf ulness of the lady, in whose 
 cause you are so interested, admits of indulgence. At any rate, I 
 am so newly in love with life that I am willing to suppose for an 
 hour that, had you known these circumstances, you would have taken 
 a different view of the offence in question. I shall remain at home till 
 two, and it is in your power till then to make me the reparation 
 necessary to my honor. Yours, etc., TIIEMLET. 
 
 There was a bridal on the following Monday at St. George s 
 Church, and the Russian secretary stood behind the bride 
 groom. Lady Ravelgold had never been seen so pale, but 
 her face was clear of all painful feeling ; and it was observed 
 by one who knew her well, that her beauty had acquired, 
 during the brief engagement of her daughter, a singular and 
 undefinable elevation. As the carriages with their white 
 favors turned into Bond Street on their way back to Bel- 
 grave Square, the cortege was checked by the press of vehi 
 cles, and the Russian, who accompanied Lady Ravelgold in 
 her chariot, found himself opposite the open britzska of a 
 lady who fixed her glass full upon him without recognizing 
 a feature of his face. 
 
 "I am afraid you have affronted Mrs. St. Leger, baron," 
 said Lady Ravelgold. 
 
282 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 " Or I should not have been here ! " said the Russian ; and 
 as they drove up Piccadilly, he had just time between Bond 
 Street and Milton Crescent to tell her ladyship the foregone 
 chapter of this story. 
 
 The trulian, on that day, was fed with wedding-cake ; and 
 the wound on Mr. Treinlet s lip was not cured by letting 
 alone. 
 
THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS. 
 
 E Emperor Yuentsoong, of the dynasty Chow, was the 
 -L most magnificent of the long-descended succession of 
 Chinese sovereigns. On his first accession to the throne, his 
 character was so little understood, that a conspiracy was set 
 on foot among the yellow-caps, or eunuchs, to put out his 
 eyes, and place upon the throne the rebel Szema, in whose 
 warlike hands, they asserted, the empire would more properly 
 maintain its ancient glory. The gravity and reserve which 
 these myrmidons of the palace had construed into stupidity 
 and fear, soon assumed another complexion, however. The 
 eunuchs silently disappeared ; the mandarins and princes 
 whom they had seduced from their allegiance were made 
 loyal subjects by a generous pardon ; and, in a few days 
 after the period fixed upon for the consummation of the plot, 
 Yuentsoong set forth in complete armor at the head of his 
 troops to give battle to the rebel in the mountains. 
 
 In Chinese annals this first enterprise of the youthful 
 Yuentsoong is recorded with great pomp and particularity. 
 Szema was a Tartar prince of uncommon ability, young, like 
 the emperor, and, during the few last imbecile years of the 
 old sovereign, he had gathered strength in his rebellion, till 
 now he was at the head of ninety thousand men, all soldiers 
 of repute and tried valor. The historian has, unfortunately, 
 dimmed the emperor s fame to European eyes by attributing 
 his wonderful achievements in this expedition to his superi 
 ority in arts of magic. As this account of his exploits is only 
 prefatory to our tale, we will simply give the reader an idea 
 
 283 
 
284 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 of the style of the historian by translating literally a passage 
 or two of his description of the battle : 
 
 u Szema now took refuge within a cleft of the mountain, 
 and Yuentsoong, upon his swift steed, outstripping the body 
 guard in his ardor, dashed amid the paralyzed troops with 
 poised spear, his eyes fixed only on the rebel. There was a 
 silence of an instant, broken only by the rattling hoofs of 
 the intruder ; and then, with dishevelled hair and waving 
 sword, Szema uttered a fearful imprecation. In a moment 
 the wind rushed, the air blackened, and, with the suddenness 
 of a fallen rock, a large cloud enveloped the rebel, and 
 innumerable men and horses issued out of it. Wings flapped 
 against the eyes of the emperor s horse, hellish noises 
 screamed in his ears, and, completely beyond control, the 
 animal turned and and fled back through the narrow pass, 
 bearing his imperial master safe into the heart of his army. 
 
 "Yuentsoong, that night, commanded some of his most 
 expert soldiers to scale the beetling heights of the ravine, 
 bearing upon their backs the blood of swine, sheep, and 
 dogs, with other impure things, and these they were ordered 
 to shower upon the combatants at the sound of the imperial 
 clarion. On the following morning, Szema came forth again 
 to offer battle, with flags displayed, drums beating, and 
 shouts of triumph and defiance. As on the day previous, 
 the bold emperor divided, in his impatience, rank after rank 
 of his own soldiery, and, followed closely by his body-guard, 
 drove the rebel army once more into their fastness. Szema 
 sat upon his war-horse as before, intrenched amid his officers 
 and ranks of the tallest Tartar spearmen ; and, as the 
 emperor contended hand to hand with one of the opposing 
 rebels, the magic imprecation was again uttered, the air 
 again filled with cloudy horsemen and chariots, and the 
 mountain shaken with discordant thunder. Backing his 
 willing steed, the emperor blew a long sharp note upon 
 
THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS. 285 
 
 his silver clarion, and, in an instant, the sun broke through 
 the darkness, and the air seemed filled with paper men, 
 horses of straw, and phantoms dissolving into smoke. 
 Yuentsoong and Szema now stood face to face, with only 
 mortal aid and weapons. 
 
 The historian goes on to record that the two armies sus 
 pended hostilities at the command of their leaders, and that, 
 the emperor and his rebel subject having engaged in single 
 combat, Yuentsoong was victorious, and returned to his 
 capital with the formidable enemy, whose life he had spared, 
 riding beside him like a brother. The conqueror s career, 
 for several years after this, seems to have been a series of 
 exploits of personal valor ; and the Tartar prince shared in 
 all his dangers and pleasures, his inseparable friend. It was 
 during this period of romantic friendship that the events 
 occurred which have made Yuentsoong one of the idols of 
 Chinese poetry. 
 
 By the side of a lake in a distant province of the empire, 
 stood one of the imperial palaces of pleasure, seldom visited, 
 and almost in ruins. Hither, in one of his moody periods of 
 repose from war, came the conqueror Yuentsoong, for the 
 first time in years separated from his faithful Szema. In 
 disguise, and with only one or two attendants, he established 
 himself in the long silent halls of his ancestor Tsinchemong, 
 and with his boat upon the lake, and his spear in the forest, 
 seemed to find all the amusement of which his melancholy 
 was susceptible. On a certain day in the latter part of April, 
 the emperor had set his sail to a fragrant south wind, and, 
 reclining on the cushions of his bark, watched the shore as 
 it softly and silently glided past, and, the lake being entirely 
 encircled by the imperial forest, he felt immersed in what he 
 believed to be the solitude of a deserted paradise. After 
 skirting the fringed sheet of water in this manner for several 
 hours, he suddenly observed that he had shot through a 
 
286 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 streak of peach-blossoms floating from the shore, and at 
 the same moment he became conscious that his boat was 
 slightly headed off by a current setting outward. Putting 
 up his helm, he returned to the spot, and beneath the droop 
 ing branches of some luxuriant willows, thus early in leaf, 
 he discovered the mouth of an inlet, which, but for the float 
 ing blossoms it brought to the lake, would have escaped the 
 notice of the closest observer. The emperor now lowered 
 his sail, unshipped the slender mast, and betook him to the 
 oars ; and, as the current was gentle, and the inlet wider 
 within the mouth, he sped rapidly on through what appeared 
 to be but a lovely and luxuriant vale of the forest. Still, 
 those blushing betrayers of some flowering spot beyond ex 
 tended like a rosy clew before him ; and with impulse of 
 muscles swelled and indurated in warlike exercise, the swift 
 keel divided the besprent mirror winding temptingly onward, 
 and, for a long hour, the royal oarsman untiringly threaded 
 this sweet vein of the wilderness. 
 
 Resting a moment on his oars while the slender bark still 
 kept her way, he turned his head toward what seemed to be 
 an opening in the forest on the left, and in the same instant 
 the boat ran head on, to the shore, the inlet at this point 
 almost doubling on its course. Beyond, by the humming of 
 bees and the singing of birds, there should be a spot more 
 open than the tangled wilderness he had passed ; and, disen 
 gaging his prow from the alders, he shoved the boat again 
 into the stream, and pulled round a high rock, by which the 
 inlet seemed to have been compelled to curve its channel. 
 The edge of a bright green meadow now stole into the 
 perspective, and, still widening with his approach, disclosed 
 a slightly rising terrace clustered with shrubs, and studded 
 here and there with vases ; and farther on, upon the same 
 side of the stream, a skirting edge of peach-trees loaded with 
 the gay blossoms which had guided him thither. 
 
THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS. 287 
 
 Astonished at these signs of habitation in what was well 
 understood to be a privileged wilderness, Yuentsoong kept 
 his boat in mid-stream, and with his eyes vigilantly on the 
 alert, slowly made headway against the current. A few 
 strokes with his oars, however, traced another curve of the 
 inlet, and brought into view a grove of ancient trees scat 
 tered over a gently ascending lawn, beyond which, hidden 
 from the river till now by the projecting shoulder of a mound, 
 lay a small pavilion with gilded pillars glittering like fairy 
 work in the sun. The emperor fastened his boat to a tree 
 leaning over the water, and with his short spear in his hand, 
 bounded upon the shore, and took his way toward the shining 
 structure, his heart beating with a feeling of wonder and 
 interest altogether new. On a nearer approach, the bases of 
 the pillars seemed decayed by time, and the gilding weather- 
 stained and tarnished ; but the trellised porticoes on the 
 southern aspect were laden with flowering shrubs in vases of 
 porcelain, and caged birds sang between the pointed arches, 
 and there were manifest signs of luxurious taste, elegance, 
 and care. 
 
 A moment with an indefinable timidity the emperor paused 
 before stepping from the greensward upon the marble floor 
 of the pavilion, and in that moment a curtain was withdrawn 
 from the door, and a female, with step suddenly arrested 
 by the sight of the stranger, stood motionless before him. 
 Ravished with her extraordinary beauty, and awe-struck with 
 the suddenness of the apparition and the novelty of the ad 
 venture, the emperor s tongue cleaved to his mouth, and ere 
 he could summon resolution, even for a gesture of courtesy, 
 the fair creature had fled within, and the curtain closed the 
 entrance as before. 
 
 Wishing to recover his composure, so strangely troubled, 
 and taking it for granted that some other inmate of the house 
 would soon appear, Yuentsoong turned his steps aside to the 
 
288 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 grove ; and with his head bowed, and his spear in the hollow 
 of his arm, tried to recall more vividly the features of the 
 vision he had seen. He had walked but a few paces when 
 there came toward him from the upper skirt of the grove, a 
 man of unusual stature and erectness, with white hair un- 
 braided on his shoulders, and every sign of age except in 
 firmity of step and mien. The emperor s habitual dignity 
 had now rallied, and on his first salutation the countenance 
 of the old man softened, and he quickened his pace to meet 
 and give him welcome. 
 
 " You are noble? " he said with confident inquiry. 
 
 Yuentsooug colored slightly. 
 
 " I am," he replied, " Lew-melin, a prince of the empire." 
 
 * And by what accident here ? 
 
 Yuentsoong explained the clew of the peach-blossoms, and 
 represented himself as exiled for a time to the deserted 
 palace upon the lakes. 
 
 "I have a daughter," said the old man abruptly, " who 
 has never looked on human face save mine." 
 
 " Pardon me," replied his visitor, "I have thoughtlessly 
 intruded on her sight, and a face more heavenly fair " 
 
 The emperor hesitated, but the old man smiled encoura 
 gingly. 
 
 "It is time," he said, "that I should provide a younger 
 defender for my bright Teh-leen, and Heaven has sent you 
 in the season of peach-blossoms with provident kindness. 1 
 You have frankly revealed to me your name and rank. Be 
 fore I offer you the hospitality of my roof, I must tell you 
 mine. I am Choo-tseen, the outlaw, once of your own rank, 
 and the general of the Celestial army." 
 
 The emperor started, remembering that this celebrated 
 rebel was the terror of his father s throne. 
 
 1 The season of peach-blossoms was the only season of marriage in ancient China. 
 
THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS. 289 
 
 "You have heard my history," the old man continued. 
 "I had been, before my rebellion, in charge of the imperial 
 palace on the lake. Anticipating an evil day, I secretly 
 prepared this retreat for my family ; and when my soldiers 
 deserted me at the battle of Ke-chow, and a price was set 
 upon my head, hither I fled with my women and children ; 
 and the last alive is my beautiful Teh-leen. With this brief 
 outline of my life, you are at liberty to leave me as you came, 
 or to enter my house on the condition that you become the 
 protector of my child." 
 
 The emperor eagerly turned toward the pavilion, and, with 
 a step as light as his own, the erect and stately outlaw has 
 tened to lift the curtain before him. Leaving his guest for 
 a moment in the outer apartment, he entered to an inner 
 chamber in search of his daughter, whom he brought, pant 
 ing with fear, and blushing with surprise and delight, to her 
 future lovei and protector. A portion of an historical tale 
 so delicate as the description of the heroine is not work for 
 imitators, however, and we must copy strictly the portrait 
 of the matchless Teh-leen, as drawn by Le-pih, the Anacreon 
 of Chinese poetry and the contemporary and favorite of 
 Yuentsoong. 
 
 " Teh-leen was born while the morning star shone upon 
 the bosom of her mother. Her eye was like the unblemished 
 blue lily, and its light like the white gem unfractured. The 
 plum-blossom is most fragrant when the cold has penetrated 
 its stem, and the mother of Teh-leen had known sorrow. 
 The head of her child drooped in thought, like a violet over 
 laden with dew. Bewildering was Teh-leen. Her mouth s 
 corners were dimpled, yet pensive. The arch of her brows 
 was like the vein in the tulip s heart, and the lashes shaded 
 the blushes on her cheek. With the delicacy of a pale rose, 
 her complexion put to shame the floating light of day. Her 
 waist, like a thread in fineness, seemed ready to break, yet 
 
290 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 was it straight and erect, and feared not the fanning breeze ; 
 and her shadowy grace was as difficult to delineate as the 
 form of the white bird rising from the ground by moonlight. 
 The natural gloss of her hair resembled the uncertain sheen 
 of calm water, yet without the false aid of unguents. The 
 native intelligence of her mind seemed to have gained strength 
 by retirement ; and he who beheld her thought not of her 
 as human. Of rare beauty, of rarer intellect, was Teh-leen, 
 and her heart responded to the* poet s lute." 
 
 We have not space, nor could we, without copying directly 
 from the admired Le-pih, venture to describe the bringing of 
 Teh-leen to court, and her surprise at finding herself the 
 favorite of the emperor. It is a romantic circumstance, 
 besides, which has had its parallels in other countries. But 
 the sad sequel to the loves of poor Teh-leen is but recorded 
 in the cold page of history ; and if the poet, who wound up 
 the climax of her perfections with her susceptibility to his 
 lute, embalmed her sorrows in verse, he was probably too 
 politic to bring it ever to light. Pass we to these neglected 
 and unadorned passages of her history. 
 
 Yuentsoong s nature was passionately devoted and con 
 fiding ; and, like two brothers with one favorite sister, lived 
 together Teh-leen, Szema, and the emperor. The Tartar 
 prince, if his heart knew a mistress before the arrival of 
 Teh-leen at the palace, owned afterward no other than her ; 
 and, fearless of check or suspicion from the noble confidence 
 and generous friendship of Yuentsoong, he seemed to live 
 but for her service, and to have neither energies nor ambi 
 tion except for the winning of her smiles. Szema was of 
 great personal beauty, frank when it did not serve him to be 
 wily, bold in his pleasures, and of manners almost femininely 
 soft and voluptuous. He was renowned as a soldier, and, 
 for Teh-leen, he became a poet and master of the lute ; 
 and, like all men formed for ensnaring the heart of women, 
 
THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS. 291 
 
 he seemed to forget himself in the absorbing devotion of 
 his idolatry. His friend the emperor was of another mould. 
 Yuentsoong s heart had three chambers, love, friendship, 
 and glory. Teh-leen was but a third in his existence, yet he 
 loved her, the sequel will show how well. In person, he 
 was less beautiful than majestic, of large stature, and with a 
 brow and lip naturally stern and lofty. He seldom smiled, 
 even upon Teh-leen, whom he would watch for hours in 
 pensive and absorbed delight ; but his smile, when it did 
 awake, broke over his sad countenance like morning. All 
 men loved and honored Yuentsoong ; and all men, except 
 only the emperor, looked on Szema with antipathy. To such 
 natures as the former, women give all honor and approba 
 tion ; but, for such as the latter, they reserve their weakness ! 
 Wrapt up in his friend and mistress, and reserved in his 
 intercourse with his counsellors, Yuentsoong knew not that, 
 throughout the imperial city, Szema was called "the Jcieu," 
 or robber-bird, and his fair Teh-leen openly charged with 
 dishonor. Going out alone to hunt, as was his custom, and 
 having left his signet with Szema, to pass and repass through 
 the private apartments at his pleasure, his horse fell with 
 him unaccountably in the open field. Somewhat supersti 
 tious, and remembering that good spirits sometimes " knit 
 the grass " when other obstacles fail to bar our way into 
 danger, the emperor drew rein, and retured to his palace. 
 It was an hour after noon, and, having dismissed his attend 
 ants at the city gate, he entered by a postern to the imperial 
 garden, and bethought himself of the concealed couch in a 
 cool grot by a fountain (a favorite retreat, sacred to himself 
 and Teh-leen), where he fancied it would be refreshing to 
 sleep away the sultriness of the remaining hours till evening. 
 Sitting down by the side of the murmuring fount, he bathed 
 his feet, and left his slippers on the lip of the basin to be 
 unencumbered in his repose within, and so, with unechoing 
 
292 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 step, entered the resounding grotto. Alas ! there slumbered 
 the faithless friend with the guilty Teh-leen upon his bosom ! 
 
 Grief struck through the noble heart of the emperor like a 
 sword in cold blood. With a word he could consign to tor 
 ture and death the robber of his honor, but there was agony 
 in his bosom deeper than revenge. He turned silently away, 
 recalling his horse and huntsmen, and, out-stripping all, 
 plunged on through the forest till night gathered around him. 
 
 Yuentsoong had been absent many days from his capital, 
 and his subjects were murmuring their fears for his safety, 
 when a messenger arrived to the counsellors informing them 
 of the appointment of the captive Tartar prince to the gov 
 ernment of the province of Szechuen, the second honor of 
 the Celestial empire. A private order accompanied the an 
 nouncement, commanding the immediate departure of Szema 
 for the scene of his new authority. Inexplicable as was this 
 riddle to the multitude, there were those who read it truly by 
 their knowledge of the magnanimous soul of the emperor ; 
 and among these was the crafty object of his generosity. 
 Losing no time, he set forward with great pomp for Szechuen, 
 and in their joy to see him no more in the palace, the slighted 
 princes of the empire forgave his unmerited advancement. 
 Yuentsoong returned to his capital ; but to the terror of his 
 counsellors and people, his hair was blanched white as the 
 head of an old man ! He was pale as well, but he was 
 cheerful and kind beyond his wont, and to Teh-leen untiring 
 in pensive and humble attentions. He pleaded only impaired 
 health and restless slumbers as an apology for nights of soli 
 tude. Once Teh-leen penetrated to his lonely chamber, but 
 by the dim night lamp she saw that the scroll over the win 
 dow 1 was changed, and instead of the stimulus to glory 
 
 1 The most common decorations of rooms, halls, and temples, in China, are orna 
 mental scrolls or labels of colored paper or wood, painted and gilded, and hung over 
 doors or windows, and inscribed with a line or couplet conveying some allusion to 
 
THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS. 293 
 
 which formerly hung in golden letters before his eyes, there 
 was a sentence written tremblingly in black : 
 
 " The close wing of love covers the death-throb of honor." 
 
 Six months from this period the capital was thrown into 
 a tumult with the intelligence that the province of Szechuen 
 was in rebellion, and Szema at the head of a numerous army 
 on his way to seize the throne of Yuentsoong. This last 
 sting betrayed the serpent even to the forgiving emperor, and 
 tearing the reptile at last from his heart, he entered with the 
 spirit of other times into the warlike preparations. The im 
 perial army was in a few days on its march, and at Keo-yang 
 the opposing forces met and prepared for encounter. 
 
 With a dread of the popular feeling toward Teh-leen, 
 Yuentsoong had commanded for her a close litter, and she 
 was borne after the imperial standard in the centre of the 
 army. On the eve before the battle, ere the watch-fires were 
 lit, the emperor came to her tent, set apart from his own, and 
 with the delicate care and kind gentleness from which he 
 never varied, inquired how her wants were supplied, and 
 bade her thus early farewell for the night ; his own custom 
 of passing among his soldiers on the evening previous to an 
 engagement, promising to interfere with what was usually his 
 last duty before retiring to his couch. Teh-leen on this oc 
 casion seemed moved by some irrepressible emotion, and as 
 he rose to depart, she fell forward upon her face, and bathed 
 his feet with her tears. Attributing it to one of those 
 excesses of feeling to which all, but especially hearts ill at 
 ease, are liable, the noble monarch gently raised her, and with 
 
 the circumstances of the inhabitant, or some pious or philosophical axiom. For 
 instance, a poetical one recorded by Dr. Morrison : 
 
 " From the pine forest the azute dragon ascends to the milky way," 
 typical of the prosperous man arising to wealth and honors. 
 
294 PROSE WETTINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 repeated efforts at re-assurance, committed her to the hands 
 of her women. His own heart beat far from tranquilly, for, 
 in the excess of his pity for her grief he had unguardedly 
 called her by one of the sweet names of their early days of 
 love, strange word now upon his lip, and it brought 
 back, spite of memory and truth, happiness that would not be 
 forgotten ! 
 
 It was past midnight, and the moon was riding high in 
 heaven, when the emperor, returning between the lengthening 
 watch-fires, sought the small lamp which, suspended like a 
 star above his own tent, guided him back from the irregular 
 mazes of the camp. Paled by the intense radiance of the 
 moonlight, the small globe of alabaster at length became 
 apparent to his weary eye, and with one glance at the peace 
 ful beauty of the heavens, he parted the curtained door be 
 neath it, and stood within. The Chinese historian asserts 
 that a bird, from whose wing Teh-leen had once plucked an 
 arrow, restoring it to liberty and life, and in grateful attach 
 ment to her destiny, removed the lamp from the imperial tent, 
 and suspended it over hers. The emperor stood beside her 
 couch. Startled at his inadvertent error, he turned to retire ; 
 but the lifted curtain let in a flood of moonlight upon the 
 sleeping features of Teh-leen, and like dewdrops the undried 
 tears glistened in her silken lashes. A lamp burned faintly 
 in the inner apartment of the tent, and her attendants slept 
 soundly. His soft heart gave way. Taking up the lamp, he 
 held it over his beautiful mistress, and once more gazed pas 
 sionately and unrestrainedly on her unparalleled beauty. The 
 past the early past was alone before him. He forgave 
 her, there, as she slept, unconscious of the throbbing of 
 his injured but noble heart so close beside her, he forgave 
 her in the long silent abysses of his soul ! Unwilling to wake 
 her from her tranquil slumber, but promising to himself, from 
 that hour, such sweets of confiding love as had well-nigh 
 
THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS. 295 
 
 been lost to him forever, he imprinted one kiss upon the 
 parted lips of Teh-leen, and sought his couch for slumber. 
 
 Ere daybreak the emperor was aroused by one of his 
 attendants with news too important for delay. Szema, the 
 rebel, had been arrested in the imperial camp, disguised, and 
 on his way back to his own forces ; and like wildfire the 
 information had spread among the soldiery, who, in a state 
 of mutinous excitement, were with difficulty restrained from 
 rushing upon the tent of Teh-leen. At the door of his tent, 
 Yuentsooug found messengers from the alarmed princes and 
 officers of the different commands, imploring immediate aid 
 and the imperial presence to allay the excitement ; and while 
 the emperor prepared to mount his horse, the guard arrived 
 with the Tartar prince, ignominiously tied, and bearing 
 marks of rough usage from his indignant captors. 
 
 " Loose him ! " cried the emperor, in a voice of thunder. 
 
 The cords were severed, and with a glance whose ferocity 
 expressed no thanks, Szema reared himself up to his fullest 
 height, and looked scornfully around him. Daylight had 
 now broke, and as the group stood upon an eminence in sight 
 of the whole army, shouts began to ascend, and the armed 
 multitude, breaking through all restraint, rolled in toward the 
 centre. Attracted by the commotion, Yuentsoong turned to 
 give some orders to those near him, when Szema suddenly 
 sprang upon an officer of the guard, wrenched his drawn 
 sword from his grasp, and in an instant was lost to sight in 
 the tent of Teh-leen. A sharp scream, a second of thought, 
 and forth again rushed the desperate murderer, with his 
 sword flinging drops of blood, and ere a foot stirred in the 
 paralyzed group, the avenging cimeter of Yuentsooug had 
 cleft him to the chin. 
 
 A hush, as if the whole army was struck dumb by a bolt 
 from heaven, followed this rapid tragedy. Dropping the 
 polluted sword from his hand, the emperor, with uncertain 
 
296 PKOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 step, and the pallor of death upon his countenance, entered 
 the fatal tent. 
 
 He came no more forth that day. The army was mar 
 shalled by the princes, and the rebels were routed with great 
 slaughter ; but Yuentsoong never more wielded sword. " He 
 pined to death," says the historian, "with the wane of the 
 same moon that shone upon the forgiveness of Teh-leen." 
 
LETTEES FROM UNDEK A BRIDGE. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 MY DEAR DOCTOR, Twice in the year, they say, 
 the farmer may sleep late in the morning, between 
 hoeing and haying, and between harvest and thrashing. If 
 I have not written to you since the frost was out of the 
 ground, my apology lies distributed over the " spring- work," 
 in due proportions among ploughing, harrowing, sowing, 
 plastering, and hoeing. We have finished the last ; some 
 thanks to the crows, who saved us the labor of one acre of 
 corn by eating it in the blade. Think what times we live in, 
 when even the crows are obliged to anticipate their income ! 
 
 When I had made up my mind to write to you, I cast 
 about for a cool place in the shade ; for, besides the changes 
 which farming works upon my epidermis, I find some in the 
 inner man, one of which is a vegetable necessity for living 
 out-of-doors. Between five in the morning and "flower- 
 shut," I feel as if four walls and a ceiling would stop my 
 breath. Very much to the disgust of William (who begins 
 to think it was infra dig. to have followed such a hob-nail 
 from London), I showed the first symptom of this chair-and- 
 carpet asthma, by ordering my breakfast under a balsam-fir. 
 Dinner and tea soon followed ; and now, if I go in-doors by 
 daylight, it is a sort of fireman s visit, in and out with a 
 long breath. I have worn quite a dial on the grass, working 
 my chair around with the sun. 
 
 4 4 If ever you observed (a phrase with which a neighbor 
 
 297 
 
298 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 of mine ludicrously prefaces every possible remark), a single 
 tree will do very well to sit, or dine, or be buried under, but 
 you cannot write in the shade of it. Beside the sun-flecks 
 and the light all around you, there is a want of that privacy 
 which is necessary to a perfect abandonment to pen and ink. 
 I discovered this on getting as far as "Dear Doctor," and, 
 pocketing my tools, strolled away up the glen to borrow 
 "stool and desk" of Nature. Half-open, like a broad- 
 leaf ed-book (green margin and silver type) , the brook-hollow 
 of Glenmary spreads wide as it drops upon the meadow, 
 but above, like a book that deserves its fair margent, it 
 deepens as you proceed. Not far from the road, its little 
 rivulet steals forth from a shadowy ravine, narrow as you 
 enter, then widening back to a mimic cataract ; and here, a 
 child would say, is a fairy parlor. A small platform (an island 
 when the stream is swollen) lies at the foot of the fall, car 
 peted with the fine silky grass which thrives with shade and 
 spray. The two walls of the ravine are mossy, and trickling 
 with springs ; the trees overhead interlace, to keep out the 
 sun ; and down comes the brook, over a flight of precipitous 
 steps, like children bursting out of school, and, after a laugh 
 at its own tumble, it falls again into a decorous ripple, and 
 trips murmuring away. The light is green, the leaves of the 
 overhanging trees look translucent above, and the wild blue 
 grape, with its emerald rings, has wove all over it a basket- 
 lattice so fine that you would think it were done to order, 
 warranted to keep out the hawk, and let in the humming-bird. 
 "With a yellow pine at my back, a moss cushion beneath, and 
 a ledge of flat stone at my elbow, you will allow I had a 
 secretary s outfit. I spread my paper, and mended my pen ; 
 and then (you will pardon me, dear Doctor) I forgot you 
 altogether. The truth is, these fanciful garnishings spoil 
 work. Silvio Pellico had a better place to write in. If it 
 had been a room with a Chinese paper (a bird standing for- 
 
LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 299 
 
 ever on one leg, and a tree ruffled by the summer wind, and 
 fixed, with its leaves on edge, as if petrified with the var- 
 let s impudence), the eye might get accustomed to it. But 
 first came a gold-robin, twittering out his surprise to find 
 strange company in his parlor, yet never frighted from his 
 twig by pen and ink. By the time I had sucked a lesson out 
 of that, a squirrel tripped in without knocking, and sat nib 
 bling at a last year s nut, as if nobody but he took thought 
 for the morrow. Then came an enterprising ant, climbing 
 my knee like a discoverer; and I wondered whether Fer 
 nando Cortes would have mounted so boldly, had the Peak 
 of Darien been as new-dropped between the Americas as 
 my leg by his ant-hill. By this time a small dripping from a 
 moss-fringe at my elbow betrayed the lip of a spring ; and, 
 dislodging a stone, I uncovered a brace of lizards lying snug 
 in the ooze. We flatter ourselves, thought I, that we drink 
 first of the spring. We do not know always whose lips were 
 before us. 
 
 Much as you see of insect-life, and hear of bird-music, as 
 you walk abroad, you should lie perdu in a nook, to know 
 how much is frighted from sight, and hushed from singing, 
 by your approach. What worms creep out when they think 
 you gone, and what chatterers go on with their story ! So 
 among friends, thought I, as I fished for the moral. We 
 should be wiser if we knew what our coming hides and 
 silences ; but should we walk so undisturbed on our way ? 
 
 You will see with half a glance, dear Doctor, that here was 
 too much company for writing. I screwed up my inkstand 
 once more, and kept up the bed of the stream till it enters 
 the forest, remembering a still place by a pool. The tall 
 pines hold up the roof high as an umbrella of Brobdignag ; 
 and neither water brawls, nor small birds sing, in the gloom 
 of it. Here, thought I, as far as they go, the circumstances 
 are congenial. But, as Jean Paul says, there is a period of 
 
300 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 life when the real gains ground upon the ideal ; and to 
 be honest, dear Doctor, I sat leaning on the shingle across 
 my knees, counting my sky-kissing pines, and "reckoning 
 what they would bring in saw-logs, so much standing, so 
 much drawn to the mill. Then there would be wear and tear 
 of bob-sled, teamster s wages, and your dead-pull springs, 
 the horses knees. I had nearly settled the per and contra, 
 when my eye lit once more on "My Dear Doctor" staring 
 from the unfilled sheet, like the ghost of a murdered resolu 
 tion. "Since when," I asked, looking myself sternly in 
 the face, " is it so difficult to be virtuous? Shall I not write 
 when I have a mind? Shall I reckon pelf whether I will or 
 no? Shall butterfly imagination thrust iron-heart to the 
 wall? No!" 
 
 I took a straight cut through my ruta-baga patch and corn 
 field, bent on finding some locality (out of doors it must be) 
 with the average attractions of a sentry-box or a church- 
 pew. I reached the high-road, making insensibly for a 
 brush-dam, where I should sit upon a log, with my face 
 abutted upon a wall of chopped saplings. I have not men 
 tioned my dog, who had followed me cheerfully thus far, 
 putting up now and then a partridge, to keep his nose in; 
 but, on coming to the bridge over the brook, he made up his 
 mind. "My master," he said (or looked), "will neither 
 follow the game, nor sit in the cool. Cliacun & son gout. 
 I m tired of this bobbing about for nothing in a hot sun." 
 So, dousing his tail (which, " if you ever observed," a dog 
 hoists, as a flag-ship does her pennant, only when the com 
 modore is aboard) , he sprung the railing, and spread him 
 self for a snooze under the bridge. " Ben trovato ! " said 
 I, as I seated myself by his side. He wagged his tail half 
 round to acknowledge the compliment, and I took to work 
 like a hay-maker. 
 
 I have taken some pains to describe these difficulties to 
 
LETTEES FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 301 
 
 you, dear Doctor, partly because I hold it to be fair, in this 
 give-and-take world, that a man should know what it costs 
 his fellow to fulfil obligations, but more especially to apprise 
 you of the metempsychose that is taking place in myself. You 
 will have divined, ere this, that, in my out-of-doors life, I am 
 approaching a degree nearer to Arcadian perfectibility, and 
 that, if I but manage to get a bark on and live by sap (spare 
 your wit, sir), I shall be rid of much that is troublesome, 
 not to say expensive, in the matters of drink and integu 
 ment. What most surprises me in the past is, that I ever 
 should have confined my free soul and body in the very 
 many narrow places and usages I have known in towns. I 
 can only assimilate myself to a squirrel brought up in a 
 school-boy s pocket, and let out some June morning on a 
 snake fence. 
 
 The spring has been damp for corn, but I had planted on 
 a warm hill-side, and have done better than my neighbors. 
 The Owaga l creek, which makes a bend round my meadow 
 before it drops into the Susquehanna (a swift, bright river 
 the Owaga, with as much water as the Arno at Florence), 
 overflowed my cabbages and onions in the May freshet ; but 
 that touches neither me nor my horse. The winter wheat 
 looks like " velvet of three-pile," and every thing is out of 
 the ground including, in my case, the buckwheat, which is 
 not yet put in. This is to be an old-fashioned hot summer, 
 and I shall sow late. The peas are podded. Did it ever 
 strike you, by the way, that the pious ^Eneas, famous through 
 all ages for carrying old Anchises a mile, should, after all, 
 yield glory to a bean ? Perhaps you never observed that this 
 filial esculent groivs up with his father on his back. 
 
 In my "new light," a farmer s life seems to me what a 
 manufacturer s might resemble, if his factory were an indige- 
 
 1 Corrupted now to Owego. Ochwaga was the Indian word, and means swift 
 water. 
 
302 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 nous plant, machinery, girls, and all. What spindles and 
 fingers it would take to make an orchard, if nature found 
 nothing but the raw seed, and rain-water and sunshine were 
 brought as far as a cotton-bale ! Your despised cabbage 
 would be a prime article, if you had to weave it. Pumpkins, 
 if they ripened with a hair-spring and patent lever, would 
 be, " by r lady," a curious invention. Yet these, which 
 Aladdin nature produces if we but "rub the lamp," are 
 more necessary to life than clothes or watches. In planting 
 a tree (I write it reverently) , it seems to me working imme 
 diately with the divine faculty. Here are two hundred 
 forest-trees set out with my own hand ; yet how little is my 
 part in the glorious creatures they become ! 
 
 This reminds me of a liberty I have lately taken with 
 nature, which I ventured upon with proper diffidence, though 
 the dame, as will happen with dames, proved less coy than 
 was predicted. The brook at my feet, from its birth in the 
 hills till it dropped into the meadow s lap, tripped down like 
 a mountain-maid with a song, bright and unsullied. So it 
 flowed by my door. At the foot of the bank its song and 
 sparkle ceased suddenly, and, turning under the hill, its 
 waters disappeared among sedge and rushes. It was more 
 a pity, because you looked across the meadow to the stately 
 Owaga, and saw that its unfulfilled destiny was to have 
 poured its brightness into his. The author of Ernest Mal- 
 travers has set the fashion of charity to such fallings away. 
 I made a new channel over the meadow, gravelled its bed, 
 and grassed its banks, and (last and best charity of all) pro 
 tected its recovered course with overshadowy trees. Not 
 quite with so gay a sparkle, but with a placid and tran 
 quil beauty, the lost stream glides over the meadow, and, 
 Maltravers-like, the Owaga takes her lovingly to his bosom. 
 The sedge and rushes are turned into a garden ; and if you 
 drop a flower into the brook at my door, it scarce loses a 
 
LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 303 
 
 breath of its perfume before it is flung on the Owaga, and 
 the Susquehanna robs him of it but with his life. 
 
 I have scribbled away the hours till near noon, and it is 
 time to see that the oxen get their potatoes. Faith ! it s a 
 cool place under a bridge. Knock out the two ends of the 
 Astor House, and turn the Hudson through the long passage, 
 and you will get an idea of it. The breeze draws through 
 here deftly, the stone wall is cool to my back, and this floor 
 of running water, besides what the air steals from it, sounds 
 and looks refreshingly. My letter has run on, till I am 
 inclined to think the industry of running water "breeds i* 
 the brain." Like the tin-pot at the cur s tail, it seems to 
 overtake one with an admonition, if he but slack to breathe. 
 Be not alarmed, dear doctor, for, sans potatoes, my oxen 
 will loll in the furrow ; and though the brook run till dooms 
 day, I must stop here. Amen. 
 
 LETTER XIV. 
 
 THIS is return month, dear Doctor ; and, if it were only to 
 be in fashion, you sliould have a quid pro quo for your four 
 pages. October restores and returns ; your gay friends and 
 invalids return to the city ; the birds and the planters return 
 to the South ; the seed returns to the granary ; the brook 
 at my feet is noisy again with its returned waters ; the leaves 
 are returning to the earth ; and the heart that has been out- 
 of-doors while the summer lasted comes home from its wanr 
 derings by field and stream, and returns to feed on its harvest 
 of new thoughts, past pleasures, and strengthened and con 
 firmed affections. At this time of the year, too, you expect 
 a return (not of pasteboard) for your " visits ; " but as you 
 have made me no visit, either friendly or professional, I owe 
 
304 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 you nothing. And that is the first consolation I have found 
 for your short-comings (or no-comings-at-all) to Gleiimary. 
 
 Now, consider my arms akimbo, if you please, while I 
 ask you what you mean by calling Glenmary " backwoods ! " 
 Faith, I wish it were more backwoods than it is. Here be 
 cards to be left, sir, morning calls to be made, body-coat 
 soirees, and ceremony enough to keep one s most holiday 
 manners well aired. The two miles distance between me 
 and Owego serves me for no exemption, for the village of 
 Canewana, which is a mile nearer on the road, is equally 
 within the latitude of silver forks ; and dinners are given in 
 both, which want no one of the belongings of Belgrave 
 Square, save port-wine and powdered footmen. I think it 
 is in one of Miss Austen s novels that a lady claims it to be 
 a smart neighborhood in which she " dines with four-and- 
 twenty families." If there are not more than half as many 
 in Owego who give dinners, there are twice as many who ask 
 to tea, and give ice-cream and champagne. Then, for the 
 fashions, there is as liberal a sprinkling of French bonnets in 
 the Owego church as in any village congregation in England. 
 And for the shops that subject is worthy of a sentence by 
 itself. When I say there is no need to go to New York for 
 hat, boots, or coat, I mean that the Owego tradesmen (if 
 you are capable of describing what you want) are capable 
 of supplying you with the best and most modish of these 
 articles. Call you that " backwoods? " 
 
 All this, I am free to confess, clashes with the beau ideal 
 
 of the 
 
 "Beatus ille qui procul," etc. 
 
 I had myself imagined (and continued to imagine for some 
 weeks after coming here), that, so near the primeval wilder 
 ness, I might lay up my best coat and my ceremony in laven 
 der, and live in fustian and a plain way. I looked forward 
 to the delights of a broad straw hat, large shoes, baggy 
 
LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 305 
 
 habiliments, and leave to sigh or whistle without offence ; 
 and it seemed to me that it was the conclusion of a species 
 of apprenticeship, and the beginning of my "freedom." 
 To be above no clean and honest employment of one s time, 
 to drive a pair of horses or a yoke of oxen with equal alac 
 rity, and to be commented on for neither the one nor the 
 other, to have none but wholesome farming cares, and work 
 with nature and honest yeomen, and be quite clear of mortifi 
 cations, envies, advice, remonstrance, coldness, misappre 
 hensions, and etiquettes, this is what I, like most persons 
 who "forswear the full tide of the world," looked upon as 
 the blessed promise of retirement. But, alas ! wherever 
 there is a butcher s shop and a post-office, an apothecary and 
 a blacksmith, an "Arcade" and a milliner, wherever the 
 conveniences of life are, in short, there has already arrived 
 the Procrustes of opinion. Men s eyes will look on you, and 
 bring you to judgment ; and, unless you would live on wild 
 meat and corn-bread in the wilderness, with neither friend 
 nor helper, you must give in to a compromise, yield half at 
 least of your independence, and take it back in common 
 place comfort. This is very every-day wisdom to those who 
 know it ; but you are as likely as any man in the world to 
 have sat with your feet over the fire, and fancied yourself on 
 a wild horse in a prairie, with nothing to distinguish you 
 from the warlike Comanche, except capital wine in the cellar 
 of your wigwam and the last new novel and play, which 
 should reach this same wigwam, you have not exactly deter 
 mined how ! Such " pyramises are goodly things," but they 
 are built of the smoke of your cigar. 
 
 This part of the country is not destitute of the chances of 
 adventure, however; and twice in the year, at least, you 
 may, if you choose, open a valve for your spirits. One-half 
 the population of the neighborhood is engaged in what is 
 called lumbering ; and until the pine-timber of the forest 
 
306 PROSE WHITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 can be counted like the cedars of Lebanon, this vocation will 
 serve the uses of the mobs of England, the revolutions of 
 France, and the plots of Italy. I may add, the music and 
 theatres of Austria and Prussia, the sensual indulgence of 
 the Turk, and the intrigue of the Spaniard ; for there is in 
 every people under the sun a superflu of spirits unconsumed 
 by common occupation, which, if not turned adroitly or 
 accidentally to some useful or harmless end, will expend its 
 reckless energy in trouble and mischief. 
 
 The preparations for the adventures of which I speak, 
 though laborious, are often conducted like a frolic. The 
 felling of the trees in mid-winter, the cutting of shingles, 
 and the drawing out on the snow, are employments preferred 
 by the young men to the tamer but less arduous work of the 
 farmyard ; and in the temporary and uncomfortable shanties, 
 deep in the woods, subsisting often on nothing but pork and 
 whiskey, they find metal more attractive than village or fire 
 side. The small streams emptying into the Susquehanna 
 are innumerable ; and eight or ten miles back from the river 
 the arks are built, and the materials of the rafts collected, 
 ready to launch with the first thaw. I live myself, as you 
 know, on one of these tributaries, a quarter of a mile from 
 its junction. The Owaga trips along at the foot of my lawn, 
 as private and untroubled for the greater part of the year as 
 Virginia "Water at Windsor ; but, as it swells in March, the 
 noise of voices and hammering coming out from the woods 
 above warns us of the approach of an ark ; and, at the rate 
 of eight or ten miles an hour, the rude structure shoots by, 
 floating high on the water without its lading (which it takes 
 in at the village below), and manned with a singing and 
 saucy crew, who dodge the branches of the trees, and work 
 their steering-paddles with an adroitness and nonchalance 
 which sufficiently show the character of the class. The 
 sudden bends which the river takes in describing my woody 
 
LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 307 
 
 Omega put their steersmanship to the test ; and, when the 
 leaves are off the trees, it is a curious sight to see the bulky 
 monsters, shining with new boards, whirling around in the 
 swift eddies, and, when caught by the current again, gliding 
 off among the trees like a singing and swearing phantom of 
 an unfinished barn. 
 
 At the village they take wheat and pork into the arks, 
 load their rafts with plank and shingles, and wait for the 
 return of the freshet. It is a fact you may not know, that, 
 when a river is rising, the middle is the highest, and vice 
 versa when falling ; sufficiently proved by the experience of 
 the raftsmen, who, if they start before the flow is at its top, 
 cannot keep their crafts from the shore. A pent-house, 
 barely sufficient for a man to stretch himself below, is raised 
 on the deck, with a fireplace of earth and loose stone ; and 
 with what provision they can afford, and plenty of whiskey, 
 they shove out into the stream. Thenceforward it is vogue 
 la galere! They have nothing to do all day, but abandon 
 themselves to the current, sing and dance, and take their 
 turn at the steering-oars ; and when the sun sets, they look 
 out for an eddy, and pull in to the shore. The stopping- 
 places are not very numerous, and are well known to all who 
 follow the trade ; and, as the river swarms with rafts, the 
 getting to land, and making sure of a fastening, is a scene 
 always of great competition, and often of desperate fighting. 
 When all is settled for the night, however, and the fires are 
 lit on the long range of the flotilla, the raftsmen get together 
 over their whiskey and provender, and tell the thousand 
 stories of their escapes and accidents ; and with the repetition 
 of this, night after night, the whole rafting population along 
 the five hundred miles of the Susquehanna becomes partially 
 acquainted, and forms a sympathetic corps, whose excitement 
 and esprit might be roused to very dangerous uses. 
 
 By daylight they are cast off and once more on the current ; 
 
308 PROSE WHITINGS OF &. P. WILLIS. 
 
 and in five or seven days they arrive at tide-water, where the 
 crew is immediately discharged, and start, usually on foot, 
 to follow the river home again. There are several places in 
 the navigation which are dangerous, such as rapids and dam- 
 sluices ; and what with these, and the scenes at the eddies, 
 and their pilgrimage through a thinly settled and wild coun 
 try home again, they see enough of adventure to make them 
 fireside heroes, and incapacitate them (while their vigor lasts, 
 at least) for all the more quiet habits of the farmer. The 
 consequence is easy to be seen. Agriculture is but partially 
 followed throughout the country ; and, while these cheap 
 facilities for transporting produce to the seaboard exist, 
 those who are contented to stay at home, and cultivate the 
 rich river-lands of the country, are sure of high prices and 
 a ready reward for their labor. 
 
 MORAL. Come to the Susquehanna, and settle on a farm. 
 You did not know what I was driving at all this while ! 
 
 The raftsmen who "follow the Delaware" (to use their 
 own poetical expression) are said to be a much wilder class 
 than those on the Susquehanna. In returning to Owego, by 
 different routes, I have often fallen in with parties of both ; 
 and certainly nothing could be more entertaining than to listen 
 to their tales. In a couple of years, the canal route on the 
 Susquehanna will lay open this rich vein of the picturesque 
 and amusing ; and, as the tranquil boat glides peacefully 
 along the river-bank, the traveller will be surprised with the 
 strange effect of these immense flotillas, with their many fires 
 and wild people, lying in the glassy bends of the solitary 
 stream, the smoke stealing through the dark forest, and the 
 confusion of a hundred excited voices breaking the silence. 
 In my trip down the river in the spring, I saw enough that 
 was novel in this way to fill a new portfolio for Bartlett ; and 
 I intend he shall raft it with me to salt water the next time 
 he comes among us. 
 
LETTEES FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 309 
 
 How delicious are these October noons ! They will soon 
 chill, I am afraid, and I shall be obliged to give up my out- 
 of-door habits ; but I shall do it unwillingly. I have changed 
 sides under the bridge, to sit with my feet in the sun, and I 
 trust this warm corner will last me till November, at least. 
 The odor of the dying leaves, and the song of the strength 
 ening brook, are still sufficient allurements, and even your 
 rheumatism (of which the Latin should be podagra) might 
 safely keep me company till dinner. Adieu, dear Doctor ! 
 write me a long account of Vestris and Matthews (how you 
 like them, I mean, for I know very well how I like them 
 myself) , and thank me for turning over to you a new leaf 
 of American romance. You are welcome to write a novel, 
 and call it "The Raftsman of the Susquehanna." 
 
 LETTER TO THE UNKNOWN PURCHASER AND 
 NEXT OCCUPANT OF GLENMARY. 
 
 SIR, In selling you the dew and sunshine ordained to 
 fall hereafter on this bright spot of earth, the waters on 
 their way to this sparkling brook, the tints mixed for the 
 flowers of that enamelled meadow, and the songs bidden to 
 be sung in coming summers by the feathery builders in Glen- 
 mary, I know not whether to wonder more at the omnipotence 
 of money, or at my own impertinent audacity toward Nature. 
 How you can buy the right to exclude at will every other 
 creature made in God s image from sitting by this brook, 
 treading on that carpet of flowers, or lying listening to the 
 birds in the shade of these glorious trees, how I can sett it 
 you, is a mystery not understood by the Indian, and dark, I 
 must say, to me. 
 
 "Lord of the soil " is a title which conveys your privileges 
 
310 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 but poorly. You are master of waters flowing at this mo 
 ment, perhaps, in a river of Judaea, or floating in clouds over 
 some spicy island of the tropics, bound hither after many 
 changes. There are lilies and violets ordered for you in 
 millions, acres of sunshine in daily instalments, and dew 
 nightly in proportion. There are throats to be tuned with 
 song, and wings to be painted with red and gold, blue and 
 yellow ; thousands of them, and all tributaries to you. Your 
 corn is ordered to be sheathed in silk, and lifted high to 
 the sun. Your grain is to be duly bearded and stemmed. 
 There is perfume distilling for your clover, and juices for 
 your grasses and fruits. Ice will be here for your wine, 
 shade for your refreshment at noon, breezes and showers 
 and snowflakes ; all in their season, and all " deeded to you 
 for forty dollars the acre ! Gods ! what a copyhold of prop 
 erty for a fallen world ! " 
 
 Mine has been but a short lease of this lovely and well- 
 endowed domain (the duration of a smile of fortune, five 
 years, scarce longer than a five-act play) ; but as in a play 
 we sometimes live through a life, it seems to me that I have 
 lived a life at Glenmary. Allow me this, and then you must 
 allow me the privilege of those who, at the close of life, 
 leave something behind them, that of writing out my will. 
 Though I depart this life, I would fain, like others, extend 
 my ghostly hand into the future ; and if wings are to be 
 borrowed or stolen where I go, you may rely on my hover 
 ing around and haunting you in visitations not restricted by 
 cock-crowing. 
 
 Trying to look at Glenmary through your eyes, sir, I see 
 too plainly that I have not shaped my ways as if expecting 
 a successor in my lifetime. I did not, I am free to own. I 
 thought to have shuffled off my mortal coil tranquilly here ; 
 flitting- at last in company with some troop of my autumn 
 leaves, or some bevy of spring blossoms, or with snow in the 
 
LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 311 
 
 thaw; my tenants at my back, as a landlord may say. I 
 have counted on a life-interest in the trees, trimming them 
 accordingly; and in the squirrels and birds, encouraging 
 them to chatter and build, and fear nothing, no guns per 
 mitted on the premises. I have had my will of this beautiful 
 stream. I have carved the woods into a shape of my liking. 
 I have propagated the despised sumach and the persecuted 
 hemlock and " pizen laurel." And "no end to the weeds 
 dug up and set out again," as one of my neighbors delivers 
 himself. I have built a bridge over Glenmary brook, which 
 the town looks to have kept up by "the place;" and we 
 have plied free ferry over the river, I and my man Tom, till 
 the neighbors, from the daily saving of the two miles round, 
 have got the trick of it. And betwixt the aforesaid Glen 
 mary brook and a certain muddy and plebeian gutter formerly 
 permitted to join company with and pollute it, I have pro 
 cured a divorce at much trouble and pains ; a guardian duty 
 entailed, of course, on my successor. 
 
 First of all, sir, let me plead for the old trees of Glenmary. 
 Ah, those friendly old trees ! The cottage stands belted in 
 with them, a thousand visible from the door, and of stems 
 and branches worthy of the great valley of the Susquehanna. 
 For how much music played without thanks am I indebted 
 to those leaf-organs of changing tone ? for how many whis 
 perings of thought breathed like oracles into my ear? for 
 how many new shapes of beauty moulded in the leaves by 
 the wind? for how much companionship, solace, and wel 
 come? Steadfast and constant is the countenance of such 
 friends : God be praised for their staid welcome and sweet 
 fidelity ! If I love them better than some things human, it 
 is no fault of ambitiousness in the trees. They stand where 
 they did. But in recoiling from mankind, one may find 
 them the next kindliest things, and be glad of dumb friend 
 ship. Spare those old trees, gentle sir ! 
 
312 PROSE WRITINGS OF JV. P. WILLIS. 
 
 In the smooth walk which encircles the meadow, betwixt 
 that solitary Olympian sugar-maple and the margin of the 
 river, dwells a portly and venerable toad ; who (if I may 
 venture to bequeath you my friends) must be commended to 
 your kindly consideration. Though a squatter, he was no 
 ticed in our first rambles along the stream, five years since, 
 for his ready civility in yielding the way, not hurriedly, how 
 ever, nor with an obsequiousness unbecoming a republican, 
 but deliberately and just enough ; sitting quietly on the grass 
 till our passing by gave him room again on the warm and 
 trodden ground. Punctually after the April cleansing of the 
 walk, this jewelled habitut, from his indifferent lodgings hard 
 by, emerges to take his pleasure in the sun ; and there, at 
 any hour when a gentleman is likely to be abroad, you may 
 find him, patient on his os coccygis, or vaulting to his asylum 
 of high grass. This year, he shows, I am grieved to remark, 
 an ominous obesity, likely to render him obnoxious to the 
 female eye, and with the trimness of his shape has departed 
 much of that measured alacrity which first won our regard. 
 He presumes a little on your allowance for old age ; and with 
 this pardonable weakness growing upon him, it seems but 
 right that his position and standing should be tenderly made 
 known to any new-comer on the premises. In the cutting of 
 the next grass, slice me not up my fat friend, sir ! nor & set 
 your cane down heedlessly in his modest domain. He is 
 4 mine ancient, and I would fain do him a good turn with 
 you. 
 
 For my spoilt family of squirrels, sir, I crave nothing but 
 immunity from powder and shot. They require coaxing to 
 come on the same side of the tree with you, and though 
 saucy to me, I observe that they commence acquaintance 
 invariably with a safe mistrust. One or two of them have 
 suffered, it is true, from too hasty a confidence in my grey 
 hound Maida, but the beauty of that gay fellow was a trap 
 
LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. 313 
 
 against which nature had furnished them with no warning 
 instinct. (A fact, sir, which would prettily point a moral!) 
 The large hickory on the edge of the lawn, and the black 
 walnut over the shoulder of the flower-garden, have been, 
 through my dynasty, sanctuaries inviolate for squirrels. I 
 pray you, sir, let them not be " reformed out," under your 
 administration. 
 
 Of our feathered connections and friends, we are most 
 bound to a pair of Phebe-birds and a merry Bob-o -Lincoln, 
 the first occupying the top of the young maple near the door 
 of the cottage, and the latter executing his bravuras upon 
 the clump of alder-bushes in the meadow ; though, in common 
 with many a gay- plum aged gallant like himself, his where 
 about after dark is a dark mystery. He comes every year 
 from his rice-plantation in Florida to pass the summer at 
 Glenmary. Pray, keep him safe from percussion-caps, and 
 let no urchin with a long pole poke down our trusting Phebes ; 
 annuals in that same tree for three summers. There are 
 humming-birds, too, whom we have complimented and looked 
 sweet upon, but they cannot be identified from morning to 
 morning. And there is a golden oriole who sings through 
 May on a dogwood tree by the brook-side, but he has fought 
 shy of our crumbs and coaxing ; and let him go ! We are 
 mates for his betters, with all his gold livery ! With these 
 reservations, sir, I commend the birds to your friendship and 
 kind keeping. 
 
 And now, sir, I have nothing else to ask, save only your 
 watchfulness over the small nook reserved from this purchase 
 of seclusion and loveliness. In the shady depths of the small 
 glen above you, among the wild-flowers and music, the music 
 of the brook babbling over rocky steps, is a spot sacred to 
 love and memory. Keep it inviolate, and as much of the 
 happiness of Glenmary as we can leave behind, stay with you 
 for recompense ! 
 
KATE CREDIFORD. 
 
 I FOUND myself looking with some interest at the back 
 of a lady s head. The theatre was crowded, and I had 
 come in late, and the object of my curiosity, whoever she 
 might be, was listening very attentively to the play. She did 
 not move. I had time to build a lifetime romance about her 
 before I had seen a feature of her face. But her ears were 
 small, and of an exquisite oval ; and she had that rarest 
 beauty of woman, the hair arched and joined to the white 
 neck with the same finish as on the temples. Nature often 
 slights this part of her masterpiece. 
 
 The curtain dropped, and I stretched eagerly forward to 
 catch a glimpse of the profile. But no ! she sat next one of 
 the slender pilasters, and, with her head leaned against it, 
 remained immovable. 
 
 I left the box, and, with some difficulty, made my way 
 into the crowded pit. Elbowing, apologizing, persevering, I 
 at last gained a point where I knew I could see my incognita 
 at the most advantage. I turned pshaw ! how was it 
 possible I had not recognized her? 
 
 Kate Crediford ! 
 
 There was no getting out again, for a while at least, with 
 out giving offence to the crowd I had jostled so unceremoni 
 ously. I sat down vexed, and commenced a desperate study 
 of the figure of Shakspeare on the drop-curtain. 
 
 Of course I had been a lover of Miss Crediford s, or I 
 could not have turned with indifference from the handsomest 
 woman in the theatre. She was very beautiful, there was 
 314 
 
KATE CREDIFORD. 315 
 
 no disputing. But we love women a little for what we do 
 know of them, and a great deal more for what we do not. 
 I had love-read Kate Crediford to the last leaf. We parted 
 as easily as a reader and a book. Flirtation is a circulating 
 library, in which we seldom ask twice for the same volume ; 
 and I gave up Kate to the next reader, feeling no property 
 even in the marks I had made in her perusal. A little quarrel 
 sufficed as an excuse for the closing of the book, and both of 
 us studiously avoided a reconciliation. 
 
 As I sat in the pit, I remembered suddenly a mole on her 
 left cheek, and I turned toward her with the simple curiosity 
 to know whether it was visible at that distance. Kate looked 
 sad. She still leaned immovable against the slight column, 
 and her dark eyes, it struck me, were moist. Her mouth, 
 with this peculiar expression upon her countenance, was cer 
 tainly inexpressibly sweet, the turned-down corners ending 
 in dimples, which in that particular place, I have always 
 observed, are like wells of unfathomable melancholy. Poor 
 Kate ! what was the matter with her ? 
 
 As I turned back to my dull study of the curtain, a little 
 pettish with myself for the interest with which I had looked 
 at an old flame, I detected half a sigh under my white waist 
 coat ; but, instantly persuading myself that it was a dispo 
 sition to cough, coughed, and began to hum " Suoni la 
 trornba." The curtain rose, and the play went on. 
 
 It was odd that I never had seen Kate in that humor 
 before. I did not think she could be sad. Kate Crediford 
 sad ! Why, she was the most volatile, light-hearted, care- 
 for-nothing coquette that ever held up her fingers to be 
 kissed. I wonder, has any one really annoyed you, my poor 
 Kate ! thought I. Could I, by chance, be of any sendee to 
 you? for, after all, I owe you something! I looked at her 
 again. 
 
 Strange that I had ever looked at that face without emo- 
 
316 PROSE WETTINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 tion ! The vigils of an ever- wakeful, ever-passionate, yet 
 ever-tearful and melancholy, spirit seemed set and kept 
 under those heavy and motionless eyelids. And she, as I 
 saw her now, was the very model and semblance of the char 
 acter that I had all my life been vainly seeking ! This was 
 the creature I had sighed for when turning away from the 
 too mirthful tenderness of Kate Crediford ! There was 
 something new, or something for the moment miswritten, in 
 that familiar countenance. 
 
 I made my way out of the pit with some difficulty, and 
 returned to sit near her. After a few minutes, a gentleman 
 in the next box rose, and left the seat vacant on the other 
 side of the pilaster against which she leaned. I went around 
 while the orchestra were playing a loud march, and, without 
 being observed by the thoughtful beauty, seated myself in 
 the vacant place. 
 
 Why did my eyes flush arid moisten as I looked upon the 
 small white hand lying on the cushioned barrier between us ? 
 I knew every vein of it, like the strings of my own heart. 
 I had held it spread out in my own, and followed its delicate 
 blue traceries with a rose-stem, for hours and hours, while 
 imploring and reproaching and reasoning over love s lights 
 and shadows. I knew the feel of every one of those ex 
 quisite fingers, those rolled-up rose-leaves, with nails like 
 pieces cut from the lip of a shell ! Oh the promises I had 
 kissed into oaths on that little chef-d ceuvre of nature s tinted 
 alabaster ! the psalms and sermons I had sat out holding 
 it, in her father s pew ! the moons I had tired out of the 
 sky, making of it a bridge for our hearts passing backward 
 and forward ! And how could that little wretch of a hand, 
 that knew me better than its own other hand (for we had 
 been more together) , lie there, so unconscious of my pres 
 ence? How could she Kate Crediford sit next to me, as 
 she was doing, with only a stuffed partition between us, and 
 
KATE CREDIFOED. 317 
 
 her head leaning on one side of a pilaster, and mine on the 
 other, and never start, nor recognize, nor be at all aware of 
 my neighborhood? She was not playing a part, it was easy 
 to see. Oh, I knew those little relaxed fingers too well ! 
 Sadness, indolent and luxurious sadness, was expressed in 
 her countenance, and her abstraction was unfeigned and con 
 templative. Could she have so utterly forgotten me mag 
 netically, that is to say? Could the atmosphere about her, 
 that would once have trembled betrayingly at my approach, 
 like the fanning of an angel s invisible wing, have lost the 
 sense of my presence ? 
 
 I tried to magnetize her hand. I fixed my eyes on that 
 little open palm, and, with all the intensity I could summon, 
 kissed it mentally in its rosy centre. I reproached the un 
 grateful little thing for its dulness and forge tf ulness, and 
 brought to bear upon it a focus of old memories of pressures 
 and caresses, to which a stone would scarce have the heart 
 to be insensible. 
 
 But I belie myself in writing this with a smile. I watched 
 those unmoving fingers with a heart. I could not see the 
 face nor read the thought of the woman who had once loved 
 me, and who sat near me now so unconsciously ; but if a 
 memory had stirred, if a pulse had quickened its beat, those 
 finely-strung fingers, I well know, would have trembled 
 responsively. Had she forgotten me altogether? Is that 
 possible ? Can a woman close the leaves of her heart over a 
 once-loved and deeply-written name, like the waves over 
 a vessel s track, like the air over the division of a bird s 
 flight? 
 
 I had intended to speak presently to Miss Crediford, but 
 every moment the restraint became greater. I felt no more 
 privileged to speak to her than the stranger who had left the 
 seat I occupied. I drew back, for fear of encroaching on 
 her room, or disturbing the folds of her shawl. I dared not 
 
318 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 speak to her. And, while I was arguing the matter to my 
 self, the party who were with her, apparently tired of the 
 play, arose and left the theatre, Kate following last, but 
 unspoken to, and unconscious altogether of having been near 
 any one whom she knew. 
 
 I went home, and wrote to her all night, for there was no 
 sleeping till I had given vent to this new fever at my heart. 
 And in the morning I took the leading thoughts from my 
 heap in incoherent scribblings, and embodied them more 
 coolly in a letter : 
 
 " You will think, when you look at the signature, that this is to be 
 the old story; and you will be as much mistaken as you are in believ 
 ing that I was ever your lover, till a few hours ago. I have declared 
 love to you, it is true. I have been happy with you, and wretched 
 without you; I have thought of you, dreamed of you, haunted you, 
 sworn to you, and devoted to you all and more than you exacted of 
 time and outward service and adoration; but I love you now for the 
 first time in my life. Shall I be so happy as to make you comprehend 
 this startling contradiction ? 
 
 " There are many chambers in the heart, Kate; and the spirits of 
 some of us dwell, most fondly and secretly, in the chamber of tears, 
 avowedly, however, in the outer and ever-open chamber of mirth. 
 Over the sacred threshold, guarded by sadness, much that we select 
 and smile upon, and follow with adulation in the common walks of 
 life, never passes. We admire the gay. They make our melancholy 
 sweeter by contrast, when we retire within ourselves. We pursue 
 them. We take them to our hearts, to the outer vestibules of our 
 hearts, and, if they are gay only, they are content with the uncon- 
 secrated tribute which we pay them there. But the chamber within 
 is, meantime, lonely. It aches with its desolation. The echo of the 
 mirthful admiration without jars upon its mournful silence. It longs 
 for love, but love toned with its own sadness, love that can penetrate 
 deeper than smiles ever came, love that, having once entered, can 
 be locked in with its key of melancholy, and brooded over with the 
 long dream of a lifetime. But that deep-hidden and unseen chamber 
 of the heart may be long untenanted. And, meantime, the spirit 
 becomes weary of mirth, and impatiently quenches the fire even upon 
 
KATE CREDIFORD. 319 
 
 its outer altar, and in the complete loneliness of a heart that has no 
 inmate or idol, gay or tearful, lives mechanically on. 
 
 " Do you guess at my meaning, Kate ? Do you remember the mer 
 riment of our first meeting ? Do you remember in what a frolic of 
 thoughtlessness you first permitted me to raise to my lips those restless 
 fingers ? Do you remember the mock condescension, the merry 
 haughtiness, the rallying and feigned incredulity, with which you first 
 received my successive steps of vowing and love-making, the arch 
 look when it was begun, the laugh when it was over, the untiring 
 follies we kept up, after vows plighted, and the future planned and 
 sworn to ? That you were in earnest, as much as you were capable 
 of being, I fully believe. You would not else have been so prodigal of 
 the sweet besto wings of a maiden s tenderness. But how often have 
 I left you with the feeling, that, in the hours I had passed with you, 
 my spirit had been alone! How often have I wondered if there were 
 depths in my heart which love can never reach! How often mourned 
 that in the procession of love there was no place allotted for its sweet 
 est and dearest followers, tears and silence ! O Kate ! sweet as was 
 that sun-gleam of early passion, I did not love you ! I tired of your 
 smiles, waiting in vain for your sadness. I left you, thought of you 
 no more. 
 
 " But now (and you will be surprised to know that I have been 
 so near to you unperceived) I have drank an intoxication from one 
 glance into your eyes, which throws open to you every door of my 
 heart, subdues to your control every nerve and feeling of my existence. 
 Last night I sat an hour tracing again the transparent and well-remem 
 bered veins upon your hand, and oh! how the language written in 
 those branching and mystic lines had changed in meaning and power! 
 You were sad. I saw you from a distance, and, with amazement at 
 an expression upon your face which I had never before seen, I came 
 and sat near you. It was the look I had longed for when I knew you, 
 and when tired of your mirth. It was the look I had searched the 
 world for, combined with such beauty as yours. It was a look of 
 tender and passionate melancholy, which revealed to me an unsus 
 pected chamber in your heart, a chamber of tears. Ah ! why were 
 you never sad before? Why have we lost why have I lost the 
 eternity s worth of sweet hours, when you love me with that concealed 
 treasure in your bosom ? Alas ! that angels must walk the world, un 
 recognized till too late ! Alas ! that I have held in my arms, and 
 pressed to my lips, and loosed again with trifling and weariness, the 
 creature whom it was my life s errand, the thirst and passionate long 
 ing of my nature, to find and worship! 
 
320 PROSE WHITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 11 O heaven ! with what new value do I now number over your 
 adorable graces of person ! How spiritualized is every familiar feature, 
 once so deplorably misappreciated ! How compulsive of respectful 
 adoration is that flexible waist, that step of aerial lightness, that 
 swan-like motion, which I once dared to praise triflingly and half- 
 mockingly, like the tints of a flower, or the chance beauty of a bird ! 
 And those bright lips ! How did I ever look on them, and not know 
 that within their rosy portal slept voiceless, for a while, the controlling 
 spell of my destiny, the tearful spirit followed and called in my 
 dreams, with perpetual longing ? Strange value given to features and 
 outward loveliness by qualities within ! Strange witchery of sadness 
 in a woman ! Oh, there is in mirth and folly, dear Kate, no air for 
 love s breathing, still less of food for constancy, or of holiness to con 
 secrate and heighten beauty of person ! 
 
 "What can I say else, except implore to be permitted to approach 
 you, to offer my life to you, to begin thus late, after being known 
 so long, the worship which till death is your due ? Pardon me if I 
 have written abruptly and wildly. I shall await your answer in an 
 agony of expectation. I do not willingly breathe till I see you, till 
 I weep at your feet over my blindness and forgetfulness. Adieu! but 
 let it not be for long, I pray you! " 
 
 I despatched this letter, and it would be difficult to embody 
 in language the agony I suffered in waiting for a reply. I 
 walked my room that endless morning with a death-pang m 
 every step, so fearful was I so prophetically fearful 
 that I had forfeited forever the heart I had once flung from 
 me, 
 
 It was noon when a letter arrived. It was in a hand 
 writing new to me. But it was on the subject which pos 
 sessed my existence, and it was of final import. It follows : 
 
 DEAB SIB, My wife wishes me to write to you, and inform you 
 of her marriage, which took place a week or two since, and of which 
 she presumes you are not aware. She remarked to me that you 
 thought her looking unhappy last evening, when you chanced to see 
 her at the play. As she seemed to regret not being able to answer 
 your note herself, I may perhaps convey the proper apology by taking 
 upon myself to mention to you, that, in consequence of eating an 
 
KATE CREDIFORD. 321 
 
 imprudent quantity of unripe fruit, she felt ill before going to the 
 theatre, and was obliged to leave early. To-day she seems seriously 
 indisposed. I trust she will be well enough to receive you in a day or 
 two; and remain, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 SAMUEL SMITHEES. 
 
 But I never called on Mrs. Samuel Smithers. 
 
THE GHOST-BALL AT CONGEESS HALL. 
 
 IT was the last week of September, and the keeper of 
 " Congress Hall " stood on his deserted colonnade. The 
 dusty street of Saratoga was asleep in the stillness of village 
 afternoon. The whittlings of the stage-runners at the cor 
 ners, and around the leaning-posts, were fading into dingy 
 undistinguishableness. Stiff and dry hung the slop-cloths at 
 the door of the livery-stable, and drearily clean was doorway 
 and stall. " The season " was over. 
 
 " Well, Mr. B ! " said the Boniface of the great cara 
 vansary, to a gentlemanly-looking invalid, crossing over from 
 the village tavern on his way to Congress Spring, this looks 
 
 like the end of it ! A slimmish season, though, Mr. B ! 
 
 Gad, things isn t as they used to be in your time ! Three 
 months we used to have of it, in them days, and the same 
 people coming and going all summer, and folks own horses, 
 and all the ladies drinking champagne ! And every hop 
 was as good as a ball ; and a ball when do you ever see 
 such balls nowadays? Why, here s all my best wines in the 
 cellar; and as to beauty pooh ! they re done coming here, 
 anyhow, are the belles, such as belles ivas! " 
 
 "You may say that, mine host, you may say that! " re 
 plied the damaged Corydon, leaning heavily on his cane. 
 "What! they re all gone now, eh nobody at the United 
 States ?" 
 
 "Not a soul, and here s weather like August ! capital 
 weather for young ladies to walk out evenings, and for a 
 drive to Barhydt s nothing like it ! It s a sin, / say, to 
 
 322 
 
THE GHOST-BALL AT CONGRESS HALL. 323 
 
 pass such weather in the city ! Why shouldn t they come 
 to the Springs in the Indian summer, Mr. B ? " 
 
 Coming events seemed to have cast their shadows before. 
 As Boniface turned his eyes instinctively toward the sand 
 hill, whose cloud of dust was the precursor of new pilgrims 
 to the waters, and the sign for the black boy to ring the bell 
 of arrival, behold, on its summit, gleaming through the neb 
 ulous pyramid like a lobster through the steam of the fisher 
 man s pot, one of the red coaches of " the People s Line ! " 
 
 And another ! 
 
 And another ! 
 
 And another ! 
 
 Down the sandy descent came the first, while the driver s 
 horn, intermittent with the crack of his whip, set to bobbing 
 every pine-cone of the adjacent wilderness. 
 
 4 Prrr ru te too toot pash ! crack ! snap ! 
 
 prrrr r rut rut nut ! ! G lang ! Hip ! 
 Boniface laid his hand on the pull of the porter s bell, but 
 
 the thought flashed through his mind that he might have been 
 dreaming was he awake ? 
 
 And, marvel upon wonder ! a horn of arrival from the 
 other end of the village ! And as he turned his eyes in that 
 direction, he saw the dingier turnouts from Lake Sacrament 
 
 extras, wagons, every variety of rattletrap conveyance 
 pouring in like an Irish funeral on the return, and making 
 (oh, climax more satisfactory !) straight, all, for Congress 
 Hall! 
 
 Events now grew precipitate. 
 
 Ladies were helped out with green veils, parasols and 
 baskets were handed after them, baggage was chalked and 
 distributed (and parasols, baskets, and baggage, be it noted, 
 were all of the complexion that innkeepers love, the 
 indefinable look which betrays the owner s addictedness to 
 extras) , and now there was ringing of bells ; and there were 
 
324 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 orders for the woodcocks to be dressed with pork chemises, 
 and for the champagne to be iced, the sherry not ; and 
 through the arid corridors of Congress Hall floated a deli 
 cious toilet air of cold cream and lavender ; and ladies maids 
 came down to press out white dresses, while the cook heated 
 the curling-irons ; and up and down the stairs flitted, with 
 the blest confusion of other days, boots and iced sangarees, 
 hot water, towels, and mint-juleps, all delightful, but all 
 incomprehensible ! Was the summer encored, or had the 
 Jews gone back to Jerusalem? To the keeper of Congress 
 Hall, the restoration of the millennium would have been a 
 rushlight to this second advent of fun-and-fashion-dom ! 
 
 Thus far we have looked through the eyes of the person 
 (pocket-ually speaking) most interested in the singular event 
 we wished to describe. Let us now (tea being over, and 
 your astonishment having had time to breathe) take the 
 devil s place at the elbow of the invalided dandy before- 
 mentioned, and follow him over to Congress Hall. It was a 
 mild night, and, as I said before (or meant to, if I did not), 
 August, having been prematurely cut off by his raining suc 
 cessor, seemed up again, like Hamlet s governor, and bent 
 on walking out his time. 
 
 Rice (you remember Rice, famous for his lemonades with 
 a corrective) , Rice, having nearly ignited his forefinger 
 with charging wines at dinner, was out to cool on the col 
 onnade ; and B , not strong enough to stand about, drew 
 
 a chair near the drawing-room window, and begged the rosy 
 barkeeper to throw what light he could upon this multitudin 
 ous apparition. Rice could only feed the fire of his wonder 
 with the fuel of additional circumstances. Coaches had been 
 arriving from every direction till the house was full. The 
 departed black band had been stopped at Albany, and sent 
 back. There seemed no married people in the party at 
 least, judging by dress and flirtation. Here and there a 
 
THE GHOST-BALL AT CONGEE SS HALL. 325 
 
 belle a little on the wane, but all most juvenescent in gayety, 
 and (Rice thought) handsomer girls than had been at Con 
 gress Hall since the days of the Albany regency (the regency 
 of beauty) , ten years ago ! Indeed, it struck Rice that he 
 had seen the faces of these lovely girls before, though they 
 whom he thought they resembled had long since gone off the 
 stage grandmothers, some of them, now! 
 
 Rice had been told, also, that there was an extraordinary 
 and overwhelming arrival of children and nurses at the 
 Pavilion Hotel, but he thought the report smelt rather like a 
 jealous figment of the Pavilioners. Odd, if true that s all ! 
 
 Mr. B had taken his seat on the colonnade, as Shak- 
 
 speare expresses it, " about cock-shut time, " twilight, 
 and in the darkness made visible of the rooms within, he 
 could only distinguish the outline of some very exquisite and 
 exquisitely plump figures gliding to and fro, winged, each 
 one, with a pair of rather stoutish but most attentive ad 
 mirers. As the curfew hour stole away, however, the ladies 
 stole away with it to dress ; and at ten o clock the sudden 
 
 outbreak of the full band in a mazurka drew Mr. B s 
 
 attention to the dining-room frontage of the colonnade, and, 
 moving his chair to one of the windows, the cockles of his 
 heart warmed to see the orchestra in its glory of old, 
 thirteen black Orpheuses perched on a throne of diuing- 
 tables, and the black veins on their shining temples strained 
 to the crack of mortality with their zealous execution. The 
 waiters, meantime, were lighting the tin Briareus (that sper 
 maceti monster so destructive to broadcloth) , and the side- 
 sconces and stand-lamps ; and presently a blaze of light 
 flooded the dusty evergreens of the facade, and nothing was 
 wanting but some fashionable Curtius to plunge first into 
 the void, some adventurous Benton, "to set the ball in 
 motion." 
 
 Wrapped carefully from the night-air in his cloak and 
 
326 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 belcher, B sat, looking earnestly into the room ; and to 
 
 his excited senses there seemed, about all this supplement 
 to the summer s gayety, a weird mysteriousness, an atmos 
 phere of magic, which was observable, he thought, even in 
 the burning of the candles ! And as to Johnson, the sable 
 leader of the band " God s-my-life," as Bottom says, how 
 like a tormented fiend writhed the Cremona betwixt his 
 chin and white waistcoat ! Such music, from instruments so 
 vexed, had never split the ears of the Saratoga groundlings 
 since the rule of Saint Dominick (in whose hands even 
 wine sparkled to song) no, not since the golden age of 
 the Springs, when that lord of harmony and the nabobs of 
 lower Broadway made, of Congress Hall, a paradise for the 
 unmarried. Was Johnson bewitched? Was Congress Hall 
 
 re-possessed by the spirits of the past? If ever Mr. B , 
 
 sitting in other years on that resounding colonnade, had felt 
 the magnetic atmosphere of people he knew to be up stairs, 
 he felt it now. If ever he had been contented, knowing that 
 certain bright creatures would presently glide into the visual 
 radius of black Johnson, he felt contented inexplicably, 
 from the same cause now, expecting, as if such music 
 could only be their herald, the entrance of the same bright 
 creatures, no older, and as bright after years of matrimony. 
 
 And now and then B pressed his hand to his head, for 
 
 he was not quite sure that he might not be a little wandering 
 in his mind. 
 
 But suddenly the band struck up a march. The first bar 
 
 was played through, and B looked at the door, sighing 
 
 that this sweet hallucination this waking dream of other 
 days was now to be scattered by reality. He could have 
 filliped that mercenary Ethiopian on the nose for playing 
 such music to such falling off from the past as he now looked 
 to see enter. 
 
 A lady crossed the threshold on a gentleman s arm. 
 
THE GHOST-BALL AT CONGRESS HALL. 327 
 
 " Ha, ha ! " said B , trying with a wild effort to laugh, 
 
 and pinching his arm into a blood-blister, come this is 
 
 too good ! Helen K ! oh, no ! Not quite crazy yet, 
 
 I hope, not so far gone yet ! Yet it is ! I swear it is ! 
 And not changed either ! Beautiful as ever, by all that is 
 wonderful ! Pshaw ! I ll not be mad ! Rice ! are you 
 there? Why, who are these coming after her? Julia 
 
 L ! Anna K , and my friend Fanny ! The 
 
 D s ! The M s ! Nay, I m dreaming, silly fool 
 
 that I am ! I ll call for a light ! Waiter ! ! Where the 
 devil s the bell ?" 
 
 And as poor B insisting on finding himself in bed, 
 
 reached out his hand to find the bell-pull, one - of the waiters 
 of Congress Hall came to his summons. The gentleman 
 wanted nothing, and the waiter thought he had cried out in 
 his nap ; and rather embarrassed to explain his wants, but 
 
 still unconvinced of his freedom from dreamland, B 
 
 drew his hat over his eyes, and his cloak around him, and 
 screwed up his courage to look again into the enchanted 
 ballroom. 
 
 The quadrilles were formed, and the lady at the head of 
 the first set was spreading her skirts for the avant-deux. 
 She was a tall woman, superbly handsome, and moved with 
 the grace of a frigate at sea with a nine-knot breeze. Eyes 
 capable of taking in lodgers (hearts, that is to say) of any 
 and every calibre and quality, a bust for a Cornelia, a shape 
 all love and lightness, and a smile like a temptation of Eblis, 
 there she was, and there were fifty like her, not like 
 her exactly, either, but of her constellation ; belles, every 
 one of them, who will be remembered by old men, and used 
 for the disparagement of degenerated younglings ; splendid 
 
 women of Mr. B s time, and of the palmy time of 
 
 Congress Hall, 
 
 " The past the past the past ! " 
 
328 PROSE WRITINGS OF IT. P. WILLIS. 
 
 Out on your staring and unsheltered lantern of brick, 
 your " United States Hotel, " stiff, modern, and promiscuous ! 
 Who ever passed a comfortable hour in its glaring cross- 
 lights, or breathed a gentle sentiment in its unsubdued air 
 and townish open-to-dustiness ? What is it to the leafy dim 
 ness, the cool shadows, the perpetual and pensive demi-jour, 
 what to the ten thousand associations, of Congress Hall? 
 Who has not lost a heart (or two) on the boards of that 
 primitive wilderness of a colonnade? Whose first adora 
 tions, whose sighs, hopes, strategies, and flirtations, are not 
 ground into that warped and slipper-polished floor, like 
 heart-ache and avarice into the bricks of Wall Street? Lord 
 bless you, madam ! don t desert old Congress Hall ! We 
 have done going to the Springs, we, and wouldn t go 
 there again for any thing, but a good price for a pang 
 (that is, except to see such a sight as we are describing) ; 
 but we cannot bear, in our midsummer flit through the Astor, 
 to see charming girls bound for Saratoga, and hear no talk of 
 Congress Hall ! What ! no lounge on those proposal sofas ; 
 no pluck at the bright green leaves of those luxuriant 
 creepers while listening to "the voice of the charmer; " no 
 dawdle on the steps to the spring (mamma gone on before) ; 
 no hunting for that glow-worm in the shrubbery by the music- 
 room ; no swing, no billiards, no morning gossips with the 
 few privileged beaux admitted to the up-stairs entry, ladies 
 wing? 
 
 "I d sooner be set quick f the earth, 
 And bowled to death with turnips," 
 
 than assist or mingle in such ungrateful forgetfulness of 
 pleasure-land ! But what do we with a digression in a 
 ghost-story ? 
 
 The ball went on. Champagne of the " exploded " color 
 (pink) was freely circulated between the dances (rosy wine 
 suited to the bright days when all things were tinted rose) , 
 
THE GHOST-BALL AT CONGRESS HALL. 329 
 
 arid wit exploded, too, in these leaden times, went round 
 with the wine; and as a glass of the bright vintage was 
 
 handed up to old Johnson, B stretched his neck over 
 
 the window-sill in an agony of expectation, confident that 
 the black ghost, if ghost he were, would fail to recognize the 
 leaders of fashion as he was wont of old, and to bow re 
 spectfully to them before drinking in their presence. Oh, 
 murder ! not he ! Down went his black poll to the music- 
 stand, and up, and down again, and at every dip the white 
 roller of that unctuous eye was brought to bear upon some 
 well-remembered star of the ascendant ! He saw them as 
 B did ! He was not playing to an unrecognized com 
 pany of late comers to Saratoga, anybodies from any 
 place ! He, the unimaginative African, believed, evidently, 
 that they were there in flesh, Helen the glorious, and all 
 her fair troop of contemporaries ! and that with them had 
 come back their old lovers, the gay and gallant Lotharios 
 of the time of Johnson s first blushing honors of renown ! 
 The big drops of agonized horror and incredulity rolled off 
 the forehead of Mr. B ! 
 
 But suddenly the waiters radiated to the side-doors, and 
 with the celestial felicity of star-rising and morning-breaking, 
 a waltz was found playing in the ears of the revellers ! Per 
 fect, yet when it did begin ! Waltzed every brain and vein, 
 waltzed every swimming eye within the reach of its magic 
 vibrations ! Gently away floated couple after couple, and as 
 they circled round to his point of observation, B - could 
 have called every waltzer by name ; but his heart was in his 
 throat, but his eyeballs were hot with the stony immovable- 
 ness of his long gazing. 
 
 Another change in the music! Spirits of bedevilment ! 
 could not that waltz have been spared? Boniface stood 
 waltzing his head from shoulder to shoulder ; Rice twirled 
 the head-chambermaid in the entry ; the black and white boys 
 
330 PEOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 spun round on the colonnade ; the wall-flowers in the ball 
 room crowded their chairs to the wall ; the candles flared 
 embracingly ghosts or no ghosts, dream or hallucination, 
 
 B could endure no more ! He flung off his cloak and 
 
 hat, and jumped in at the window. The divine Emily C 
 
 had that moment risen from tying her shoe. With a nod to 
 
 her partner, and a smile to herself, B encircled her round 
 
 waist, and away he flew like Ariel, light on the toe, but his 
 face pallid and wild, and his emaciated legs playing like 
 sticks in his unfilled trousers. Twice he made the circuit of 
 the room, exciting apparently less surprise than pleasure by 
 his sudden appearance ; then with a wavering halt, and his 
 hand laid tremulously to his forehead, he flew at the hall-door 
 at a tangent, and, rushing through servants and spectators, 
 dashed across the portico, and disappeared in the darkness ! 
 A fortnight s brain-fever deprived him of the opportunity of 
 repeating this remarkable flourish, and his subsequent sanity 
 was established through some critical hazard. 
 
 There was some inquiry at supper about " old B ," 
 
 but the lady who waltzed with him knew as little of his 
 coming and going as the managers ; and by one belle, who 
 had been at some trouble in other days to quench his ardor, 
 it was solemnly believed to be his persevering apparition. 
 
 The next day there was a drive and dinner at Barhydt s, 
 and back in time for ball and supper ; and the day after, 
 there was a most hilarious and memorable fishing-party to 
 Saratoga Lake, and all back again in high force for the 
 ball and supper ; and so, like a long gala-day, like a short 
 summer carnival, all frolic, sped the week away. Boniface, 
 by the third day, had rallied his recollections ; and with 
 many a scrape and compliment, he renewed his acquaintance 
 with the belles and beaux of a brighter period of beauty and 
 gallantry. And if there was any mystery remaining in the 
 old functionary s mind as to the identity and miracle of their 
 
THE GHOST-BALL AT CONGRESS HALL. 331 
 
 presence and re-union, it was on the one point of the ladies 
 unfaded loveliness ; for, saving a half-inch aggregation in 
 the waist, which was rather an improvement than otherwise, 
 and a little more fulness in the bust, which was a most em 
 bellishing difference, the ten years that had gone over them 
 had made no mark on the lady portion of his guests ; and as 
 to the gentleman but that is neither here nor there. They 
 were " men of mark," young or old, and their wear and tear 
 is, as Flute says, " a thing of naught." 
 
 It was revealed by the keeper of the Pavilion, after the 
 departure of the late-come revellers of Congress Hall, that 
 there had been constant and secret visitations by the belles 
 of the latter sojourn, to the numerous infantine lodgers of 
 the former. Such a troop of babies and boys, and all so 
 lovely, had seldom gladdened even the eyes of angels, out 
 of the cherubic choir (let alone the Saratoga Pavilion) ; and 
 though, in t-heir white dresses and rosebuds, the belles afore 
 spoken of looked like beautiful elder sisters to those mother 
 less younglings, yet when they came in, mothers confessed, 
 on the morning of departure, openly to superintend the 
 preparations for travel, they had so put off the untroubled 
 maiden look from their countenances, and so put on the in 
 describable growing-old-iness of married life in their dress, 
 that, to the eye of an observer, they might well have passed 
 for the mothers of the girls they had themselves seemed to 
 be, the day before only. 
 
 Who devised, planned, and brought about this practical 
 comment on the needlessness of the American haste to be old, 
 we are not at liberty to mention. The reader will have 
 surmised, however, that it was some one who had observed 
 the more enduring quality of beauty in other lands, and, on 
 returning to his own, looked in vain for those who, by every 
 law of nature, should be still embellishing the society of 
 which he had left them the budding flower and ornament. 
 
332 PKOSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 To get them together again, only with their contemporaries, 
 in one of their familiar haunts of pleasure ; to suggest the 
 exclusion of every thing but youthfulness in dress, amuse 
 ment, and occupation; to bring to meet them their old 
 admirers, married like themselves, but entering the field once 
 more for their smiles against their rejuvenescent husbands ; 
 to array them as belles again, and see whether it was any 
 falling off in beauty or the power of pleasing which had 
 driven them from their prominent places in social life, this 
 was the obvious best way of doing his immediate circles of 
 friends the service his feelings exacted of him ; the only 
 way, indeed, of convincing these bright creatures that they 
 had far anticipated the fading hour of bloom and youthful- 
 ness. Pensez-y I 
 
EPHEMEEA. 
 
FROM SARATOGA. 
 
 TO THE JULIA OF SOME YEARS AGO. 
 
 AUGUST 2, 1843. 
 
 I HAVE not written to you in your boy s lifetime, that 
 fine lad, a shade taller than yourself, whom I sometimes 
 meet at my tailor s and bootmaker s. I am not very sure, 
 that after the first month (bitter month) of your marriage, I 
 have thought of you for the duration of a revery fit to be 
 so called. I loved you lost you swore your ruin, and 
 forgot you which is love s climax when jilted. And I 
 never expected to think of you again. 
 
 Beside the astonishment at hearing from me at all, you 
 will be surprised at receiving a letter from me at Saratoga. 
 Here where the stars are, that you swore by, here, where 
 the springs and colonnades, the wood walks and drives, the 
 sofas and swings, are all coated over with your delicious 
 perjuries, your "protested" protestations, your incalculable 
 bankruptcy of sighs, tears, caresses, promises ! Oh, Julia 
 mais, retiens toi, ma plume ! 
 
 I assure you I had not the slightest idea of ever coming 
 here again in the world, not the slightest! I had avow 
 in heaven against it, indeed. While I hated you before I 
 forgot you, that is to say I would not have come for your 
 husband s million (your price, Julia!). I had laid Saratoga 
 away with a great seal, to be re-opened in the next star I 
 shall inhabit, and used as a light-house of warning. There 
 was one banister at Congress Hall, particularly, across which 
 
 335 
 
336 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 we parted nightly, the next object my hand touched after 
 losing the warm pressure of yours ; the place I leaned over 
 with a heart under my waistcoat which would have scaled 
 Olympus to be nearer to you, yet was kept back by that 
 mahogany and your "no," and I will believe that devils 
 may become dolls, and ghosts play around us like the smoke 
 of a cigar, since over that banister I have thrown my leg 
 and sat thinking of the past without frenzy or emotion ! 
 And none have a better right than we to laugh now at love s 
 passionate eternities! For we were lovers, Julia, I as I 
 know, and you as I believe ; and in that entry, when we 
 parted to dream, write, contrive for the blissful morrow, 
 any thing but sleep and forget, in that entry and over that 
 banister were said words of tenderness and devotion, from 
 as deep soundings of two hearts as ever plummet of this 
 world could by possibility fathom. You did love me, mon 
 ster of untruth and forgetfulness as you have since been 
 bought for, you did love me ! And that you can ride in 
 your husband s carriage and grow fat, and that I can come 
 here and make a mock of it, are two comments on love 
 worthy of the commonplace-book of Mephistophiles. Fie 
 on us ! 
 
 I came to Saratoga as I would look at a coat that I had 
 worn twenty years before, with a sort of vacant curiosity 
 to see the shell in which I had once figured. A friend said, 
 "Join me at Saratoga! " and it sounded like, "Come and 
 see where Julia was adorable." I came in a rail-car, under 
 a hot sun, and wanted my dinner, and wished myself where 
 Julia indeed sat fat in her fauteuil, wished it, for the good 
 wine in the cellar and the French cook in the kitchen. And 
 I did not go down to "Congress Hall," the old palais 
 (Tumour, but in the modern and comfortable parlor of the 
 " United States," sat down by a pretty woman of these days, 
 and chatted about the water-lily in her bosom and the boy 
 
FEOM SARATOGA. 337 
 
 she had up stairs, coldly and every-day-ishly. I had been 
 there six hours, and you had not entered my thoughts. Please 
 to believe that, Julia ! 
 
 But in the evening there was a ball at Congress Hall. And 
 though the old house is unfashionable now, and the lies of 
 love are elsewhere told and listened to, there was a movement 
 among the belles in its favor, and I appended myself to a 
 lady s arm and went boldly. I say boldly, for it required an 
 effort. The twilight had fallen, and with it had come a 
 memory or two of the Springs in our time. I had seated 
 myself against a pillar of the colonnade of the " United 
 States," and looked down toward Congress Hall; and you 
 were under the old vine-clad portico, as I should have 
 seen you from the same spot, and with the same eye of fancy, 
 sundry years ago. So it was not quite like a passionless 
 antiquary that I set foot again on that old-time colonnade, 
 and to say truth, as the band struck up a waltz, I might have 
 had in my lip a momentary quiver, and some dimness in my 
 world-weary eye. But it passed away. 
 
 The ball was comme fa, and I found sweet women (as 
 where are they not given, candles and music?), and aired 
 my homage as an old stager may. I danced without think 
 ing of you uncomfortably, though the ten years washing of 
 that white floor has not quite washed out the memory of your 
 Arab instep with its embracing and envied sandal, gliding and 
 bounding, oh, how airily ! For you had feet absolute in their 
 perfection, dear Julia ! had you not? 
 
 But I went out for fresh air on the colonnade, in an evil 
 and forgetful moment. I strolled alone toward the spring. 
 The lamp burned dim, as it used to burn, tended by Cupid s 
 minions. And on the end of the portico, by the last window 
 of the music-room, under that overhanging ivy, with stars 
 in sight that I would have sworn to for the very same, sat 
 a lady in a dress like yours as I saw you last, and black 
 
338 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 eyes, like jet lamps framed in velvet, turning indolently 
 toward me. I held by the railing, for I am superstitious, 
 and it seemed to me that I had only to ask why you were 
 there ; for, ghostly or bodily, there I saw you ! Back came 
 your beauty on my memory with yesterday s freshness of 
 recollection. Back came into my heart the Julia of my long- 
 accursed adoration ! I saw your confiding and bewildering 
 smile, your fine-cut teeth of pearl, your over-bent brow and 
 arch look from under, your lily shoulders, your dimpled 
 hands. You were there, if my senses were sufficient evi 
 dence, if presence be any thing without touch, bodily there ! 
 Of course it was somebody else. I went in and took a 
 julep. But I write to tell you that for a minute a minute 
 of enormous capacity I have loved you once more. For 
 one minute, while you probably were buried deep in your 
 frilled pillow (snoring, perhaps who knows?), for one 
 minute, fleeting and blissful, you have been loved again 
 with heart, brain, blood, all on fire with truth, tenderness, 
 and passionate adoration by a man who could have bought 
 you (you know I could !) for half the money you sold for ! 
 And I thought you would like to know this, Julia ! And 
 now, hating you as before, in your fleshy forgetfulness, 
 Yours not at all. 
 
SUMMER IN TOWN. 
 
 WE know nothing of a more restless tendency than a fine, 
 old-fashioned June day, one that begins with a morn 
 ing damp with a fresh south wind, and gradually clears away 
 in a thin white mist, till the sun shines through at last, genial 
 and luxurious, but not sultry, and every thing looks clear 
 and bright in the transparent atmosphere. We know noth 
 ing which so seduces the very eye and spirit of a man, and 
 stirs in him that gypsy longing, which, spite of disgrace 
 and punishment, made him a truant in his boyhood. There 
 is an expansive rarity in the air of such a day, a something 
 that lifts up the lungs, and plays in the nostrils with a deli 
 cious sensation of freshness and elasticity. The close room 
 grows sadly dull under it. The half-open blind, with its 
 tempting glimpse of the sky, and branch of idle leaves flick 
 ering in the sun, has a strange witchery. The poor pursuits 
 of this drossy world grow passing insignificant ; and the 
 scrawled and blotted manuscripts of an editor s table 
 pleasant anodyne as they are when the wind is in the east 
 are, at these seasons, but the " Diary of an Ennuye"e," the 
 notched calendar of confinement and unrest. The com 
 mendatory sentence stands half completed ; the fate of the 
 author under review, with his two volumes, is altogether of 
 less importance than five minutes of the life of that tame 
 pigeon that sits on the eaves washing his white breast in the 
 spout ; and the public good-will, and the cause of literature, 
 and our own precarious livelihood, all fade into^dim shadow, 
 and leave us listening dreamily to the creeping of the sweet 
 
 339 
 
340 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 south upon the vine, or the far-off rattle of the hourly, with 
 its freight of happy bowlers and gentlemen of suburban 
 idleness. 
 
 What is it to us, when the sun is shining, and the winds 
 bland and balmy, and the moist roads with their fresh smell 
 of earth tempting us away to the hills, what is it then, to 
 us, whether a poor-devil-author has a flaw in his style, or 
 our own leading article a "local habitation and a name"? 
 Are we to thrust down our heart like a reptile into its cage, 
 and close our shutter to the cheerful light, and our ear to 
 all sounds of out-door happiness ? Are we to smother our 
 uneasy impulses, and chain ourselves down to a poor, dry 
 thought, that has neither light, nor music, nor any spell in 
 it save the poor necessity of occupation? Shall we forget 
 the turn in the green lane where we are wont to loiter in our 
 drive, and the cool claret of our friend at the Hermitage, 
 and the glorious golden summer sunset in which we bowl 
 away to the city, musing and refreshed ? Alas ! yes ; the 
 heart must be closed, and the green lane and the friend that 
 is happier than we (for he is idle) must be forgotten, and 
 the dry thought must be dragged up like a wilful steer and 
 yoked to its fellow, and the magnificent sunset, with all its 
 glorious dreams and forgetful happiness, must be seen in the 
 pauses of articles, and the " bleared een " of painful atten 
 tionand all this in June, prodigal June, when the very 
 worm is all day out in the sun, and the birds scarce stop 
 their singing from the gray light to the dewf all ! 
 
 What an insufferable state of the thermometer! We 
 knock under to Heraclitus, that fire is the first principle of 
 all things. Fahrenheit at one hundred degrees in the shade ! 
 Our curtain in the attic unstirred ! Our japonica drooping 
 its great white flowers lower and lower ! It is a fair scene, 
 indeed ! not a ripple from the pier to the castle, and the sur 
 face of the water, as Shelley says, "like a plane of glass 
 
SUMMER IN TOWN. 341 
 
 spread out between two heavens ; and there is a solitary 
 sloop, with the light and shade flickering on its loose sail, 
 positively hung in the air, and a gull (it is refreshing to see 
 him) keeping down with his white wings close to the water 
 as if to meet his own snowy and perfect shadow. Was ever 
 such intense, unmitigated sunshine ? There is nothing on the 
 hard, opaque sky but a mere rag of a cloud, like a handker 
 chief on a tablet of blue marble, and the edge of the shadow 
 of that tall chimney is as definite as a hair, and the young 
 elm that leans over the fence is copied in perfect and motion 
 less leaves like a very painting on the broad sidewalk. How 
 delightful the night will be after such a deluge of light! 
 How beautiful the modest rays of the starlight, and the cool, 
 dark blue of the heavens, will seem after the dazzling clear 
 ness of this sultry noon ! It reminds one of that exquisite 
 passage in Thalaba, where the spirit-bird comes, when his 
 eyes are blinded with the intense brightness of the snow, 
 and spreads her green wings before him ! 
 
 We have been paid for letting the world know a great 
 many things that were of no consequence to the world what 
 ever, and, among other nothings, a certain metropoliphobia of 
 our own, on which we have expended a great deal of choice 
 grammar and punctuation. We trust the world believes by 
 this, that, capable as we are of loving our entire species (one 
 at a time) , we hate a city collectively. Having a little moan 
 to make, with a little moral at the close, we put this private 
 prejudice once more into type, trusting to your indulgence, 
 good reader. 
 
 This is June ; and " where are you going this summer?" 
 though a pertinent question enough, and seasonable, and 
 just what anybody says to everybody he meets, has to our 
 ear a little offence in it. If it were asked for information, 
 a la bonne heure ! we are willing to tell any friend where we 
 
342 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 are going, this side the Styx. But though the question 
 (asked with most affectionate earnestness by your friend) is 
 merely a preface to enlightening you as to his own " water 
 ing-place," there must still be an answer. And suppose 
 that answer, though not a whit attended to, touches upon 
 your secret sorrow, your deucedest bore ! suppose But 
 you see our drift ! You understand that we are to sweat out 
 the summer solstice within the "bills of mortality." You 
 see that we are to comfort our bucolic nostrils as we best 
 may, with municipal grass, picking here and there a clover- 
 top or an aggravating dandelion twixt post-office and city- 
 hall. Heaven help us ! 
 
 True, New York is " open at the top." We are prepared 
 to be thankful for what comes down to us, air, light, and 
 dew. But alas ! Earth is our mother, Earth, who sends all 
 her blessings upward; Earth, who, in the city, is stoned over, 
 and hammered down, paved, flagged, suffocated, her natural 
 breath quite cut off, or driven to escape by drain and gas- 
 pipe, her flowers and herbs prevented, her springs shut down 
 from gushing ! This arid pavement, this hot smell of dust, 
 this brick color and paint, what are they to the fragrant 
 lap of our overlaid mother, with her drapery of bright colors 
 and tender green ? Answer, O omnibus-horse ! Answer, O 
 worky-editor ! 
 
 But there be alleviations ! It is to these that hangs the 
 moral of our tale." We presume most men think them 
 selves more worthy than u sparrows " of the attention of 
 Providence, and of course most men believe in a special 
 Providence for themselves. We do. We believe that we 
 shall not " fall to the ground without " (a) " notice." (But 
 this, let us hope, is anticipating.) We wish to speak now of 
 the succedaneum thrown in our path for our pastoral depriva 
 tions, for the lost brook whose babbling current turned the 
 wheel of our idleness. Sweet brook, that never robbed the 
 
SUMMER IN TOWN. 343 
 
 pebbles of a ray of light in running over them ! It became 
 a type to us, that brook. Our thoughts ran brook-wise. 
 Bright water, braiding its ripples as it ran, became our vehi 
 cle of fancy. We lagged, we dragged, we were " gravelled 
 for lack of matter," without it. And now mark! Provi 
 dence has supplied it (through his honor the mayor). A 
 brook, a clear brook, not pellucid merely, but transparent, 
 a brook with a song, tripping as musically (when the carts 
 are not going by) as the beloved brook now sequestered to 
 the Philistines, trips daily before us! Our daily walk is 
 along its border for, say, a rod and a half. Meet us there, 
 if you will, O congenial spirit ! As we go to the post-office 
 we span its fair current at the broadest, and take a fillip in 
 our fancy for the day. Would you know its geography 
 more definitely? Stand on the steps of the Astor, and gaze 
 over to the sign of "P. Pussedu, wig-maker, from Italy." 
 Drop then the divining-rod to the left, and a much- frequented 
 pump will become apparent, perched over a projecting curb 
 stone, around which the dancing and bright water trips with 
 sparkling feet, and a murmur audible at least to itself. It 
 is the outlet of the fountain in the park, and, as Wordsworth 
 
 says, 
 
 "Parching summer hath no warrant 
 To consume this crystal well," 
 
 as an order is first necessary from the corporation. Oh ! (if 
 it were not for being taken to the watch-house) we could sit 
 by this brook in the moonlight, and pour forth our melan 
 choly moan ! But the cabmen wash their wheels in it now, 
 and the echo would be, " Want a cab, sir? " Metropolises, 
 a vaunt ! 
 
BROADWAY AND THE BATTEEY. 
 
 MARCH made an expiring effort to give us a spring-day 
 yesterday. The morning dawned mild and bright, and 
 there was a voluptuous contralto in the cries of the milkmen 
 and the sweeps, which satisfied me, before I was out of bed, 
 that there was an arrival of a south wind. The Chinese 
 proverb says, " When thou hast a day to be idle, be idle for 
 a day ; " but for that very elusive " time when," I irresistibly 
 substitute tke day the wind sweetens after a sour north 
 easter. Oh the luxury (or curse, as the case may be) of 
 breakfasting leisurely with an idle day before one ! 
 
 I strolled up Broadway between nine and ten, and encoun 
 tered the morning tide doivn; and if you never have studied 
 the physiognomy of this great thoroughfare in its various 
 fluxes and refluxes, the differences would amuse you. The 
 clerks and workies have passed down an hour before the 
 nine o clock tide, and the sidewalk is filled at this time with 
 bankers, brokers, and speculators bound to Wall Street ; old 
 merchants and junior partners bound to Pearl and Water ; 
 and lawyers, young and old, bound for Nassau and Pine. 
 Ah, the faces of care ! The day s operations are working 
 out in their eyes ; their hats are pitched forward at the angle 
 of a stage-coach with all the load on the driver s seat, their 
 shoulders are raised with the shrug of anxiety, their steps 
 are hurried and short, and mortal face and gait could scarcely 
 express a heavier burden of solicitude than every man seems 
 to bear. They nod to you without a smile, and with a kind 
 of unconscious recognition ; and, if you are unaccustomed 
 8M 
 
BROADWAY AND THE BATTEEY. 345 
 
 to walk out at that hour, you might fancy that, if there were 
 not some great public calamity, your friends, at least, had 
 done smiling on you. Walk as far as Niblo s, stop at the 
 greenhouse there, and breathe an hour in the delicious atmos 
 phere of flowering plants, and then return. There is no 
 longer any particular current in Broadway. Foreigners com 
 ing out from the cafes, after their late breakfast, and idling 
 up and down for fresh air; country-people shopping early; 
 ladies going to their dressmakers in close veils and demi- 
 toilets; errand-boys, news-boys, duns, and doctors, make 
 up the throng. Toward twelve o clock there is a sprinkling 
 of mechanics going to dinner, a merry, short-jacketed, 
 independent-looking troop, glancing gayly at the women as 
 they pass, and disappearing around corners and up alleys ; 
 and an hour later Broadway begins to brighten. The omni 
 buses go along empty, and at a slow pace, for people would 
 rather walk than ride. The side-streets are tributaries of silks 
 and velvets, flowers and feathers, to the great thoroughfare ; 
 and ladies whose proper mates (judging by the dress alone) 
 should be lords and princes, and dandies, shoppers, and 
 loungers of every description, take crowded possession of 
 thepa^. At nine o clock you look into the troubled faces 
 of men going to their business, and ask yourself, " To what 
 end is all this burden of care? " arid at two, you gaze on the 
 universal prodigality of exterior, and wonder what fills the 
 multitude of pockets that pay for it ! The faces are beauti 
 ful, the shops are thronged, the sidewalks crowded for an 
 hour ; and then the full tide turns, and sets upward. The 
 most of those who are out at three are bound to the upper 
 part of the city to dine; and the merchants and lawyers, 
 excited by collision and contest above the depression of care, 
 join smiling in the throng. The physiognomy of the crowd 
 is at its brightest. Dinner is the smile of the day to most 
 people, andthe hour approaches. Whatever has happened 
 
346 PROSE WETTINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 in stocks or politics, whoever is dead, whoever ruined sidce 
 morning, Broadway is thronged with cheerful faces and good 
 appetites at three ! The world will probably dine with pleas 
 ure up to the last day perhaps breakfast with worldly care 
 for the future on doomsday morning ! And here I must 
 break off my daguerreotype of yesterday s idling ; for the 
 wind came round easterly and raw at three o clock, and I 
 was driven in-doors to try industry as an opiate. 
 
 The first day of freedom from medical embargo is equiva 
 lent, in most men s memories, to a new first impression of 
 existence. Dame Nature, like a provident housewife, seems 
 to take the opportunity of a sick man s absence to whitewash 
 and freshen the world he occupies. Certainly I never saw 
 the bay of New York look so beautiful as on Sunday noon ; 
 and you may attribute as much as you please of this impres 
 sion to the "Claude Lorraine spectacles" of convalescence, 
 and as much more as pleases you to the fact that it was an 
 intoxicating and dissolving day of spring. 
 
 The Battery on Sunday is the Champs-filys6es of foreign 
 ers. I heard nothing spoken around me but French and 
 German. Wrapped in my cloak and seated on a bench, I 
 watched the children and the poodle-dogs at their gambols, 
 and it seemed to me as if I were in some public resort over 
 the water. They bring such happiness to a day of idleness, 
 these foreigners, laughing, talking nonsense, totally un 
 conscious of observation, and delighted as much with the 
 passing of a row-boat or a steamer, as an American with 
 the arrival of his own argosy from sea. They are not 
 the better class of foreigners who frequent the Battery on 
 Sunday. They are the newly arrived, the artisans, the Ger 
 man toy-makers, and the French boot-makers, people who 
 still wear the spacious-hipped trousers and scant coats, the 
 gold rings in the ears, and the ruffled shirts, of the lands of 
 
BROADWAY AND TEE BATTERY. 347 
 
 undandified poverty. They are there by hundreds. They 
 hang over the railing, and look off upon the sea. They sit 
 and smoke on the long benches. They run hither and thither 
 with their children, and behave as they would in their own 
 garden, using and enjoying it just as if it were their own. 
 And an enviable power they have of it ! 
 
 There had been a heavy fog on the water all the morning, 
 and quite a fleet of the river-craft had drifted with the tide 
 close on to the Battery. The soft south wind was lifting the 
 mist in undulating sweeps, and covering and disclosing the 
 spars and sails with a phantom effect quite melodramatic. 
 By two o clock the breeze was steady and the bay clear, and 
 the horizon was completely concealed with the spread of 
 canvas. The grass in the Battery plats seemed to be grow 
 ing visibly meantime, and to this animated sea-picture gave 
 a foreground of tender and sparkling green ; the trees looked 
 feathery with the opening buds ; the children rolled on the 
 grass, and the summer seemed come. Much as Nature loves 
 the country, she opens her green lap first in the cities. The 
 valleys are asleep under the snow, and will be for weeks. 
 
A TETE-A-TETE. 
 
 SIT back in jour chair, and let me babble ! I like just to 
 pull the spigot out of my discretion, and let myself run. 
 No criticisms, if you please, and don t stare ! Eyelids down, 
 and stand ready for slip-slop. 
 
 I was sitting last night by the lady with the horn and the 
 glass umbrella, at the Alhamra I drinking a julep, she (my 
 companion) eating an ice. The water dribbled, and the 
 moon looked through the slits in the awning, and we chatted 
 about Saratoga. My companion has a very generalizing 
 mind, situated just in the rear of a very particularly fine pair 
 of black velvet eyes, and her opinions usually come out by a 
 little ivory gate with a pink portico charming gate, charm 
 ing portico, charming opinions. I must say I think more of 
 intellect when it is well lodged. 
 
 I am literally at a dead loss to know whether she said it, 
 or I said it, what my mind runs on at this moment. It s 
 all one, for if I said it, it was with the velvet approbation of 
 her ineffable eyes, and before such eyes I absorb and give 
 back, like the mirror that I am. These, then, are her reflec 
 tions about Saratoga. 
 
 Why, in mamma s time, it was a different affair. There 
 was a cabinet of fashion in those days, and the question was 
 settled with closed doors. Giants have done being born, and 
 so have super-beautiful women, such women as used to lay 
 down hearts like blocks in the wooden pavement, and walk 
 on nothing else. There were about three in each city, three 
 belles of whom every baptized person in the country knew 
 
 348 
 
A TETE-A-TETE. 349 
 
 the name, style, and probable number of victims. Their 
 history should have been written while they lasted; for of 
 course the gods loved them, and "whom the gods love die 
 first," and they are dead, and have left no manuscripts nor 
 models. Well, these belles were leagued, and kept up their 
 dynasty by correspondence. New York was the seat of 
 government, and the next strongest branch was at Albany 
 (where the women at one time were lovelier than at any 
 known place and period since the memory of woman) . In 
 New York alone, however, were married ladies admitted to 
 the councils. Here and there a renowned beau was kept in 
 the antechamber for advice. April came, and then com 
 menced a vigorous exchange of couriers. "The Springs," 
 of course, but which? Saratoga, or Lebanon, or Ballston? 
 What carried it, or who decided it, was inshrined in the most 
 eternal mystery ; but it was decided, and known to a few 
 beaux and the proprietors of the hotels by the middle of 
 May. Wine and Johnson s band were provided accordingly. 
 The summer was more punctual in those days, and July par 
 ticularly was seldom belated. After the Fourth, the cabinet 
 started, and then commenced a longitudinal radiation from 
 north to south after what, and to follow whom, was only a 
 secret to the uninitiated. And such times for then the 
 people had fortunes, and the ladies drank champagne ! La ! 
 how ma talks about it ! 
 
 But now ! Eheu fugaces ! (Latin for " Bless my soul ! ") 
 change has drank all the spirit of our dream. There is 
 so much aristocracy in New York, that there is none at all. 
 Beauty has been scrambled for, and everybody has picked 
 up a little. There must be valleys to make mountains, 
 ugly people before there can be belles ; but, everybody being 
 rather pretty, who can be divine? Idem, gentility! Who 
 knows who isn t " genteel" in New York? There are fifty 
 circles as like as peas, and not even an argument as to the 
 
350 PROSE WETTINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 perihelion. Live where you please, know whom you please, 
 wear what you please, and ride freely in the omnibuses, and 
 nobody makes a remark ! Social anarchy ! 
 
 Why, what a state of things it is when it is as much trou 
 ble to find out where the prettiest people have gone to pass 
 the summer as it is to inquire out " good "-ness in Wall 
 Street! No cherishing, either, of belle or beau descent! 
 The daughters of the charming tyrants of ten or twenty 
 years ago, the boys of the beaux of that time, walk about 
 unpointed at and degenerate. The " good society " of 
 twenty years ago is most indifferent society now. 
 
 " The vase in which roses have once been distilled * 
 
 goes for a crockery pipkin. 
 
 A great pity they don t have coffee at the Alhamra ! And 
 no curacoa and what is ice-cream without a drop of cura- 
 9oa ! It is a pretty place, a very pretty place ! And there 
 should be nobody to wait on you here but dainty and dapper 
 slaves such as the Moors had, with golden rings on their 
 ankles, in the veritable Alhambra. That tall, crooked black 
 amoor hurts my eye. 
 
 So there was no " Mr. Hicks," and no " legacy to Wash 
 ington Irving." Here s the pity ! I wish a Mr. Hicks might 
 be created impromptu, on purpose. And more Mr. Hickses 
 for more authors. Birds that sing should be provided with 
 cages and full cups. What could be done better with spare 
 moneys than to take the footworn pilgrim of genius, and send 
 him softly down from the temple of fame shod with velvet ! 
 In every rich man s will there should be at least one line 
 illuminated with a bequest to genius. Heaven give us a 
 million, that we may set the glorious example ! 
 
 And now, lady, who are you that in this gossiping dream 
 has held converse with me ? I have murmured to the black 
 cross, suspended by its braid of hair upon your throat of 
 
A TETE-A-TETE. 351 
 
 ivory, without asking your name content that you listened. 
 But now (if spiritual visitors have arms) put your arm in 
 mine, and come out under a better-devised ceiling ! The night 
 is fragrant. Heaven is sifting love upon us through the 
 sieve of the firmament starlight, you took it for ! And as 
 much falls in Broadway as elsewhere. And the stars are as 
 sweet seen from this sidewalk, as they are from the Fountain 
 of Egeria. I have sighed in both places, and know. 
 " Allans! faites moi I amour car je suis dans mon humeur 
 des Dimanches." 
 
A SUNDAY WALK. 
 
 I AM inclined to think it is not peculiar to myself to have a 
 sabbath taste for the water-side. There is an affinity, 
 felt, I think, by man and boy, between the stillness of the day 
 and the audible hush of boundaries to water. Premising 
 that it was at first with the turned-up nose of conscious 
 travesty, I have to confess the finding of a sabbath ramble, 
 to my mind, along the river-side in New York, the first 
 mile toward Albany, on the bank of the Hudson. Indeed, 
 if quiet be the object, the nearer the water the less jostled 
 the walk on Sunday. You would think, to cross the city 
 anywhere from river to river, that there was a general hydro 
 phobia, the entire population crowding to the high ridge of 
 Broadway, and hardly a soul to be seen on either the East 
 River or the Hudson. But, with a little thoughtful frequent 
 ing, those deserted river-sides become contemplative and 
 pleasant rambling-places ; and if some whim of fashion do 
 not make the bank of the Hudson, like the Marina of Smyrna, 
 a fashionable resort, I have my Sunday afternoons provided 
 for during the pigritude of city durance. 
 
 Yesterday (Sunday) it blew one of those unfolding west 
 winds, chartered expressly to pull the kinks out of the belated 
 leaves, a breeze it was delightful to set the face to, 
 strong, genial, and inspiriting, and smelling (in New York) 
 of the snubbed twigs of Hoboken. The Battery looked very 
 delightful, with the grass laying its cheek to the ground, and 
 the trees all astir and trinkling ; but on Sunday this lovely 
 resort is full of smokers of bad cigars unpleasant gentle- 
 
A SUNDAY WALK. 353 
 
 men to take the wind of. I turned the corner with a look 
 through the fence, and was in comparative solitude the next 
 moment. 
 
 The monarch of our deep-water streams, the gigantic 
 " Massachusetts," lay at her wharf, washed by the waving 
 hands of the waters taking leave of the Hudson. The river 
 ends under the prow ; or, as we might say with a poetic 
 license, joins on at this point to Stonington, so easy is the 
 transit from wharf to wharf in that magnificent conveyance. 
 From this point up extends a line of ships, rubbing against 
 the pier the fearless noses that have nudged the poles and 
 the tropics, and been breathed on by spice-islands and ice 
 bergs, an array of nobly-built merchantmen, that, with 
 the association of their triumphant and richly-freighted com 
 ings and goings, grows upon my eye with a certain majesty. 
 It is a broad street here, of made land, and the sidewalks in 
 front of the new stores are lumbered with pitch and molasses, 
 flour and red ochre, bales, bags, and barrels, in unsightly 
 confusion ; but the wharf-side, with its long line of carved 
 figure-heads, and bowsprits projecting over the street, is an 
 unobstructed walk, on Sundays at least, and more sugges 
 tive than many a gallery of marble statues. The vessels 
 that trade to the North Sea harbor here, unloading their 
 hemp and iron ; and the superb French packet-ships, with 
 their gilded prows ; and, leaning over the gangways and 
 taffrails, the Swedish and Norwegian sailors jabber away 
 their Sunday s idle time ; and the negro cooks lie and look 
 into the puddles ; and altogether it is a strangely mixed pic 
 ture, Power reposing, and Fret and Business gone from the 
 six-days whip and chain. I sat down on a short hawser- 
 post, and conjured the spirits of ships around me. They 
 were as communicative as would naturally be expected in a 
 tete-cl-tete, when quite at leisure. Things they had seen and 
 got wind of in the Indian seas, strange fishes that had tried 
 
354 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 the metal of their copper bottoms, porpoises they had run 
 over asleep, wrecks and skeletons they had thrown a shadow 
 across, when under prosperous headway, these and par 
 ticulars of the fortunes they had brought home, and the 
 passengers coming to look through one more country to find 
 happiness, and the terrors and dangers, heartaches and 
 dreams, that had come and gone with each bill of lading, 
 the talkative old bowsprits told me all. I sat and watched 
 the sun setting between two outlandish-looking vessels, and, 
 at twilight, turned to go home, leaving the spars and lines 
 drawn in clear tracery on a sky as rosy and fading as a 
 poet s prospects at seventeen. 
 
A SPRING DAY IN WINTER. 
 
 A SPRING day sometimes bursts upon us in December. 
 One scarcely knows whether the constant warmth of the 
 fire, or the fresh sunny breathings from the open window, are 
 the most welcome. At such a time the curtains swing lazily 
 to the mild wind as it enters, and the light green leaves of 
 the sheltered flowers stir and erect themselves with an out-of- 
 door vigor, and the shuffled steps and continued voices of 
 the children in the street have the loitering and summer-like 
 sound of June. I do not know whether it is not a cockney 
 feeling ; but with all my love for the country, fixed as it is 
 by the recollections of a life mostly spent in the " green 
 fields" I sometimes "babble of," there is something in a 
 summer morning in the city, which the wet, warm woods, and 
 the solitary though lonely haunts of the country do not, after 
 all the poetry that has been "spilt upon them" (as Neal 
 would say) , at all equal. Whether it is that we find so much 
 sympathy in the many faces that we meet, made happy by 
 the same sweet influences, or whatever else may be the reason, 
 certes, I never take my morning walk on such a day, without 
 a leaping in my heart, which, from all I can gather by dream 
 or revelation, has a touch in it of Paradise. I returned once, 
 on such a day, from an hour s ramble after breakfast. The 
 air rushed past my temples with the grateful softness of 
 spring, and every face that passed had the open, inhaling 
 expression which is given by the simple joy of existence. 
 The sky had the deep clearness of noon. The clouds were 
 winnowed in light parallel curves, looking like white shells 
 
 355 
 
356 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 inlaid on the arched heavens ; the smooth, glassy bay was 
 like a transparent abyss opening to the earth s centre, and 
 edging away underneath with a slope of hills, and spires, 
 and leafless woods, copied minutely and perfectly from the 
 upper landscape ; and the naked elms seemed almost clothed 
 as the teeming eye looked on them, and the brown hills took 
 a tint of green, so freshly did the summer fancies crowd 
 into the brain with the summer softness of the sunshine and 
 air. The mood is rare in which the sight of human faces 
 does not give us pleasure. It is a curious occupation to look 
 on them as they pass, and study their look and meaning, and 
 wonder at the providence of God, which can provide, in this 
 crowded world, an object and an interest for all. With 
 what a singular harmony the great machine of society goes 
 on ! So many thousand minds, and each with its peculiar 
 cast and its positive difference from its fellow, and yet no 
 dangerous interference, and no discord audible above the 
 hum of its daily revolution. I could not help feeling a 
 religious thrill as I passed face after face, with this thought 
 in my mind, and saw each one earnest and cheerful, each 
 one pressing on with its own object, without waiting or caring 
 for the equally engrossing object of the other. The man of 
 business went on with an absorbed look, caring only to thread 
 his way rapidly along the street. The student strided by 
 with the step of exercise, his lips parted to admit the pleasant 
 air to his refreshed lungs, and his eye wandering with bewil 
 dered pleasure from object to object. The schoolboy looked 
 wistfully up and down the street, and lingered till the last 
 stroke of the bell summoned him tardily in. The womanish 
 schoolgirl, with her veil coquettishly drawn, still flirted with 
 her boyish admirer, though it was "after nine;" and the 
 child, with its soiled satchel and shining face, loitered seri 
 ously along the sidewalk, making acquaintance with every 
 dog, and picking up every stone on its unwilling way. The 
 
A SPRING DAY IN WINTER. 357 
 
 spell of the atmosphere was universal, and yet all kept on 
 their several courses, and the busy harmony of employment 
 went steadily and unbrokenly on. How rarely we turn upon 
 ourselves, and remember how wonderfully we are made and 
 governed ! 
 
EVANESCENT IMPRESSIONS. 
 
 I HAVE very often, in the fine passages of society, such 
 as occur sometimes in the end of an evening, or when a 
 dinner-party has dwindled to an unbroken circle of choice 
 and congenial spirits, or. at any of those times when conver 
 sation, stripped of all reserve or check, is poured out in the 
 glowing and unfettered enthusiasm to which convivial ex 
 citement alone gives the confidence necessary to its flow, I 
 have often wished, at such times, that the voice and manner 
 of the chance and fleeting eloquence about us could be ar 
 rested and written down for others beside ourselves to see 
 and admire. In a chance conversation at a party, in the 
 bagatelle rattle of a dance, in a gay hour over coffee and 
 sandwiches en famille, wherever you meet those whom you 
 love or value, there will occur pieces of dialogue, jeux d esprit, 
 passages of feeling or fun, trifles, it is true, but still such 
 trifles as make eras in the calendar of happiness, which you 
 would give the world to rescue from their ephemeral destiny. 
 They are, perhaps, the soundings of a spirit too deep for 
 ordinary life to fathom, or the gracefulness of a fancy linked 
 with too feminine a nature to bear the eye of the world, or 
 the melting of a frost of reserve from the diffident genius ; 
 they are traces of that which is fleeting, or struck out, like 
 phosphorus from the sea, by irregular chance ; and you want 
 something quicker and rarer than formal description to arrest 
 it warm and natural, and detain it in its place till it can be 
 looked upon. 
 
 358 
 
FEOST. 
 
 IT is winter veritable winter with bona fide frost, and 
 cramping cold, and a sun as clear and powerless as moon 
 light. The windows glitter with the most fantastic frost 
 work. Cities with their spires and turrets, ranks of spears, 
 files of horsemen, every gorgeous and brilliant array told of 
 in romance or song, start out of that mass of silvery tracery, 
 like the processions of a magic mirror. What a miraculous 
 beauty there is in frost ! What fine work in its radiant 
 crystals ! What mystery in its exact proportions and its 
 maniform varieties ! The feathery snowflake, the delicate 
 rime, the transparent and sheeted ice, the magnificent ice 
 berg moving down the sea like a mountain of light, how 
 beautiful are they all ! and how wonderful is it, that, break 
 and scatter them as you will, you find under every form the 
 same faultless angles., the same crystalline and sparkling ra 
 diation. It sometimes grows suddenly cold at noon. There 
 has been a heavy mist all the morning, and as the north wind 
 comes sharply in, the air clears, and leaves it frozen upon 
 every thing with the thinness of palpable air. The trees are 
 clothed with a fine white vapor, as if a cloud had been 
 arrested and fixed motionless in the branches. They look 
 in the twilight like gigantic spirits, standing in broad ranks, 
 and clothed in drapery of supernatural whiteness and texture. 
 On close examination the crystals are as fine as needles, and 
 standing in perfect parallelism, pointing in the direction of 
 the wind. They are like fringes of the most minute threads, 
 edging every twig and filament of the tree, so that the branches 
 
 359 
 
360 PROSE WRITINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 are thickened by them, and have a shadowy and mysterious 
 look, as if a spirit foliage had started out from the naked 
 limbs. It is not so brilliant as the common rime seen upon 
 the trees after a frozen rain, but it is infinitely more delicate 
 and spiritual, and to me seems a phenomenon of exquisite 
 novelty and beauty. 
 
A CONTADINA. 
 
 "~p)RAY, now (Joes that face deserve framing and glaz- 
 JL ing ? " asked a visitor to-day. The question had been 
 asked before. It is a copy from a head in some old picture, 
 one of a series of studies from the ancient masters, litho 
 graphed in France. It represents a peasant of the Cam- 
 pagna ; and certainly, in Broadway, she would pass for a 
 coarse woman, and not beautiful for a coarse one. I have 
 been brought to think the head coarse and plain, however, 
 by being often called on to defend it. I did not think so 
 when I bought it in a print-shop in London. I do not now, 
 unless under catechism. 
 
 To me, the whole climate of Italy is expressed in the face 
 of that contadina. It is a large, cubical-edged, massy style 
 of feature, which born in Scotland, would have been singu 
 larly harsh and inflexible. There is no refinement in it now, 
 and, to be sure, little mobility or thought ; but it is a face 
 in which there is no resistance. That is its peculiarity. The 
 heavy eyelid droops in indolent animal repose. The lips are 
 drowsily sweet. The nostrils seem never to have been dis 
 tended nor contracted. The muscles of the lips and cheeks 
 have never tingled nor parched. It is a face on which a 
 harsh wind never blew. If the woman be forty, those fea 
 tures have been forty years sleeping in balm, enjoying only 
 
 resisting, enduring, never. No one could look on it, and 
 
 fancy it had ever suffered or been uncomfortable, or dreaded 
 wind or sun, summer or winter. A picture of St. Peter s, 
 a mosaic of Psestum, a print of Vesuvius or the Campanile, 
 none of the common souvenirs of travel, would be to me 
 half so redolent of Italy. 
 
 361 
 
SORROW S RELUCTANT GATE. 
 
 last-turned leaf, dear reader, seems to us always like 
 a door shut behind us, with the world outside. We have 
 expressed this thought before, when it was a prelude to being 
 gayer than in the preceding pages. With the closed door, 
 now, we would throw off restraint, but it is to be sadder than 
 before. It is so with yourself, doubtless. You sometimes 
 break into singing on entering your chamber, and finding 
 yourself alone : sometimes you burst into tears. 
 
 There is nothing for which the similitudes of poetry seem 
 to us so false and poor, as for affliction by the death of those 
 we love. The news of such a calamity is not "a blow." 
 It is not like "a thunderbolt," or "a piercing arrow;" it 
 does not "crush and overwhelm" us. We hear it at first, 
 with a kind of mournful incredulity ; and the second feeling 
 is, perhaps, a wonder at ourselves, that we are so little 
 moved. The pulse beats on as tranquilly, the momentary 
 tear dries from the eye. We go on about the errand in which 
 we were interrupted. We eat, sleep at our usual time, and 
 are nourished and refreshed ; and if a friend meet us, and 
 provoke a smile, we easily and forgetfully smile. Nature 
 does not seem to be conscious of the event, or she does not 
 recognize it as a calamity. 
 
 But little of what is taken away by death is taken from the 
 happiness of one hour, or one day. We live, absent from 
 beloved relatives, without pain. Days pass without our see 
 ing them mouths years. They would be no more absent 
 in body if they were dead. But suddenly, in the midst of 
 362 
 
SORROW S RELUCTANT GATE. 363 
 
 our common occupations, we hear that they are one remove 
 farther from us, in the grave. The mind acknowledges it 
 true. The imagination makes a brief and painful visit to the 
 scene of the last agony, the death-chamber, the burial, and 
 returns weary and dispirited to repose. For that hour, per 
 haps, we should not have thought of the departed, if they 
 were living, nor for the next. The routine we had relied 
 upon to fill up those hours comes round. We give it our 
 cheerful attention. The beloved dead are displaced from 
 our memory ; and perhaps we start suddenly, with a kind of 
 reproachful surprise, that we can have been so forgetful, 
 that the world, with its wheels of minutes and trifles, can 
 thus untroubled go round, and that dear friend gone from it. 
 
 But the day glides on, and night comes. We lie down, 
 and unconsciously, as we turn upon our pillow, commence 
 a recapitulation that was once a habit of prayer, silently 
 naming over the friends whom we should commend to God, 
 did we pray, as those most dear to us. Suddenly the heart 
 stops, the breath hushes, the tears spring hot to the eyelids. 
 We miss the dead ! From that chain of sweet thoughts a link 
 is broken, and for the first time we feel that we are bereaved. 
 It was in the casket of that last hour before sleeping, em 
 balmed in the tranquillity of that hour s unnamed and un- 
 reckoued happiness, that the memory of the dead lay hid. 
 For that friend, now, we can no longer pray ! Among the 
 living, among our blessings, among our hopes, that sweet 
 friend is namable no more ! We realize it now. The list 
 of those who love us, whom we love, is made briefer. With 
 face turned upon our pillow, with anguish and fears, we blot 
 out the beloved name, and begin the slow and nightly task 
 of unlearning the oft-told syllables from our lips. 
 
 And this is the slow-opening gate by which sorrow enters 
 in ! We wake on the morrow, and remember our tears of the 
 past night ; and as the cheerful sunshine streams in at our 
 
364 PMOSE WETTINGS OF N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 window, we think of the kind face and embracing arms, the 
 soft eyes and beloved lips, lying dark and cold in a place 
 oh, how pitiless in its coldness and darkness ! We choke 
 with a suffused sob, we heave the heavy thought from our 
 bosom with a painful sigh, and hasten abroad for relief hi 
 f orgetf ulness ! 
 
 But we had not anticipated that this dear friend would die, 
 and we have marked out years to come with hopes in which 
 the dead was to have been a sharer. Thoughts and promises, 
 and meetings, and gifts, and pleasures, of which hers was 
 the brighter half, are wound like a wreath of flowers around 
 the chain of the future ; and as we come to them to the 
 places where these looked-for flowers lie in ashes upon the 
 inevitable link oh, God ! with what agonizing vividness 
 they suddenly return ! with what grief, made intenser by 
 realizing, made more aching by prolonged absence, we call 
 up those features beloved, and remember where they lie, 
 uncaressed and unvisited ! Years must pass, and other af 
 fections must "sweep, and garnish, and enter in" to the 
 void chambers of the heart, and consolation and natural for- 
 getfulness must do their slow work of erasure ; and mean 
 time, grief visits us in unexpected times and places, its 
 paroxysms imperceptibly lessening in poignancy and tena 
 city, but life in its main current flowing, from the death to 
 the forgetting of it, unchanged on. 
 
 And now, what is like to this in nature (for even the slight 
 sympathy in dumb similitudes is sweet) ? It is not like the 
 rose s perishing, for that robs only the hour in which it dies. 
 It were more like the removal from earth of that whole race 
 of flowers ; for we should not miss the first day s roses, 
 hardly the first season s, and should mourn most when the 
 impoverished spring came once more round without them. It 
 were like stilling the music of a brook forever, or making all 
 singing-birds dumb, or hushing the wind-murmur in the trees, 
 
SORROW S RELUCTANT GATE. 365 
 
 or drawing out from nature any one of her threads of price 
 less repetition. We should not mourn for the first day s 
 silence in the brook or in the trees, nor for the first morn 
 ing s hush after the birds were made voiceless. The recurrent 
 dawns, or twilights, or summer noons, robbed of their ac 
 customed music, would bring the sense of its loss the value 
 of what was taken away increasing with its recurrent season. 
 But these are weak similitudes, as they must needs be, drawn 
 from a world in which death the lot alike of all living crea 
 tures that inhabit it is only a calamity to man ! 
 
Recent American Fiction 
 
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 eccentric the dialogue is never extravagant ; the descriptive and analytical 
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 is a charming book, full of a genuine human interest." Portland Weekly 
 
 Advertiser, 
 
 *** For Sale by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid, upon receipt of price, by 
 
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fie 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 
 JAN 1 o 1963 
 
 JAN 6 
 
 LD 21-100m-ll, 49(B7146sl6)476 
 
 

 M151280 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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