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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY H 
 sr= OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OB 
 
 California State Library 
 
 Class
 
 .Six OF ONE 
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE 
 OTHER. 
 
 AN EVERT DAT NOVEL. 
 
 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, 
 
 ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY, 
 
 LUCRETIA P. HALE, 
 FREDERIC W. LORING, 
 
 FREDERIC B. PERKINS, 
 
 EDWARD E. HALE. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 1872.
 
 v/ 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON.
 
 SIX PREFACES. 
 
 FIRST PREFACE. 
 
 THE history of this composition is precisely told in 
 the November number of OLD AND NEW, in 
 which it was first announced to the public. 
 
 "What is this," said Anna Haliburton, "about a new 
 serial in OLD AND NEW? ' Six of One by Half a Dozen of 
 the Other,' is that the name? " 
 
 The Editor of OLD AND NEW was not present; but 
 Colonel Ingham answered for him, as, at a pinch, he does 
 sometimes. 
 
 " What you saw was one of the unconscious prophecies 
 which give the world a hint of its best blessings in advance." 
 
 " AVould it please you, dear padre, to abandon the method 
 of the pulpit for a moment, and, in somewhat clearer lan- 
 guage, to tell us what our chief does intend, in an enterprise 
 in which he has not enlisted our endeavors ? ' ' 
 
 " He has not enlisted you," said Ingham, " because, as it 
 is, the Editor has enlisted our five best home story- writers, 
 Mr. McDonald being, alas! too far away, to unite their 
 forces, and it being, alas! evident that even in our seven- 
 teen hundred annual pages we cannot print a whole novel 
 by each of them, and at the same time take care of all the 
 world of literature, art, and religion beside." 
 
 " Once more," said Felix Carter again, " will you please 
 to abandon the method of the bar, and state explicitly what 
 the chief proposes ? ' ' 
 
 
 h*f'*
 
 iy FIRST PREFACE. 
 
 " He proposes this," said Ingham. " It is impossible, as 
 I said when I was interrupted, to print a serial novel by Mrs. 
 Stowe, and one by Mr. Loring, and one by Mrs. Whitney, 
 and one by Mr. Perkins, and one by Miss Hale, in the same 
 volume which contains ' The Vicar's Daughter,' and ' Ups 
 and Downs.' The Editor sees this impossibility, and so do 
 the distinguished writers I have named. Yet the readers of 
 OLD AND NEW are to be considered also, considered, 
 indeed, first of all. And what has been determined on, in a 
 high council of these writers of fiction, is that they, adding 
 Mr. Hale to their number, shall unite in writing one novel, 
 which will be a serial, and in which our readers will be able 
 to enjoy them all together. Wishing a name which should 
 give an idea of the method of the book, the chief consulted 
 the Nomenclator; and the Nomenclator said the new serial 
 should be called 
 
 'SIX OF ONE BY HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER.'" 
 
 " And will you tell us how the plot is constructed? " 
 "No; nor will I tell you the plot. All I know is, that it 
 grew, novel and plot, much as I remember to have seen 
 Signer Blitz's plates start from the table when he was spin- 
 ning them. He announced that he would spin six earthen 
 dinner-plates at one time. He began with one, spuming it 
 as you spin a penny for a child; when that was well going, 
 he started number two; and then, from a side-table started 
 the third. If he saw one faint and weary he encouraged it 
 by a touch of his finger at the point of revolution ; and when 
 these three were happily gyrating, like so many interior 
 planets, he let loose in succession numbers four, five, and 
 six. I think the chief started the novel in much the same 
 way. He spoke to Mrs. Stowe first, and consulted Mr. 
 Loring. Then he went to Mrs. Whitney, and sent a brief of 
 the plot to Miss Hale. The four principals had what the 
 Friends call ' a solid sitting ; ' and in the equally happy
 
 FIRST PREFACE. V 
 
 phrase of those charming people they were ' baptized into 
 each other's spirit.' They possessed themselves mutually of 
 the best plot, the best moral, the locale, and the atmosphere 
 of the story. They selected the names, actually changed 
 Mary Yates into Rachel Holley, after Mary had been tried 
 and found wanting. Meanwhile, our philosophical Devil- 
 Puzzling friend, Mr. Perkins, had come cordially into the 
 combination, so that the story is to have the benefit of his 
 universal information, and, I suppose, of his conferences 
 with Apollo Lyon, Esq. Thus it is that we are to publish 
 the first chapter of ' Six of One ' in December." 
 
 " Whose chapter is that? " said everybody, even the slug- 
 gish gentlemen taking out their cigars for the inquiry. 
 
 " I have told you that it is everybody's chapter." 
 
 "Do you mean to say," said Haliburton, "that Mr. 
 Hale locked all these people up, as if he were Ptolemy 
 Philadelphus with the seventy translators, that he shut 
 them into five cells in the attic of 143 Washington Street, 
 and himself retired into a sixth, and that at the end of six 
 months they all came out, a little haggard, bearing six 
 manuscripts, which on examination by Rand & Avery's 
 proof-reader, proved to be identical, even to the use of semi- 
 colons instead of comma-dashes? " 
 
 This was a very long sentence for Haliburton, or for any- 
 body. 
 
 Ingham said that he did not mean so. But he meant that 
 the high contracting powers had come to no dead-locks in 
 the management of the story. " The public will undoubt- 
 edly know better than the authors themselves do who wrote 
 what or who contributed which. All I know is, that we are 
 to have the critical period of the life of Six of Them by Half 
 a Dozen of the Others." 
 
 The plan having been once suggested, copies of the 
 following sketch of a plot were submitted to each of 
 the six contributors :
 
 yi FIRST PREFACE. 
 
 SIX OF THEM BY SIX OF US. 
 CHAPTERS I. AND II. 
 
 John Bryant and Jane Gaylord grew up in District No. 1 
 of Marston, went to the same school, of course, &c., &c. 
 Henry Eyre and Henrietta Silva grew up in District No. 2, 
 &c., &c. Mark Hinsdale and Mary Yates grew up in 
 District No. 3, &c., &c. 
 
 In all dances, frolics, sleigh-rides, &c., they paired off as 
 above. The town supposed they were mated for life. 
 Perhaps they supposed so themselves. But 
 
 CHAPTERS HI. AXD IV. 
 
 John Bryant went to Boston, 
 
 Henry Eyre to Norwich, and 
 
 Mark Hinsdale to New York to try their fortunes. 
 
 Henrietta Silva went to Boston, 
 
 Mary Yates to Norwich, and 
 
 Jane Gaylord to New York. 
 
 The law of ' ' propinquities ' ' affected them. The letter- 
 writers of Marston concluded, perhaps they concluded them- 
 selves, that the old cast of parts had not been the right one, 
 and that other destinies were over them, mating them again 
 by residence; when 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Jane Gaylord being appointed teacher in a Chicago School, 
 Henrietta Silva detained there in travelling, and Mary Yates 
 on a visit there, it proved 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 That the fore-ordained mates were: 
 
 John and Mary. 
 
 Henry and Jane. 
 
 Mark and Henrietta. And so the story ends. 
 
 MKM. Note as an aide-memoire, that the original 
 initials are J. and J., H. and H., M. and M.
 
 FIRST PREFACE. v ii 
 
 It is impossible to say whether the plan would ever 
 have gone further, but that our dear friend Mr. Frederic 
 Wadsworth Loring, who had enlisted joyfully in the 
 scheme, and with fun ever new descanted on it, took it 
 into his charge and keeping. No one who talked with 
 him about it could resist him. He compelled the 
 authors to their duty ; and soon after he left Boston 
 for that expedition to the Pacific slope which termi- 
 nated so fatally, 1 they had their first "solid sitting," 
 four out of the remaining five being present. 
 
 The ladies protested against the names. After 
 great canvassing, they agreed on the respective char- 
 acters to be maintained by the heroes and heroines. 
 New names were then selected .to match these charac- 
 ters, and the briefs were altered thus : 
 
 1. JEFF FLEMING, dashing fellow, go ahead; begins with 
 JANE BURGESS, she a pattern. He ends with RACHEL 
 
 HOLLEY. 
 
 2. HORACE VANZANDT, inventor, begins with HENRIETTA 
 SYLVA, called NETTIE, attractive but coquettish ; but ends with 
 JANE BURGESS. 
 
 3. MARK HINSDALE, bookish, and given to clouds and 
 scenery; begins with RACHEL HOLLEY, regular beauty and 
 good; ends with NETTIE SYLVA. 
 
 MEM. They are to be common-place, not very high- 
 flying, people. 
 
 On this agreement the four selected their parts, Mr. 
 Loring's was assigned to him, and absent author num- 
 
 1 Mr. Loring was killed by a body of outlaws, supposed to be Apache 
 Indians, on his return toward San Francisco, from a summer of adven- 
 ture with Lieutenant Wheeler's survey.
 
 viii SECOND PREFACE. 
 
 ber six took Hobson's choice. It was tacitly agreed 
 (by the Editor) that each of the partners should be 
 entirely and personally responsible for all the imagin- 
 ings, opinions, and statements of all the other partners. 
 
 Only a part of Mr. Loring's work was finished by 
 him ; and the other authors have, with a sad interest, 
 completed the unfinished sketches received from him. 
 
 One and another meeting has since been held, and 
 the result is before the readers, the original name 
 having been changed by the distinguished Nomenclator 
 of OLD AND NEW to 
 
 SIX OF ONE 
 BY HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 
 
 SECOND PREFACE. 
 
 UNQUESTIONABLY the tap-root of American growth, 
 whether it be palmetto or pine, is of the shortest. 
 You transplant it very easily. And why not? The 
 Americans have ample room and verge enough. Our 
 English friends may naturally think that " home " is a 
 place where the inmates stay, and twirl industriously 
 round, like squirrels inside of their trundling tin domi- 
 cile. Not but what the Englishman travels to every 
 part of the world, and takes his home-comforts with 
 him, enjoys his sponging bath on his way to the Albert
 
 SECOND PREFACE. i x 
 
 N'yanza, and his ale in the Himalaya. But he always 
 finds it necessary to send his children and wife " home " 
 every year or two, to pick up the English constitution 
 in climate, and the English "accent" in education. 
 Our American on the other hand, wandering over the 
 extent of our great continent, has no occult tie that 
 fetches him back to live in the home of his childhood. 
 His home is where his business is, where he can make 
 his fortune. He begins his career a stern Northerner, 
 with a theory that life is nothing but work, and by and 
 by he turns up a lazy Southerner, smoking his pipe all 
 day on the open veranda. From a quiet country home, 
 he passes through college life, breasts the passions of 
 one of our great cities, then calms off on a western 
 farm. But do not think that you have him rooted there. 
 If he has a good offer for his wheat-fields, he has no 
 particular reason for holding on to them, and you may 
 see him next in South America, or setting up a chocolate 
 mill in New England. 
 
 Perhaps toward the end of life some sentiment leads 
 him to take his grandchildren to look at his native 
 village. He talks to them of its quiet, of the old 
 homestead with broad roof sloping to the ground, with 
 the grass coming up to the front door, and a red rose- 
 bush against the old stone- wall, and the stream rippling 
 behind the house. But, alas ! at the end of his pilgrim- 
 age, he finds a row of tenements set up across the front- 
 door yard, the old homestead is an Irish shanty, and 
 a grimy factory makes a hideous noise by the side 
 of the " quiet stream." The old man sighs with regret ;
 
 X THIRD PREFACE. 
 
 not for the calm scenes of his youth, indeed, " but " he 
 says, " if I had only held on to the land, what a fortune 
 I might have made ! " 
 
 Yet is there not a matter of education in this ? We 
 cannot boast of a strong American physical constitu- 
 tion, equal to that of the Englishman, but in the 
 facility with which the American adapts himself to the 
 various climates and soils in which he places himself, 
 does he not gain a largeness of character, a liberality 
 of spirit, and freedom of soul ? 
 
 Our young American people find out how to centre 
 all their home interests in any spot where they live, 
 in country or city, on the farm or the plantation. 
 When the time comes in which they must choose their 
 places in life, they are not detained by considering if it 
 is within the circle of their birthplace. They live 
 where their life is. For them it is, 
 
 "Six OF ONE, AKD HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER." 
 
 THIRD PREFACE. 
 
 A PIECE of a preface ? Very well ; with all my heart. 
 Though why preface, as Dickens would say, I 'm sure 
 I don't know; seeing that prefaces are always post- 
 scripts. 
 
 Are there to be five prefaces ? or one, conglomerate 
 like the story of five paragraphs? Shall we put in
 
 THIRD PREFACE. x j 
 
 " the wit of the staircase," the things we might have 
 said and didn't? Shall we supplement, or explain, or 
 excuse, or gently deprecate, or mystify? And shall 
 we do it all together, or one at a time, dividing round 
 again? The Colonel has sent no special orders; he 
 has, in fact, gone off the field, leaving his regiment to 
 manoeuvre for itself in this final charge upon the public, 
 in any pell-mell fashion that it may devise. But then 
 that shows only the great and merited confidence he 
 reposes in us. 
 
 Well, the dear critics know all the joints in our 
 armor : we told them at the outset where to look for 
 them. To glance off to a different simile suggested by 
 the word, the ribs of the roast are all cracked before- 
 hand : they will be poor carvers if they can't cut us 
 up. 
 
 But that is not the metaphor that will carry me 
 through either. 
 
 There were six balls to wind ; there were six pairs 
 of hands set to do the work. I will not pause upon 
 that "were;" this is not the place, nor is this light 
 preface in the vein, for speaking of how we were left 
 to be only five. 
 
 But what wonder if, with one or two ends of our 
 yarn out on the Highlands, one in Boston, one in 
 Cambridge, and trailing off thence to Florida, and the 
 other where not? the threads should get curiously 
 mixed and crossed and tangled, not to say broken in 
 the process ? If we have tied clumsy weaver's knots 
 anywhere, if we have changed and twisted more than
 
 x ii THIRD PREFACE. 
 
 you expected or than seemed reasonable, before you 
 say hastily, "That's what comes of patchwork; of 
 course it would be a disjointed, distracted medley;" 
 look around you at the real live threads that twist and 
 cross and snarl and break, and are tied in the wrong 
 places, and coming unfastened all the time in this per- 
 plexed and jumbled world, and see if you can trace 
 any one of them, that you discern the most of, further 
 on a clear, uncomplicated line than you can these of 
 ours? 
 
 I find I have done the " gentle deprecation " busi- 
 ness, though I did not know I should when I began : 
 if I could, without trespassing on my neighbor's divi- 
 sion, I should just say one thing more. You need not 
 come down upon us with the conclusion that we have 
 not known at all, from one hand or head to the 
 other, what it was to be about ; how drift and turn, or 
 how fall out. There, too, is a deep moral, and a subtle 
 correspondence. 
 
 Somebody who set us to work did know, and it has 
 all ended precisely as it was meant to do. There has 
 been rough-hewing, but there has been shaping also, 
 and a clear intent. 
 
 But it is not my province to " explain ; " I pass the 
 pen to whom? Will you take it, queen of the 
 clever chessmen?
 
 FOURTH PREFACE. xiii 
 
 FOURTH PREFACE. 
 
 IT must of com*se be difficult for one who thinks 
 seriously, to put forth even a story without embodying 
 some moral truth in it. The thoughts turn so easily 
 to inner meanings ; we ask ourselves so constantly 
 what is the real significance, the real value, the real 
 importance of souls or emotions or persons or things 
 or actions, or of the whole universe, that a story 
 which is only a story seems very unsubstantial. Thus, 
 the careful reader will not find it difficult to analyze 
 six types of character in the three heroes and three 
 heroines of this book ; and if such reader love mystical 
 numbers, Mrs. Worboise will make up the Semitic seven. 
 Nor will it demand too much meditation to unravel 
 the trains of thought and emotion which moved our 
 little company of personages ; nor to detect the single 
 practical lesson which the story teaches, one so obvi- 
 ous, indeed, that it may as well be stated plainly, for 
 it is greatly needed in this dear country of ours. It is, 
 that engagements to marry should not be carelessly 
 made, lest youth and love be wasted in three when 
 one is enough. And when they are made, they should 
 be quickly ended by marriage.
 
 SIXTH PREFACE. 
 
 FIFTH PREFACE. 
 
 THIS story offers six numbers by as many different 
 authors. Is there nothing to choose between the six ? 
 
 Some voices answer, "Indeed there is!" Already 
 the admirers of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," have pointed 
 out their favorite chapters. The enthusiasts for Leslie 
 Goldthwaite know well their own, and Fred Ingham 
 can no longer humbug his readers. 
 
 Six planned to write these few chapters for the 
 amusement of the public. But one has been called to 
 a higher destiny, leaving behind some fragrant traces 
 of his memory. 
 
 But there are six principal characters. The title of 
 the book may have something to do with them. It 
 seems to have been indifferent which either of them 
 chose to marry. 
 
 Gentle public, decide it either way : to us, it is 
 "Six OF ONE AND HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER." 
 
 SIXTH PREFACE. 
 
 THE original brief of the plot of this story was drawn 
 early in the summer of 1871. The "stage direction" 
 was simply that the parties should meet at Chicago in 
 the autumn of that year, to find their destiny. Little
 
 SIXTH PEE FACE. xv 
 
 did the innocent augurs and gypsy-women who fore- 
 told this fate for heroes and heroines know then in 
 what tempest of fire that destiny would be fulfilled. 
 Doubtful as they were as any augur must be of the 
 way in which life shall solve the mystery of life, all 
 that the story-tellers could do was to let the characters 
 grow as the conditions of their being permitted, let 
 them come and go as these conditions directed, and 
 leave the issue to that decision which may always be 
 trusted, when youth, faithful and loyal, determines for 
 itself what is right, and abandons the proprieties and 
 etiquettes suggested by Mrs. Grundy. To their dis- 
 may, when the 9th of October came, a conflagration 
 such as never will be described, devastated the beautiful 
 city which had been chosen for the scene where their 
 little story should end. This conflagration took place 
 at the moment these young people were there. Born 
 and cradled and trained to do their duty, if they could 
 find it, Jeff Fleming, Horace Vanzandt, and Mark 
 Hinsdale did not shrink from duty in the horrors of 
 that dreadful night and day, and Jane Burgess, Hen- 
 rietta Sylva, and Rachel Holley were as true to theirs. 
 It was in the midst of duty well done, in the catastrophe 
 of unexpected calamity, that, as the augurs and gypsy- 
 women had ignorantly predicted, the story ended, and 
 they met their destiny.
 
 SIX OF ONE 
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 r I "*HE snow was falling over the roofs and houses 
 A of Greyford, not in great loose feathers, but 
 with that fine, steady, continuous descent which 
 indicates a steady purpose. 
 
 " We are in for it now," said Dr. Sylva, as he 
 drew on his gloves for a long ride in the neighbor- 
 hood. " Nettie, here comes the snow you 've been 
 wanting." 
 
 Nettie's first movement was in the direction of 
 the window ; her second, after satisfying herself 
 of the state of things out of doors, was shall 
 we tell the secret? to the looking-glass that 
 hung over the table in the family keeping-room. 
 Her father had gone out, and Nettie was alone. 
 
 She stood before it considering the image therein 
 attentively, and nodding to it with a little knowing 
 twinkle in her eye, as if she should say, There are 
 a pair of us, and we '11 have it all our own way 
 now. 
 
 l A
 
 2 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 We by no means desire to tell tales out of school, 
 or to produce the impression that young ladies 
 when left alone in family " keeping-rooms " are in 
 the habit of standing before the domestic looking- 
 glass and contemplating their own charms. All 
 we have to rejnark on the present occasion is, that 
 if Nettie Sylva was so employed, she could not 
 easily in that house have found any thing^ better 
 worth looking at. 
 
 For " the keeping-room " of Dr. Sylva was evi- 
 dently as commonplace and fluffy and uninterest- 
 ing a scene as family keeping-rooms of economical 
 people who live on small incomes are apt to be- 
 come. There was a faded carpet, a worn settee 
 which served the purpose of a sofa, a book-case 
 with Rollin's History, Hume's " History of Eng- 
 land," Scott's Family Bible, Doddridge's "Rise 
 and Progress," and " The Pilgrim's Progress " for 
 reading. There was a turn-down shelf with 
 pigeon-holes, where Dr. Sylva kept account-books 
 and letters ; there was a half-dozen of slippery 
 hard-wood-bottomed chairs; there was a tall old 
 clock tick-tacking in the corner ; and there were 
 rustling paper window-shades, which Nettie de- 
 tested. Nettie, in fact, detested the whole room, 
 as a horrid, poor, commonplace, dusty, musty af- 
 fair. Young ladies do sometimes have just such 
 feelings as this about the family sitting-room.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF TEE OTHEE. g 
 
 Under these circumstances, could you look over 
 Nettie's shoulder into the looking-glass, you would 
 feel the force of what we have been saying : that 
 the image she saw there was the best worth look- 
 ing at of any thing in the room. It isn't saying 
 much, to be sure. Nettie Sylva was a tall, lithe, 
 handsome girl, and looked as if she had been got 
 up by Mother Nature in a more generous mood of 
 mind than she generally is in when she makes our 
 pure, delicate, spare, lady-like New-England girls. 
 She was like a tropical flower ; every thing about 
 her was bright and rich and abundant. She had 
 lovely golden brown hair, and ever so much of it. 
 Her cheeks had the high bloom and color of the 
 pomegranate. She had great, rich, velvet dark 
 eyes with long lashes ; her waist was round as an 
 apple, and she had a beautiful fulness of form, not 
 a common attribute. of American beauty. Nettie 
 was of very good taste, and rather liked her own 
 looks. It was said there was a tinge of Italian 
 blood in her veins, through some grandmother -on 
 the maternal side ; but Nettie was enough of a 
 Yankee for all that to have a pretty good sense of 
 what things were worth, and what could be done 
 with them practically. Consequently the store of 
 charms which she saw reflected in the looking-glass 
 were something that she very well knew the use 
 of, although the use she made of them just about
 
 4 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 these days, was one that will certainly not meet 
 the approbation of the reflecting mind. On the 
 present occasion the principal use that she was 
 making of them was to plague and tease Horace 
 Vanzandt, as she had previously plagued and teased 
 many other of the leading beaux of the village. 
 Horace, however, was most particularly attractive 
 game. He was handsome, lively, spirited, hot- 
 tempered, and forgiving, so that it was the easiest 
 thing in the world both to put him into a passion 
 and to get him out of it ; and these two exercises 
 considerably varied the dulness of the village life. 
 For Greyford was a dull village, it is to be con- 
 fessed. Nobody was very rich there, and nobody 
 was very poor. The girls were all educated at the 
 high school, and knew and read and had heard 
 about all sorts of scenes that they could not afford 
 to see, and splendid doings in the world that they 
 never could take any part in, and read serial stories 
 every week out of three or four newspapers, by 
 means of which they lived among duchesses and 
 countesses, and had all sorts of thrilling adventures 
 in the spirit, while their bodies were tied down to 
 the routine of a narrow, economical family life. 
 The young men at Greyford, as a matter of course, 
 were put to work early, and hadn't half the time 
 to read and study and get themselves up in poetry 
 and romances that the girls had, and consequently
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 5 
 
 there was none of them that appeared to the 
 girls the ideal hero ; but still they were accepted 
 as the best there was. There were approved ways 
 and means of seeing each other. There was the 
 singing-school once a week, where, by the by, Net- 
 tie had the richest voice and led the treble. There 
 were apple-cuttings and croquet-parties ; but, best 
 and liveliest of all, there were the sleigh-rides which 
 came in the winter, when the young fellows were 
 to a good degree released from farm-work, and 
 free to bask in the charms of female society. 
 
 It had been given out and agreed among the 
 young fellows of the village, that, as soon as there 
 was snow enough, there should be a grand sleigh- 
 ride over to the hotel in North Denmark, where a 
 dancing-room had been engaged, and provision 
 made for a regular frolic. 
 
 The point in discussion in Nettie's mind as she 
 stood nodding at her image in the glass was this : 
 Would Horace Vanzandt come to invite hdfr to this 
 sleigh-ride ? She knew, in her own guilty con- 
 science, that she had sent him off horridly angry 
 the Sunday evening before, and whether he had 
 gotten over it or not was the point in discussion in 
 her own mind ; and, by way of estimating the bal- 
 ance of probabilities, she took a good look at her- 
 self. She rather thought he would come back, 
 and at this moment she heard the click of the
 
 6 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 gate. In a moment she turned, and was seated in 
 the demurest manner at her work-basket, making 
 a little ruffled apron with pockets, in which she 
 was so much absorbed that Horace was obliged to 
 rap three or four times on the door till he could 
 rouse the ear of the little inattentive bound-girl 
 in the back-kitchen. There had been times when 
 Miss Nettie under such circumstances would go 
 and open the door herself, and say, " Oh ! is it 
 you? I thought," &c., &c., &c. But this 
 morning she felt diplomatic ; and, on the whole, 
 she concluded that he must be made to come all 
 the way. Horace, in fact, had come resolved to 
 beg pardon for being insulted on Sunday evening. 
 He had flown into a passion and made himself 
 ridiculous. Of course this had put him in the 
 wrong ; but now here was the snow coming, and 
 he wanted Nettie for his partner. He knew that 
 she would tease and provoke him the whole even- 
 ing. Why, then, would no one else but Nettie do 
 for him, when there was Jane Burgess, the nicest, 
 sweetest, most reasonable girl that ever was heard 
 of, who never did or said an unkind thing to any- 
 body ; and Rachel Holley, with cheeks and forehead 
 like the pink and the white of sweet-peas and the 
 prettiest and most winning of voices ? Both these 
 had graciously entreated him; and yet he could 
 form no idea of anybody that he wanted except
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. f 
 
 this vexatious Nettie, who neither would take him 
 nor let him alone, and kept him always in a state 
 of fermentation. Well, why does a young fellow 
 like to drive a lively, high-spirited filly, that 
 prances and curvets, snorts, and pulls on the bit, 
 and comes within an inch of dashing his brains out 
 every once in a while ? We leave that to the con- 
 sciousness of individuals and to the metaphysicians. 
 All is, Horace has stood long enough on the door- 
 step, and we must get him in.
 
 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 T TORACE determined to open the matter cheer- 
 fully* and ignore the fact that there had 
 been any quarrel ; and so began briskly, " Well, 
 Miss Sylva, we" are in luck; the snow has come." 
 
 " I don't like snow," said Nettie, contradic- 
 tiously ; but she smiled as she said it, and, lifting 
 her great, beautiful eyes, fixed them on Horace 
 not unkindly. 
 
 " But don't you see, Miss Nettie, our sleigh-ride 
 is to come off now ? " 
 
 " Sleigh-ride ? " said Miss Nettie, in a tone of 
 innocent inquiry. " What sleigh-ride ? " 
 
 " Why, of course you know r the sleigh-ride 
 that we fellows have been planning for three or 
 four weeks past. We ' ve got the room and the 
 fiddler all engaged." 
 
 Now, Nettie knew all these things perfectly 
 well. The fact was, that she and Jane Burgess 
 and Rachel Holley had discussed them over and 
 over, to the minutest details of possibilities, and 
 they had all settled what they were to wear. But
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 9 
 
 was she to let the enemy know this ? Of course 
 not. 
 
 " Oh ! " she said, " I can't be expected to know, 
 as nothing has been said to me." 
 
 " Why, of course," said Horace. 
 
 " I don't think it is of course," said Nettie. 
 " How should I know any thing, when nothing 
 has been said to me ? " 
 
 " Why, yes ; it is all arranged. Jeff Fleming is 
 to take Jane Burgess in his new sleigh. He went 
 to New Haven last week, and bought a new string 
 of bells on purpose ; and Mark Hinsdale is going 
 with Rachel Holley ; and may I have the pleasure, 
 Miss Nettie, of taking you ? " 
 
 " Oh ! it appears I am Hobson's choice, then. 
 Thank you. I don't know that I shall care to go. 
 It will be very cold, and I think sleigh-rides are 
 rather a bore." 
 
 " Now, Miss Sylva, you really can't be so 
 cruel." 
 
 " Cruel ! I don't know what you call cruel. 
 Ah ! I see what you mean. I suppose you have 
 tried all the other girls and found them engaged." 
 
 "I do think you are the most provoking person, 
 Miss Nettie, that ever I did know." 
 
 Horace Vanzandt was a very handsome young 
 fellow ; and when he was angry the blood flushed 
 into his cheek, and the fire snapped from his eyes ; 
 1*
 
 10 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 and Nettie felt a perilous sort of pleasure in pro- 
 voking these natural phenomena. 
 
 " Come now, Horace," she said suddenly, assum- 
 ing an air of the most sisterly concern. " Why 
 must we always quarrel ? not that I care particu- 
 larly about it, but it really grieves me to see a 
 person that I respect give way to his temper so." 
 
 " By George ! Nettie, it 's your fault," said 
 Horace. " I never do get so angry with anybody 
 else, but you seem to delight to make me misera- 
 able. Now, I came to invite you on Sunday night, 
 but you quarrelled with me and got it all out of 
 my head." 
 
 " Well, Horace, if you have come just to renew 
 the Sunday night's quarrel " 
 
 " I haven't. I came to make up." 
 
 " And give me Hobson's choice in the sleigh- 
 ride," said Nettie. 
 
 Horace rose up hastily, and flung out of the 
 room. Nettie gave one quick mischievous glance 
 after him, seized a little packet from her work- 
 basket, ran round by another path to the gate, and 
 was there before Horace got there. " You silly 
 boy," she said. " You never will give me time to 
 give you this. I had it all ready for you on Sun- 
 day night." 
 
 It was a guard-chain of Nettie's own workman- 
 ship which had been promised to Horace months 
 before.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. H 
 
 " I 've sat up many a night working on this," 
 she said reproachfully. 
 
 " O Nettie ! " 
 
 " Come now, let 's be friends," she said, laying 
 her hand on his arm. " Really, Horace, I feel 
 absolutely concerned about your violent temper. 
 You must overcome it." Horace looked at her 
 quizzically as she put the guard-chain round his 
 neck, and then followed her an unresisting captive 
 into the house again, where it pleased Nettie to 
 keep him at her feet reading Tennyson to her till 
 near dinner-time. And this was the way that 
 matters commonly went on between Horace and 
 Nettie. 
 
 Horace Vanzandt was the son of one of the 
 largest farmers in the neighborhood, and the 
 youngest of four brothers who all took respectably 
 to farming. Horace was of a lively turn of mind, 
 and meant to strike out something rather more 
 adventurous and congenial in life. If there was 
 any thing he detested it was following the slow 
 steps of oxen, ploughing, and planting potatoes 
 and harvesting little gains at the end of the year. 
 Horace determined to be an inventor. He had a 
 turn for machinery and a Yankee quickness of 
 hand. He even in boyhood had made a pattern 
 of a water-wheel which turned an imaginary mill 
 in the brook in the back lot. He had devised a
 
 12 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 churn for his mother, which the knowing ones 
 said might have taken a patent if somebody else 
 hadn't made one just like it before him. So Hor- 
 ace read and thought, and whittled, and studied 
 models, and used to carry them up to show to 
 Nettie, who sometimes laughed at them, but, after 
 all, rather fed the flame of his hopes and anticipa- 
 tions. 
 
 Nettie sympathized with all her fiery, restless 
 heart in Horace's contempt of farming, and in his 
 desires to make to himself a fortune in some easier 
 way. She detested the dull reality of life in Grey- 
 ford, where, as she phrased it, " nobody ever came, 
 and nothing ever happened." 
 
 Greyford, to be sure, was one of those still, 
 quiet towns which impress travellers who ride 
 through it with the idea that the inhabitants are 
 all either dead or gone on long voyages. The 
 front doors were always tight shut even in the 
 warmest summer weather, and not a human creat- 
 ure was by any accident ever seen about them. 
 All the window-blinds were tight closed, except 
 perhaps one-half of one on one side, far to the 
 back of the house. The reason of this was, that 
 when the Greyford housekeepers had cleaned the 
 paint of the chambers and parlors, in the spring, 
 they wanted to keep them immaculate from flies, 
 and so shut up all the window-bunds till the time
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 13 
 
 for the autumn cleaning. Meanwhile they lived 
 in one or two rooms in the back of the house, and 
 congratulated themselves that the front part was 
 always in order. This particular habit, by the 
 way, though a most efficient preservative of the 
 colors of carpets and conducive to the health and 
 long life of the hair-seat chairs and chintz-covered 
 sofas which lurked within these dark domains, was 
 not acceptable to Master Horace. He used to say 
 that when he had a house of his own he was going 
 to set apart one room in it for a fly-room, and have 
 it warm and bright and airy and sunny, and have 
 just as many flies in it as he wanted. Nettie, 
 when he said this one day in her presence, an- 
 swered promptly, that if he went on in that con- 
 trary spirit he would find not only flies entering 
 into his room, but Beelzebub the god of flies: 
 whereupon Horace rejoined impulsively that he 
 hoped to coax a goddess in there, not a devil. 
 Then he stopped short, a little embarrassed. Net- 
 tie, however, with that instinctive readiness of 
 which the shyest and most skittish young ladies 
 have the most, answered with a sniff that he 
 wasn't likely to catch many goddesses unless he 
 baited his trap with something better than flies. 
 
 But, as we have said a few words about Grey- 
 ford, we will make bold to say a few more ; for 
 the fact is, that this ancient town is itself better 
 
 m
 
 14 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 worth knowing, not merely than the two inexpe- 
 rienced young persons about whom we have been 
 talking, but even than the whole of any one of the 
 generations of hard-working, economical, hum- 
 drum New-Englanders, who have slowly followed 
 each other to the old-fashioned dreary burying- 
 ground of the town since its first settlement in 
 the year 1639. 
 
 Greyford is one of the very oldest of the Con- 
 necticut towns, and, like all those which were por- 
 tions of the original New Haven Colony, was 
 settled in good measure by "gentry," as distin- 
 guished from the yeomanry, from whom almost 
 exclusively the Connecticut colony was recruited. 
 Hence its families have yet traditions and heir- 
 looms that knit together with a strong but invisible 
 tie the working-day life that now is, and the far- 
 away days of the knights and gentlemen of Good 
 Queen Bess and her successor Gentle King Jamie. 
 These, however, are but few, an ancient copy 
 of the Geneva Bible, or a faded and almost invisi- 
 ble embroidered coat-of-arms. But of both the 
 early and the later days of our history, the me- 
 morials were more numerous, and the recollections 
 were clear and authentic, and romantic too. The 
 sons of old Greyford, farmers though they were, 
 bravely upheld the cause, and followed the banner 
 of their country, whether it was the blood-red flag
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 15 
 
 of the English king, or the brighter stars and 
 stripes, from the old French War down to the Re- 
 bellion ; serving always under officers of their 
 own choice, wise and experienced fellow-towns- 
 men of their own. Others had followed the sea, 
 and had brought home with them to ornament the 
 brown old homesteads where they established them- 
 selves to end their days, such strange and fantastic 
 articles as sailors delight to gather. 
 
 Now the antique queen's arms and the old 
 carved powder-horns, the whales' teeth and the 
 New-Zealand clubs, startle and interest the visitor 
 who finds them in a country farm-house, and set 
 him thinking and questioning. In like manner 
 these manifold experiences of war and seafaring 
 had stored the minds of the dwellers in Greyford 
 with many curious tales, and with travellers' 
 thoughts and opinions, such as seem strange and 
 uncanny to the dwellers-at-home, but yet are full of 
 stimulus and fascination. 
 
 In such communities there are always such per- 
 sons as we commonly term " characters." A re- 
 tired sea-captain is certain to be a character. 
 Long-forgotten strains of ancestral blood reap- 
 pear all of a sudden in some curious manifestation 
 in a plain farmer's son or daughter ; and the child 
 grows up perhaps into a genius, but oftener into a 
 specimen of peculiarities a character. And even
 
 16 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 the life of the farmers who live and die at home, 
 utterly uneventful as it is, is in itself far from un- 
 favorable to the development of strange and odd 
 traits. There is something in the calmness of the 
 sunny fields, in the stillness of winter snows, in 
 the cool quiet of the green woods, that conjures 
 certain minds into even an unnatural excitement, 
 even by the mystical influence of mere silent soli- 
 tude. 
 
 The landscape of Greyford, and the character 
 of its surroundings, were so varied and picturesque 
 as to add great power to these natural influences. 
 There were broad tracts of ancient woodland, 
 stretching far away over the hills. There was a 
 river, a clear and lively stream, that ran through 
 the township and entered the sea not very far 
 away. There were broad and level tracts of 
 singularly fertile farming land. Here and there 
 among the wooded hills of the back country were 
 lovely little lakes, all alone in the forest, and 
 plentifully stocked with perch and roach and pick- 
 erel, and well-known to many a barefooted bqjr as 
 the Meccas of his rare half-holidays. At the ex- 
 treme north-eastern part of the town, orie steep 
 mountain, so isolated and so bold in its outline as 
 to seem much loftier than it really was, stood up 
 alone and silent, shrouded to its very summit in 
 thick, tall forest-trees, while the vast, sheer de-
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 17 
 
 scent of its eastern face plunged down in one 
 immense cliff, far below the surface of the earth ; 
 for close under it was the largest of all the lakes 
 of the whole region, whose steep shore, the con- 
 tinuation of the mountain precipice, sank into 
 black waters reputed to be unfathomable. The 
 road that led northward through this wild and 
 striking pass had been scored deep into the living 
 rock, for there was not a foot of level land to 
 hold it. 
 
 Doubtless all these influences had moulded and 
 modified more or less the traits of every personage 
 in this our story ; to which, having said all that we 
 wanted to about geography and history, we now 
 return. 
 
 Nettie had a painstaking step-mother, a worthy 
 woman, devoted to the task of keeping her father's 
 house in the required style. The relations between 
 her and Nettie were diplomatic. Nettie was not 
 fond of housework, and Mrs. Dr. Sylva was ; and 
 it occurred to the young lady, that, in this con- 
 junction of circumstances, it was only the fair 
 thing that her mother-in-law, who had the work 
 to do, should arrange the house in her own way ; 
 though as we have intimated, it was a way ex- 
 tremely distasteful to Nettie. Still, rather than 
 take hold with her own hands and conduct the 
 housekeeping on another pattern, Nettie was will-
 
 18 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 ing to let things take their course without remon- 
 strance. She had her own dresses to make and 
 alter according to the patterns in " Harper's Bazar," 
 she had several serial stories on hand to read, and 
 she had the afore-named singing-schools, apple- 
 cuttings, croquet-parties, tea-drinkings, and sleigh- 
 rides to attend, and generally a love-affair off or 
 on; for Nettie was one of the sort who scarcely 
 ever made a visit without webbing some silly fly 
 in her net, and having a love-letter of some kind 
 to answer. 
 
 This conduct of Nettie's was very seriously dis- 
 approved, not only by the matrons of Greyford, 
 but by the young ladies of her set, who were 
 understood in confidential moments to aver to 
 each other that Nettie Sylva was a flirt, and that 
 it really was abominable for her to trifle with 
 gentlemen as she did. 
 
 But so long as Nettie found that the gentlemen 
 rather liked to be trifled with, and that their 
 hearts, however sorely scratched and lacerated by 
 her claws, had a marvellous aptitude for healing, 
 her own conscience was quite at ease in the mat- 
 ter. In fact, Nettie looked upon flirtation as the 
 only providential compensation her case admitted 
 of in her compulsory dull existence in Greyford. 
 
 Horace Vanzandt was, on the whole, rather 
 more to her than any of her other beaux ; but then
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 19 
 
 Horace had no money, and there seemed no likeli- 
 hood of his having any for years to come ; so, as 
 Nettie sensibly remarked, there was no sort of use 
 in having any thing more than a friendship. But 
 of course the gossips mated them, and they gener- 
 ally in point of fact were mated, as in the present 
 sleigh-ride. Jeff Fleming never thought of such" 
 a thing as presuming to ask Nettie when Horace 
 was evidently setting his cap in that direction ; 
 and Mark Hinsdale, though he had written a 
 sonnet on her in " The Greyford Union Eagle," 
 did not so much as venture to think of driving her 
 in his sleigh on this occasion. 
 
 Nettie winced a little at times under this state 
 of things. She wanted variety. " Who wants to 
 be tied always to one fellow?" she remarked. 
 Jane Burgess, on the contrary, had been heard to 
 assert, that, if she had a friend as devoted to her 
 as Horace was to Nettie, she would take more 
 care how she treated him. 
 
 Jane was, to say the truth, just one of those 
 women whom good mothers and sisters always 
 wish their sons and brothers would marry. She 
 was pretty, she was witty, and she was wise ; but 
 all in such just proportions, that there was no 
 salient point. She was a girl of scruples, careful 
 what she said and did, true to the heart's core, 
 and without shadow of turning.
 
 20 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 Nettie Sylva was a bundle of capabilities and 
 perhapses. What she might become was a prob- 
 lem. She lived a life of impulse rather than 
 reflection, and did things from morning till night 
 for no other reason than that she felt like them at 
 the moment. She belonged to the class celebrated 
 by our respected friend Mr. Alexander Pope, 
 
 " Ladies, like variegated tulips, show 
 'Tis to their changes half their charms they owe." 
 
 Nettie certainly had as many streaks as a first- 
 class tulip, and changes enough to make her ex- 
 tremely charming ; and after Horace went away, 
 she proceeded, with the aid of " Harper's Bazar," 
 to compose a toilette for the next week's fete of 
 the most killing description.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 21 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 TTENRIETTA SYLVA put on her hat one 
 afternoon, and went over to old Miss Bur- 
 gess's. By " old Miss Burgess," I don't mean 
 Jane. I never could bear to* have people under 
 any sort of misapprehension for a moment, even 
 for the sake of an after agreeable surprise. 
 
 Old Miss Burgess is the aunt. Jane is the 
 niece. Though, from living so long and so quietly 
 with so prim and quaint a piece of the last genera- 
 tion, Jane had perhaps caught a flavor of the last 
 generation herself, and mixed it up with her nine- 
 teen years in a certain, gentle and odd suggestion 
 of old-maidishness, that joins itself to her bloom 
 and prettiness like a bit of thyme or lavender set 
 in a bouquet ; and she took on something aunt- 
 like in her ways among the girls. That is why 
 Nettie Sylva, I think, liked her, and came to her, 
 with all her little snarls that she could not pick 
 out herself. Not for the help alone, either ; she 
 liked to shock the proper Jane, mildly, with her 
 freaks and nights. For Jane took every thing in 
 a calm, saint-like fashion, even her shocks.
 
 22 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 Jane Burgess was a pretty girl of the years- 
 gone-by sort ; one that could wear her hair plain 
 and smooth to her head, twisted up behind, and 
 have a dark calico gown on, without making any 
 difference. The prettiness was there, a fact; 
 in the clear, pure, healthily-tinted skin ; the open, 
 fair contour; the large, deep, soft blue-gray eyes, 
 with black, easily-dropping lashes ; the even brows, 
 the demure little nose, with perfect profile, the 
 same both ways ; and the delicious mouth, playing 
 with a peculiar, tender, fascinating little curve of 
 its own over the faultless, shyly visible teeth. 
 
 Once in' a while of a warm summer's day, busy 
 in her garden, or coming home from a walk ; or in 
 a crisp winter wind ; or over the fire or the iron- 
 ing board, in the flush of her work, Jane's 
 smooth brown hair would ruffle and wave itself 
 into a soft mistiness and lightness about her fore- 
 head, and perhaps get pushed back in her forget- 
 fulness from off her delicate temples ; and then 
 you saw one of those accidents of loveliness that 
 never happen in these deliberately got-up days. 
 Once, girls were liable to bewitching little uncon- 
 scious changes; Nature had her own cunning 
 tricks and manners with them ; excitement or 
 exercise lit 'them up, tossed them into pretty be- 
 wilderments of arrangement and color, and gave 
 the looker-on little blessed revelations and sur-
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 23 
 
 prises : but now there must be bewilderment all 
 the time ; they must turn away from their looking- 
 glasses all fluffed up with a cloudy confusion of 
 carefully dishevelled charms, that will not let any 
 line be traced throughout, but leaves artfully so 
 much to the imagination, makes so many breaks, 
 like the shimmer of a veil, that a general jumble 
 and sparkle imposes itself almost as a universal 
 beauty. There is a certain amount of beauty 
 about ; but you do not know exactly where it is, 
 any more than you do where the specie is that the 
 currency stands for. Everybody gets temporarily 
 credited for a little. It is pretty much so with all 
 our living, even our thinking. Life is broken 
 up into delusive rainbows. There is hardly any 
 steady, pure, white light anywhere. 
 
 Old Miss Burgess met Nettie Sylva at the door, 
 her glasses pushed up against her cap, and her 
 long gray knitting-work in her hands. 
 
 "Jane has gone abroad this afternoon," she 
 said. " But walk in ; lay off your things, and stay 
 and drink tea. She '11 be proper glad to see you 
 when she comes. You 're quite a stranger." 
 
 Nettie Sylva knew what the old lady meant. 
 Jane had not gone to Europe. We have not quite 
 arrived at the time, though it looks as if we might 
 be near it, when one can leave word with the 
 family, or with the serving-maid, as one puts one's
 
 24 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 gloves on, "I am going over in this afternoon's 
 catapult; shall be back to tea," take a shoot 
 through the Liverpool tunnel and a half-hourly 
 balloon to London, make a few friendly calls, 
 and hurry back at dusk. 
 
 No. Miss Burgess only meant, in the old- 
 fashioned way, used when nobody went more than 
 a mile or two from home, except with grave prep- 
 aration of scrip and staff, and making one's will 
 beforehand, for weighty cause of life or love or 
 property, that Jane had gone for a walk in the 
 village. 
 
 "I most wonder you didn't come across her 
 somewheres," said the old lady, drawing her 
 glasses down again, and poring over a dropped 
 stitch. " She must be in to Squire Holley's." 
 
 When one of these three girls Jane Burgess, 
 Nettie Sylva, or Rachel Holley missed another, 
 she was pretty sure to turn up in company with 
 the third. They were as different as the three 
 angles of a scalene triangle, and just as essential 
 to each other in the making up; especially at a 
 time like this, when a grand frolic was afoot, invi- 
 tations given and pending, and gowns to be decided 
 on ; to say nothing of feminine tactics and councils 
 of war for the campaign. 
 
 Nettie Sylva came to Jane Burgess for nice little 
 moral lectures and wise counsel; but then in a
 
 'HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 5 
 
 sly, keen fashion, she often turned round upon her 
 before they finished their talk, and gave quite as 
 good as she got. 
 
 "Now, what on earth am I to do with that 
 Horace ? " she says to Jane, leaning over the 
 bureau while that particular young lady folded up 
 and put away her shawl and gloves ; Nettie, mean- 
 time, taking sidelong peeps at the looking- 
 glass, trying to examine her own profile, which 
 she was never quite satisfied with when she saw 
 Jane's. 
 
 " It 's the fqx and the goose and the basket of 
 corn. If I say no, and stay at home, there 's my 
 own poor little nose cut off, you see, if it 's pretty 
 to say so ; if I go with anybody else, oh, my 
 gracious ! wouldn't there be a ferment and a 
 rumpus ? And if I undertake to go all that six 
 miles with him alone, I shall either have to jump 
 out into a snowbank and run home, or keep up 
 such a squabble as I really haven't conscience or 
 constitution for, or else hear all he 's got to say ; 
 and I ain't ready, Jane Burgess ! I 've quarrelled 
 with him till I 'm tired." 
 
 " What do you quarrel with him for ? " 
 
 " What else can I do ? It isn't safe to stay 
 
 made up with him half an hour. It's the only 
 
 way a girl has to get time for herself. There 's no 
 
 fairness in it. A man can stand off, and look, and 
 
 2
 
 26 SIX OF ONE BY' 
 
 consider, till he 's made up his mind ; and then he 
 can come forward, and ' be particular ; ' and you 
 can't let him begin to be the least bit particular 
 without giving him claims ; and how on earth 
 you 're to be fair to yourself and decent with him, 
 I can't make out ! " 
 
 " I suppose the girl has the same time to look 
 and consider that the man has," said quiet Jane. 
 
 " Yes, indeed ! And then what if he never 
 begins ? I tell you it 's all on one side, and 
 I believe I won't have any thing to do with it ! " 
 
 And Nettie pouted, and felt the tears coming 
 into her eyes, and saw the pins on Jane's cushion 
 begin to glitter and grow big ; and then she 
 glanced round into the glass again, to find out how 
 she looked when she was crying. 
 
 " I think it is ordered, if we only try to do what 
 is right," said Jane, virtuously. 
 
 " Yes ; and how are you going to know ? If 
 you look at a thing all round, there are so many 
 rights. It 's right for me to work myself out, and 
 find out what I am, and what I want, and let him 
 see. I 've no business to be all Sylva and no 
 Nettie, till after I 'm married, and then drop it, as 
 I 've got to do. And he ought to be willing ; it.'s 
 for his good : he ought to take time for his own 
 sake; but men never do. They are always in a 
 hurry."
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 27 
 
 It is funny to see how a girl who comes to have 
 affairs to manage with one man, talks immediately 
 of the whole sex in a generalizing way, and feels 
 as if she had all mankind at once upon her hands ; 
 and vice versa. 
 
 Well, it is true in a sense. They do stand to 
 each other, representatively and inclusively, as 
 man and woman ; it is always, in each new ex- 
 periment, Adam and Eve again, whatever else 
 they may happen to have been christened. 
 
 " There is one thing that is always right," said 
 Jane. " Not to do any thing, ever so little, to 
 draw a man on, unless you are sure you are " 
 She paused shyly, with a bit of a blush rising. 
 
 " Smashed yourself ! " said Nettie, boldly. " And 
 how are you going to know when you are smashed ? 
 Or how are you ever likely to be till you have 
 knocked round a little ? That 's the point. You 
 can't buy a pair of shoes without trying 'em on. 
 It's ridiculous ! " 
 
 She began again presently. 
 
 " Mrs. Sylva says it 's very ' shallow ' of me not 
 to know my own mind. That 's a great word of 
 my stepmother's. But if I were shallow, really, I 
 don't think I should have any trouble. I tell you 
 it 's just sounding, and doubting, and considering 
 that makes me act so. There are so many sides 
 to every thing; and somehow I always see the
 
 28 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 opposite one. That 's the reason I quarrel ; and 
 then, again, that's the reason I make up." 
 
 " If I imagined I ever might marry a person," 
 said Jane thoughtfully, " I shouldn't want to have 
 all these little fusses beforehand. I shouldn't 
 think he would depend so much on me after- 
 wards." 
 
 " I don't want to be depended on. I want him 
 to be thankful every day for what he gets, as we 
 all are ; not knowing how long it 's going to last. 
 That 's Christian." 
 
 " Christian for him," said Jane quietly. 
 
 " And if I sanctify him, what better can I do ? 
 That brings up the 'ordering' again. Do you 
 believe people are cut out for each other, Jane ? 
 I don't. If they are, I should like to know who 
 does it." 
 
 " I think the Lord does," said Jane. " At any 
 rate, he brings people together." 
 
 " It 's fixed very queer," said Nettie meditatively, 
 with a puzzled frown knit up into her forehead. 
 " Because you can't allow for the growing. It has 
 to be all settled before you really come to any 
 thing. As if things had been fitted on to me when 
 I was five years old to last all my lifetime. That 's 
 no way for anybody to cut out ! And I don't 
 believe anybody can. How do I know what I 
 shall be ten years from now? Or Horace Van-
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF TEE OTHER. 29 
 
 zandt, either ? It is an awful long measuring ! 
 Now I think of it, that was the way mother used 
 to do with my gowns when she first came. She 
 made them down to my heels, for fear I should 
 outgrow them. And I hated them: they were 
 never right. I won't begin life so, all of a draggle, 
 because I shall be up higher by and by ; neither 
 do I want to be left anyways unprovided for or 
 out in the cold, when I do get bigger. It isn't 
 fair ! We ought to be made so as to keep pretty 
 longer, and have some chances ! " And Nettie 
 ended, as usual, with a look in the glass. 
 
 " The best way is to make things that can be 
 let out and let down for the growing," Jane said. 
 " There is more in everybody than they know of, 
 I suppose. And the Lord, making the measures, 
 knows it all, doesn't he ? " 
 
 " I presume it 's proper to say he does," said 
 Nettie. ,"Jane! what are you going to wear 
 Thursday ? " 
 
 " My stone-colored brilliantine, with blue rib- 
 bons, and some white chrysanthemums in my 
 hair." 
 
 " There, now ! That 's just you ! All so easy 
 and quiet, and ready beforehand, and no-kind-of- 
 consequence-what ; and, after all, you '11 be the 
 very prettiest one. Rachel is going to be won- 
 derful, though. Did she tell you! That new
 
 30 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 dazzle-blue merino, with swan's-down round the 
 neck and sleeves." 
 
 " I saw it. What is yours ? " 
 
 " Crimson, with a flash in it. Tea-rosebuds and 
 coral flowers. My roses are just blooming on pur- 
 pose. I shall carry them in a box on wet cotton- 
 wool. Won't Horace get into a fry while he 's 
 waiting down stairs for me to put them on ? And 
 then, while he 's getting over it, 1 11 be promising 
 for half the dances to everybody that asks. He 
 always loses the next thing while he 's rebelling 
 about the last. He's got lots to learn. Jane! 
 I '11 just tell you what, I 've as good a mind as 
 ever was to take Jeff Fleming in the pairing-off." 
 
 Jane colored up suddenly ; then as suddenly 
 calmed down and smiled. 
 
 " You think he won't ? We '11 see. Jane, you 're 
 altogether too settled. You 're just as bad, the other 
 way, as I am. And there 's one thing, I dare say 
 you 've no idea of it, but I doubt if an}>- thing 
 makes much difference to you, after all. It hap- 
 pens to be Jeff, because you 've had him at your 
 elbow all your days, and it 's * cut out.' The truth 
 is, you a'n't cut out for anybody in particular so 
 much as just for a pattern. You '11 be sweet and 
 mild, and you '11 be married, and you '11 housekeep, 
 just because it 's all a part of perfect living for a 
 woman ; and that 's what you 're in love with. Jeff
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 31 
 
 Will do as well to hang it on to as anybody; and 
 you '11 live and die in a frame of mind like a pan of 
 hiilk. And you '11 set, and you '11 just turn to solid, 
 tranquil bonny-clabber. Now, J'm going to be 
 either butter or cheese ; I haven't made my mind 
 up which. I 've got 'em both in me. Isn't that 
 queer? " 
 
 And she followed Jane downstairs into the 
 corner sitting-room, where Miss Burgess was cut- 
 ting up spice-cake for tea ; and of course there was 
 not much more said except about how her mother 
 did, and whether the doctor thought old Deacon 
 Chowle was any better, and how Jane had found 
 Mrs. Holley this afternoon ; Mrs. Holley being an 
 invalid, and so always a staple of conversation. And 
 at six o'clock, the starlight already shining over 
 the snow, Nettie set off for home, meeting Jeff 
 Fleming at the gate as she went out, and encoun- 
 tering Horace Vanzandt afterwards at the post- 
 office, as she had ever} r reason to expect she might, 
 and letting him walk home with her for such con- 
 solation as he could get by the way, with all her 
 little defensive prickles set up and alert whichever 
 way he tried to stroke her. 
 
 If Horace Vanzandt had not been of the inven- 
 tive order of mind, fond of puzzles, and given to 
 combating little wearying obstacles with a most 
 fine and patient and delicate ingenuity, the mere
 
 32 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 man that was in him must have revolted long ago 
 at Nettie's whims, and thrown the whole thing 
 over. But I thing the mechanician could not give' 
 up the fascinating perplexity. The more he was 
 baffled, the more the wheels would not run and 
 the cogs would not catch, the more he was irresist- 
 bly drawn to pursue the reason why, the more 
 nicely and curiously he tried time after time to 
 adapt his experiments. If he flung every thing by 
 in a pet, it was only to make himself more work in 
 repairing intricate and involved damages, when he 
 came back, penitent and patient, as in the nature 
 of him he could not help doing, to his task again.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 "D ACHEL HOLLEY sat reading to her mother 
 in the little bedroom that opened from the 
 long sitting-room, until five o'clock ; then Roxana 
 came in with Mrs. Holley's tea, and Rachel kissed 
 her mother, and went off to her own room to dress. 
 For this was Thursday evening ; and Mark Hiiis- 
 dale was to come for her at half-past six, to drive 
 her to North Denmark for the sleigh-ride dance. 
 
 Rachel Holley's toilet was even a prettier thing 
 than the result ; but we have no right to look at 
 it, to see the fresh pink of her face, and the 
 white of her arms and shoulders as they come 
 clear and blooming from under the dashes of cold 
 water and the soft wrapping and pattings of the 
 towel ; to watch her brush her little set of pearls, 
 and hear the pure, zvhole sound that tells of their 
 perfection and entireness; but when the little pink 
 sack is on, and that sunshine of hair is tossed down 
 over it, like the golden over the rose in a fair sun 
 set, then, if I am ever to take author's privilege, 
 and give you a peep at any picture you could 
 2* c
 
 34 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 not have without me, it becomes nly duty to let 
 you in. 
 
 Rachel's hair " did itself." It rippled and poured 
 over her shoulders like an amber waterfall, with all 
 the million little braided lines in it* that curl and 
 twist in running water; and the comb stroked 
 through, just proving that it was not a tangle, but 
 leaving every little curl and twist to reassert itself 
 in its wake, precisely as the running water would 
 if you drew your fingers through it. And then 
 Rachel gathered it all up in her two little hands, 
 that had to clutch and grasp to do it, and gave 
 it a turn one way, and set in a little trident of 
 shell to hold it, and after that a turn another 
 way, burying the tiny comb, and now a long, 
 slender hairpin was pushed in ; and so round and 
 round, here and there, caught and looped and fast- 
 ened just as it seemed to be determined to go, 
 until it was one beautiful, bewildering, shining 
 heap, lying gracefully around the natural curves 
 of her head, and dropping with a lovely, glisten- 
 ing shimmer about her brows and temples. You 
 can't do it with tails and cushions and hot slate- 
 pencils, and you needn't try ; Rachel Holley just 
 had that hair, and it was a piece of her. Jane 
 Burgess's was pretty in its soft, modest, shadowy 
 smoothness. Why don't you all keep what is your 
 own ? Then everybody would have something.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 35 
 
 A blue ribbon was drawn through to finish, and 
 tied in a little butterfly bow up high among the 
 gold, on the left side ; and then, after the dainty 
 fingers had been into the basin again, the dazzle- 
 blue merino went on, and the snowy down border- 
 ings were fastened about throat and arms, and 
 there was Rachel Holley ready for the sleigh-ride. 
 And what do you think will become of Mark Hins- 
 dale now ? 
 
 Poor little Rachel ! I had to bring you up here 
 to see her, without telling you why. You must 
 needs have had this one unspoiled glimpse of her 
 glad beauty. Even Mark Hinsdale was not to see 
 it after all, just so, to-night. 
 
 She turned round with her candle in her hand, 
 to go downstairs. A rapid step came up as she 
 opened her door. Roxana's frightened face met 
 hers. 
 
 " O Rachel, for the land's sake hurry down ! 
 Your ma ! " 
 
 Mrs. Holley was " taken faint," as Roxana 
 called it. They gave her brandy, and sent the 
 boy, Silas, for the doctor. Rachel rubbed her 
 mother's hands, and sent Roxy for the hot brick 
 from the oven, to put to her cold feet. She 
 bathed her head with bay-water, and gave her 
 carefully some drops of hartshorn to smell at. 
 And then, while she came slowly back to some-
 
 36 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 thing like her usual frail, delicate life again, yet 
 with a new, strange look that shot a fearful intui- 
 tion straight to Rachel's heart, and made it seem 
 an unreckoned duration of experience since she 
 had tied on her blue ribbon so unconsciously there 
 upstairs, a look as of one who leaves the door, 
 but turns back for a thing yet to be fetched or 
 done, Rachel sat, and knelt, and stood, by or 
 over her, tending, and listening, and whispering, 
 and making little loving signs, for half an hour, 
 alone with her, while they waited. For Mrs. Hoi- 
 ley had feebly motioned to Roxana to go away. 
 
 I cannot tell you of that half-hour. It*was a 
 half-hour between two dear souls ; a little time 
 God gave them to live in, to go back into from 
 either side and meet in, as the heart and secret 
 and fulness of their years together, by and by, 
 when they should be outwardly parted. 
 
 There are points of experience where all things 
 gather. Eternity is in them. They are like the. 
 three short years of the Lord Christ's ministering 
 to the world. 
 
 When Mark Hinsdale came, Mrs. Holley had 
 fallen into a brief sleep. 
 
 Mark thought it was some beautiful, tender-sad 
 angel who came so softly through the shadow of 
 the sitting-room to meet him, and stood in the 
 firelight in her azure robes with shining borders.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHEE. 37 
 
 For there was something glorified, uplifted above 
 the shock and the fear, in Rachel's face, strong 
 and full of love from that supreme communion. 
 
 " Mother is going to die," she said, putting her 
 hand in Mark's, and raising that look, that he 
 never forgot, to his. 
 
 " Oh, no ! " he said with the first pitying im- 
 pulse, keeping hold of the hand. " Is she worse ? 
 She will be better again, as she has been. Don't 
 be frightened." 
 
 " I 'm not frightened. I see. O Mark ! " she 
 said suddenly, as one tender heartbreak from their 
 deep, Ifrief talk came over her, "she said she 
 shook me once when I was a little child, 
 and she asked me to forgive her ! " 
 
 And the human grief broke forth in passionate 
 tears. Mark put his arm around her, as she stood 
 and trembled with her sobs. 
 
 " Don't cry ! don't cry, Rachel ! " was all he 
 could say to her. 
 
 And Dr. Sylva came in and found them so. 
 
 Squire Holley was away from home, attending 
 to some law business. Instead of going to North 
 Denmark, Mark Hinsdale drove his fast bay colt 
 alF night over the road to Hartford, and brought 
 the squire back next morning in time to see his wife. 
 
 The next time Mark saw Rachel, it was in a 
 black dress at her mother's burial.
 
 38 BIX OF ONE BY 
 
 Dr. Sylva was a sympathetic man^ and a bit of a 
 friendly old gossip. He was touched and interested 
 by what he had seen, and he could not help talk- 
 ing about it. He told how good Mark Hinsdale 
 had been, and how plain it was that all was set- 
 tled between him and Rachel. " And the sooner 
 it 's made fast the better," he said. " Squire Hoi- 
 ley 's rich enough to take them both right in at 
 home. And I guess that 's the way it will be. 
 He won't want to part with his girl ; and yet he 's 
 no kind of a man to be left in charge of her, all 
 alone, though he 's first-rate for the deestrict." 
 
 And that was the way that everybody came to 
 have it that Mark Hinsdale and Rachel Holley 
 were engaged.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 TVTOBODY knew at the sleigh-ride dance what 
 was happening. They all wondered and 
 wondered, between the cotillons, and in hands 
 across, and up and down the reels, what had be- 
 come of Mark and Rachel. Some thought one 
 thing, and some another, according to their own 
 characteristics. Jeff Fleming said Mark was in 
 one of his clouds somewhere, and had forgotten to 
 come down. Nettie Sylva guessed they had had 
 some little muss : they would come in late, maybe, 
 with some excuse, just in time, perhaps, for the 
 pairing-off. Jane quietly remembered Mrs. Hoi- 
 ley, and thought she might have needed Rachel ; 
 but nobody imagined any thing like the truth. 
 There is no one whom all the world looks upon as 
 more a fixture in the world, than a confirmed 
 invalid. 
 
 Nettie Sylva had tied her face up in a cloud, 
 and told Horace he must not talk to her, coming 
 over ; she had had a toothache yesterday, and was 
 afraid of it again. What with that, and dropping
 
 40 SIX OF ONE JBY 
 
 her muff out of the sleigh and making him go back 
 for it through the snowdrifts, and taking it into 
 her head to carry the whip and touching up the 
 gay little mare with it almost every time Horace 
 did say any thing, she got over the ground, accord- 
 ing to her notion of it, pretty well. The rest of 
 the programme had been carried out very nearly 
 as she had indicated it to Jane. She had been a 
 long time settling the exact position of the tea- 
 roses in her bright, silky crimps, and in making 
 them " stay put ; " for tea-rosebuds, everybody 
 knows, are the loveliest and most unmanageable 
 of blossoming things, they are so tipsy with 
 their own rich beauty ; and, by the time she came 
 down from the little gallery dressing-room attached 
 to the dancing-hall, she found Horace in the pas- 
 sage below, tolerably cold, and in a fair state of 
 provokableness. Everybody else, nearly, had gone 
 in. 
 
 " Have you been ready long ? " she asked 
 sweetly, taking his arm. " But then you didn't 
 have tea-rosebuds to fix in your hair ! Let 's 
 make haste now : they '11 be engaging for all the 
 dances, and I don't want to be left out in the 
 cold." 
 
 That last clause was a sudden impish inspira- 
 tion. 
 
 "I suppose not. Nobody does," said Horace,
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 41 
 
 with an enunciation as if his words were just 
 stiffening with frost as he spoke them, and were 
 too much congealed to flow further after those 
 five. 
 
 " Why, you 're all nipped up ! " said Nettie, 
 turning round at him. " Your nose is blue. 
 You 'd better go right to the fire, and get warm.' 
 
 And with that, she dropped his arm as they got 
 inside the door, and let herself be surrounded, at 
 the instant of his half withdrawal, by two or three 
 eager claimants for dancing promises. 
 
 The second dance, and the third, and the fourth, 
 she gave. Nobody asked for the first, of course ; 
 that was supposed, according to sleigh-ride eti- 
 quette, to be Horace's. 
 
 When she had reached as far as five, she looked 
 round to see where Horace was. He was stand- 
 ing by the big wood fire, half-way down the hall ; 
 warming his nose, probably, as she had bidden 
 him. 
 
 " Good boy ! " she said slyly to herself, under 
 her breath, and laughed. 
 
 Then she slipped off, quite at the opposite side, 
 and along to a far corner, where she seated her- 
 self demurely. 
 
 The first set was forming. Clarissa Dunmore 
 was standing up there in the corner, with her 
 brother Elisha. Nettie got behind Miss Dim-
 
 42 BIX OF ONE BY 
 
 more's wide skirts, for Clarissa only had a new 
 best dress once in three years, and wore the fashion 
 out, and hid herself. She chattered with Miss 
 Clarissa as she came back and forth, and made 
 her miss half the figures. 
 
 " Why ain't you dancing ? " was Miss Clarissa's 
 natural question. 
 
 " Oh, I 'm getting ready ! Hands across ! Why 
 don't you mind? There's Nat Kinsley, wait- 
 ing!" 
 
 Nettie knew she could always manage Miss 
 Clarissa. 
 
 Clarissa was an old maid and didn't know it. 
 She had never stopped to think about it. She had 
 only had four best dresses since she began to keep 
 house for her brother after their mother died ; and 
 she had gone about with him to all the sleigh-rides 
 and huskings and apple-bees, ever since, quite 
 naturally; for neither of them had anybody else 
 to go with. Clarissa thought her time hadn't 
 come, if she thought any thing, and kept on 
 patiently ; not expecting to be " run after much," 
 because she had never been a beauty ; but just 
 accepting things as they were, and putting a piece 
 of daphne odora, off her big bush, into her back 
 hair, just where she had put it twelve years ago, 
 and setting off contentedly with Elisha every time 
 there was a merry-making, and seeing it all
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 43 
 
 through, with him to depend upon, and to talk it 
 over with afterward. 
 
 " Elisha was real clever and good about seein' 
 to," she said: "she .didn't know what girls did 
 that didn't have brothers." 
 
 They danced as much as they wanted to ; for 
 " they always had one another, if nobody else 
 came along." And they really supposed they had 
 "been to the party," as much as anybody else. 
 Some people take the world at large in that way, 
 and think they have been to it too. 
 
 After the cotillon was over, Nettie scudded 
 round again, and got on to the opposite side, met 
 the girls, Jane Burgess and three or four others 
 whom she knew best, who all supposed, of course, 
 that she had been dancing. Then she came up 
 face to face with Horace Vanzandt, just as she 
 meant to do. 
 
 "Oh!" she cried. "Why where have you 
 been ? I didn't see any thing of you all through 
 the set. Have you got warm yet? " 
 
 " I hope you had a pleasant dance," said Horace 
 grimly. 
 
 " Dance ! why, I didn't dance. Of course not. 
 I sat over there in the corner all the time. No- 
 body asked me. I haven't had a soul to speak to 
 but Clarissa Dunmore and Elisha. Pm getting 
 cold now."
 
 44 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 " Nettie ! " said Horace, in a low, strong voice, 
 " what does all this mean ? " 
 
 " I don't know I'm sifrre I " said Nettie, with 
 wide-open brown eyes. " What does it ? I sup- 
 posed" 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Well, if you will make me say it, that 
 you might possibly have asked me to dance, your- 
 self; and so I waited." 
 
 There could not be any thing more utterly 
 simple than Nettie's look lifted up to Horace 
 Vanzandt's face. 
 
 " If that is all, come and dance now," said 
 Horace, holding out his hand, with a very grave 
 face. It was earnest with him : he could not stop 
 for jests, scarcely for courtesies. 
 
 " Oh, wow I 'm engaged ! For this, and the 
 next, and the next, and the next. And, besides, 
 I think it would be proper to say ' sorry ' or 
 ' please,' or something ! " 
 
 And Nettie went off with Jeff Fleming. " Jeff 
 was bright," she said: "she always had a good 
 time with Jeff Fleming," she told Jane. 
 
 Horace Vanzandt went and asked Jane. 
 
 Somehow, when Nettie was very bad, he had an 
 impulse toward Jane Burgess for friendly comfort. 
 Jane knew Nettie so well, and always had some- 
 thing kind and excusing to say, that made him 
 feel better.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 45 
 
 " I can't make Nettie out to-night," he said, 
 while he and Jane waited at the side. 
 
 "You never can," said Jane. "That's just 
 what she means. If you didn't try you 'd do 
 better." 
 
 " But why does she treat me so ? She went off 
 and made me think she had been dancing, and then 
 came back and put me in the wrong because I 
 hadn't asked her. She makes me mad ; and 
 then she won't give me any excuse for a quarrel ; 
 nothing to take hold of, I mean." 
 
 "Don't look for it. Take it as if it were all 
 right. It is only a part of the frolic. Nettie is 
 a good girl, only she isn't quite ready to sober 
 down. You mustn't hurry her." 
 
 Jane colored up as she said this. It was the 
 nearest to a taking-for-granted of Horace's wish 
 and meaning toward Nettie, that she had ever 
 come to in any of their tacit confidences. 
 
 They had to chasse now, and Horace could not 
 say any more until the figure was over. He 
 thought what a nice quiet partner Jane was, as he 
 came back to her, and met her clear, friendly look 
 and pleasant smile. It rested him to be with her 
 a while. She was like fair, level road, after ups 
 and downs, jolts and pitches. But then that, he 
 supposed, was because he didn't care so much. 
 What was it that kept him beating back and forth
 
 46 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 helplessly, among the thorns and tangles of Net- 
 tie's tricks and whims ? 
 
 " I wish she would grow more like you, Jane. 
 Can't you make her ? You are together so much." 
 
 " You wouldn't like her half so well," said 
 Jane, smiling at his question. It did not seem so 
 surprising a question to her, doubtless, as it would 
 have done if she had not known in her quiet way 
 that she was a pattern. To her mind there was 
 only one sort of woman that was worth while, or 
 that ever ought to be ; and she meant to be that 
 woman right straight through. Of course Nettie 
 would be better if she could make her a little 
 more after the same type ; but then she spoke 
 truth and wisdom in saying that Horace at this 
 stage of his experience, at least would not have 
 liked her half as well. 
 
 " See how pretty she is this minute ! And 
 sweet and happy too : there ' isn't a bit of real 
 malice in it. It 's all fun." 
 
 Nettie was flying out across the hall in a long 
 gallopade chasse", her color bright, her dark eyes 
 like two winter stars, and a merry gleam of glitter- 
 ing teeth between the red parted lips. 
 
 She came quite up to them as they stood. 
 
 " I shan't have a .dance left," she said, in a gay, 
 quick whisper to Jane, as she gave her a little 
 whirl, and then took her partner's hand again.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 47 
 
 " If anybody else wants one," she added, over her 
 shoulder, " he 'd better make haste. But it 's a reel 
 next ; and I won't engage for reels, ever ! " 
 
 " You heard ? " said Jane. 
 
 " Yes. She meant me to." 
 
 " Of course she did. That 's the good of her. 
 She has kept the reel on purpose." 
 
 " She always keeps the reels. She likes to set 
 them scrambling. And I won't scramble." For 
 all that, he got beside her when the quadrille 
 ended. Jane managed it partly, perhaps, in choos- 
 ing her seat. 
 
 "Will you dance with me now?" said Horace, 
 when the reel was called. And Nettie gave him 
 her hand with an exquisite little docile, nestling, 
 good-child movement to his side. Nettie was lovely 
 all through that reel, and the next, which came in 
 two dances more. " I always like my best dances 
 in the middle of the evening," she said. " The first 
 ones are dreary." And Horace grew content under 
 her smiles, as he had done a hundred times before, 
 and let by-gones be by-gones, as Nettie always told 
 him he ought ; although she did confess to Jane 
 Burgess that the by-gones were never more than 
 twenty-four hours old before they began again. 
 
 Jane herself could hardly tell what to make of 
 Nettie, when she declared to her in the "join 
 hands" of Money Musk, that she "didn't more
 
 48 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 than half like it, after all : she believed if he would 
 only stay mad, once, long enough to give her a real 
 little scare, she should like him better than she ever 
 had done yet." 
 
 " But he knows you don't mean it. He could see 
 you didn't, the minute he quieted down. Besides, 
 I told him so." 
 
 " You did ! You were nicely set to work ! Now 
 I shall have it all to do over again ! " 
 
 She did it in the pairing-off. 
 
 The pairing-off was the last dance of all. Nettie 
 had been down to supper, and I wish I could tell 
 you all about that supper, such as is only had in a 
 country tavern, at a country sleigh-ride ; its roast 
 chickens and ducks, its whipped creams and plum- 
 cakes, its custards and quince jellies, its nuts and 
 apples, and cheese and crullers ; its hot coffee, thick 
 with cream, and its champagne cider ; its regular 
 sitting down, pair and pair ; its plentiful helpings ; 
 its jokes and its fortune-tellings and its philopenas, 
 with apple-parings and apple-namings, and double 
 almonds. I should like to tell you all ; but there 
 will not be room for every thing, and I can't : I can 
 only tell you, as I began to do, that Nettie behaved 
 beautifully, as beautifully as Nature and little 
 children do before some grand outburst of mis- 
 chief; and she came up again radiant and benign, 
 and danced the " Rustic " with Horace, with Cla-
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 49 
 
 rissa Dunmore, whom she had made him take for 
 his other partner. And Horace said to himself how 
 good-natured and thoughtful that was of her for the 
 poor thing, after all. 
 
 But when the pairing-off came ! 
 
 That is a round dance ; not what we call a round 
 dance here in the city, but a dance formed in a ring. 
 
 No one takes a partner : they all go up one by one 
 and take places independently, a young man and 
 a young woman alternately ; though I will not say 
 there may not be some mutual management to get 
 tolerably near each other in certain cases. Yet 
 that is not sure to avail, either ; for it rests with 
 the manager to call out as he pleases, " Ladies to 
 the right, gentlemen to the left ! " or the reverse. 
 And then follows something like the old Swiss 
 dance, a forward and back, a turning round, a 
 passing on ; so that, one after another, each lady 
 meets every gentleman. And as they meet, by 
 settled agreement, by some quick, mutual under- 
 standing, or by deliberate asking and assent, as the 
 case may be, they pair off, here and there ; 
 chasse together out from the ring and round the 
 circle, and to places, successively, in a long line 
 gradually formed from the top of the room, for 
 contra-dance ; and then a merry hands-across, down, 
 the middle and up again, down the outside and up 
 the middle, a scamper to the end, and all re- t
 
 50 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 peated, as long as any couple cares to keep it up, 
 finishes, with its gay tumult, the evening. 
 
 Horace Vanzandt placed himself in the ring next 
 but three to Nettie. Nat Kinsley, Elisha Dunmore, 
 and Jo Greenleaf were between. She wouldn't take 
 either of them, he thought. 
 
 But Jeff Fleming gave the word, " Ladies to the 
 left ! " and behold the whole circle was between 
 them ! He could only trust now to her love of fun 
 and dancing, and the likelihood of her coquetting 
 all round the set before she took up with, any. 
 
 He watched at every turn ; she made seven or 
 eight, and then she met Jeff Fleming. How she 
 did it nobody knew, of the three most interested ; 
 least of all, perhaps, Jeff himself, who certainly had 
 thought of nothing until that moment but of look- 
 ing out for Jane. But just as he gave his hands to 
 Nettie, in the turn, he met a sudden, shy, merry, 
 mischievous, wistful little glance he was con- 
 scious of the least possible lingering as they came 
 around, of a little tremulous poise of her pretty 
 figure ; their eyes encountered again, with a flash 
 of fun in both ; and away out to the far side with 
 a sweep, down again toward the lessening circle 
 around, and up to the head of the hall triumphant- 
 ly, the naughty couple ran away with each other 
 before the assembled eyes of Greyford and North 
 Denmark.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER., 51 
 
 Horace made a few turns more, and then broke 
 out of the ring and sat down. That, also, the 
 dancers were at liberty to choose. That made the 
 more fun. Two or three others got tired, or fore- 
 saw that it might be policy, and did the same ; 
 Jane paired off with Elisha Dunmore ; and Claris- 
 sa, trotting round patiently to the end, expecting 
 nothing but the dance, was left out, odd, at last ; 
 and, nothing troubled, went quietly off to the dress- 
 ing-room, to find her hood and rubbers comfortably 
 before the crowd came up. 
 
 Down at the door, when all was over, Horace 
 met Nettie Sylva, in her wraps, nothing visible in 
 her feue but two brilliant, provoking eyes. 
 
 " I'm so sorry, Horace ! but I don 't dare ride in 
 that cutter again. My toothache has come back ; 
 and so I'm going with Mr. Dunmore in his chaise- 
 top. You'll take Clarissa, won't you ? "
 
 52 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A LETTER. 
 
 NEW YORK, Dec. 1, 1870. 
 
 T^EAR NETTIE, I think I was right in 
 leaving Greyford without giving you notice. 
 The fact is, if I had told you, I am afraid I should 
 not have come. You have great power over me ; 
 so much that I have run away from it. I cannot 
 bring myself to submit any longer to be treated as 
 you treat me, even by one whom I admire as much 
 as you, and of whom I think as much as I do of 
 you. And I found that I was man enough to 
 quietly pack up and go ; and so I did. 
 
 Now that I am here, and established, it is right 
 again that I should tell you about it. And still I 
 am conscious that you will perhaps be displeased, 
 and will not care to know. However, I am assist- 
 ant book-keeper at Fy lings & Co.'s Works. They 
 do many kinds of manufacturing in iron, and they 
 rent parts of their building, together with the use 
 of steam-power, to mechanics ; so that the fact is, 
 the place is a sort of paradise to me. If I should
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF TEE OTHER. 53 
 
 ever go to heaven, I sometimes fancy I shall find 
 my part of it fitted up with all kinds of machinery 
 and tools, one eternal buzz of gearing and belts, 
 and lathes and planers, and all manner of artificers 
 in brass and iron. My patron saint is St. Tubal 
 Cain, I guess. I have already scraped acquaint- 
 ance with a wiry little man, with great, thoughtful 
 eyes, who is working all day, and thinking all day 
 and all night too, upon a new type-setting and 
 distributing machine. 
 
 I have seen Rachel two or three times. Poor 
 girl ! She was always so bright and happy that I 
 never imagined she had such depth and intensity 
 of feeling. And her mother had been ill so long, 
 and her hold on life was so very frail, that I should 
 have reasoned that her departure would have been 
 a comfort rather than a sorrow. But all the way 
 from Greyford she was so sad and silent that I 
 could not talk to her. And when last evening 
 I said something about her mother, she trembled 
 so much and cried so much that I was frightened. 
 I cried a little too. I don't know but I ought to 
 be ashamed of it, but I never yet saw tears of real 
 sorrow without contributing a few. I don't re- 
 member crying on my own account, either, since 
 I was small enough to cry at being whipped. I 
 don't know why it was, but I somehow felt that 
 in some way or other, something about Mark had
 
 54 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 been the reason of Rachel's leaving Greyford. 
 And yet I can't see why; for everybody was 
 noticing how kind Mark was, and how suitable it 
 would be if they should be married at once and 
 go to the Squire's to live. But she would not say 
 a word about Mark ; and though I can't tell what 
 made me know, I did know, that she did not wish 
 to. I am sorry for Mr. Holley, left alone in the 
 old house. But then he is one of those who find 
 a great deal to satisfy their minds in their busi- 
 ness ; so he will do very well. 
 
 I have read this over. I have left out, I guess, 
 the things I would have liked best to say. But, 
 Nettie, I don't know how you would take them. 
 And, I am waiting to hear what you say to me. I 
 suppose I have everybody's ordinary privilege to 
 say that I am 
 
 Truly yours haven't I ? 
 
 HOEACE VANZANDT. 
 
 THE ANSWER. 
 
 HARTFORD, Dec. 7, 1870. . 
 
 DEAR HORACE, Your letter was forwarded 
 to me from Greyford, and so I could not answer 
 any sooner. 
 
 It was extremely kind of you to reveal to me 
 the place of your abode, in case I should be anxious
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 55 
 
 to know. I should be very proud to believe that 
 I had so much influence over you as you kindly 
 intimate. But if your letter can be relied upon, 
 you will not miss me very much as long as you 
 can have a machine to turn round and round. 
 
 I was not so much surprised to hear of your 
 going to New York as if you had never spoken of 
 it to me. And I do not know why you should 
 imagine that I would have remonstrated with you. 
 You write as if I were a kind of evil genius whom 
 you found it necessary to avoid. This I assure 
 you is a mistake. I am truly your friend. But I 
 hope I should not have distressed you by crying 
 as Rachel did, if you had been brave enough to 
 come and tell me what you were going to do. 
 
 As you have told me about your situation, I 
 suppose I may tell you about mine. I am staying 
 with my Aunt Helen, helping her keep house, and 
 taking lessons in singing and the piano, besides 
 hers in housekeeping. Aunt Helen wanted me to 
 come, and Mrs. Sylva did not object, though father 
 did. 
 
 It will always give me pleasure to hear from 
 you. NETTIE. 
 
 P. S. Jeff Fleming is in Hartford now. He 
 came with me. He is real good company. He is 
 clerk in a store, and they say he has been making 
 some first-rate speeches before the Sons of Tern-
 
 56 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 perance. Nobody knew he was so smart except 
 me. I always said he was bright. He is quite 
 attentive, which is very proper to his old friend, 
 all alone here in the busy city. 
 
 I am so glad you are comforting poor Rachel. 
 She is so good that I only wonder she should need 
 any comfort. When you see her give her my best 
 love. 
 
 You will, perhaps, be interested to hear that 
 Mark Hinsdale has gone to Boston to live, and 
 that Jane Burgess has gone there too. I don't 
 know exactly what they are doing ; but no doubt 
 Rachel will hear from Mark, and tell you all about. 
 Jeff Fleming has not heard yet, except that Jane 
 is visiting her sister, Mrs. Bardies, and is having 
 a kind of holiday. It is as if a mine had exploded 
 under us six, and flung us helter-skelter, six ways 
 for Sundays. I suppose it will all be right, how- 
 ever; fates will be served out to us, I guess, at 
 the rate of about six to the half-dozen. That will 
 be just right : a fate apiece. NETTIE. 
 
 Now, the intelligent reader will have observed 
 that these two letters were like the stories of for- 
 ests and enchantments drear, which Milton speaks 
 of, 
 
 " Where more is meant than meets the ear." 
 
 They afforded no bad specimens, in fact, of
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 57 
 
 topics which shine by their absence. Horace did 
 not tell Nettie that he was grieved by her conduct 
 or sorry for his own. Nor did Nettie tell any 
 thing of the kind to Horace. Like two Yankees, 
 as they were, they were talking about the weather 
 and the crops, instead of coming right down to 
 their bargain. 
 
 Horace's letter did not surprise Nettie particu- 
 larly, for he had often talked to her of his schemes 
 of fortunes to be made in the city ; but hers did 
 somewhat startle him, and it annoyed him too. 
 But it was his own fault ; for he had written, in 
 his displeasure, a stiffish and rather presuming 
 letter, to tell the truth. What business had he to 
 assume that it was such a mighty concern of hers 
 whether he left Greyford or not ? And then the 
 innuendo, twice over, that she must profess a deep 
 interest in his goings-on or else he wouldn't say a 
 word about them ! It was not a very judicious 
 piece of diplomacy, truly. 
 
 If it had told the whole truth, however, instead 
 of telling not half, but one-third of it, so to speak, 
 it would have been still less judicious ; that is, 
 always supposing that Master Horace had intended 
 to propitiate. But the young gentleman had 
 thought fit to conceal from Nettie a still more strik- 
 ing expression of that emotional sympathy which 
 he had described than that which he did mention. 
 3*
 
 58 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 The fact is, that, quite carried away by poor 
 Rachel's tears, Horace had at parting quietly put 
 his arm round her and kissed her, on the fore- 
 head, I mean, in a beautifully brotherly way ; and 
 the poor girl, nervous and fluttered, did not think 
 of resisting. 
 
 In short, though Horace was not exactly con- 
 scious of it, his letter was cold and irritating, well 
 calculated to provoke Nettie, who, whatever she 
 might be in the depths of her nature, was a suf- 
 ficiently high-spirited and independent puss, little 
 disposed to be ordered about by anybody. The 
 proof of this, indeed, had already come to pass 
 before Horace wrote, although he knew nothing of 
 it; and not mistrusting any such state of things, 
 this it was which startled him as aforesaid. 
 
 One fine day, then, a short time after the even- 
 ing of the dance at North Denmark, Dr. Sylva 
 brought home the news of Horace's departure, 
 with a good deal of perturbation in his kindly old 
 heart as to its bearings upon his daughter's happi- 
 ness. He gave it first to his wife, along with an 
 open letter, and he requested the good lady to 
 transfer the two to Nettie ; for he had a vague idea 
 that where there 's any thing uncomfortable, women 
 should be dealt with by women. N. B. It 's a 
 great mistake ! 
 
 Mrs. Sylva was a little hampered by considera-
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 59 
 
 tions like these about either happiness or circum- 
 spection ; being one of those well-meaning and 
 thick-skinned persons who blurt right out what- 
 ever occurs to them to say, and look with the most 
 honest surprise at any one who talks about hurting 
 people's feelings. She marched straightway to the 
 foot of the stairs, and bawled out, 
 
 " Nettie ! -Nettie ! here 's Horace Vanzandt he 's 
 gone to New York 'long with Rachel Holley, n ; 
 here 's a letter for you f 'm Hartford ! " 
 
 Nettie, busy in her own room, felt her heart 
 give a jump, and then it sank with that painful 
 lost feeling that sudden bad news brings. But as 
 she was alone, nobody saw her; and she turned 
 first pale and then red ; and the tears filled her 
 eyes, and she succeeded in preventing them from 
 running over; and it was with a delay scarcely 
 perceptible that she ran downstairs and received 
 the letter, answering her step-mother's communi- 
 cation 'very composedly with, 
 
 " Well, Horace Vanzandt has been talking long 
 enough about going, and it 's time he went, I 'm 
 sure ! " 
 
 She very soon read her aunt's letter, and very 
 promptly accepted its invitation, much against the 
 wishes of the worthy doctor. But Nettie argued 
 with much briskness and force that this was ex- 
 actly the occasion she had been waiting for to take
 
 60 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 some finishing lessons in singing and on the piano, 
 and moreover in the ways of the " Old Hartford 
 Housekeepers ; " a generation of ancient dames 
 who are traditionally reported to have possessed 
 mighty secrets of the kitchen and of the pantry, 
 as efficacious in their way as those Runic rhymes 
 which could cleave mountains and shiver good 
 steel swords. 
 
 We will, however, let her get to Hartford by 
 herself, - it is a safe and easy journey, while we 
 communicate to the reader the experiences, 
 indispensable to the understanding of the re- 
 mainder of our tale, of Horace and Rachel in 
 New York. 
 
 A great city is a great solitude. Within it, 
 little settlements grow up here and there, as in a 
 new country, of those who are neighbors by loca- 
 tion, and who do or may become acquaintances or 
 friends by intercourse. Sometimes these are es- 
 tablished in some group of houses not very far 
 apart from each other ; sometimes the whole is 
 included under one roof, like the nests of the 
 sociable grossbeaks that we used to read about in 
 the natural history. 
 
 These single-roof birds' -nests are sometimes 
 found in boarding-houses ; and it happened that
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 61 
 
 our two Connecticut young folks drifted into one 
 where, for the time being at least, all the birds in 
 their little nests agreed. For it is too often that 
 we see the shameful sight (we beg good Doctor 
 Watts's pardon for imbedding one of his "in- 
 spired poems," as some admiring divine calls them, 
 into our poor flat prose) of all the children of 
 such a family falling out and chiding and fight- 
 ing. 
 
 People in the city, again, and things in the city, 
 are like those in the country, with the effects of 
 density and excitement superadded. They are 
 " fired up " very high by the sharp stimulus of 
 their purposes and the further stimulus of the 
 competition which makes every day a fight 
 not merely a struggle, but a fight for life. 
 They are magnetized, too, each by all the others. 
 At night, from miles away on the Palisades or 
 down the Bay, you can see a dusky red glare that 
 caps the whole of the great city like a low-lying 
 lurid cloud brooding down upon it. It is the gen- 
 eralized result and remainder of the millions of 
 lights that are burning there, and that fill all the 
 air above them with this red glow. Exactly sucli 
 a lurid, dim, hot glow of mental and physical ex- 
 citement incessantly broods over the city. 
 
 Now, the condition of things in which Horace 
 and Rachel found themselves was a twofold state.
 
 62 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 They underwent the excitement of New York, 
 and were of course in more or less danger from it. 
 Many of the places of abode which were suited to 
 their means would for various reasons have con- 
 centrated and re-enforced this excitement and this 
 danger. Even as it was, they did not escape entire- 
 ly from it. It happened that certain countervailing 
 influences, together with such resisting qualities as 
 the two young persons possessed within themselves, 
 saved them from any serious harm. 
 
 It was Rachel who had told Horace where to 
 look for his city home. 
 
 " Come to Mrs. Worboise's with me," she had 
 said. " I shall go there ; and, if you don't like, 
 then you can go away after a little while." 
 
 So he went. No danger that he should go 
 away ! Poor Mrs. Worboise ! Her difficulty was, 
 that she could not make people go away. As long 
 as he staid in New York he abode with the plump, 
 laughing, crying, soft-hearted motherly baby of a 
 woman ; and if he were to live there for centuries, 
 he would never have thought of going away, nor 
 for ten thousand years. Indeed, Jim Fellows, 
 then a reporter, who was staying there at the 
 time, used to shock the two serious boarders, Miss 
 Doddle and Mrs. Pogey, every little while, by sing- 
 ing to the piano-forte in the parlor a naughty parody 
 on a good Methodist camp-meeting hymn :
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 63 
 
 
 When we 've been here ten thousand years, 
 
 A stuffing just like fun, 
 Each greedy sinner will eat more dinner 
 
 Than if he'd just begun. 
 
 " i r ou '11 surely be bankrupt, dame," Fellows 
 would say. " No human being can set such a 
 good table and take such care of boarders as you 
 do and not be ruined." 
 
 And Mrs. Worboise would laugh her jolly, musi- 
 cal laugh, as cheery as a schoolgirl's, despite her 
 fifty years and widowhood, and say, oh, she guessed 
 not ! 
 
 " But you know you will," persevered the teas- 
 ing youth, on one of these occasions, not long after 
 Rachel and Horace had enlisted under her banner : 
 " how much does that pompous old Judge De For- 
 est owe you now ? Four hundred and fifty dollars, 
 isn't it?" 
 
 " I do wish he would do something for me," said 
 Mrs. Worboise, " that's a fact. He promises to pay 
 half next Saturday, though." 
 
 " Mrs. Worboise," said Fellows, lifting his fore- 
 finger at the landlady in a stern and awful manner, 
 " now answer me a straight question, upon your 
 conscience and honor. Hasn't he made you that 
 very promise every week for three months? 
 what ? " 
 
 Poor Mrs. Worboise blushed as rosy as the even-
 
 64 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 ing clouds. She had one of those very fine, clear- 
 tinted, transparent skins that never grow muddy 
 nor rough, and her cheeks were as smooth as a 
 plump little girl's, and she blushed as easily. 
 Besides, she was caught. Fellows, a very per- 
 spicacious personage, had hit upon the exact nature 
 of the Judge's financial relations with Mrs. Wor- 
 fcoise : they had caused the poor landlady many a 
 secret tear, and many an unconcealed one too, for 
 that matter ; for she cried at least as easily as she 
 laughed. She laughed now ; but there was a per- 
 ceptible uneasiness in the laugh, and she said, with 
 an effort, 
 
 " Well, Mr. Fellows, if all my boarders were as 
 honest and regular as you are, in spite of all your 
 naughty words, I should get along very well." 
 
 " Naughty words, indeed ! " responded the young 
 gentleman with a mighty affectation of anger. " I 
 defy you to refer to a single improper expression." 
 
 " But you are very irreverent, Mr. Fellows ! " 
 
 " That 's only because I always say my prayers in 
 secret, dame," he almost always called her dame. 
 " And you do take cheating so easily, that it 's evi- 
 dent it 's what you are for. It 's a great shame that 
 I don't cheat you ; so it is. Do you know, Mrs. 
 Worboise," he continued, suddenly changing his 
 tone to one of embarrassment, " I am greatly 
 troubled to raise some money to-day. Could you
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 65 
 
 possibly let me have fifty dollars until Saturday ? 
 It would save me from real distress." 
 
 "Why, yes indeed, you dear boy!" cried out 
 Mrs. Worboise ; and the tears stood in her great 
 soft brown eyes, ready to run over at his trouble ; 
 " and more too. Here," and she drew out a 
 pocket-book. " But remember Saturday ; for in- 
 deed I must have it then : I have promised it on 
 the rent ; and I 'm sadly behind." 
 
 She was eagerly counting out the bills ; but Fel- 
 lows burst out laughing, whereat she looked up in 
 the most innocent surprise imaginable, and saw 
 that she was deluded. 
 
 " Oh, that 's a shame ! " she said. " You bad 
 man ! " 
 
 " Yes," said the reporter gravely, " no doubt 
 you think so. That 's just like a woman. But 
 if you thought some of your money had been a 
 great help to me, nothing would make you think 
 me bad." 
 
 " Now, stop ! " said the landlady. " Go along. 
 You know how much I like you. But I want 
 Rachel to help me now about some sewing ; and 
 you must go away."
 
 66 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 '"r > HE winter weeks fled rapidly away, their days 
 and evenings crowded full and over-full of 
 duties and of pleasures, all acting with strange 
 new stimulus upon the clean and healthy but rural 
 and inexperienced natures of Horace and Rachel. 
 They were both of them finely organized, mentally 
 as well as physically, both widely awake to what- 
 ever was about them, and sensitively impressible by 
 it. Horace, moreover, possessed much more execu- 
 tive ability i.e., energetic good sense than is 
 at all usual or to be expected of people who have 
 the gift of invention. Rachel, on her part, had 
 more of the peculiar faculties which make a 
 mechanic, than would have been expected of a 
 woman, and particularly of one so very delicately 
 fibred and of such introverted mental habits and 
 almost excessively spiritualizing tendencies. 
 
 As for Horace, he was pretty well occupied by 
 his book-keeping, by his own efforts at inventing, 
 and by a course of study which he was very sen- 
 sibly pursuing, in the principles of natural phi-
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 67 
 
 losophy and in "the history of mechanics and inven- 
 tion. Still, he had a superabounding flow of life 
 and spirits ; and it was with immense eagerness 
 and curiosity and keen enjoyment that he ac- 
 cepted all sorts of suggestions from master Jim 
 Fellows, to go and see, or go and help do, one 
 and another of the multifarious things and occur- 
 rences that a city reporter has to hunt up, or wit- 
 ness, or join in. 
 
 Rachel's situation was as similar to his, perhaps, 
 as a young woman's could be under the circum- 
 stances. She had not, it is true, such exacting 
 and peremptory and regular daily duties to drive 
 her, as those which bound Horace to stand at a 
 desk and compute and make entries so many hours 
 every day on pain of breach of contract, reprimand 
 from a stern employer, and angry expulsion from 
 a respectable and comfortably paid post. When 
 young women do have such external forces about 
 them, they train about as readily, perhaps, into 
 what are called " business habits," as young men ; 
 but they seldom have them. 
 
 She was nominally making a winter's visit to 
 Mrs. Worboise, who was what may be called a 
 half-aunt. That is, Mrs. Worboise was half-sister 
 to Squire Holley ; so that if she had had a daugh- 
 ter, such daughter would have been Rachel's half- 
 cousin ; the two girls having in common only one
 
 68 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 instead of two, out of their eight grandparents. 
 Such relationships are the most convenient in the 
 world. Brother and sister, or parent and child, 
 are under a tremendous conventional imperative to 
 be fond of each other, -no matter how entirely 
 unsuitable their tastes and feelings and views and 
 pursuits may be. But half cousinships, for in- 
 stance, and the like, can be made just as much or 
 just as little of as you choose, and nobody thinks 
 of saying a word. 
 
 Not that Mrs. Worboise was a person who took 
 such things into account. Indeed, the dear little 
 woman was an inexhaustible fountain of pure love 
 and tenderness, which flowed forth upon good and 
 evil almost as the Lord's warm sunshine falleth 
 alike upon both. She had been for a long time 
 coaxing Rachel to come and make her a visit; 
 indeed, ever since the decease of her lord, the late 
 Mr. Worboise, had, by a natural enough train of 
 circumstances, launched her. upon the troubled 
 and perilous career of a New York boarding-house 
 keeper's life for which she was just as fit as any 
 other little soft trustful baby would be to rule a 
 gang of Apache Indians on horseback in all their 
 war-paint and howls. So Rachel had delayed, 
 and perhaps would never have come, had it not 
 been for the explosion, as Nettie called it in her 
 letter to Horace, which had tossed their little six- 
 fold company in such diverse directions.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 69 
 
 Rachel, although she had all those rarer beau- 
 tiful qualities which belong to a young lady in a 
 book, still, like most other people, had a good deal 
 of human nature in her. She therefore in the 
 course of time gradually recovered from that ex- 
 treme grief which had overcome her at her mother's 
 death. She began at once to go to church with 
 Mrs. Worboise, who had been brought up a strict 
 Calvinistic Presbyterian, and she was speedily 
 snapped up by the enterprising Sunday-school 
 superintendent, who happened to meet both the 
 ladies together, as a teacher. She likewise duti- 
 fully attended the Thursday evening female prayer- 
 meeting which was maintained with preternatural 
 obstinacy by Mrs. Dr. Blewbly, the minister's wife, 
 along with a few other of the sterner class of 
 ladies, against the terrific onslaughts of Satan as 
 he appeared in the guise of obstructions arising 
 from city life. Mrs. Pogey and Miss Doddle were 
 two of this earnest band ; and Mrs. Worboise used 
 to go regularly with them, because they took her, 
 and Rachel used to go too, because Mrs. Worboise 
 asked her. 
 
 Being as aforesaid a dexterous maiden, Miss 
 Rachel quickly came into great request in the 
 house in all things which have respect unto the 
 cutting and fitting of dresses, and, indeed, in what- 
 ever pertains to the domain of needlework gener r
 
 70 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 ally. She was already a pretty good workwoman 
 on the sewing-machine, and she at once assumed 
 the whole charge of all such matters for Mrs. 
 Worbbise herself, greatly lightening the toils of 
 that overloaded and hard-working lady. Indeed, 
 it was really only fair for her to insist upon remit- 
 ting to Rachel the money which the latter ten- 
 dered her at the end of a three-months' sojourn, 
 aside from the fact that said sojourn was nominally 
 a visit. 
 
 Then there were lectures or concerts or sights 
 of some kind every evening. Then Miss Rachel 
 had a course of reading too, no less than Horace ; 
 though it was one which some would judge not so 
 useful. Indeed, that practical young gentleman 
 grumbled a little in a careful manner, for some- 
 how he found himself very cautious about ex- 
 pressing any opposition to Rachel's more peculiar 
 peculiarities at the books she devoured so very 
 eagerly. So would most of us perhaps. Yet, after 
 all, it is pretty often true that the reading which 
 we enjoy most does us most good. At any rate, 
 other reading does not usually do us much good, 
 for usually we won't read it. Rachel read eagerly 
 a number of biographies and other works by and 
 about mediaeval and other mysticists ; Jacob Bceh- 
 men, Madame Guyon, and so forth. She worked 
 .through a good deal of Swedenborg. She tried a
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 71 
 
 good many Spiritualist publications, but could not 
 manage more than two or three of them ; and she 
 read industriously at a number of religious and 
 serious periodicals which came to the house. And 
 lastly, she adopted a shrewd suggestion of Horace's 
 own. He, being a bit of a philosopher, though to 
 tell the truth his dealings with Nettie did not 
 always seem entirely philosophical, had a little 
 theory about the faculties which constitute inven- 
 tiveness ; and he urged Rachel to try and see 
 whether the same correct eye and hand that 
 enabled her to fit a waist so accurately, and to 
 judge so unerringly of sizes and proportions in 
 cutting -patterns and economizing materials, would 
 not stand her in good stead in learning decorative 
 design. 
 
 He had judged truly. The very suggestion of 
 the Free School of Design at Cooper Union made 
 her cheeks flush with delight. She went and 
 returned home from her first attendance in a high 
 state of pleasurable excitement. The superin- 
 tendent said, she reported, that she did capitally ; 
 and she worked away, first with copies and so on, 
 until she had mastered the handling of her pencil, 
 and then, with constantly growing pleasure, in 
 doing real work "from the round," and from 
 original subjects ; and in pursuance of another 
 wise suggestion of Horace's she began therewith
 
 72 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 to make herself acquainted as well as she could 
 with the history of her new avocation, finding 
 endless pleasure in it ; most of all, by the way, in 
 tracing out those numberless connections and 
 interminglings of ornament and religion which 
 show such a necessary unison 'between the instinct 
 of beauty and the instinct of worship. 
 
 In all these pursuits of Rachel's, she was greatly 
 aided and abetted by a Mrs. Erling, who was 
 boarding in the house. Her husband was extant, 
 which is not always the case with ladies' hus- 
 bands in New York, but he was hardly seen in 
 the house at all. He was an under-sized, blackish- 
 looking, dried-apple sort of man, a managing clerk 
 in a large law-office, very busy indeed, and, sooth 
 to say, about as little fitted to accompany his yoke- 
 fellow along the pathways which she preferred, as 
 could well be. He, however, like a man of sense, 
 made the best of it, let her have her own way, and 
 devoted himself wholly to his own affairs. He 
 hardly said a word at breakfast, shot off as soon as 
 it was over, and was never seen again at all until 
 next morning by anybody but his wife, unless he 
 chanced to be fallen in with about twelve o'clock 
 by some belated inmate, who discovered him un- 
 obtrusively entering by means of his night-key, 
 or silently gliding upstairs like an uncommonly 
 short, lean, and dark-complexioned ghost.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 73 
 
 Mrs. Erling, however, was strangely different 
 from him. She was a frail and almost translucent 
 looking woman, still young, with a singularly pure 
 and ethereal face, exceeding delicate in outline, 
 very fair, with wonderfully limpid, soft eyes, 
 which were surprisingly dark for one all whose 
 other physical traits imported whiteness, and 
 which therefore impressed you with the idea that 
 they belonged to sonle one else. 
 
 She was every way such a person as you may 
 fancy one of Baron Reichenbach's "sensitives" 
 to have been, but without the positive sickness 
 which seems to have been part of their profes- 
 sional outfit. Without being exactly a " Spiritua- 
 list," this Mrs. Erling was profoundly interested, 
 and pretty well read, in the history it has no 
 philosophy yet of that singular ghostly invasion 
 (to admit for the moment its own claims) during 
 the -last quarter of a century which has chosen 
 that name, and also in a great range of reading on 
 related subjects, including the mystics already 
 spoken of, remote inquiries about the earliest 
 heretics and heretical sects, Gnostics and Mani- 
 cheans, for instance, the purer heathen religions, 
 magic, and so on. Rachel was naturally disposed 
 to the wondering part of religious experiences, 
 and of course found herself very "ready to follow 
 Mrs. Erling through her spiritual old curiosity shop.
 
 74 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 At the same time, her whole religious training, 
 and the naturally elevated tone of her own 
 thoughts, kept her awake to the immeasurably 
 superior purity, grandeur, and wonderfulness of 
 Christianity. Thus, she was in no great danger 
 from her forays into wonderland, though you could 
 never have thought it, to listen to the heart-break- 
 ing lamentations of Miss Doddle and Mrs. Pogey, 
 who were morally certain, and indeed stated in so 
 many words, that Satan was evidently lying in 
 wait for the young girl, and greatly desiring to 
 have her, that he might sift her as wheat. 
 
 While time fled rapidly as aforesaid, other mat- 
 ters, without exactly fleeing, just went on as 
 usual. Any of Mrs. Worboise's guests who chose, 
 cheated her ; and there were too many who did. 
 Among these was old Judge De Forest, who was 
 a disgraceful old humbug, not to put too fine a 
 point upon it. He, as well as Horace, was an in- 
 ventor, but of what, nobody seemed distinctly 
 to know. He was a large, portly, red-faced 
 man, very oily and voluble of speech, habitually 
 talking of such astronomical sounding totals as 
 millions of dollars, very energetic in wordy advo- 
 cacy of all manner of what are called " advanced 
 and reformatory ' ' views ; and he wore a frill to 
 his shirt, chewed a good deal of tobacco in a 
 rather juicy way, and walked with a gold-headed
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 75 
 
 cane. He had some place or places which he 
 called " of business," and he usually went to 
 them. He spent a good deal of time, however, 
 in his room, he had one of the best rooms in 
 the house, at work at what seemed like mechan- 
 ical drawing, with a big board, great sheets of 
 white paper, pencils, and things ; but at any hints 
 respecting the said employment, he pursed up his 
 mouth with great dignity, and assumed an air of 
 haughty reserve quite wonderful to see, only in- 
 timating that it was impossible to discuss the 
 higher secrets of science with ordinary folks. 
 
 Naturally enough, living so near together, and 
 with so much that was in common in their ways 
 of thinking, Horace and Rachel became more and 
 more intimate, and more confidential and unre- 
 served in exchanging thoughts. Rachel's unvary- 
 ing sweetness of temper, and her unconscious 
 unworldliness, diffused around her an atmosphere 
 of rest which was exquisitely delightful to the 
 young man, worried and as it were storm-tossred 
 beyond expression as he had so often been with 
 the turbulent unreasonableness of Nettie Sylva. 
 His correspondence with this latter young lady, 
 as may have been conjectured, had much the 
 qualities after which Master Slender aspired in 
 his proposed marriage relation with Miss Anne 
 Page; there was no great love in the beginning
 
 76 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 (of the correspondence, of course), and it pleased 
 Heaven to decrease it upon better acquaintance. 
 It dwindled rapidly ; and indeed quickly became 
 practically extinct, yet without either amicable 
 explanation or unkind word. The fact is, like the 
 seed in the parable, because it .had no root, it 
 withered away. 
 
 So Horace waited on Rachel whenever she 
 wanted an escort, and spent very many pleasant 
 hours in reading or talking with her in the parlor 
 or in Mrs. Worboise's own neat little sitting-room. 
 She was as glad of his company as he was of 
 hers; and he found a new and keen pleasure in 
 seeing the dainty tact with which she used to 
 manosuvre to escape from Jim Fellows or from the 
 Judge, either as conversation-mate or escort, and V 
 to shelter herself under the wing of him, Horace. 
 After some narrow escapes in such enterprises as 
 these, from dilemmas which would have entailed 
 either direct fibs or open refusals, Miss Rachel 
 bethought herself of a device that is old enough, 
 no doubt, but which Horace happened not to have 
 thought of; and it gave him a degree of pleasure 
 whose depth surprised himself. Perhaps there is 
 no human bliss more inexpressible than that of 
 him to whom a lovely woman unconsciously re- 
 veals that she prefers him. What Rachel pro-
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 77 
 
 posed was an engagement. Not that, reader ; 
 another sort. It was a standing prior engagement 
 as escort ; so that she might always say with truth 
 that she had to go with him-
 
 78 SIX OF ONE ST 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 T~^\ID space permit, I should like to trace pretty 
 **^ fully the experiences of the year which 
 Horace and Rachel thus spent in New York City. 
 They were many and significant ; for even so 
 short a period as a year, during which we live 
 broad, is evidently equal to a long one during 
 which we live narrow, even on the principles of 
 board measure. Mr. Tennyson has said very 
 much the same thing, in his terse maxim of com- 
 parative chronology about " fifty years of Europe " 
 and " a cycle of Cathay." The thing is impossi- 
 ble, however ; it would fill a book. The winter 
 passed, and the spring came, with its abominably 
 filthy streets, and the uprising again of all the evil 
 smells that defile our greatest city. Dirtier fifty 
 years of New York than a cycle of Cologne, I 
 really believe. But the little band of pilgrims at 
 Mrs. Worboise's boarding-house lived through it, 
 although their landlady's delicately clean house- 
 keeping probably made the streets worse to them 
 than to anybody else. The months passed on ; the
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF TEE OTHER. 79 
 
 mud and smells of spring were succeeded by the 
 dust and smells of summer. But the discomforts of 
 the close and uncleanly city were often relieved by 
 the little excursions that Horace or Jim, now 
 promoted, by the way, to an editorial post in the 
 office of "The Great Democracy," used to or- 
 ganize at least once a week; sometimes to Fort 
 Lee and the wooded summits of the Palisades ; 
 sometimes to the heights of Staten Island above 
 the Narrows, where the dismantled old circular 
 sandstone tower of Fort Richmond stands in a 
 comatose state among the trees, or looking va- 
 cantly down upon the enormous modern water- 
 battery below. Sometimes they went over to 
 Greenwood ; or rambled along the beach in the 
 vicinity of Fort Hamilton, though the beauties 
 of the seashore thereabouts, and on Staten Island 
 as well, are too often profaned and ruined by the 
 sad remains of some defunct horse or dog, greatly 
 destructive of all romance. And the Central 
 Park was always open; a blessed parenthesis of 
 sweet air and wholesome nature let in among the 
 brick and stone, wholesome and refreshing as a 
 cool sleep between hot, weary days ; Rachel and 
 Mrs. Erling particularly used to pass many a de- 
 lightful half-day there ; sometimes near the Mall 
 and the Lake and the shrubbery above it, some- 
 times in the less frequented and quieter regions at 
 the northern part of the Park.
 
 80 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 The four quarters of the completed year went 
 by; the cool nights of the last part of August 
 foretold the coming of cool days in September, and 
 in due time the cool days came. It was on one 
 of these days that Horace, coming down to break- 
 fast as usual, discerned upon the pleasant face of 
 the landlady, obvious and unusually disfiguring 
 traces of weeping.* By this time Horace had estab- 
 lished himself very' strongly in the affections of 
 Mrs. Worboise, who indeed had come to lean 
 upon him very much as a widow does upon her 
 grown-up son. She was fond of Jim Fellows, too, 
 for the endless vagaries and quips of that rather 
 fantastic person had a curious fascination for her. 
 But she was rather afraid of him, or at least she 
 never felt quite sure about him ; while the more 
 delicate tact and more respectful kindness of 
 Horace had drawn her very near to him. It was 
 therefore neither impertinent nor inquisitive for 
 him to beckon her away from the breakfast-table 
 a moment, before he departed to his business, and 
 when she had accompanied him into the parlor, to 
 ask her plainly what was the matter. 
 
 The poor little lady sat down on the sofa, and 
 spoke. Horace was affected by her grief, for, as 
 he said himself, he could scarcely help crying, tall, 
 strong fellow as he was, when he saw the tears of 
 another ; and yet he could not help a sense of the
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 81 
 
 ludicrous as Mrs. Worboise told her little story, 
 her large soft eyes looking straight into his, and 
 the tears coming out one after another close to 
 her little pink nose, and pursuing each other down 
 her soft cheeks until they fell into her lap, while 
 so easily and fluently did she cry, that not a single 
 sob interfered with her speech.. 
 
 " O Horace ! I don't know what I shall do. I 
 can't get any money from Mr. De Forest ; and he 
 owes me all by himself enough to pay almost a 
 quarter's rent. And the landlord says he won't 
 wait any longer ; and if I don't pay up in full by 
 the first of October, and a month in advance be- 
 sides, he must have all my furniture as security, 
 and I must leave the house on the first of Novem- 
 ber too. I suppose he ought to have his money ; 
 but it 's very hard ! I don't think he ought to 
 take away every thing I have in the world ! " 
 
 Now, Horace was what you may call a natural 
 husband. That is, he had plenty of sense and 
 energy, abundance of sympathy, and the proper 
 tact of a man ; which is, in cases like this, rather 
 to support with fit encouragement than to add 
 grief to grief. 
 
 " It 's a great shame, Mrs. Worboise. But now, 
 
 don't you feel bad until to-morrow, at any rate. 
 
 I have something in my mind that will very likely 
 
 help you. So cheer up, and keep up your courage. 
 
 4* v
 
 82 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 We '11 see you safe through, Providence permit- 
 ting." 
 
 A little of this sort of general encouragement 
 went a great way with such a facile and happy 
 disposition. It was only a few moments before 
 Mrs. Worboise felt a great deal better. 
 
 " There," she said, drying her eyes, " I 'in only 
 a baby, after all. It 's very good of you, dear, to 
 comfort me up: I won't feel bad any more, at 
 least until you tell me I may. So now run away 
 to your work." 
 
 Horace had an idea, it is true ; one that he had 
 considered a good many times ; but if he had told 
 Mrs. Worboise what it was, it would not have 
 cheered her much, I fear. It does not sound like 
 any thing very wonderful, it was to see whether 
 Jim Fellows couldn't be of some use. 
 
 But this was by no means so small a resource as 
 you may think. A Hew York newspaper reporter, 
 if he is smart and efficient, and what they call a 
 rising man, and particularly if he is gifted with 
 a small quantity of wickedness for extreme cases, 
 can do a good deal. Horace and Jim walked down 
 the street together, as they often did, and Horace 
 opened the subject to him. 
 
 "Why, my son," responded Jim; "I've been 
 honing up the sword of justice for that old pig's 
 throat this two months. Honor bright, is it, if I 
 tell you ? "
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 83 
 
 " Honor bright," said Horace. 
 
 " Well, then ; you know he owes the dame now, 
 after what deuced little he has ever paid, pretty 
 near a thousand dollars. I've worried about it 
 some myself you've noticed that I grew thin 
 and didn't eat any thing ? " 
 
 "No," said Horace promptly. 
 
 " All right " (with a grin) ; " well, I had a 
 notion three months ago that the old villain could 
 pay if he chose, and I 've invested a little money 
 to find out ; and I 've found out. I 've had him 
 shadowed from time to time ever since, but I 've 
 not got quite all the facts I want yet. Am to see 
 my man this very day ; will have the whole for 
 you by tea-time. Meanwhile keep dark ! " 
 
 "I will. But, Jim, do you know what is it 
 that the old fellow is inventing ? " 
 
 " No. Not my line." 
 
 " Well, I do. He 's been ordering a little job of 
 iron work at our place, and he ordered some more 
 of a fellow that I happen to know ; and I 've seen 
 through that part of hi tricks, anyhow. It 's a* 
 perpetual motion ! " 
 
 Jim, though no mechanic, had enough of general 
 information and general incredulity together to let 
 him laugh as easily as Horace himself at this idea. 
 
 " Why," resumed Jim, " I thought all those 
 notions were dead."
 
 84 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 " By no means ; men are at work at such ma- 
 chines all the time. I knew one myself, down 
 in North Greyford. But I wonder Judge De 
 Forest should be such a fool. He 's a swindler, 
 I don't doubt ; but I don't see how he can swindle 
 anybody very deeply with such a bold imposition 
 as this." 
 
 " But I do, though ! " said Jim. " Why, Horace, 
 don't you see ? No, you can't ; you don't know the 
 man he 's swindling. Well, it '11 be safe enough 
 now, so I '11 tell you a little more, and you can put 
 that and that together. I didn't know exactly what 
 his machine was, but I knew he was getting up a 
 machine. And he has been receiving money to 
 pay for it, and a good deal too, a good deal 
 more than is necessary, by the same token, and 
 that's just where the blessed old scamp means 
 to salt down a little peculium for himself." 
 
 " Well, but how can you work him so as to do 
 Mrs. Worboise any good? " 
 
 " Oh ! you just leave your grandfather all alone 
 for that. I 've got my little plans pretty near a 
 focus now. I expected to touch him off soon ; 
 but as you say you promised to comfort the dame 
 by this evening, I guess we can get the scenery 
 ready in season. Well, here we are. Hi-i-i-i ! " 
 and he uttered an awful yell, just as they reached 
 the corner of Broadway, at which two young ladies
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 85 
 
 just before them jumped and squealed in a very 
 delightful manner, and the omnibus driver, who 
 was the person intended, turned round at once, 
 though he was half a block away. 
 
 " See there ! " said Jim ; " so much for a pig's 
 whisper: shot 'em flying, right and left. Well 
 au reservoir ! " And he darted off, leaving Horace 
 to go about his business. 
 
 At the boarding-house the hours went on but 
 heavily ; for the cheerfulness which Horace had 
 inspired did not very long avail Mrs. W.orboise 
 against the steady, incessant weight of her money 
 troubles. In the afternoon she coaxed Rachel to 
 come and sit with her in her room. Rachel, as 
 relative, friend, and helper, had grown to be even 
 closer to the lonesome and loving-hearted little 
 widow than Horace ; closer, that is, in those ex- 
 changes of emotional expression and sentiment 
 which, for want of husbands, husbandless women 
 must be fain to transact with each other, since 
 they are disclosures that will have secrecy, and if 
 conjugal honor cannot be their shield, the honor of 
 the sex must serve. 
 
 I need not reproduce the details of their dis- 
 course ; the same inexorable fate, the abhorred 
 fury with the shears, the Atropos of the printing- 
 press, cuts short the thread of a story as remorse- 
 lessly as her infamous old namesake the threads of
 
 86 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 lives ; and I am compressed by mere violence into a 
 summary of results. For the first time, Mrs. Wor- 
 boise confessed plainly the hopeless state of her 
 business affairs. So confidential had their relations 
 been, that this may seem surprising; yet there 
 must always be some last thing to confess, and 
 with Mrs. Worboise this was it. 
 
 She admitted explicitly that she was absolutely 
 incompetent to the horrid responsibilities of her 
 post ; but what was worse, she saw no prospect of 
 any thing except losing all her furniture, it 
 represented a total of abouk two thousand five 
 hundred dollars, less, of course, an important de- 
 duction for wear and tear, and of being turned 
 out of the only home she had, without a cent or a 
 shelter. 
 
 It was a sufficiently melancholy picture, indeed ; 
 and as usual, Mrs. Worboise cried as she drew it. 
 There was pretty sure to be water in all her land- 
 scapes. Rachel proceeded to pretty nearly repeat 
 Horace's morning course of tonics. She ventured, 
 indeed, a step farther than he had done ; for she 
 took the liberty of reproving her aunt, in a small 
 feminine way, for not finding more comfort under 
 her difficulties in her religion, * a sort of thing in 
 reproofs very commonly to be observed in those 
 youthful good folks who have not yet suffered any 
 of the chronic and wearing afflictions which draw
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF TEE OTHER. 87 
 
 most heavily upon the religious constitution. After 
 they have thus suffered, however, they find out 
 what a labor it is to be happy by any means what- 
 ever, in circumstances which constitute unhappi- 
 ness. But Mrs. Worboise had no disposition to 
 answer in this sense. She was very meek, and con- 
 fessed (with tears) that it was wrong ; but that it 
 was one of those times when every thing in the 
 world seemed to be against her. 
 
 However, after a reasonable allowance of such 
 healthful moral exercises, the two women grew a 
 little more cheerful together, and then they fell to 
 comparing of personal experiences ; for nothing is 
 so certain to bring out confidences, as confiding 
 something. Here there came to the light mighty 
 secrets, whereof, however, we shall refer to only 
 two. 
 
 Mrs. Worboise hinted that she had expected 
 Rachel would be at once Mark Hinsdale's wife 
 and her father's housekeeper ; in reply to which 
 Rachel, in a quiet, serious way, intimated that 
 perhaps it might have been so, but that Mark had 
 greatly distressed her, and, she thought, done wrong, 
 in pressing her as earnestly as he did to marry him 
 while her grief was so fresh at her mother's death ; 
 and that in consequence the currents of their feel- 
 ings about each other had quite changed. Then 
 Mrs. Worboise intimated further that perhaps
 
 88 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 Horace, &c. To which the demure Rachel only 
 said, hardly blushing, and with proper and ac- 
 curate caution in utterance, that he hadn't asked 
 her, a very safe answer. Then Mrs. Worboise 
 replied that he meant to, she knew it, she said, 
 putting a thought too much emphasis on her 
 verb ; upon which Miss Rachel dexterously turned 
 the conversation, and talked away famously about 
 Uncle Worboise. 
 
 But whether or not they did each other any other 
 good, at any rate they got rid of nearly all the after- 
 noon ; insomuch that before they knew it, it was 
 time to get ready for tea.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 89 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ** I^EA came, and the boarders came to tea. Noth- 
 ing has been said in this history, as nothing 
 was needed, and there was no room if any thing 
 had been, about the rank and file of this noble 
 army. Suffice it to observe, that they filled a pretty 
 long table in the large basement dining-room, which 
 had been carried through into the original kitchen 
 of the house ; that having, in its turn, been driven 
 out into an addition built upon part of the back 
 yard. Judge De Forest was present with his frill 
 and his dignity ; Miss Doddle and Mrs. Fogey were 
 there with their serious and improving observations, 
 what a pity that it is out of the question to trans- 
 fer a seasoning at least of their discourse into these 
 comparatively frivolous pages ! Rachel was there, 
 and Horace, and Mrs. Erling, and Jim Fellows, the 
 scandalizing tease, who used to vex the righteous 
 souls of those two saintly women, to startle Mrs. 
 Worboise, and to amuse Rachel and Horace and 
 himself, with deftly chosen observations, which 
 seemed awfully irreverent at first ; but which he
 
 90 SIX OF ONE ST 
 
 always defended in such a manner as to confound, 
 if not convince, his opponents, who at last came to 
 treat him mostly with that peculiar sort of tender 
 consideration which a puppy learns to display in 
 nosing a chestnut-burr. Jim, by the way, accord- 
 ing to the etiquette in such cases, briefly introduced 
 this evening to Mrs. Worboise a quiet and respecta- 
 ble-looking man, whom he named as Mr. Crafts ; a 
 professional acquaintance, he observed, whom he 
 had taken the liberty of inviting to sup with him. 
 Mrs. Worboise accordingly received Mr. Crafts, 
 and seated him next Jim, with her wonted kindly 
 courtesy; though Horace and Rachel, if not the 
 others, saw that she was still distraught with her 
 troubles, no matter how bravely she strove to 
 thrust them down out of the way of her official 
 duties. And the viands of the meal were served, 
 and there were chat and pleasantry and laughter as 
 usual. 
 
 " Thank you for the toasted codfish," observed 
 Master Jim to his vis-d-vis, Mrs. Pogey. " Dread- 
 ful thing, if they only knew it, to be grilled so 
 after they 're dead, hay ? " 
 
 Mrs. Pogey groaned and shook her head, and 
 answered, 
 
 " Mr. Fellows, if we sin against great light we 
 shall no doubt find a dreadful fate awaiting us 
 after death."
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 91 
 
 " Light ? " replied Jim, as cheerfully as if the 
 good lady had made the most humorous suggestion 
 in the world " light ? Codfish ain't much on 
 optics. Hefty in acoustics, though, all tongues 
 and sounds inside. Ever listen to one of those 
 sounds ? Gung'l, the fiddler, was a Newfound- 
 lander ; did you know that, Mrs. Worboise ? So 
 fond of -sounds that he always kept a keg of ; em 
 by him to smell at for inspiration in composing. 
 Named his very best set of waltzes after it 
 ' Sounds from home,' you know." 
 
 Then he looked across to the Judge, who was 
 solemnly imbibing his Oolong, and continued, 
 " By the way, Judge, how comes on the perp ? " 
 
 Judge De Forest started, set down his cup, and 
 looked across with a most severe and deeply of- 
 fended air. 
 
 "-Etual," insisted Jim, with a wink. " Oh, we 
 know a thing or two, Judge ! No hyphens be- 
 tween friends, Judge. But that wasn't what I 
 was going to say. Any sounds from your home 
 recently, Judge ? " 
 
 The old fellow's face grew quite purple with 
 heavy wrath and dignity. 
 
 " Mr. Fellows," he remarked, in his most judi- 
 cial manner, " I fail to apprehend either the sig- 
 nificance or the propriety of your observations, sir. 
 They are unseasonable, sir. I fear that you have
 
 92 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 been somewhat thoughtless in your use of stimulat- 
 ing liquors, sir. You are certainly violating the 
 proprieties, sir ! " 
 
 Jim opened his mouth to reply, when a sharp, 
 high, female voice broke in, 
 
 " Jedge, indeed ! Not haaf so much as you 're 
 a violatin' on 'em this minnit, Ephraim Huggins ! " 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Mrs. Worboise, " I forgot to in- 
 troduce Mrs. Huggins ! " 
 
 Then she stopped short ; in fact, it was a super- 
 fluous introduction. The silence that followed 
 was, for a moment, perfect. Then a single sniz- 
 zling giggle would squeeze out through Jim Fel- 
 lows's teeth, though he held in as hard as he could. 
 Horace, seeming to understand, managed to laugh 
 silently ; and the stranger, Mr. Crafts, too, smiled ; 
 a kind of grim smile, that intimated amusement 
 rather than surprise. But the blank, ineffable 
 astoundment of all the rest can hardly be dreamed. 
 As for the Judge, nothing can do justice to his 
 bearing except, perhaps, a horrid picture that I 
 once saw of a monstrous old bison being worried 
 to death by a gang of prairie wolves ; blinded, 
 bleeding at a hundred wounds, helpless to reach or 
 to escape his agile assailants, resisting, indeed, only 
 in the vast mass of his slow enduring vitality. So 
 the heavy old judge, thus beset, still maintained 
 his pompous manner ; though a very close observer
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 93 
 
 might have noticed even a kind of tremor during 
 the impromptu observations of the high-voiced 
 lady ; and there assuredly was a shade of uncer- 
 tainty in his tones when he responded, and he 
 would not look towards the lady aforesaid, who 
 had jumped up when she began her apostrophe, 
 and remained standing. All the rest could thus 
 perceive that she was oldish, thin, and indeed 
 skinny ; pale and worried-looking, with thin lips, 
 a cross expression, a peaked, red-tipped nose, 
 scanty hair, and a shabby old dress. Perhaps if 
 they had known her as well as the Judge, they 
 would not have looked at her any more than he 
 did. She certainly was not pretty to see, as she 
 stood there quivering with nervous excitement, 
 and her little, pale, watery eyes looking venom- 
 ously at the august object of her ire. The Judge 
 arose, and it was to Mrs. Worboise that he spoke : 
 
 " Madam, I have been grossly insulted at your 
 table. I shall withdraw, madam. I am by no 
 means accustomed to such treatment, and shall not 
 put up with it, madam ! " 
 
 And, pushing back his chair, he left the room 
 without attending to the embarrassed apology 
 which Mrs. Worboise began to offer. Even before 
 the door closed behind the burly frame of the 
 Judge, however, Mr. Crafts arose with much nim- 
 bleness, and, without a word of apology or explana-
 
 94 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 tion, darted out after him. Jim and Horace 
 followed, rather more deliberately. Mrs. Hug- 
 gins sat down. All the rest of the boarders looked 
 at each other in a stunned sort of way, and 
 exchanged expressions of wonder in low tones. 
 
 In a moment Jim looked in, and asked Mrs. 
 Worboise to be good enough to step into the par- 
 lor a moment. She did so, and found the unhappy 
 Judge again at bay. 
 
 " O Mr. Fellows ! pray tell me what does it all 
 mean ? " she cried out, in a terrible state of nut- 
 ter. 
 
 " Just what I asked you in here for," observed 
 he. " But take a seat. We '11 finish our negotia- 
 tions in a moment. What is the whole amount 
 due you from Huggins ? " 
 
 "You mean Judge De Forest?" asked Mrs. 
 Worboise timidly. 
 
 " No more a judge than yourself, madam," 
 broke in Crafts sententiously. " Ephraim Hug- 
 gins of Saint Louis, State of Mizzoorah, spekila- 
 ter." 
 
 With a good deal of difficulty the good lady, at 
 Jim's reiterated demand, and with wide, scared 
 eyes, managed to get enough of her wits together 
 to fix on the correct sum total, a little short of 
 nine hundred dollars. Fellows summarily said, 
 "We'll call it the round sum; little enough for
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 95 
 
 interest ; " and he scribbled a receipt in full, and 
 laid it before Mrs. Worboise, saying, 
 
 " Sign that, please." 
 
 "But" she began, naturally enough 
 
 " All right, marm," said Crafts. 
 
 "Yes," assented Horace, "it's right; do, Mrs. 
 Worboise." And she signed, like one in a dream. 
 
 " There," said Jim : " check for that amount, 
 Huggins, if you please." 
 
 " Suppose I won't, what then ? " said Huggins 
 surlily. 
 
 " Take him, Crafts." said Jim ; " we won't have 
 a particle of nonsense." 
 
 Crafts now showed and read an order of arrest 
 on a charge of swindling, and sued out in behalf 
 of one Marcus Wendall. 
 
 Huggins, at hearing this name, muttered a pretty 
 large oath, and without a word took out a big fat 
 pocket-book, drew from it a blank check, filled 
 and signed it, and pushed it over the table. 
 
 " No go," said Jim, who read it carefully. 
 " T'other bank, Huggins ! " 
 
 Evidently with the very bitterest reluctance, 
 the detected swindler substituted another check. 
 
 " There, Mrs. Worboise," said Jim, " there 's 
 your money. But do you be sure and cash the 
 check the moment the bank 's open to-morrow. 
 If Crafts had let the old villain get out of the front
 
 96 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 door he was pointing for when he left the table, 
 you wouldn't have got it. I reckon we 've got to 
 keep him here all night as 'tis, and Crafts along 
 with him, to make it a sure thing that is, unless 
 he wants to sleep in the station-house, and also, 
 unless Mrs. Worboise orders him into the street." 
 
 " Oh, no ! " she cried out. " Oh, not in the 
 least!" 
 
 " Or," suggested Crafts, in his grimmest manner, 
 " unless the old gentleman 'd like the society of 
 his lawful wife." 
 
 Even Huggins appeared to see that this was not 
 a serious suggestion. It was therefore agreed that 
 Mr. Crafts should be intrusted with the pleasing 
 task of watching over the slumbers of Mr. Hug- 
 gins, in place of that fairer companion whom he 
 seemed to scorn. 
 
 "Well," said Huggins, "if you're through with 
 me, I am with you ; I '11 go upstairs." 
 
 " Wait a moment," said Horace, " Here, Jim." 
 They conferred a moment in a corner. " Good ! 
 ^first-rate!" exclaimed Jim. "Call 'em in." 
 
 Horace stepped out, and brought in Rachel and 
 Mrs. Huggins. Rachel sat down close to Mrs. 
 Worboise, and Mrs. Huggins opposite her lord. 
 
 "Mrs. H.," said Jim, "we've been thinking 
 that perhaps it would do nicely all round' if our 
 friend there should just hand you half his cash
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF TEE OTHER. 97 
 
 balance now in bank, and then you leave him alone 
 again! That'll give you let's see" he took 
 out a memorandum " about thirteen hundred 
 dollars." 
 
 Mrs. Huggins considered a moment, and con- 
 sented. 
 
 " That is," suggested the practical Crafts, " un- 
 til you find out that he 's got another amount to 
 levy on." 
 
 Wincing, if any thing, more than before, the 
 victim drew another check, and was then allowed 
 to depart under the charge of the vigilant Crafts 
 to his own room. Jim renewed to Mrs. Huggins, 
 who was also going upstairs, the caution he had 
 given to Mrs. Worboise about the check ; and then 
 Mrs. Worboise insisted that Jim Fellows should 
 tell her what she had been about, and what he had 
 been about : " For, mercy me ! " exclaimed the 
 puzzled landlady, " 1 feel as if I had been whirled 
 round in a coffee-roaster ! " 
 
 Jim explained. He told the landlady how he 
 had been watching Huggins for a long time ; how 
 he had only this very day found out about two 
 bank-accounts, the sham and the true ; how the 
 vengeful Mrs. Huggins had a few days ago come 
 to New York in search of her recreant lord, and 
 going to the detective head-quarters, had fallen in 
 with Crafts, who had forthwith notified Jim, and
 
 98 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 thereupon the tea-table tableau had been blocked 
 out. 
 
 " But what made him do as you told him to ? " 
 asked Rachel. 
 
 " Why, bless you, didn't you see the oi of 
 arrest?" asked Jim. 
 
 " But what has he done to Wendall ? " 
 
 "Got a lot of his money. But the real thing 
 that frightened him was, that I let him know I 
 would expose him in the papers in full, in my most 
 picturesque style, if he didn't pay up. That would 
 have broken up his whole arrangement with Wen- 
 dall." 
 
 "Why," said Horace, "broke it up? WendaU 
 has sued out this order of arrest now." 
 
 " No, he hasn't," said Jim coolly. " When the 
 ladies have got their money, I shall notify Huggins 
 that the warrant is all a hum, and that he can 
 proceed against me for false imprisonment or con- 
 spiracy or forgery or high treason, if he wants. 
 He'll be as still as a mouse, though, no fear of 
 that." 
 
 " Why," said Horaoe again, his eyes wide open, 
 " it 's a forgery ! " 
 
 " No ; the statute defines that," calmly explained 
 Master Jim. "I asked a lawyer. It's a misde- 
 meanor ; but we '11 burn the corpus delicti in good 
 season ; and the recording angel will blot out the
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 99 
 
 entry with a tear, as he did Uncle Toby's oath 
 because I 'm a good little boy, after all." 
 
 It was a fact ; the reckless fellow had certainly 
 perpetrated a legal offence, and a pretty serious 
 one ; yet it was so extremely fine a specimen of 
 poetical justice, that one can hardly help being 
 glad afterwards, though none of us could really 
 have recommended it in advance. 
 
 Mrs. Worboise intended to transfer the whole of 
 her money to the landlord. But Jim and Horace, 
 acting a good deal like joint conservators for her 
 benefit, forbade this, saying that half of it was 
 quite enough. 
 
 " Fact is," said Jim, " I know you can't go on 
 here, dame, just as well as you do, and a sight 
 better too. You ought to put the money in your 
 pocket and leave." 
 
 Here a servant brought in a letter for Rachel, 
 saying that it had fallen down behind the table on 
 which the carrier's letters were laid at the after- 
 noon delivery, and that she had just found it on 
 the floor. Rachel read it, and handed it to Mrs. 
 Worboise. It was from Squire Holley, and was 
 an urgent request to his half-sister to close up her 
 New York business and come and keep house for 
 him. 
 
 " He 's just as good as he can be," said the land- 
 lady tearfully. " I don't know what to say."
 
 100 SIX 'OF ONE BY 
 
 " I do," said Horace. " I '11 bet that sly thing 
 told her father to do that ! " 
 
 Rachel blushed. "Well," said she, "if I did, 
 it was in good season, wasn't it ? Mayn't I help 
 Aunt Delia as well as you ? " 
 
 " Surely," said Horace ; " and very good of you 
 to do it. And Mrs. Worboise must go too. Now, 
 Mrs. Worboise, cash your check in the morning. 
 Jim and I will go and see Mr. Warren this very 
 mimrte." 
 
 Warren was the landlord. The young men 
 went instantly. He was a sufficiently well-dis- 
 posed old fellow, but would not give them much 
 of an answer that night, saying very naturally 
 ; that he must see his tenant. 
 
 However, within a few days an arrangement was 
 made by which Mrs. Worboise's lease was surren- 
 dered ; her furniture and carpets, which under her 
 skilful and diligent management were in remarkably 
 good order, were appraised ; the landlord knew of a 
 lady, he said, who would, he thought, take charge 
 of the whole establishment at the end of Septem- 
 ber ; and not only was Mrs. Worboise able to re- 
 tain the whole of her money from Huggins, but. 
 there was a little surplus due her from the furni- 
 ture, over and above the arrears of rent which it 
 paid for. 
 
 Notice was given to the boarders accordingly;
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. ' 101 
 
 and on or before the 30th September, 1871, they 
 either searched out other homes, or arranged to 
 remain under the new administration. 
 
 As for Huggins, he departed on the morning 
 after his exposure, with his frill much rumpled, 
 his feathers generally in a very draggled state, 
 and his bank-account horribly dilapidated. He 
 talked big to the very last, assuring Crafts that 
 he should hear from him.
 
 102 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 r I ^HE diligent reader has already learned that 
 Nettie Sylva and Jeff Fleming found their 
 way to the ancient and wealthy city of Hartford. 
 It is such a trifle to travel nowadays, that I need 
 only say that they went at such times as pleased 
 them, by rail, from Greyford to New Haven, and 
 thence to Hartford. Nettie's Aunt Helen lived in 
 a little cosey tenement of her own, in the southern 
 part of the city ; and Nettie went, of course, to her 
 home. As for Jeff Fleming, he established him- 
 self at first in a hall bedroom, and " lived in his 
 trunk ; " but being at once independent and soci- 
 able in his tastes, he quickly devised a scheme 
 which was on many accounts much more agree- 
 able ; and enlisting two or three decent young fel- 
 lows, a clerk in the same store with him, and 
 others, acquaintances of the same clerk, they found 
 some empty rooms all in a row on the upper floor 
 of a great building all full of offices, in the heart 
 of the city, and, buying cheap new carpets and 
 sets of furniture, they fitted up a very nice little
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 103 
 
 colony in the air, three little bedrooms, and a 
 fourth room for a parlor. Here they lived in great 
 mirth and harmony ; for though no two of them 
 were alike, yet that only made the quartet more 
 entertaining to its members ; and, as they were all 
 manly and well-meaning young men, they were in 
 no danger of jars or disagreements. 
 
 It is a pity not to acquaint you with the fun and 
 jollity those four had in " the dove-cot," as they 
 christened it, and of the serious communion too ; 
 for thorough good fellows like these four will be 
 sure to discuss as they go along together both the 
 funny and the serious sides of every thing. As for 
 Jeff, he was a sociable, organizing, and suggestive 
 person, full of ideas, and greatly inclined to set 
 them forth ; in danger therefore, if in any danger 
 iii that direction, of becoming wordy and long- 
 winded. Jerry Bigelow was full of puns and ver- 
 bal jocularities ; and he therefore tended to his own 
 proper sort of tediousness. Punsters, however, have 
 to be quick-witted ; and thus they well know that 
 the sole condition on which they are tolerated is, 
 that they endure the pick-pocket similitude, and 
 all manner of other snubbing and reprobation 
 usually, of course, administered by persons not 
 bright enough to do what they affect so greatly 
 to despise ; so that the pretty uniform course of 
 ingenious discouragements which his three com-
 
 104 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 panions provided for him no more discouraged 
 Master Jerry than the jeers and sarcasm of the 
 heathen would a pious and enthusiastic mission- 
 ary. Ralph Van Or den was neither a joker nor a 
 talker. He was handsome, dark-faced, a little slow 
 of speech, and a fine singer of many songs and bal- 
 lads, which he accompanied, by ear, on the guitar. 
 Last of the four was Abram Wilks, a tall flaxen- 
 haired fellow, slender even to lankness, awkward 
 and queer as possible, with a great taste for collec- 
 tions of all kinds, shells, coins, old books, eggs, 
 any thing that could be classified or even put in a 
 row. 
 
 Jeffs circle of friends began to enlarge before he 
 had been many weeks in Hartford. In a town like 
 that, crowded with an immense concentration of 
 business, there is a gathering of both young men 
 and old almost as busy and wide-awake as in 
 enormous New York. At the same time, the very 
 fact that the city is small prevents the sense of 
 loneliness that springs up amid the New York 
 multitude, and preserves a portion of the feeling of 
 guardianship and watchfulness by the community 
 over the individual. This is a wonderfully valu- 
 able guarantee of decency and uprightness in life. 
 So Jeff flourished and made progress with great 
 speed ; became an active member of the Sons of 
 Temperance, and of a debating society connected
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 105 
 
 with the Young Men's Institute ; a diligent and 
 inquisitive scholar in a Bible-class at the Centre 
 Church Sunday-school, sometimes even somewhat 
 to the bewilderment of the intelligent but rather 
 conventional gentleman in charge ; a useful mem- 
 ber of the choir for Jeff sung a very fair bari- 
 tone, and could even serve as a tenor in case of 
 great necessity, with a little strain or even a falsetto 
 on a few of the higher notes, and constant care to 
 sing in a head voice. 
 
 As for Nettie Sylva, her case was about equally 
 fortunate. Her aunt was much older than Dr. 
 Sylva ; and having always had an especial fond- 
 ness for Nettie, the relation between them was 
 more like the loving tenderness of affectionate 
 grandparent and grandchild, than a mere ordinary 
 collateral kinship in the second degree. Aunt 
 Helen was quite an old lady, wearing her own gray 
 hair under a neat cap, always dressing in black or 
 gray, precise and rigid in- all her views, feelings, ' 
 and sentiments, and especially high and unbending 
 in respect of goodness of family, belonging in this 
 as well as in some other respects to a class of which 
 but few specimens are nowadays left, like lofty 
 peaks of a primitive formation, rising through the 
 homogeneous " tertiary drift " and " recent allu- 
 vium " of our average communities. Her husband, 
 Deacon Tarbox, was a dry and quaint old gentle- 
 
 5*
 
 106 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 man, with the oddest prim air about him, and of a 
 precision, conservatism, orthodoxy, and careful cor- 
 rectness generally, of such inexpressible rigidity, 
 that in comparison with him, even poor strict 
 Aunt Helen might appear quite randy. But he 
 had a good deal of humor of a high and dry sort, 
 which he dealt out sparingly, and with something 
 like an air of regret, as a miser dislikes to see coin 
 move away from his fingers, irrespective whether 
 gain or loss is to follow. 
 
 Deacon Tarbox and Aunt Helen always had 
 baked beans for supper Saturday night, and the 
 same cold for dinner on Sunday, the latter meal 
 being sometimes re-enforced by a dish of cold 
 meat and invariably by pie and a cup of tea. 
 Jeff had called to see Nettie very soon after they 
 came to Hartford ; and the young man, having had 
 the tact to keep pretty much all of his ideas to him- 
 self, and to assent to whatever was suggested by the 
 seniors in the way of doctrines, whether secular or 
 theological, became highly acceptable in their eyes. 
 His membership of the Bible-class and of the choir 
 as it happened it was at the Centre Church that 
 Mr. Tarbox was deacon confirmed this good opin- 
 ion, as did also his co-operation in the temperance 
 reform ; and thus it fell out that not only was Jeff 
 installed as Nettie's usual escort to rehearsals she 
 sang alto, by the way, and a good alto too, oil
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 107 
 
 Saturday evening^ ; but it came to be the recog- 
 nized order of events, that he should take tea at 
 Deacon Tarbox's Saturday evenings, and should 
 also, whenever he chose, be allowed to walk home 
 with the family from church, and partake of the 
 modest and cool but substantial regulation dinner 
 of that day. It need not be said that at these sab- 
 bath occasions Deacon Tarbox always said " the 
 sabbath," and never " Sunday " the greatest seri- 
 ousness of word and look was a matter of course. 
 But Jeff Fleming, a New England boy, knew this 
 well enough ; no danger of his offending in this 
 respect, so long as he should wish to preserve the 
 good opinion of the deacon, or to be even tolerated 
 within his gates. It is possible that this rigid law 
 was slightly relaxed during the Saturday evening 
 after sunset ; but the difference, if there was any, 
 was but a shade. It was the old school of observ- 
 ances as well as of theology to which Deacon Tar- 
 box belonged, and had belonged from his youth up, 
 and in which he would continue to his death, should 
 that be a thousand years hence. 
 
 The first occasion, however, on which Jeff was 
 admitted to the deacon's hospitality, was a week- 
 day one, only a few days after his arrival, and 
 before he was quite settled in his new home; 
 being a dinner, to which he was invited by Aunt 
 Helen so very pressingly that he could not well
 
 108 BIX OF ONE BY 
 
 refuse. He must stay, really, said the good old 
 lady; she did not see Greyford faces every day, 
 and his mother was her father's second cousin. 
 
 In the matter of kinship, the Yankees are al- 
 most as tenacious as the Scotch ; and those of the 
 country towns especially. It belonged to the 
 quiet and steadfast character of Aunt Helen to 
 preserve this sentiment, even after her many 
 years' residence in the busy city ; and Jeff respond- 
 ed to it with the vivacious pleasure of a youth 
 who finds unexpected friends. However, the chief 
 reason for recording this first dinner was not so 
 much its being a demonstration of natural affec- 
 tion, as the fact that it gives an opportunity to 
 chronicle one of Deacon Tarbox's characteristic 
 sayings. If the occasion had been Sunday, or 
 Saturday evening either, he would have bitten his 
 own head off before he would have said it ; be- 
 sides that the subject-matter would have been 
 absent. They had a roast pig for dinner -on the 
 day in question, succulent and toothsome enough 
 to have inspired the famous treatise of Charles 
 Lamb on the subject, and which pleased well the 
 healthy young appetites of Miss Nettie and Mas- 
 ter Jeff. The young gentleman, indeed, expressed 
 his approbation in warm terms, and asked Aunt 
 Helen how she could possibly contrive to produce 
 such a marvellous triumph of the culinary art.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 1Q9 
 
 Before the old lady could say whatever she meant 
 to say, her quaint old husband answered for her, 
 with his very driest manner, in his most pre- 
 cise and slow 'utterance, with an extra portion 
 of solemnity about his prim, thin lips, and with 
 a funny, formal bow across the table to his 
 spouse : 
 
 . " I will tell you, Mr. Fleming. She always 
 gets into the oven along with the roast." 
 
 Of course when the winter came down the 
 broad Connecticut River Valley all the way from 
 Canada, ice followed, and smoothed out all his 
 footsteps upon lake and stream. Jeff and his 
 three friends, being at that happy age when the 
 puzzle of life is how to expend the surplus of it, 
 hastened to overhaul their skating tackle, and to 
 use whatever spare hours they could command, in 
 staying out in the cold and scratching about on 
 the ice. As the march of mind had not omitted 
 Greyford, so Nettie had learned to skate ; and 
 Jeff and she had some very nice excursions on the 
 broad and glassy surface of the Connecticut, dur- 
 ing a " cold snap " of a week or two, before snow 
 came. Sometimes the four young men went to- 
 gether ; and once or twice a party of eight was 
 organized, each escorting his steel-shod damsel. 
 All this mirth and jollity, however, and other 
 agreeable things too, were brought to a sudden
 
 HO SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 close, by no less an event than the loss or at 
 least the irreparable injury of a tall or stove- 
 pipe hat, and the consequences thereof, which be- 
 fell as here followeth. 
 
 One blowing Saturday afternoon, when the early 
 closing movement had enabled Jeff to take an ex- 
 tra number of hours' skating, as if to get himself 
 well stiffened up about the legs for Sunday, Nettie 
 and he went down to the river as usual to skate. 
 They got safely out upon the ice, fastened on 
 their skates, and went careering about up and 
 down before the docks and all along the city front. 
 As the afternoon advanced, and it drew towards 
 evening, the dull, gray clouds seemed to thicken ; 
 the north-wester, which had been raving along the 
 river all the afternoon, whisking into small drifts 
 and winrows a little dry snow that had fallen 
 within a day or two, seemed to grow stronger and 
 stronger, instead of lulling as sunset approached ; 
 and whistled and whewed along out from under 
 the heavy, lumbering mass of the " Great Bridge," 
 with such a vengeance that it really required a 
 good deal of pluck as well as muscle to make 
 head against it. 
 
 Nettie and Jeff had more than once made their 
 way defiantly up to the bridge, in the very teeth 
 of old Boreas, (was he north-west?) and then, 
 turning, had spread out their arms like sails, and
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF TEE OTHER. HI 
 
 glided victoriously forth, literally upon the wings 
 of the wind, far away to the south ; standing 
 perfectly still, and borne over the smooth ice as 
 swiftly and steadily as two great birds in the air. 
 
 What it was that made Jeff Fleming wear a 
 tall hat out into that frozen hurricane, it is useless 
 to conjecture. Why, indeed, he wore one at any 
 time, or why any human being should do so, unless 
 compelled by the sentence of a court of justice, 
 as Chinese felons go about with a thick plank 
 round their necks, I for my part cannot imagine. 
 If the young man had known but how fortunate 
 for people who write about such circumstances 
 that the persons in question do not know ! At any 
 rate, Jeff usually wore a tall hat, and with mascu- 
 line obstinacy he wore it now. By means of the 
 most energetic jerks he had seated it so firmly on 
 his head that it might well have been believed 
 capable of removal only " with it, or on it," like 
 a good Spartan and his shield. But there is, as 
 some philosopher has profoundly observed, an 
 "innate depravity of inanimate matter." This, 
 probably, imperceptibly loosened the hat. The 
 really tremendous cold, in spite of Jeff's young 
 blood and vigorous exercise, had, moreover, begun 
 to drive the feeling out of his forehead, and to sub- 
 stitute the cold numb band next the hat-rim, 
 which the votaries of the abominable thing know
 
 112 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 all about, and which prevented him from knowing 
 that it was becoming loose. Perhaps, too, for 
 there are absolutely no exceptions, we are told, 
 to the operations of the great natural laws, the 
 cold was contracting his head a little who 
 knows ? At any rate, just as they swept swiftly 
 down to the end of one of their long, southwardly 
 trips, and whirled round to fight their way back 
 again against the vengeful north-wester, off went 
 Jeff's hat, and bowled away down the river, 
 skipping along and turning this way and that as 
 if it were alive and looking round with one great 
 empty eye to see if anybody were coming after it. 
 Jeff flung up one hand as quick as lightning, but 
 too late. Prompt in deciding, and not able to 
 afford to lose a nice new hat, he merely cried out 
 to Nettie, "Don't wait I '11 catch up!" and 
 sprang forth after the fugitive. 
 
 Nettie stood laughing a moment, to see the fun, 
 but it was too cold to stand. Turning about, she 
 struck out with long, resolute strokes, for the 
 bridge, and in a few seconds was out of sight 
 round a low woody point. 
 
 Twice or thrice Jeff all but caught his fleeing 
 head-gear ; and once, as it lodged for a moment in 
 a light snow-wreath, he even stooped to lay hands 
 on it. But as he afterwards said in describing 
 the experience it "laughed right in his face,
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF TEE OTHER. Hg 
 
 and hopped off again." It bounded and rolled, 
 shooting across broad glassy spaces, vaulting with 
 diabolic nimbleness over any little impediment, 
 until the enraged proprietor almost thought he 
 could see an imp riding inside of it, and making 
 impertinent gestures backward at him over the 
 rim. His ears quickly began to tingle, and then 
 to lose their feeling, and he had ta rub them furi- 
 ously more than once. Even the very top of his 
 head, through all his thick hair, began to feel the 
 sharp bites of the relentless icy wind. Angrier 
 than ever, he gathered his strength, filled his 
 lungs full, set his teeth, and, though he was already 
 flying along under the double impulse of legs and 
 tempest at a rate that a locomotive could hardly 
 have matched, he darted forward for one final 
 spurt 
 
 And with barely time for a cry, he flew with a 
 monstrous plunge away down into the deep, dark 
 blue waters of Connecticut River, rushing, with 
 the tremendous momentum of his speed, twenty 
 feet beyond the furthest edge of the thinning 
 transparent black ice, that he had seen for the 
 merest instant beneath his feet, infinitely too late 
 for even an effort to save himself, and hardly long 
 enough, so lightning-quick was the motion, to 
 know that he was gone.
 
 114 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 "\T 7HILE Jeff is paddling about in the water, 
 let us make a few calm observations. We 
 are better situated for that purpose than he, 
 although he may have the advantage of us in 
 point of coolness. What he soused into was not 
 what is called an " air-hole ; " it was a broad strip 
 of open water, stretching across the whole width 
 of the river, just at a turn in the channel, and 
 where a sort of ripple caused by some bar or 
 obstruction at the bottom had thus far resisted all 
 the powers of Jack Frost. If this hat-chase of his 
 had been foreseen, any of his Hartford-bred friends 
 would have cautioned him about this bend in the 
 river. If it had not been half-dark, and if he had 
 not been so vexed and eager about his hat, or if 
 he could possibly have imagined the existence of 
 any such hole in short, if for any reason what- 
 ever Jeff had not done it, it would not have been 
 done. But he did ; and there he is, at last, scrab- 
 bling and slopping in that mush of ice and water 
 that is working and rustling along the edge of the
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. H5 
 
 river in the very innermost elbow of the bend. 
 Instantaneous as his plunge had been, and amazing 
 as it was, Jeff was too practised a swimmer not to 
 shut his mouth tight as he went under ; and he 
 was too ready and too strong to be either terrified 
 or paralyzed in mind or body, as a feebler person 
 or a less experienced aquatic would have been. 
 So, without trying to free himself from either 
 skates or overcoat, he half instinctively felt the 
 truth, that in that freezing water no man could live 
 more than minutes ; and that if he got out at all, it 
 must be at once. No man who has not passed 
 through some such peril understands what efforts 
 can be condensed into seconds, where the jaws of 
 death are even closing over him. But the usefulness 
 of many a long run on land and many a long swim 
 in the sea now showed itself. Even if years of life 
 had been drained in that awful struggle of two 
 minutes, the victory was cheap. Despite the 
 skates (it seemed as if his feet weighed a thousand 
 pounds) ; despite the weight of his heavy water- 
 soaked clothing, he got his face above water, at 
 one look saw the shore, and went rushing for it 
 with desperate leaps, throwing himself along edge- 
 ways, shoulder first, not able to surge his body 
 above the water to the waist, as he had often done 
 in the summer waters of the Sound, but yet deci- 
 sively mastering the cold, cruel, lapping flood.
 
 116 SIX OF ONE BY ' 
 
 He struck wet clay, both with, knee and hand, 
 just as breath and strength began to fail together. 
 No human being can put forth his very uttermost 
 of strength or motion except for just so long as he 
 can hold his breath. Eagerly enough he scram- 
 bled and slopped his way out, clutching ice, mud, 
 leaves, sticks, whatever lay along that soiled and 
 dreary margin. His laden feet sank and stuck in 
 mire; he was bedaubed with the blue-gray clay 
 from head to foot ; but he had escaped the deadly 
 river ! 
 
 However, it was only to encounter a second foe 
 no less deadly. Prompt and ready as ever, he 
 forced his way up the frozen slope of the steep 
 bank ; sat down instantly, while his hands should 
 retain some life, and tried his skate-straps. He 
 could not bring his numbing fingers to bear. He 
 took out his pocket-knife, opened it with his teeth, 
 and cut the straps. Already, since he came out 
 of the water, the skates had frozen tight to his 
 feet, and he only knocked them off with a despe- 
 rate kick. Then the idea came into his mind that 
 it would be a very easy thing for him to freeze to 
 death, there on the farther side of the river, 
 though within plain sight of thousands of the 
 city's twinkling lights. And as it always will 
 be with some minds he thought of it as at once 
 horrible and absurd; and he smiled, though his 
 teeth were chattering, fearfully.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 117 
 
 "I've no hat, either!" he said to himself. 
 But he did not sit still for all this, by any means. 
 It was all in his mind in a flash. As he threw off 
 his skates, he sprang up, his overcoat crackling 
 and stiff already; picked the skates up, thrust 
 one into either coat pocket, and turning north- 
 ward up the river, set out on a full run. But as 
 the wind met him, it seemed to craunch his face 
 and his head too, all over, all at once, with some- 
 thing that, as he thought, felt more like red-hot 
 iron than arctic cold. It was again a question of 
 minutes ; perhaps Jeff was in no less danger than 
 he had been when under water. But he stopped 
 short, tore off the coat, drew it together over his 
 head, leaving just room for one eye to peep out, 
 and once more struck into a vigorous run. It was 
 useless to consider whether he could get home. 
 He must run, until he could run no more, unless 
 he reached help before his running was exhausted. 
 
 He had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile, shel- 
 tered somewhat for part of the way by a thin 
 growth of willows, and, fortunately, finding but 
 few fences to climb over, when, as he ranged up 
 opposite the great Arms Factory, he began to feel 
 that he had not running enough left in him to get 
 up opposite the heart of the city and so on to his 
 rooms. There were no houses in sight on his side 
 of the river; for all the land is meadow, flooded
 
 118 SIX OF ONE BY. 
 
 deep in the high spring freshets ; nor any road, nor 
 living thing. 
 
 " There 's just one thing to do," reflected Jeff. 
 " I '11 cross here and make straight for Aunt 
 Helen's." 
 
 No sooner said than done. He turned short, ran 
 down the bank, here sloping and sandy, hurried 
 out upon the river, not without a sort of horror of 
 it, crossed over, climbed the dyke, made his way 
 up the first cross-street, and after asking the road 
 of half a do2en different citizens, all of them 
 scared enough, to be accosted by an apparently 
 headless apparition, like a pedestrian Brom Bones, 
 and all icy and crackling as it hurried along, he 
 rang furiously at the door of Deacon Tarbox's 
 snug mansion. 
 
 The deacon himself opened it. 
 
 " Please let me in ! " said poor Jeff, not very 
 ready with his etiquette at the moment. 
 
 " Who are you? " demanded the startled deacon, 
 not so brave in mere physical matters as in those 
 of conscience. But it was not the custom to re- 
 fuse charity at that house, though it was not the 
 custom to administer it at the principal entrance. 
 
 "Who are you? Go round to the back-door." 
 And partly irritated at what he conceived to be 
 the presumptuousness of the applicant, and a lit- 
 tle dismayed withal by the uncouthness of tliis
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. H9 
 
 goblin, with its one eye peeping out through the 
 opening of the coat, he drove the door to with a 
 most peremptory and undeacon-like slam. 
 
 Half dead as he was, Jeff laughed within him- 
 self as he dragged himself round the corner of the 
 house for, as is natural, having now reached 
 succor, the effect of the tremendous strain which 
 his frame had undergone began to come down upon 
 him with a suddenness that he did not at all under- 
 stand. He reached the back-door, however, just 
 as the deacon opened it with a rather stern 
 
 " This is the proper door for " 
 
 He did not finish his sentence. As he opened 
 the door, a tall figure swayed gently forward against 
 it, then toppled over against him, and slid down to 
 the floor, crackling somewhat, in a heap. 
 
 " Dead drunk ! " muttered the deacon to him- 
 self, with disgust and horror ; and his first thought 
 was to bundle the beggar-man out upon the steps 
 and shut the door. Then the deacon bethought 
 him of the fearful cold of the weather ; he had 
 kept a daily thermometrical and meteorological re- 
 cord for fifty years in that very house ; and 
 considering that a few seconds more or less was 
 nothing to the victim of King Alcohol, he stepped 
 to a window close by, just outside of which hung 
 his record thermometer, and inspected it through 
 the glass.
 
 120 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 " Whew ! " whistled the old deacon to himself, 
 " fifteen degrees below ! He wouldn't last long 
 out there ! " 
 
 And setting down his lamp, with reluctant hands, 
 and a face puckered into lines of contemptuous 
 abhorrence enough for at least one hundred ordi- 
 nary deacons, Deacon Tarbox bent over the person 
 on the floor, and essayed to draw the coat from his 
 face. The first time he let go in astonishment. 
 
 " Why, it 's frozen as stiff as an oak plank ! " 
 
 A second stouter pull uncovered the face. 
 
 " Helen, here ! Here, this minute ! Lord-a- 
 massy on us ! It 's Jeff Fleming I "
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF TEE OTHER. 121 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 TT is needless to describe the emotions of Aunt 
 A Helen, or of Nettie, who, after delaying a few 
 minutes at the river, had sensibly come home by 
 herself, rather than wait, or speculate longer on 
 the strange delay of her escort. The emotions of 
 Yankee women do not make them useless ; and first 
 of all, they set sharply to work with the aid of the 
 deacon, to take care of their strangely costumed 
 visitor. Amongst them, they hoisted the young 
 man upon a lounge which they set before the 
 kitchen fire, and stripping off his outer garments, 
 and packing him with hot blankets, he soon recov- 
 ered his senses and told his story. 
 
 " We should be very thankful to Almighty God 
 for sparing your life," said the deacon solemnly. 
 
 " No doubt," assented Jeff; and, as the deacon 
 turned to say something to Aunt Helen, he added 
 under his breath to Nettie, 
 
 "And for letting me get into danger, too; 
 oughtn't I ? " 
 
 "Hush!" said Nettie. What else could she 
 say?
 
 122 . SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 "I'm going to get a soft hat," continued Jeff. 
 " A tall hat is a delusion and a snare." 
 
 "Still," remarked Deacon Tarbox, "I have 
 hitherto found mine safe enough on dry land." 
 
 " Deacon," said Jeff, " go a-skating with us next 
 Saturday afternoon, will you ? " 
 
 The Deacon smiled at the young joker ; it was 
 unnecessary to say any thing. 
 
 " Well," observed Jeff after a little, " I believe 
 I 'm all right, auntie. I 'm sorry to have made 
 you so much trouble, .and slopped up your nice 
 clean kitchen so." 
 
 " Don't say a single word about it," interrupted 
 the good old lady. 
 
 " Well, auntie, I '11 do as much for you some 
 time, then. I guess I '11 go up street now, at any 
 rate." And he essayed to rise, but sank back, 
 looking up at Aunt Helen with a face of such queer 
 astonishment that she laughed. 
 
 " You '11 go straight to bed that 's what you '11 
 do," said she, with decision : " and lie there all day 
 to-morrow, if necessary, too. Nettie, come and 
 help me get the south chamber ready." 
 
 In truth, the young man's strength seemed to 
 have dissolved away as if it had melted with the 
 ice on his clothes. His hands would hardly close 
 on the back of the lounge, as he tried to help him- 
 self to a sitting posture ; he seemed to have no
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. ' 123 
 
 spine ; his legs he could hardly move at all. And 
 as besides he began now to feel intolerably sleepy, 
 he was quite unable to oppose the purpose of his 
 hosts, even if it had been less obviously necessary 
 than it was. So they got out the old-fashioned 
 warming-pan, and inspired with genial warmth the 
 cool depths of the great old-fashioned bed in the 
 guest-chamber ; made a nice little fire in the stove ; 
 and then deputed the deacon to act as his " grim 
 chamberlain," and see the patient safe under the 
 bed-clothes. Even with the deacon's aid, it was 
 not without a good deal of effort that Jeff crawled 
 upstairs, undressed himself, and got into bed. 
 
 Few people know, when they stop at any place, 
 how long they are to stay. Jeff called at Aunt 
 Helen's to get dried and warmed, as the great and 
 good Dr. Isaac Watts went to Sir Thomas Abney's 
 for a visit. He did not, like the famous divine, 
 stay all his life, and at last die in these casual 
 quarters, but he staid all night, and then staid ten 
 weeks ; and he came near enough to dying, be- 
 sides. Before morning he was taken with very 
 sharp pains in his chest, indeed, he waked up 
 all of a sudden towards daylight with a howl 
 evoked by the first of them, and that evoked be- 
 sides a couple of extraordinary old ghosts in white 
 to his bedside in a twinkling to wit, the deacon
 
 124 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 and Mrs. Tarbox. There was 110 help for it, how- 
 ever ; the old lady, an experienced nurse, said it 
 was to use her orthoepy peeripanewmony. 
 She was right in the diagnosis, though obsolescent 
 as to nomenclature. After a pretty tough siege 
 with flannels dipped in hot Avater, the doctor 
 came, and on examining the patient and hearing 
 the story, looked solemn, prescribed, and, after 
 getting downstairs, questioned Aunt Helen closely 
 about any family tendencies to lung disease. 
 There had been one or two cases, it appeared, 
 within a generation or two. " Then," said the 
 doctor, " we must be all the more careful ; that 's 
 all. One thing is in his favor, he has plenty of 
 strength, and, I judge, perfectly clean health. So 
 no need to be frightened at present, though he 's 
 a pretty sick man." 
 
 You see, the doctor knew Aunt Helen. Doc- 
 tors will talk pretty plainly to people that they 
 know are safe ; none are more close-mouthed, how- 
 ever, to fools. 
 
 Well, Jeff had a long fight with the cruel enemy 
 that had seized him. As often happens where 
 people have never been ill, disease seemed to take 
 his physical frame by surprise, and to master it 
 and ravage it before it could organize its defence, 
 like a horde of barbarians swooping down without 
 notice upon a wealthy and peaceful laud. When
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 125 
 
 once, however, the assault was exhausted, though 
 it left him for the time being a mere phantom of 
 himself, his recovery was steady and natural. 
 All the time he was incessantly nursed and petted, 
 by the deacon and the two women. Their care, 
 the doctor said, certainly shortened his imprison- 
 ment a fortnight ; and he jocosely threatened to 
 collect of them a suitable addition to his fees. 
 Throughout the first stage of the disease, there 
 was nothing for them to do except to be strict in 
 following the doctor's directions, and to wait. 
 But when the danger and the pain were over, and 
 the time came when only weakness was left, and 
 the sick man could begin by tiny gradations to 
 resume something of the enjoying part of life, 
 though at first with a passiveness much more com- 
 plete than that of an infant, then came the empire 
 of the women. Except the transactions of a 
 mother over her child, nothing can exceed the 
 proud authority, and immense sense of fulfilling a 
 destiny, which a woman displays in tending a 
 sick person, more especially if it is a favorite 
 and a man. Why not? As the stoical stock- 
 broker observed on hearing the roar of the lions, 
 " Let 'em roar, for that ' their biz." Nor was the 
 deacon a whit behindhand, according to his lights. 
 To be sure, he would have made a very poor fist 
 at displaying the occasional bouquets of hot-house
 
 126 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 flowers with which Nettie used now and then to 
 beautify the room ; and as he was one of those 
 opprobriums of the late Lowell Mason, who can't 
 sing, nor learn to sing, any more than a three- 
 cornered file working across a handsaw, so he 
 would have made wild work with Nettie's ever 
 ready songs. Nor could he compound the magical 
 confections of every kind, wherewith dear old 
 Aunt Helen used to gratify his appetite, that grew 
 more and more ravenous as he gathered strength, 
 the old lady sitting by in the extremest happiness 
 while he demolished in five minutes some delicacy 
 whose harmless and nourishing yet flavorsome 
 quality had occupied her, more or less, very likely, 
 for half a day. 
 
 But the deacon could talk, and he could read 
 aloud ; and, when Jeff gathered strength enough, 
 he used to take his turn in these employments 
 with the ladies ; and the kind old soul was just as 
 happy in it as they were. 
 
 " You are three angels, you three," said Jeff 
 one day, as they all stood at his bedside. " I 
 didn't know there were any such people in the 
 world." And the tears stood in his eyes ; for when 
 one is so very weak, one fries very easily. How- 
 ever Jeff laughed too, though rather feebly, and 
 finished his extravaganza. " When you three get to 
 heaven, you won't know the difference, for you
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 127 
 
 can't be a bit better than you are now, and 
 you won't find you 're a bit better thought of. 
 Angels are plenty there ; stay here, where you are 
 needed." 
 
 As for the choice of reading, Nettie brought 
 mild new novels from the Young Men's Institute 
 Library. She got pretty much whatever she 
 wanted from kind-hearted Mr. Boltwood, for the 
 sake of the sick man, who was one of his con- 
 stituents, and a favorite, as he was, in fact, with 
 everybody who knew him. Aunt Helen used to 
 listen a while, sometimes, to these wonderful pro- 
 ductions ; but her sound sense and practical piety 
 were usually unable to bear the unnatural atmos- 
 phere very long. She would shake her head, and 
 rise and depart, saying, that, for her part, she 
 thought that there must be a special providence 
 for young folks nowadays, to preserve them 
 through all the nonsense they read. Her selec- 
 tions were different ; she often chose some book 
 of travels in the Holy Land or the East ; such as 
 Warren's " Recovery of Jerusalem," which, in 
 spite of its dry method and confused arrangement, 
 she read as it deserves with close attention 
 and great delight, from title-page to finis. The 
 story of the wonderful Moabite stone, too, en- 
 chanted her, Jeff insisted, exactly as " Robinson 
 Crusoe" or the "Arabian Nights" does a small
 
 128 BIZ OF ONE BY 
 
 boy. So did Rawlinson's " Five Great Monarch- 
 ies," and any other books she could get hold of, 
 of the class which may be called unintentional 
 illustrations of Scripture. And, indeed, they are 
 the best supports and the best commentaries on 
 that wonderful book, the unitary and symmetrical 
 heart-growth and chronicle of sixteen hundred 
 years of the existence of man, and of God's 
 words and works through him. The deacon, 
 again, chose an entirely different department ; 
 and by the way, Jeff showed his natural tact 
 unless it was merely the languid passiveness of an 
 invalid in allowing his three angels to choose 
 their own respective fields wherein to expatiate. 
 The deacon always read him, firstly, the daily 
 paper, one New York one and one Hartford 
 one, and many a shrewd and dry comment did 
 he make upon the chronicles of events, and then 
 upon the use which the editors, those prophets of 
 the nineteenth century, made of them in the edi- 
 torial columns. When this was not enough, to 
 tell the truth it usually was, the good old man 
 used to confer upon Jeff his greatest literary favor. 
 That is to say, he would read to him his own daily 
 portion, which he always took in course, of the 
 "Exposition of the Old and New Testaments," 
 by that great and sound divine, the Rev. Matthew 
 Henry. Of this monumental work, the worthy
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 129 
 
 deacon possessed a noble copy of the London 
 edition of 1761, in five volumes folio. In this in- 
 structive commentary, the deacon was accustomed 
 to read a suitable portion every evening before 
 family prayers, sometimes to himself, and, oc- 
 casionally, when he lighted upon some striking 
 passage, aloud, for the good of whomsoever it 
 might concern. No wonder the deacon loved it, 
 and had already read it through in course three 
 times, being now well advanced in the fourth ; 
 for, as he was accustomed to say with devout 
 thankfulness, it was, under God, due to the 
 weighty reasonings, and powerful applications of. 
 that book, that in his youth he had been brought 
 to a realizing sense of his lost state, and ultimately 
 to a trembling hope that he had laid fast hold 
 upon eternal life. It used to put Jeff asleep. 
 
 Nothing has thus far been said of two concern- 
 ments wherewith it might seem that Jeff should 
 have had something to do during this illness of 
 his ; namely, his own family, and Jane Burgess. 
 Reason enough : Jeff had no family ; and it was 
 this solitary position of his in the world which 
 caused the simple, hearty, genuine, old-fashioned 
 New England kindness of Deacon Tarbox's family 
 to make all the more impression upon him. Both 
 his parents had died long ago ; he had indeed been 
 brought up in great measure by some excellent 
 6* i
 
 130 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 people, who had been friends of his father and 
 mother, and who treated him with helpful kind- 
 ness, and shrewdly managed his little inheritance. 
 But they were not letter-writing persons ; and, in 
 fact, neither were Deacon nor Mrs. Tarbox. The 
 news of Jeffs illness went to Greyford in Nettie's 
 letters to her father, therefore, but as the young 
 man was in the best possible hands, neither letters 
 nor visits were made necessary, and none came. 
 As for Jane Burgess, she was also far less of a 
 letter-writer than Nettie or Rachel. Besides, she 
 was enveloped as all of us are in this world in 
 webs of circumstance ; things had been happening 
 to her in Boston, for an account of "Which the 
 reader is referred to the next chapter. 
 
 After Jeff Fleming had removed to his own 
 room at the Dove-cot again, had resumed his usual 
 employment at the store, and was rapidly laying 
 hold once more upon all the avocations of his busy 
 life, it was natural that he should still feel far 
 more as if Deacon Tarbox's house was his home, 
 than as if he was a stranger there ; so he was at 
 the house even more frequently than before his ill- 
 ness, with or without any excuse. 
 
 One pleasant evening, when the Deacon and his 
 wife had gone out to an evening meeting at the 
 South Church, Jeff and Nettie sat chatting alone 
 in the " keeping-room."
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 131 
 
 " Nettie," said Jeff, " I always used to be afraid 
 of you. I thought you were a sharp-tempered girl, 
 and you certainly used to snap like a pea in a hot 
 skillet sometimes. Have you grown quiet? I 
 don't inquire whether you have grown sweet-tem- 
 pered, for I have found out that you always were 
 that.'" 
 
 " I think I have grown quiet," said Nettie, 
 blushing. " I love Aunt Helen ; and I believe it 
 would make anybody quiet, and good too, to live 
 with her. But I "am able to snap, as you call it, 
 on occasion." 
 
 " No, please. At least, Nettie, I don't mean to 
 give you any occasion to snap me. I like you 
 ever so much better as you are. It is like finding 
 a sweet heart inside of no; nobody can fancy 
 you with a rough outside." 
 
 " Nor a sweetheart, either," said Nettie, twisting 
 his words. 
 
 Jeff answered, this time with something very 
 much like a blush on his part, 
 
 " It would not be right to fancy you a sweet- 
 heart, Nettie. Nothing less respectful than a 
 strong love and a deep longing should be offered 
 to you ; a fancy for you would be an impertinence. 
 You are too good." 
 
 " Well, Jeff," replied the young lady, " I don't 
 know why you should say all the pretty things.
 
 132 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 Thank you very much for so many compliments ; 
 and you shall have one for yourself. Aunt Helen 
 was saying to-day that she never in her life saw a 
 man before that was perfectly good-natured and 
 patient in sickness. So that you are angel number 
 four, you see." 
 
 " Ah, Nettie ! " he said, with a good deal of 
 emotion, " unless you have lived all your life with 
 strangers, you don't know how such good deeds as 
 yours and Aunt Helen's make a person good. I 
 imagine you people would make Judas Iscariot 
 into the best creature in the world. I couldn't 
 have been cross with you or her by me, any more 
 than water could freeze in the fire. It wasn't I 
 that was sweet-tempered; it was you." 
 
 " Aren't you going to allow any thing at all for 
 uncle ? " said Nettie, who, so differently from most 
 handsome young women, heartily liked to be 
 praised, and was no more inclined to resent Jeff's 
 pretty speeches than a house-cat is to resent 
 stroking. 
 
 " Yes, indeed. Haven't I always reckoned him 
 one of the angels of this house ? But it 's queer 
 
 I can't be near as fond of him as I can of Aunt 
 Helen and you. He isn't so pretty. He isn't so 
 nice to kiss." 
 
 " You don't know, sir. I like to kiss him." 
 
 " Well, Nettie, you may kiss him for me, then, 
 
 I wish"
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 133 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " I mean, won't you give me a little music ? " 
 
 " Certainly." And she opened the piano and 
 sat down ; looking up at him as he took his usual 
 place behind her left shoulder, with a smile that 
 was sunshine itself. " What shall it be ? " 
 
 "I don't know, Nettie." 
 
 " Well, then, take my last piano solo, to begin 
 with." 
 
 She played a " Hungarian March." At least, 
 that was the name printed on it, and it was written 
 on the square-built " four-four " basis which is 
 called " march time ; " but nevertheless it was a 
 wild, sweet, strange melody too, such as might be 
 imagined to have arisen in the heart of some gypsy 
 musician uttering the nameless yearnings of his 
 mystic Oriental soul, amid the rich influences of 
 sunny vineyards and glorious rivers in the noble 
 land of Hungary. 
 
 "O Nettie!" said Jeff; "once more, please." 
 Music which is very beautiful calls upon those 
 who are sensitive to -it, with a voice that is almost 
 a sharp pain. It searches the depths of pure 
 emotion, very far below the shallow ripples of 
 criticising judgment or even of conscious observa- 
 tion. Jeff Fleming's voice was unsteady, but the 
 trifling words were full of pleading, if pleading 
 had been necessary. In truth, the very lovely
 
 134 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 music was breaking the ice in another realm than 
 that of the wintry river ; and Nettie, who felt the 
 music, perhaps, even more than he, without know- 
 ing it, felt that there was more pleading in the 
 request than merely for a few measures of music. 
 She shivered slightly, but only answered, 
 
 " Yes, certainly." Could she have had a double 
 meaning? Could she have felt not perceived 
 any unspoken wishes from her companion ? And 
 she played the piece again, the delicate, firm 
 fingering, the unusually quiet movements of her 
 shapely smooth fingers upon the keys, adding that 
 curious magic to the music which depends upon 
 the appearance of producing much effect with little 
 motion. This time, neither of them said a word ; 
 but each knew that the other was greatly moved. 
 
 Without speaking, Nettie modulated through a 
 few soft chords, paused a moment, and played 
 another piece, belonging in the same chapter of 
 sentiment with the former, yet sadder. It was so 
 much more melancholy, in fact, that when the last 
 soft cadence ended, and Nettie's hands lay motion- 
 less upon the keys of the final chord, Jeff said, as 
 if speaking to himself, 
 
 Why it is all full of tears." 
 
 Nettie, with a little start, turned back the open 
 leaf, arid pointed to the title. "Les Larmes," it 
 read.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 135 
 
 She looked up once more, into Jeff's face, half 
 turning round upon the piano-stool. Jeff could 
 see that her long dark eyelashes were wet. 
 
 " Do you feel it so much too ? " he asked. 
 
 " Indeed, yes," she said ; and added, with her 
 sunshiny smile, " But if you can tell so well what 
 the music says, what was the other? " 
 
 The witch ! I half believe she knew what she 
 was about. Jeff looked down into her eyes for a 
 moment. 
 
 "May I tell you?" 
 
 She could not quite frame to say yes ; she said 
 not a word. Her eyes fell ; but Jeff quickly but 
 lightly passed his arms around her, and kissed her 
 beautiful red lips three times. 
 
 " The music said it, Nettie," he said, as she 
 sprang up, but he caught her hand. " I say it for 
 myself, too, Nettie. I love you. Mayn't I ? " 
 
 It is of course possible that if the old people had 
 staid at home, and the piano had been kept shut, 
 Nettie and Jeff would not have become engaged to 
 each other, at least not that night. As it was, 
 they did.
 
 136 SIX OF ONE B7 
 
 CHAPTEE XHI. 
 
 TT was Jane's first visit with her sister Sophy. 
 Also it was her sister's first winter in Boston. 
 
 Ned Bardies had made his fortune in Cottons- 
 wick, where he lived over a dozen years. Since 
 then he had been a year in St. Louis ; afterwards, 
 he and his wife spent six months in Paris. This 
 was very convenient for Mrs. Bardies, because she 
 could pick up all her furniture there for the house 
 Ned had been building on the new land. For the 
 original Bardleses were Boston people. 
 
 Happily it was a large house, for it was one 
 through which the whole Bardies family swept, 
 from morning till night. Aunts, uncles, cousins, 
 sisters, sisters-in-law, and brothers ditto, made it 
 their grand central rendezvous. It might be called 
 the Bardies highway. There were walls to the 
 house ; but they shut in and never shut out. 
 
 Not that Ned Bardies showed a special partiality 
 for his own family, but there were so many of 
 them ! And only Jane and her aunt on the 
 Burgess side. It was Ned who had suggested that
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 137 
 
 Jane should come and spend the winter with them. 
 Sophy had determined that she would bring his 
 youngest sister, Christine, into society that very 
 winter, and she was to be with them for the grand 
 object of her coming out. Ned had said that he 
 did not think it was fair to have Christine all that 
 time, unless Sophy had as long a visit from her 
 sister. So it was settled they should both be 
 asked ; and in the preparations for receiving them, 
 if Sophy selected any thing particularly pretty for 
 the room she was fitting up for Christine, Ned was 
 sure to find the counterpart of it, perhaps a 
 little bit more costly, for Jane's. 
 
 Let us explain that Ned Bardies was by no 
 means what would be called a liberal man. He 
 had made every cent of his money himself, and 
 all too carefully, one by one, not to know the value 
 of every coin of it. But he was just beginning 
 to enjoy the charm of spending, and finding out 
 how large his " margin " was. It is not every 
 millionaire that reaches this bit of knowledge, to 
 be sure. But, again, he might not have been so 
 liberal, had Jane been in any way dependent upon 
 him. Happily the Burgess property had cut up 
 well between the two daughters. Jane for the 
 first time began to appreciate this when she came 
 to stay with her brother-in-law. She had before 
 felt the comfortable consciousness of owning -prop-
 
 138 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 erty, of the family mansion, that could always 
 be a roof for her old age ; but the activity of the 
 Bardies establishment suddenly showed her the 
 outside charm of money, its pleasant chink, and 
 the delight of changing the coin for some equiva- 
 lent. Jane did not get away from Greyford till 
 the winter was half over, when an old widow 
 friend of her aunt's had turned up to stay some 
 months, with her two daughters, and there was no 
 special reason why Jane should be needed there. 
 
 Jane Burgess was one of those receptive beings 
 in whom everybody confides. She was never a 
 confidant, because she was never in the habit of 
 telling her own secrets to another ; but, if such a 
 villanous word could be allowed, she was a faithful 
 confidee. She could not sit in a railroad-station 
 two minutes, but what some Irish mother had 
 given her all her history. Indeed, she knew the 
 heart's romance of that stoical creature who keeps 
 the ladies' room of the station. It was also as- 
 serted that a horse-car conductor had one day 
 sat down by her side, to tell her about his wife's 
 breaking her leg. She knew the sorrows and joys 
 of everybody in Greyford. Therefore she had not 
 been in her sister's house more than a week, before 
 she had been consulted by every member of the 
 family, about some little intricacy. This was for- 
 tunate for Jane, because the first morning after
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 139 
 
 her arrival, when they were fairly through break- 
 fast, and she stood for a few moments at the 
 Low-window, looking down the broad street, she 
 suddenly felt all the loneliness of a new place. A 
 bit of home-sickness came over her for dear old 
 Greyford, where she had her set of friends who 
 really needed her. " Nobody wants me here," she 
 said to herself. 
 
 Sophy, to be sure, was full of occupation, not 
 merely with her six children in the nursery, and 
 the six servants who were to oversee them, but 
 with the successive demands of each day : there 
 was evidently plenty to do. At the breakfast- 
 table the plans for the day had been talked over ; 
 and the question was, which of all the proposed 
 things could be done, and how every thing could 
 be got into one short day. Sophy had left the 
 table, saying, " Well, it 's no use planning ; some- 
 body will be in and change it all. There 's only 
 one thing certain, we shan't do what we have 
 settled to do." 
 
 Now, this was just what Jane hated. So she 
 said to herself, as she stood by the window. She 
 had been in the habit of leading a well-ordered life. 
 She had her Monday duties, as well as her Sunday 
 ones ; and could sit down Saturday evening, with 
 her work-basket well cleared out, and a feeling 
 that the week and its work had been smoothed off
 
 140 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 even. What was she going to do in this grand 
 chaos, where there was no especial orbit marked 
 out for herself, but, what was worse, those that 
 had orbits amused themselves by dashing into 
 those of other people ? It ended, as we have seen, 
 in her becoming the confessor of all. Her reverie 
 of the first morning had been broken by Christine's 
 exclamation, 
 
 " Now, Miss Burgess, do give me your opinion ! 
 Shall it be green, or blue ? they are equally becom- 
 ing to me." 
 
 Before the end of the week Christine was calling 
 her " Jeanie," a shortening of her name, and an 
 endearment, that nobody had ever ventured on 
 before. 
 
 Sophy had confided to her that she hoped Chris- 
 tine would marry a certain Mr. Archer, a second 
 cousin of the Bardies family, whom she thought 
 every thing of ; and she hoped Jane would do all 
 she could to assist her. 
 
 Ned had introduced another young man to Jane 
 with especial pomp and ceremony, afterwards 
 explaining to her that his prospects were admi- 
 rable, and his family of the best, whom, he had 
 settled, would just do for Christine. 
 
 Meanwhile Christine had confided to Jane her 
 own little passion, quite another "party." 
 
 Each of Mr. Bardles's three married sisters took
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 141 
 
 Jane to drive, in their respective cqups, on several 
 afternoons, and each gave her the history of their 
 prosperity, and their plans for the rest of the 
 family. His two married brothers, living one on 
 each side of him, told her almost every day what 
 they were worth. 
 
 She knew which was the favorite chair of the 
 old-bachelor uncle, and could make the deaf old 
 aunt hear. Aunt Maria, who always had some- 
 thing severe to say to her nephews and nieces, 
 managed to hear whatever she was not expected 
 to ; just as it is the near-sighted people who pick 
 up the pins, and see the basting- threads. The lit- 
 tle crippled nephew, who was lifted out of the 
 carriage, and laid tenderly on the sofa, to spend 
 the day with Aunt Sophy, learned to look wist- 
 fully round for Jane who showed him the pictures 
 so gently and kindly. 
 
 All of those who found it so easy to pour their 
 pleasures and their trials into Jane's ear never 
 thought of asking any reciprocal confidences from 
 her. Their pleasure was in recounting and dwell- 
 ing upon their own triumphs, and trotting them- 
 selves out as heroines and heroes before such a 
 ready listener. The invalid boy, indeed, did look 
 anxiously at times to see if Jane were tired of sit- 
 ting by him, and would hope that he was not 
 keeping her from anything more pleasant. And
 
 142 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 Christine had, . at first, wanted to get at the 
 romance of Jane's life ; for she was wondering very 
 much whether she was perhaps broken-hearted 
 (how delightfully interesting that would be, if it 
 were so ! ) at the conduct of Jeffrey Fleming. 
 She had heard they were engaged ; and now he 
 was spending the winter in Hartford, and Jane 
 never had any letters from there, she was sure. 
 But she never got any confidences from Jane on 
 the subject. The latter was one of those who not 
 only could keep a secret, but always gave the air 
 of having no secret to keep. And all this was 
 done by merely quietly going on as Jane Burgess, 
 just as she did in Greyford. Only, to Sophy's 
 astonishment, Jane was greatly admired in society. 
 That is a thing nobody can set down any law for ; 
 even Mr. Buckle couldn't. Sophy thought it was 
 because Jane took to crimping her hair ; perhaps it
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER, 143 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 TANE is by no means the beauty of this story. 
 ** It has, perhaps, been sufficiently explained that 
 Rachel Holley is. For Rachel always looked like 
 a beauty, wherever you put her. Whether it was 
 her grace, the pose of her classical head, or the 
 glitter of her golden hair, it would be difficult to 
 say. But, however you took her, she had a way 
 of making a frame about herself, and turning into 
 a real picture, whether it was when she stood in 
 the parlor doorway to bid you good-by, or if she 
 were kneeling at Mrs. Worboise's feet to put 
 on that lady's "Arctics," to go to an evening 
 meeting. 
 
 But Jane was always composed, equal to the 
 occasion, and had the grand fund of reserve on 
 hand that always is impressive. 
 
 There was one person who laid a special claim 
 to Jane's sympathy, and it was acknowledged by 
 all the Bardies family. This was Mark Hinsdale. 
 He had been received there kindly, and soon 
 became one of the many expected guests who were 
 allowed to drop in at any time. There was a seat
 
 144 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 for him at the dinner-table, plans for him for the 
 evening's concert, theatre, or party, whatever it 
 might be. 
 
 Of course, Mark also had to consult and confide 
 with Jane. Every new plan which took form-, as 
 he sat in the library waiting of a rainy day for any- 
 body to come and ask for a " sermon-book," or for 
 " another book," would be dashed down on paper, 
 to be sent to her. With his vivid imagination, 
 these plans instantly assumed their full proportions ; 
 and, as he wrote, the detail wrought itself out, even 
 to refinement. This would all be posted to Jane, 
 and the next time Mark called he would expect 
 her judgment on the whole. It was sometimes a 
 play, sometimes a novel ; always it was to be very 
 successful when it had found a publisher, and 
 always Jane was expected, from having read- the 
 brief, to retain a complete knowledge of each char- 
 acter, and of all the names. Here, for instance, is 
 the plan of " Bertie Gwynne." 
 
 LIBRARY, Monday Morning. 
 
 DEAR JANE, I have had a most interesting talk with 
 an army officer, who has been for three years surveying oil 
 the Plains. He has shot buffalo, and, I dare say, scalped 
 Indians, and knows every thing. He knows all our east- 
 ern wilderness just as well. What he says confirms my 
 plan for " Bertie Gwynne." Just look at this table of 
 contents.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 145 
 
 The detail of the book is so extensive, that I cannot give 
 you the plot, but you can read this. 
 
 BERTIE GWYNNE. 
 Book 1. ON BOARD THE SERINGA. 
 
 1. Waiting. 
 
 2. The Captain's Story. 
 
 3. Ended and Begun. 
 
 4. Mamelita. 
 
 5. In the Mexican Inn. 
 
 6. Captain Hathaway in Command. 
 
 7. The Wreck of the Seringa. 
 
 Book 2. SOUTH-WEST AND NORTH-WEST. 
 
 1. In the Indian Country. 
 
 2. The Old Patriarch. 
 
 3. Escape. 
 
 4. Norah Burke's Suitor. 
 
 5. The Signing of the Deed. 
 
 6. Father and Son. 
 
 7. Charley Phinney's Departure. 
 
 Book 3. LITTLE CAPTAIN. 
 
 1. History of the Bucker Family. 
 
 2. Little Captain's Education. 
 
 3. Eden in New England. 
 
 4. The Mail comes in. 
 
 5. The Mail goes out. 
 
 Book 4. SlLVERSPURS. 
 
 1. The Phinney Corporations. 
 
 2. Conchita and Panchita. 
 
 3. An Unexpected Arrival. 
 7 J
 
 146 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 4. The Ball and its Results. 
 
 5. Silverspurs to the Rescue ! 
 
 6. Through the Desert 
 
 7. The Waterspout. 
 
 8. The Story of Silverspurs. 
 
 9. News from Home. 
 
 Book 5. RISEN FROM THE DEAD. 
 
 1. The New Home. 
 
 2. In the Old Churchyard. 
 
 3. Rest. 
 
 I think that if I am ever to do any thing good, it will be 
 in this story, which will attempt to trace the growth of a 
 soul with only Nature to come in contact with it ; which 
 will be full of the life and adventure of sea and land, of 
 North Atlantic and South Pacific shores ; which will be 
 exciting, yet in no way offensively sensational. 
 
 This is the story I told you of at the theatre, a story 
 which you declared was certainly not immoral, though it 
 might not be moral. It has grown to artistic completion, 
 and unfolded now something like a moral, a relation of 
 heroic self-sacrifice. 
 
 In just the same freedom, Mark would have 
 his budget of sorrows to bring to Jane. Over 
 and over again he talked with her about Rachel 
 Holley. 
 
 " It is something I can't stand, to think of Rachel 
 spending the winter in a second, no, fifteenth-rate 
 boarding-house in New York, when we might just 
 as well have been married, and be living comfor- 
 tably here in Boston."
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 147 
 
 Now, Jane knew that Mr. Holley had nothing 
 in particular to give his daughter if she should be 
 married ; and she, privately, did not exactly see 
 how Rachel and Mark were going to live so very 
 comfortably on his little salary as assistant li- 
 brarian ; especially as Mark, when he said these 
 words, would look round approvingly upon all the 
 Bardies luxury about them, as though he and 
 Rachel had only to step into just such a home. 
 
 Mark was an unpractical being ; he had lived in 
 his books all his life. His gleam of Rachel was 
 all that had ever waked him out of his dreamy 
 reading. As he sat in a comfortable chair in the 
 Bardies back parlor, he thought how delightful it 
 would be to be living with Rachel in a home of 
 his own, much like this, only he should turn the 
 back parlor into a library ; and and it was 
 very agreeable to explain it all to the listening 
 Jane. 
 
 Jane defended Rachel, and gradually . brought 
 Mark to acknowledge that perhaps she was right 
 in not being in such a hurry to be married. Then, 
 afterwards, he came to be glad that Rachel was in 
 New York, on Horace's account ; for the poor 
 fellow must be sadly cut up at Nettie's treatment 
 of him. Indeed, Mark in a short time began to 
 be consoled, and the stir and bustle of the Bardies 
 family interested him, and woke him up from his
 
 148 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 dreamy life. He brought them all the new books : 
 these they could look at, if they had not time for 
 more, and it was very convenient to have him to 
 tell what there was in the books, when they didn't 
 read them. 
 
 It must not be supposed, that, for all these con- 
 fessions, Jane had any private chapel or oratory 
 set apart ; there was no privacy in the Bardies 
 family. The two drawing-rooms opened upon 
 each other with wide folding doors. In the back 
 room, Jane and Christine took their French lessons 
 three mornings in the week. But aunts and 
 uncles poured in upon the lesson all the same. 
 The sisters liked the chance to come in and talk 
 a little French with M. Pinaud. Aunt Maria, 
 of course, always happened in, just as they were 
 looking for a little quiet, and always it was neces- 
 sary to explain to her what was going on. 
 
 "Oh, a French lesson! I hate the French," 
 was the regular answer, which it was hoped 
 M. Pinaud would not understand, though it 
 was given in so loud a voice he could not but 
 hear. 
 
 Just in the height of the m$lee, the six children 
 would come down, on their way out for their noon 
 walk ; and the stair\vay opening between the 
 rooms, it gave an admirable chance to stop them, 
 and have a great time with them. Hetty's new
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 149 
 
 suit had to be admired, and Johnny's leggings, 
 and Carl's new hobby-horse, that his father 
 brought from New York; and they each had ;i 
 favorite aunt, who pounced upon her especial pet ; 
 and all the children had to learn to say " Bon 
 jour " to M. Pinaud. The little infantry proces- 
 sion swept off, at last ; some of the aunts with it. 
 But, by this time, there was luncheon, and every- 
 body had to go down to that ; and afterwards 
 came callers, or calls to be made till dinner, and 
 in the evening a rush always. When there was 
 no French lesson, there was shopping. For after- 
 noons, again, there were the matinees, afternoon 
 concerts, or drives. 
 
 Yet in such a rush, the moments stolen for con- 
 fidence are only the more sweet. If one has the 
 whole day for conversation, it gets a little diluted 
 and weak. But, if you must concentrate all you 
 want to say into the favored moment, you natu- 
 rally make it concise, and to the point. That is, 
 a long cultivation teaches you to do so. Often, 
 after all, you bring out only the most unnecessary 
 and vapid part of what you have to say, just as so 
 many people take up half their letters in explain- 
 ing how they have not written before, a fact al- 
 ready painfully evident. 
 
 " Jeanie, you must sit by me to-night, at the 
 play," Christine would whisper to Jane. " I have
 
 150 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 got such a story to tell you ! " And the moment 
 of confidence had to be fought for ; it never came 
 of itself. 
 
 One day, when noon at the Bardies house was 
 especially uproarious, Mark came to Jane's side to 
 try to say something to her. The children were 
 all on their way out for their walk. Johnny was 
 shrieking with delight on the back of the bache- 
 lor uncle, who was trotting him up and down 
 the length of the two rooms. Sophy was telling 
 the price of the feather in Retty's hat to two of 
 her sisters-in-law, on the opposite side of the room, 
 to whom she had to scream out the valuable in- 
 formation. Aunt Maria was explaining to the 
 .pompany in general her views upon the French 
 war. She thought the Communists had better 
 have been left to kill each other, and then, when 
 there was not a Frenchman to be seen, the English 
 could take Paris : which she wondered they didn't 
 do, after Waterloo. 
 
 M. Pinaud was just taking his leave, and Chris- 
 tine was attempting to drown her Aunt Maria's 
 voice in a flood of French ; but she was not very 
 ready in that language, and ended by going off 
 in a list of the numerals, which she could say 
 easily. It did not make much difference what she 
 said, in.the hubbub ; and the French teacher was
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 151 
 
 only too glad to get off, without crushing Sallie's 
 wax doll that lay in the stairway. 
 
 " I should like to walk with you to the opera, 
 Jane, to-night. I have something to tell you," 
 was all Mark found a chance to say.
 
 152 SIX OF ONE BT 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 \\ 7HEN evening came, there was some talk of 
 Jane's going in the carriage with old Mrs. 
 Bardies ; but she stoutly resisted, and was allowed 
 to set off, taking Mark's arm. A boy, one of Ned 
 Bardles's younger brothers, hitched on to them for 
 part of the way, but happily found their conversa- 
 tion dull, and they had a few moments to each 
 other. The information Mark wanted to give 
 Jane was something he had learned of Jeffrey 
 Fleming. That constant young man had never 
 written to Jane any thing about his long illness. 
 Nor had Nettie written to tell her of it. Jane 
 had heard not a word from him for many weeks. 
 Some one had told Mark that Jeffrey had been 
 dangerously ill, and Mark directly wrote to Hart- 
 ford to inquire about it. A letter came from Jef- 
 frey himself, to say that it was all true ; but he 
 was well again, and now " dead in love with 
 Nettie," as he expressed it. 
 
 Jeffrey had always been a wild young fellow, 
 never capable of sticking to one thing long.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 153 
 
 There had only been one bit of steadfastness in 
 him, and that was his affection for Jane. There 
 had always been something in her serene atmos- 
 phere, that had brought out all his finer qualities, 
 so everybody thought. And it was considered 
 one of Jane's saintly gifts, that of loving such a 
 harum-scarum, and bringing him into respectable 
 society. 
 
 How could Mark impart to Jane the intelligence 
 of Jeffrey's shameful desertion ? 
 
 It was Jane who helped him out. She, too, had 
 a piece of intelligence for him. She had received 
 a letter from Rachel, telling about her life in New 
 York, and how much she was depending upon 
 Horace Vanzandt's tenderness and affection. 
 
 "I do believe, if he ever loved Nettie," said 
 Rachel, " he loves her no longer. And certainly 
 she is not worthy the love of one so whole-souled 
 as he is, if she could treat him as she has done ! " 
 
 Jane thought she ought to prepare Mark for the 
 fact that Rachel was finding some consolation in 
 Horace in his absence; and, knowing that her 
 time was short, she plunged directly into it. This 
 made it amazingly easy for Mark to tell his part ; 
 and he was so eager in abusing Jeffrey Fleming, that 
 he forgot to be as sorry as h.e ought about Rachel. 
 
 It was with Mark's intelligence ringing in her 
 ears that Jane sat through the opera.
 
 154 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 The action of an opera is often supposed to be 
 unnatural and absurd; but the writer of the 
 .libretto knows well the power of the music that is 
 to lift the whole story into a reality. And, if one 
 listens to the opera with any great emotion on 
 one's mind, it is astonishing how its music allies 
 itself to one's feelings and makes the stage carry 
 out the drama that is going on in the heart. 
 
 We almost believe that music is a necessary 
 accompaniment to all the tragedy or action of pur 
 own lives ; and when the orchestra stops, and the 
 curtain falls, we come out into the silence, or into 
 the hubbub that follows the harmony, with the 
 feeling that our little play is ended too, and that 
 there is nothing more. 
 
 Even when a grinding organ is playing at the 
 corner of the streets, look round and you will see 
 how unconsciously everybody's pace is set in time 
 with the melody, - old men, and little girls, and 
 busy shopping- women, and some of them go 
 moving on with an earnest, heroic look, as though 
 the music of the spheres were suddenly sounding 
 up through the discordant noise of the street. 
 
 The drama of Jane's life was coursing through 
 her mind, all the time she was listening to the 
 three acts of the opera. Between the parts, Chris- 
 tine on one side would bring in a little chippering 
 about somebody's bonnet ; but on the other side
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 155 
 
 Mark was sitting silent, having fallen back into 
 one of his moods. 
 
 The opera was " II Trovatore." Jane was go- 
 ing over some of her old times with Jeffrey, one 
 evening, when she had saved him from a terrible 
 temptation, when he had staid by her, and gave 
 her all the history of his life, telling her scenes 
 that had been then a black contrast to her own 
 peaceful life, that had made her shudder, and were 
 recalled again in the clangor of the chorus on the 
 stage, by the great tumult of the orchestra. 
 
 Again the scene changed, and she thought of 
 him on his sick-bed, and perhaps wanting her 
 again. She had discouraged Jeffrey's writing" to 
 her, partly because he wrote such poor letters, and 
 partly because, as she told him, he ought to be 
 devoting himself to his business ; and, if he were 
 writing every day to her, it would take out a 
 great piece of his time. And she did not think 
 much of now-and-then letters, when one has every 
 thing to tell, and tells nothing. Besides, Jane 
 had a difficulty in trusting her own thoughts even 
 to paper. It frightened her, the very idea of see- 
 ing her own heart laid down in black and white 
 before her eyes. For this reason Jane had always 
 written very cold, unsatisfactory letters. 
 
 And now on the stage there was the scene of a 
 high tower at one side. Behind it was the tenor,
 
 156 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 singing with all his might off the stage, supposed 
 to be in the uppermost story of the tower. 
 
 What a voice he had ! How rich, how tender, 
 how moving ! He was reproaching the lady of his 
 love for leaving him, for deserting him to marry 
 another. But there she was below, singing with 
 all her voice, out of her heart, too, trying to reach 
 way up to him from the foot of the tower, telling 
 him how she loved him, and how she wanted to 
 come to him, and to save his life. And all the 
 time from the distance came the Miserere, the 
 chanting of some quiet nuns singing in this heav- 
 enly way out of the peace of their cells, and send- 
 ing their harmony into the discords of the world. 
 It was a chorus with many monotones, however : 
 what sympathy did it have with two hearts storm- 
 ing and breaking outside ? 
 
 Well, all this, to Jane, became her own drama. 
 
 And have we not all of us acted and lived it 
 through in all our lives ? We call the plot of the 
 opera absurd and unnatural and ridiculous. Oh, 
 yes ! so it all is, the bridegroom with his white 
 satin breeches, loose at the knee, lace-trimmed ; 
 the stout basso, brawling his woes. But have we 
 not seen the being 'we loved the most, imprisoned 
 in some tower, and we at the foot of it, outside, 
 grasping the cold stones, trying to reach to him ? 
 It is sickness, sin, of ours or his, some impenetra-
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 157 
 
 bility, that shuts him from us. We hear his 
 appealing voice, but we cannot come to him ; and 
 not far away there is going on the sound of the 
 voices of the peaceful, of those who are feeling no 
 longer the passions of the world, and they chant 
 of death and heaven and pity. But it cannot quiet- 
 us ; for it is not only our own sorrow, but the 
 agony of another, that is calling to us ; and we try 
 to make the voice of our heart reach him with our 
 sympathy, though it must be in discord with the 
 chant. Jane seemed to see Jeffrey on his sick-bed, 
 stretching out his arms to her, appealing to her. 
 
 " Non ti scordar di me" sang out the opera- 
 singer. 
 
 " What, I, separate my heart from yours ! ? ' said 
 Jane's thoughts. 
 
 " Could not I go to you? " 
 
 And then came another pause between the parts 
 of the opera, and everybody fell to saying a few 
 things. Sophy had tears in her eyes, but she only 
 took out her handkerchief to show its embroidery 
 to her neighbor. 
 
 Now, in all this, Jane had been thinking not 
 merely of Jeffrey's severe illness, and that she had 
 not been there to care for him ; but the sting had 
 been, that another woman had filled what was her 
 province. Jane loved Nettie, as all these three 
 girls loved each other. But Jane had been Jef-
 
 158 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 frey's strong friend and supporter. There had 
 been periods in his life when she had saved him 
 from himself. She felt, then, a certain right to be 
 every thing to him, a jealousy of the influence 
 of another. 
 
 And Nettie she could not believe was the right 
 woman for Jeffrey ; they were too much alike, both 
 fascinating from their very waywardness. Mark 
 had somehow let out in his story that Nettie had 
 changed, had improved. 
 
 But who wanted Nettie to improve, or change ? 
 Was not she very well as she was ? What prosaic, 
 Yankee-calculating kind of books are those that 
 are so stern on the butterflies ! Would we indeed 
 prefer them all to stay as caterpillars, and be 
 grubbing round all the time over the foliage ? And 
 if the butterfly finds his food in every flower-cup, 
 why need he build little larders, like ants and bees ? 
 
 Jane did not say all this. The Gypsy was sing- 
 ing her sleepy song, and Jane only felt that it was 
 all wrong, and that it was her fault. If she had 
 not been so stiff about Jeffrey's writing, it would 
 have been different. She would have known of his 
 illness, from his not writing ; she would have gone 
 to him. 
 
 Christine arranged that Mr. Archer should walk 
 home with Jane, and Mark with herself ; so Jane 
 had no more talk with him that night.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 159 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 A FTERWARDS there came fresh opportuni- 
 ties of Jane's having conversation with Mark 
 alone. 
 
 Her charitable feelings had been much exercised 
 since she had been in Boston. She could not re- 
 sist giving an answer to the appeals of " only one 
 cent " from the forlorn boys and girls on Beacon 
 Street. In the first days of her visit, Ned had 
 caught her listening to the story of a ragged 
 woman on the door-steps. He had then lectured 
 her on the subject of the utter uselessness, nay, 
 wickedness, of giving money in such cases ; and he 
 presented Jane with a packet of tickets of the 
 Provident Association, and its little directory of 
 names to whom to apply. Jane made liberal use 
 of these. 
 
 But sometimes she could not resist answering 
 such an appeal herself; and she had accumulated 
 a little set of poor places to be visited, that she 
 attended to as carefully as to any of her list 
 of callers. But these places were far away in
 
 160 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 the narrow, perplexing, winding streets, and she 
 needed Mark as guide. Two or three times a 
 week, then, they set off together on these journeys 
 of discovery. 
 
 Such an expedition was not particularly favora- 
 ble to talking. All the first part of the way they 
 were interrupted by meeting acquaintances ; then 
 they reached the streets, where the sidewalks were 
 . very narrow, there was building going on, here 
 and there, and Mark had to shoot off in one direc- 
 tion, and Jane in another. But Mark had a happy 
 faculty of not being disturbed by these outside in- 
 terruptions, and would hold on to his sentence and 
 his idea, all through the intricacies .of street-cross- 
 ings, crowds and jostlings. 
 
 In one of their wanderings, one day, far down 
 at the "North" End," they stumbled upon what 
 looked like a bee-hive, or what Mark called a 
 human ant-heap. For little ants of children were 
 running in and out of a little shop from which each 
 came with a ginger-cake in its mouth. 
 
 " Suppose we try our chance," said Mark to 
 Jane ; " for our long walk makes me feel as if I 
 should like a ginger-cake." 
 
 Jane agreed ; and they went into a little low 
 shop, the lower story of a house that formed one 
 of a most uninteresting looking block of houses. 
 
 But when they were inside, they found it was
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 161 
 
 the establishment of Luclarion Grapp, of which 
 Jane had heard. This remarkable woman had set 
 up a little shop in the most hopeless and poorest 
 part of the town, for the very purpose of doing 
 something for the forlorn children that seemed to 
 swarm about there. She had succeeded, from 
 washing the face of one child, in purifying the 
 families of many ; and she gladly showed Jane and 
 Mark up and down through the rooms of her little 
 home. 
 
 " That 's a good beginning," said Mark, after 
 they had left. 
 
 " It shows what one woman can do," said Jane. 
 
 " Then how much two people could do," said 
 Mark, " if they set themselves together ! But, 
 Jane, do you know the sight of all such destitution 
 as we have been seeing here stirs up all my theo- 
 ries ? I begin to wonder what right we have to 
 any property at all, when these have barely their 
 daily bread. Not that I am largely endowed with 
 worldly goods ; but I take my little luxuries, and I 
 am, in my way, working for an independence, for a 
 competency, that I have hoped to reach some 
 time." 
 
 Jane was plunging across the street in front of 
 an omnibus, and her answer was lost. 
 
 " Now, I have half a mind," said Mark, " to 
 start a new order of mendicant friars, throw what
 
 162 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 little goods I have into the general fund, and set 
 out begging my daily bread." 
 
 " If you came across brother Bardies," said Jane, 
 for now they had happened to reach a broad side- 
 walk, and firm footing, where she could talk more 
 freely, " he would give you a ticket to the Provi- 
 dent Association." 
 
 "That's the trouble nowadays," said Mark; 
 " one is always coming flat up against an institu- 
 tion. If it were only like the old days, when there 
 was a wide porch to the houses of the great, where 
 the poor could find their rest, and be sure that 
 a loaf of bread would be brought to them " 
 
 "But stop a minute, Mark," said Jane ; " some- 
 body must then be rich enough to build up your 
 castle and its wide porch, and somebody has got to 
 earn and make your bread. Now, I should be a 
 little ashamed to go round and beg for bread I had 
 not earned. But perhaps you mean to preach so 
 grandly that you will be worthy of it." 
 
 " Oh, no ! " said Mark, in a discouraged tone. 
 " I am no preacher ; but seriously, Jane, is it the 
 highest life among the rich, or among the poor? 
 or, rather, won't you tell me what do you think 
 living Avhat do you think life is? " 
 
 They had reached a crowded place, where all 
 the horse-cars and all the omnibuses seemed to 
 have met in one grand jumble, with news-boys,
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF TEE OTHER. 163 
 
 apple-women, men selling boot-lacings, men with 
 valises, women with huge travelling-bags, all flung 
 together in a grand pell-mell. It was a muddy 
 day, and sidewalks and street were imbedded in a 
 black paste. Jane had been grasping her dress, 
 and dropping her sunshade every three steps. She 
 succeeded in answering 
 
 " I think it is a little mixed now." 
 
 "I agree with you," said Mark, laughing: "it 
 is for us two to pick our course through it, to- 
 gether, cleanly, if we can. What do you say to 
 taking this blue-green horse-car?" 
 
 Jane gladly flung herself into it; and Mark, 
 seating himself by her side, went on with his spec- 
 ulations. These were somewhat interrupted, for 
 here they had reached the meridian of acquaint- 
 ances who were to be greeted in the car. Still 
 Mark held manfully to his thread. 
 
 When Jane had a little time to consider it all 
 by herself, she began to tremble a little at her 
 responsibilities with Mark. He was depending 
 upon her, she feared, too much. 
 
 In the old days she used to think that the 
 kaleidoscope of fate ought to have jostled Mark 
 and Nettie side by side. Nettie was precisely the 
 gay, lively companion that he needed to stir him 
 from his dreams, and keep him active in life. 
 Now the kaleidoscope had turned, and there was
 
 164 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 a fresh crystallization in their little circle. Was 
 this to be the permanent one ? She began to 
 think so. There was one thing she possessed, that 
 she would gladly give Mark ; and that was her 
 fortune. Yes, how pleasant it would be to make 
 for him a comfortable home, with its luxurious 
 library, and to have every thing easy and happy 
 for him. She could do it ; and in return he was 
 just the person to make home-life charming, al- 
 ways even in temper, with a steady flow of happy 
 thought and originality that made talk with him 
 delightful. She knew that Mark thought so little 
 of her fortune, that the fact that he was poor and 
 she rich would not stand in the way of his marry- 
 ing her, because it would not occur to him. He 
 would marry her for love, so conscious of her own 
 worth that he would forget in his unworldliness 
 that she had also the commonplace charms of 
 money. This simplicity touched Jane ; and she 
 felt that she would like to keep him in this dream 
 all his life. There were, so many about her, who 
 looked at her only as an heiress, that it was re- 
 freshing to know how utterly Mark was uncon- 
 scious of it. 
 
 She was a little startled one day, when Mark 
 came in suddenly, and begged to speak with her. 
 She drew back from the accustomed throng in 
 the parlors, into a little anteroom that separated
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF TEE OTHER. 165 
 
 them from the billiard-room in the wing. This 
 was so called because there was a billiard-table 
 there, where all the members of the family were 
 fond of playing. But it communicated by some 
 stairs with the lower story, and' Sophy was apt to 
 be holding her domestic household councils here 
 with her servants. So it was by no means a se- 
 cluded room, and the little anteroom that led to 
 it was quite a thoroughfare. 
 
 It was pretty much filled up, too, by a large 
 Daphne plant in flower, and a marble head of 
 Psyche on a pedestal. Mark and Jane managed 
 to stand there a few minutes. 
 
 44 Jane, I have come to tell you," said Mark, 
 44 that I have just received an appointment as head 
 librarian to the Johnsonian Library in Chicago, 
 with a real substantial salary ; only I must go 
 there directly." 
 
 Sophy rushed through from the billiard-room. 
 
 "Where is Ned? Has he got out? I must 
 speak to him." 
 
 44 To Chicago ! " said Jane, when she had an- 
 swered Sophy : " how singular ! For I was going 
 to tell you of our new plans. Ned's brother 
 wants him to come out to Chicago, for this next 
 winter, to oversee some business ; and Sophy and 
 I, all of us, are to go next fall. At least, it is 
 settled I am to go if I like. Ned was talking it
 
 166 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 /over this morning at breakfast ; and I, indeed, 
 thought I would consult you on my going." 
 
 Jane's long sentence had only been brought 
 out with interruptions. Carl, the oldest boy, 
 had dashed through to the billiard-room to find 
 his mother, and back again, not successful in his 
 search. Retty had appeared looking for Cecil. 
 The nurse came rushing after Retty. Cecil had 
 made his way downstairs, but Retty was not to 
 be allowed to follow him ; the nurse brought 
 Retty back triumphantly in her arms, screaming 
 at the top of his lungs. He had to be cosseted by 
 his aunt, and then his mother reappeared on the 
 scene to see what was the matter. Then she 
 wanted to consult Jane about making Mr. Jack 
 Bardies stay to dinner, but she flew off again at 
 a scream from Cecil. Aunt Maria was shouting 
 from the front room, wondering where Jane was. 
 
 " Of course, of course," said Mark, when he 
 had a chance to speak, " you will come to Chicago. 
 Only let me get there first and establish myself, 
 and then may I write and ask you " 
 
 Christine here plunged in. 
 
 " O Jane, Jane ! save me from that detestable 
 Mr. Archer. He is coming up the stairs. Do 
 let me have a cosey little chat with you and 
 Mark"- 
 
 Mark suppressed some strong language, unusual
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 167 
 
 to him, and left. He came in the evening to say 
 good-by, but had only an opportunity of promis- 
 ing to write to Jane. 
 
 The next day was Valentine's Day, and this 
 little poem came to Jane. It was not in Mark's 
 writing. But could any one except him have 
 written it? 
 
 DAY AND NIGHT. 
 
 I. 
 
 Though my heart throbs not when I hear her voice, 
 
 Nor moves with every rustle of her dress, 
 
 Still do I know her Avondrous loveliness, 
 And in her rare, sweet beauty I rejoice. 
 The symbol of all lovely things to me ; 
 
 A touch of heaven seems to light her face. 
 
 She is a creature of such perfect grace, 
 And more than that, such perfect purity, 
 The world seems better for her living in it. 
 
 To love her, then, can any of us dare 1 
 Her heart a treasure is, I would not win it. 
 
 It is enough, our breathing the same air. 
 I know, through her, my life is filled with light. 
 This is the placid day : oh ! must there come a night 1 
 
 II. 
 
 To her alone I can myself disclose ; 
 
 She always understands and comforts me. 
 
 So brave, so frank, so generous is she, 
 So true a friend, that I forget my foes. 
 So beautiful, with soft yet brilliant eyes, 
 
 And tangled dark brown hair, and youth's rich bloom, 
 
 Where'er she moves is warmth and sweet perfume. 
 And yet, o'er all this good, such ill may rise :
 
 168 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 Though by the future only 'twill be proved, 
 Too well I know what coming years may bring, 
 
 If, ever loving, she should not be loved. 
 She will reach ruin through that suffering. 
 
 But now she is all love and life and light. 
 
 It is the joyous day : I will not think of night. 
 FEB. 14, 1871.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 169 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 "XTALENTTNE'S DAY came in Lent last year, 
 and soon after Easter the Bardies establish- 
 ment was broken up for the summer wanderings. 
 Jane went for a few weeks to Greyford, but was 
 to spend the summer with her sister Sophy in 
 Newport. 
 
 She found that she had just missed seeing Rachel 
 Holley and Horace, in Greyford. Mr. Holley had 
 taken Rachel away with him " out west." 
 
 " Somehow, since his wife is dead," said Miss 
 Burgess, Jane's aunt, " Mr. Holley can't seem to 
 settle down to any thing at home. He has gone 
 out prospecting a little. He did talk about Denver 
 City and St. Paul's ', but I shouldn't wonder if he 
 settled down before he got there. Mrs. Holley's 
 relations are all in Chicago, and Mrs. Worboise 
 has moved out there, I suppose you heard." 
 
 Jane heard, too, that Dr. Sylva and Nettie 
 joined the Holleys, just for the journey, and no- 
 body knew when Nettie would be back. 
 
 How quiet Greyford seemed ! Jane looked up 
 and down its broad streets, with their huge elms
 
 170 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 shading it on either side ; and, in the late afternoon, 
 she seemed to see the same cows wandering home 
 that she used to watch when she was a child. 
 They ran wildly into Deacon Spinley's side yard, 
 just as they used to, and were chased out with the 
 same contumely, as it seemed, by the same boy. 
 
 One day, while she was with her aunt, she 
 opened a little cupboard that was set into the side 
 of the old-fashioned chimney of the sitting-room, to 
 put away into it some of the things she was tired 
 of seeing on the mantle-piece. She was surprised 
 to find standing in front of one of the shelves, 
 looking at her, a little bear of carved wood, which 
 she had never seen before. She took it out to look 
 at it, when Miss Burgess exclaimed, " There, Jane, 
 I almost forgot to give it to you. Horace Van- 
 zandt left it for you, to show you he had improved 
 in carving since the old days. He put it up on the 
 mantle-shelf ; but seeing it was getting dusty, I set 
 it away in the cupboard, and clean forgot it." 
 
 It was in very old, childish days that the Van- 
 zandts lived next door to the Burgesses. Horace 
 had a special gift at whittling, and used to make 
 dolls' chairs and tables for Jane, that she kept in 
 her baby-house as long as they would stand. The 
 little Jane valued them, though the legs were 
 rickety ; and they were the pride of her estab- 
 lishment.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 171 
 
 One day when Horace was about six years old, 
 he was found crying on the door-step. Tears were 
 unusual with this ambitious youth. Jane tried to 
 find out the trouble. He held up a bit of wood in 
 his hand, saying, " I tried to make it a bear, and it 
 will be a pig." 
 
 This was a tragic event in childhood, but had 
 been the source of an infinite number of jokes 
 afterwards ; Horace insisting that his bears, in 
 after life, turned out nothing but pigs. 
 
 " He wants to show me that he can make a 
 bear," said Jane, as she took it upstairs with her. 
 This was on one of her last days of packing, and 
 she did the bear up in tissue-paper, and put it in 
 one of the sacredest trays of her trunk. She had 
 a letter from Mark in the afternoon ; and when she 
 went back to her room she unpacked all her things, 
 took the bear out, and set it up on the mantle- 
 piece. 
 
 " I may as well leave it with the rest of my 
 things," she said. 
 
 The next morning she went away. She looked 
 round her room before she left, with her travelling- 
 bag in her hand. The little bear sat up on his 
 hind legs, and looked at her. She saw the little 
 bear, took it, and plunged it into the top of her 
 bag. 
 
 Sophy went upstairs with Jane to her room,
 
 172 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 after she reached Newport, and was present when 
 Jane opened her bag, to take out some of her 
 things. " What a dear little bear ! " exclaimed 
 Sophy, when it appeared. " It is just the thing to 
 set on the top of your little clock. I had a plan 
 for a cuckoo-clock for your room, but Ned thought 
 you would not like the noise. And perhaps it is 
 best not to have two in the house. And he found 
 this pretty little carved thing for the mantle-piece. 
 And just what it needs is this little bear." 
 
 Jane's summer passed on quietly. Its peace 
 almost terrified her. It made her think of one of 
 those cloudless summer days that are called 
 " weather breeders," and she had a vague dread 
 of a storm collecting behind the horizon. 
 
 She had the most charming letters from Mark, 
 full of tenderness and eloquence and poetry. 
 She liked to read them over and over. After she 
 had been especially moved by one of these letters, 
 she would take away Horace's little bear from the 
 top of the clock, and set it aside. But Ann, the 
 housemaid, had an unwonted eye for symmetry, 
 and always found it out and put it back again. 
 
 " Of course it 's absurd," said Jane to herself, 
 " to make any thing out of such a little thing. 
 But I wonder if Horace meant any thing more than 
 fun, and to show me that he had improved in carv- 
 ing, Yet it keeps me thinking of him ; and I can't
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 173 
 
 see the right of it, that all Mark's letters should 
 not keep him in my mind so much as the sight of 
 that little thing makes Horace always present 
 to me ! " 
 
 As for Mark, he liked Chicago. It would be 
 hard to find a wide-awake young man, whether he 
 were poet like Mark, inventor like Horace, or a gen- 
 eral, driving, enthusiastic putter-of-things-through 
 like Jeff, who did not like Chicago in those days, 
 at least, till he had seen the folly of it. In the 
 first place, Chicago was, as Mark's old friend, Dr. 
 Sylva, was used to say, a central ganglion of the 
 world's nervous-system, the life of the world 
 found its centres there ; and then Humfry, on the 
 other side the table, would laugh, and say, " He 
 means it is a relay station on the wires," which was 
 substantially what the Doctor did mean. Every- 
 body was in a hurry ; everybody looked forward, and 
 was so perfectly sure of his future that he dis- 
 counted it at whatsver rate of interest. Mark did 
 not find that a great many people came into the 
 Johnsonian Library ; but that was all the better 
 for the librarian. It gave him more time to write 
 for " The Lakeside Monthly," in which he was an 
 accepted and favorite contributor. As he walked 
 home at night, he would stop and see Mr. Walsh, 
 and look over the last new books, and in his beau- 
 tiful book-store, that most luxurious of " loafing-
 
 174 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 places," turn over some of the new English 
 newspapers. Then, ignoring the horse-cars, he 
 would cross the bridge westward, often stopping 
 to study character or race, as the fresh- water sea- 
 men worked their boats or schooners through the 
 drawbridges or up and down the crowded stream. 
 Mark lived in nice rooms with some old friends 
 who kept house well out on the prairie, as he used 
 to say, on the west side. But he did not dislike 
 his walk, night or morning. In the warmest 
 August evenings he came home well contented with 
 himself, and declaring, that if you did not walk fast, 
 the air was not oppressive. This meant, being in- 
 terpreted, that as he walked he had been blocking 
 out a new novel, or whipping into shape the refrac- 
 tory rhymes of a new sonnet to Jane. To think 
 that that quiet girl, so well-balanced, so little de- 
 monstrative, should have got this empire over our 
 bright, intense poet, who cannot sleep to-night un- 
 less to paper he has confided what he thinks and 
 what he knows ! Ah, Jane ! Jane ! as he makes 
 "lowly" do its duty in rhyming with "holy," and 
 reserves fit place lower down in which the line is 
 to round off into " melancAo?^," are you reading 
 his last sonnet? or are you looking at Horace's 
 bear?
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 175 
 
 CHAPTER XVHI. 
 
 999 WEST 12-rn STREET, Aug. 11, 1810. 
 
 "JV/TY DEAR MARK, The Greyford people 
 tell me you are in Chicago. And to think 
 that your old dream is fulfilled, and that you are 
 librarian-iii-chief ! Shall I not make you order 
 full sets of " Annales des Mines," and " Royal 
 Engineer Transactions," and every thing else in 
 my line ? You know, old fellow, that I am to 
 spend next winter in Chicago, and, if things turn 
 out well, all my life. It is one of those hits which 
 fellows here call " bonus ictus" that being supposed 
 to be the Latin for " a good lick." 
 
 Do you know any thing about cut-offs ? .Very 
 likely you do not ; but on the proper management 
 and adjustment of cut-offs depends the .very price 
 of the coal that you will burn next winter to warm 
 your Alexandrian library, or whatever its name 
 may be. It is estimated that the truly successful 
 cut-offs now in use diminish the quantity of fuel 
 needed in the steam-engines which employ them 
 by twenty-three, twenty-seven, and in some cases
 
 176 BIX OF ONE BY 
 
 thirty-five, and even thirty-six and two-thirds per 
 cent. So you see a cut-off, if it is really good, is 
 a virtual addition of such an amount as those 
 figures represent to the coal-product of the coun- 
 try. 
 
 Well, we have stumbled on an old fellow 
 queer fellow too ; regular down-east Yankee who 
 has a most amazing and ingenious invention for a 
 new cut-off. If you were here I could explain it 
 to you in two minutes ; but without a working 
 model you would hardly understand it. I have 
 just sent off to London, where we are to get an 
 English patent, some capital drawings of it by 
 Rachel, which would make you understand it per- 
 fectly. No matter. Some friends of mine have 
 an interest in the patent for the whole North-west, 
 with the exception of Davenport, Dubuque, and 
 two or three other cities, which had been sold 
 before. We propose to establish one good shop to 
 begin with, as our head-centre ; and the question 
 now is where it shall be put. I have been rather 
 in favor of Chicago myself, it is such an advantage 
 to be at a central point. Wherever it is estab- 
 lished, Chicago will be my central point for some 
 months, till we are ready to begin, for I have the 
 oversight of all the sub-contracts we make. 
 
 Oddly enough, as very likely you know, our old 
 friend, Mrs. Worboise, at whose adventures you
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 177 
 
 have heard us laugh so much, is established there. 
 Would you mind going round to see her, and 
 finding out surreptitiously whether I can go to her 
 direct when I come ? If I write and ask, she will 
 turn out the best inmates she has ; Abe Lincoln 
 and his wife and Thad would have to go to make 
 room for me, if she could not provide otherwise. 
 But if you think she has a decent attic, or other 
 landing-place, which I can have without ruining 
 her, just engage it for me, and let me know. 
 They tell me business was never opening so 
 briskly in Chicago. But I believe that is what 
 you Western fellows always say. How soon I 
 shall be saying " we Western fellows ! " It will 
 be real good to live in the same " school deestrict " 
 with you again, old fellow. Good-by. 
 Yours for ever, 
 
 HORACE VANZANDT. 
 
 Mark was thoroughly glad to find that one of 
 the old set was coming out to be near him, though 
 it were but for a time. Of course, he found that 
 Mrs. Worboise had room enough for Horace, and 
 he was only sorry that he had established himself 
 on the West Side. She was in that part of the 
 city well at the southward, where it begins to 
 become a little open, and her good spacious house 
 had room enough and to spare for Horace and his 
 8* i.
 
 178 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 belongings. Well pleased was she to know that 
 fate had thrown him under her roof again. Mark 
 was quite sure that the letter gave him pleasure 
 so far. He was also sure that it gave him no pain 
 no, no sort of pain to find Horace speaking 
 of Rachel and Rachel's drawing as if he were so in 
 the habit of regarding her as entirely his own 
 property, that there need be no explanation why 
 she was drawing illustrations of specifications for 
 him. He was sure this gave him no pain. But 
 he wondered a little why it gave him no pain. 
 He knew very well, that ever since Valentine's 
 Day, and before, every poem he had written to 
 anybody had been written to Jane Burgess. 
 There was a true woman, who could appreciate 
 him and his. Still, he could not but remember, 
 also, that night when Rachel's mother died, and 
 the verses he wrote to her the next Valentine's 
 Day ; and, indeed, he remembered that he wished 
 he knew how he could ask her for a little drama 
 of his, called " The Pearl in the Well," which he 
 had sent to her with a pretty dedication, and 
 which nobody had any copy of excepting her. 
 He was not quite sure but he could get it brought 
 out at Crosby's Opera House ; and, if he had not 
 wholly dropped correspondence with Rachel, he 
 would write and ask her for it. It puzzled him 
 a little to know, first, how he ever could have
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 179 
 
 thought that she was so good a critic of his work ; 
 and, second, why he was not more jealous of Hor- 
 ace, of whom, in fact, he was not jealous at all. 
 
 Of which mysteries the explanation was simple 
 enough to anybody who could look at them without 
 the obscuring films which clouded Master Mark's 
 vision. He and Rachel Holley had been to school 
 together, and had gone home together. She had 
 ridden on his sled, and, in return, had taught him 
 to play cat's-cradle. Then she had become a 
 woman at the period when he was ceasing to be a 
 boy, but had not become a man. Being the 
 woman he knew best, he honored her, prized her, 
 and supposed he loved her. It is a mistake which 
 often happens where propinquity, as Miss Edge- 
 worth calls it, has brought a boy and girl together. 
 The woman Rachel judged the situation better 
 than the fledgling Mark ; and this was the reason 
 why Rachel did not engage herself to him, when 
 he plead so earnestly, and wrote verses which were 
 so pretty, after her mother's death. 
 
 But Mark was to become a man in his time. A 
 dreamy man, if you please ; a man who did not yet 
 know much about how the wolf was to be kept 
 from the door, or whether the little god of love 
 could or could not turn the spit. Still, he was 
 a man. Being a man, he had been thrown into 
 near and confidential intercourse with another
 
 180 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 charming woman, Jane Burgess. Who, indeed, 
 was not in confidential intercourse with this sympa- 
 thetic Jane ? Yet, again, she was the first culti- 
 vated and accomplished woman whom the man 
 Mark Hinsdale had seen nearly. Being the AVO- 
 man he knew best, he honored her in turn, prized 
 her, and supposed he loved her. He wrote her 
 very pretty verses, and sent her very charming 
 letters. He certainly loved her as he had never 
 loved Rachel, and that was really the reason why 
 he was not in the least jealous of Horace Van- 
 zandt. But all this, which it is easy enough for all 
 of us to understand, was not so clear to Mark, who 
 could not understand that as lately as two years 
 ago he was in that transition condition of the 
 polliwog, or the tadpole, which, by the more care- 
 ful writers in anthropology, is called the condition 
 of the hobbledehoy.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF TEE OTHER. 181 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 ' I "'HE Bardies family, with full contingents of 
 nurses for the children, even with a man- 
 servant who was to see to the baggage, as if it 
 needed any seeing to, and with Jane, of course, 
 had gone to sleep at Rochester, N. Y., and had 
 waked some forty miles east of Windsor, opposite 
 Detroit, in Canada. Jane had gulped down an 
 immense regret when she had found that she was 
 to be trundled by Niagara, actually " in full sight 
 of the cataract," as Ned Bardies told her, without 
 any idea of the pain he gave her, and that she was 
 not to have any sight of it, not even to be waked 
 to see the shimmer of the white spray in the moon- 
 light, nor to hear the roar of the water. She even 
 had rebellious plans that she would sit up till mid- 
 night and go out upon the platform as they passed, 
 if so she might fulfil the dream of twenty years, 
 and at least feel that she had "seen Niagara." 
 But no one gave the least countenance to this. 
 Her berth had to be made up when the other 
 berths were made up. All she could do was to
 
 182 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 resolve that she would not go to sleep. Perhaps 
 she could jump up when the time came. But, 
 alas ! before the time came, she was so far asleep 
 that she thought it was ironing day at Deacon 
 Spinley's, and each successive kitchybunk of each 
 twenty-foot rail that they passed over, appeared in 
 her dream as a flat-iron thrown by Mrs. Spinley at 
 the crash towel which was hanging on her roller. 
 So Jane did not " see Niagara " that time. 
 
 Forty miles east of Windsor everybody was 
 awake, and began to say he had not slept a wink 
 all night. Jane had washed herself in a few 
 thimblefuls of cinder soup, which at her call 
 distilled like dew into the bottom of a cinder- 
 specked basin in the ladies' dressing-room. She had 
 rubbed some ring or lamp she had about her, and 
 those good genii, who were always her friends, had 
 arranged the "tangled dark-brown hair," so that 
 it seemed as if nothing had disturbed her. The 
 same genii had created for her matchless and spot- 
 less cuffs and collars. Then Jane went back to the 
 narrow quarters where she had slept, and found 
 that some other genii had been round with wands, 
 and that the berths had disappeared, and that in 
 their places were wide and deep "rep-covered" 
 seats, lighted by large plate-glass windows, through 
 which she could see, what was a sight quite new to 
 her, the blackened clearings, the log-cabins, and
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 183 
 
 the September harvest and fruitage of a new 
 country. The sun was well up, and the scene was 
 exciting enough, even to a person less hearty, 
 healthy, and alive than Jane. 
 
 An hour of this rapid panorama shifting, and she 
 knew, without question, that she was hungry. 
 But Jane was a little reticent ; and she lived on a 
 principle which had never yet failed her, which the 
 Western people embody in their direction, " Don't 
 be first to squawk." Jane knew very well, that, 
 by the same law of nature which made her hungry, 
 Ned Bardies was already more hungry than she ; 
 arid she knew that if he were in that condition, all 
 powers in earth would be set in operation to meet 
 his necessities, and, still more, that she should fare 
 as well as he. So Jane still looked out upon pigs 
 arid stumps and corn and pumpkins and sheep and 
 log-cabins ; caught now and then the long, low 
 line of the lake which they were skirting ; saw in 
 a few moments more that the number of cabins 
 increased, and that they were approaching some 
 place with a name ; saw Ned Bardies begin to bus- 
 tle, and to stir up the nurses and the children: 
 and thus it happened that in fifteen minutes from 
 the time when Jane was well aware that she was 
 hungry, she was hustled upstairs in the steam 
 ferry-boat at Windsor, had been placed opposite 
 some sausages and fried oysters, by that most at-
 
 184 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 tentive host who presides there, was receiving his 
 assurances that every hand-bag, veil, umbrella, 
 newspaper, and shawl-strap were in such safety as 
 the bank of England even did not give its specie, 
 and was listening to his explanations of the length 
 of time which was before her for her meal. " Cen- 
 tral Michigan ! were they going by the Central ? " 
 Heavens ! what hours were before them then for 
 breakfast ! In all which her voluble and hospita- 
 ble friend was substantially correct. Jane had 
 tune enough for a good breakfast. 
 
 The Bardies children, sandwiched in with nurses, 
 were at her left. At their extreme left they were 
 protected by Mrs. Bardies. Mr. Ned Bardies, be- 
 longing to a sex which has rights, was downstairs, 
 far from any breakfast-room, watching their bag- 
 gage as it passed the customs-officer. So were all 
 the men of all the parties. The ladies and children, 
 therefore, were well forward with their breakfast, 
 the children had finished their beefsteak and 
 omelet, their sausages and fried oysters, and 
 were beginning on their buckwheats and maple 
 sirup, when four gentlemen filed up from the 
 lower deck to take such chance of breakfast as they 
 might, and found seats opposite our friends. The 
 last of them flung his cap and gloves on a table, 
 ordered " coffee, steak, Indian bread," drew a stool 
 into place, and turned to sit opposite Jane. It
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER, 185 
 
 was Horace Vanzandt. One of the lucky double- 
 sixes of travelling ! 
 
 A bright, hearty, pleasant addition he made to 
 their party. He and Jane had not met now for 
 more than a year, and only for a few moments 
 then. All six of us suppose, looking back upon it, 
 that neither of them appeared to the other as 
 changed ; certainly, neither would have said that 
 the other was "improved;" still, as we have 
 talked it over, our verdict has been, that these 
 two fresh and true young people could not have 
 knocked about in the world as much as they had in 
 two years, more or less, since the famous Greyford 
 sleigh-ride, without gaining that self-possession, in- 
 formation, tact, if you please ; that facility in ex- 
 pression, and facility in listening, which varied 
 society gives, to which the reading of good novels 
 contributes, which, all combined, so lighten up man 
 or woman in intercourse, even with the nearest of 
 their old friends. At all events, Horace had a world 
 of information about people in whom Jane was inter- 
 ested, which was new to her, and she as much that 
 was new to him. Still more, he had been making 
 rapid steps in his profession. He had learned very 
 thoroughly, by this time, how little he knew ; an 
 immense acquisition for the youngster of three and 
 twenty. She had moved, as people say, in the so- 
 ciety of Boston and Newport ; among people no
 
 186 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 whit more intelligent or highly-bred than those she 
 left at Greyford, but among people of many more 
 types, and their experience had varied hers, and 
 had quickened her methods of expression. So it 
 happened, if we six have rightly analyzed and syn- 
 thetized, that Horace was more quiet, more simple, 
 and far more profound in what he had to say ; that 
 Jane was less shy, and more animated, in what she 
 had to say. Certainly, talk ranged over an immense 
 range ; but neither said any thing of the bear. 
 
 The Bardleses all made Horace feel at home. 
 Indeed, they were occupying almost the whole 
 of a drawing-room car with their immense party. 
 Nor is there a better chance for long and satisfac- 
 tory talk than in a good drawing-room car, when 
 the road is well ballasted, and the train well run. 
 No postman, nay, no door-bell, there ! So, for a 
 happy hundred and fifty miles, be the same more or 
 less, they talked, they amused the children, they 
 read the September " Old and New," they talked 
 again, and cut out cats and horses from paper for 
 the little ones, and talked again, and talked again ; 
 and so they came to Marshall, where the train 
 stopped for dinner. Dinner was soon over, and all 
 the party were back again in their car but Ned 
 Bardies himself, who was taking the last possible 
 moment with his cigar. His wife, as usual, began to 
 be uneasy ; the train began to start, when Ned
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 187 
 
 appeared at the door triumphant, threw it open, 
 and waited on the platform for Nettie Sylva to 
 come in ! 
 
 Our readers may recollect the circumstances under 
 which Horace Vanzandt and Nettie Sylva parted 
 at the North Denmark sleigh-ride. We have tried 
 to make them understand with how much and with 
 how little feeling Nettie wrote to him when he 
 was first in New York ; how far she then felt hurt 
 by his manner in writing to her, and how far she 
 pretended to feel hurt. We have also tried ^to 
 make the reader understand how deep was the 
 wound which Jane Burgess had received, when, in 
 face of the observations of the mild police of 
 Greyford, and of every decision of its common 
 law, Jeff Fleming, who had been supposed to be 
 hers, and hers only since they outspelled the best 
 spellers in the district, had transferred his heart 
 and hand to this same Nettie, after his long illness 
 at the deacon's. To analyze and synthetize on 
 those yearnings was comparatively easy. It is not 
 quite so easy to say just what went through each 
 heart of the three, and each mind, when they met 
 so unexpectedly in the drawing-room car at Mar- 
 shall. 
 
 They were all fond of each other ; that was cer- 
 tain. The girls were very fond of each other. 
 Still, Jane did not think Nettie had ever treated
 
 188 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 Horace fairly, and she had told her so more than 
 once. For all that, in the very depth of her heart, 
 Jane was glad that, as things had turned, Nettie 
 had treated Horace as she had. It was clear to 
 Jane's well-balanced mind that Nettie never could 
 have made Horace happy, and she doubted whether 
 Horace would have made her happy. Now, to 
 pass to Nettie, the bright, pretty, coquettish thing 
 we must confess she was; she was "just as glad 
 as she could be " to see them both. She said so, 
 and we all six think she was. It was her way to 
 be glad ; and she was more apt to be glad when 
 she was on the top crest of a wave that seemed 
 likely to topple right over, than on any conceivable 
 level of any summer sea. Still, though Nettie was 
 "just as glad as she could be," she undoubtedly 
 was well aware that Jeff Fleming was as entirely 
 Jane's property, when he came frozen stiff into 
 the deacon's house, had only Jane asserted suze- 
 rainty, as was any unmarked log the deacon's 
 property when it was flung up by the river on his 
 meadow. Nettie knew this in her guilty heart; 
 and she knew as well that that night when she had 
 played " Les Larmes " to Jeff, and he, susceptible, 
 tender fellow, had been so tearful, so tender, and 
 so happy, she knew, or thought she knew, she had 
 been giving a great wrench at Jane's heart-strings. 
 And as for Horace, Horace had comforted him-
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 189 
 
 self with Rachel; yes, verily. Still Nettie did 
 happen to notice that the guard-chain Horace 
 wore was that she knit for him, and that there had 
 been a time when she could have kept him in 
 Greyford for ever had she chosen. So, though 
 Nettie was "just as glad as she could be " to see 
 them both, we all six think that it was with the joy 
 of wild adventure, and that she was curious to know 
 how many of the egg-shells among which they 
 were all to tread would be broken, and how many 
 would hold firm their yolks and their albumen. 
 
 It must be confessed that neither of the girls 
 seemed externally in the least disturbed by any of 
 these reflections; they kissed and laughed, and 
 held each other by all four hands ; then Nettie did 
 all the necessary civilities to Mrs. Bardies and the 
 rest ; and then the three, Jane, Nettie, and Horace, 
 nestled down into one vis-d-vis, and began talking 
 of how it had all fallen out that they had all come 
 together. Horace was trying to persuade himself 
 that he ought not to feel confused. Had not Nettie 
 snubbed him, once, twice, thrice, n times ? to take 
 his favorite mathematical formulas. Nay, had she 
 not accepted Jeff willingly, in defiance of him and 
 of Jane both, and of all Greyford beside ? None 
 the less is it true, that, of the three, Horace was 
 the only one who for a moment appeared to be ill 
 at ease.
 
 190 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 But this did not last long. They were soon tell- 
 ing each other facts, and facts are an immense relief 
 when there is any loose screw in people's senti- 
 ments. Nettie was explaining about -her journey- 
 ings. Mr. Holley was prospecting in his eternal 
 lumber speculations, and had taken Rachel with 
 him. They had been up in Minnesota, beyond St. 
 Paul's, she knew not where. Nettie, meanwhile, 
 had been staying with an old friend at Ann Arbor. 
 She was to meet the Holleys at the Sherman House 
 in Chicago on this particular day, and here she was, 
 so far on her way. She had been riding with them 
 all the way from Ann Arbor without knowing it. 
 
 Then the Hofleys would be in Chicago with 
 them all ! And Mark was there already. What 
 fun! 
 
 Neither Jane nor Horace dared ask Nettie where 
 Jeff was. And Nettie, dashing as she was, did not 
 happen to tell. 
 
 Evening found them at Chicago. Horace was to 
 go to his quarters at Mrs. Worboise's. The Bar- 
 dieses and Jane were all to go to the new house in 
 Erie Street. But all parties first went with Net- 
 tie to the Sherman House. There, sure enough, 
 they found Rachel Holley and her father. There, 
 as it happened, was Mark Hinsdale, making a 
 friendly call. The girls both thought that he and 
 Rachel seemed on a very brotherly and sisterly
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 191 
 
 footing. Five of the six, in the chances of life, 
 had brought up at Chicago. They agreed they 
 would all see the sights together the next day. 
 Who could tell when they all should come together 
 again !
 
 192 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 nr^HE sight-seeing lasted longer than they had 
 expected ; and all parties of our friends grew 
 well wonted to Chicago before it was at an end. 
 The Bardies cortege was settling down in their new 
 house. Mr. Holley's combinations about the lum- 
 ber lands in Minnesota seemed to draw out into 
 longer and longer convolutions, which he explained 
 to no one, and for which no one cared. They 
 began on their lion-hunting with determined ardor, 
 supposing that they must finish it in three days. 
 But the days lengthened into weeks ; and for every 
 day of every week, these young people found 
 themselves together almost every afternoon, every 
 evening without exception, and sometimes in the 
 morning. There was an excursion to Hyde Park, 
 the pretty watering-place of Chicago ; there was 
 an excursion to Riverside, that wonderful and beau- 
 tiful country town, where, before your house is 
 built, your sidewalk is laid, your water and gas- 
 pipes ready, your drainage adjusted; where in 
 short, every grievance of ordinary building is cared
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 193 
 
 for before you begin. There were the stock-yards 
 to be seen, under the oversight of Mr. Denison, a 
 new-made friend of Mark's, who was very attentive, 
 and with whom that sad flirt Nettie made very 
 rapid acquaintance. Always there was, for a place 
 of rendezvous, the cool, pleasant reading-room of 
 the Johnsonian Library, where Mark had created 
 for the time a vat of lemonade, having ordered ice 
 by the week from the ice-man. There were the 
 elevators to be seen, and explained in detail by 
 Horace. There were the water-works, with the 
 most interesting and courteous explanations from 
 Mr. Chesborough and Mr. Clarke. Jane, Nettie, 
 and Rachel had all been teachers ; and they had 
 found some old Normal-School acquaintance in the 
 high school, which had a great interest for them. 
 And in Mr. Barry they had the most instructive 
 and kind guide in the treasures, then still in their 
 fulness, of the Chicago Historical Library. In 
 those days there was a great deal for intelligent" 
 curiosity to see and enjoy in the young city of the 
 Lakeside. 
 
 No one of them, perhaps, observed it then ; but 
 the rather unusual fact for them, that they were 
 not precisely paired, brought these young people 
 into a relation new to them, and much more fresh 
 and healthy than they had ever been in before since 
 childhood. As they had grown to be men and
 
 194 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 women, they had always, by some fate outside 
 themselves, been thrown in couples. At the sleigh- 
 ride, for instance, already spoken of, it was to be 
 Mark and Rachel, Jeff and Jane, Horace and Net- 
 tie. In New York, it was Rachel and Horace. In 
 Boston, it was Jane and Mark. Always they had 
 been counted off by twos, as the drill sergeants 
 say, whether they would or no. But in these 
 various walks, rides, and sails of Chicago, that ar- 
 rangement was necessarily broken. For there were 
 only two of the young men, nobody knew where 
 Jeff Fleming was, and there were all three of 
 the young women. It might well be that there 
 was some Mr. Denison, or Mr. Marsh, or Mr. Fay 
 beside, of the party, very likely two or three of 
 the Chicago gentlemen, who had found out that 
 three pretty Yankee girls were seeing sights to- 
 gether. But the old doublet combination was 
 broken up. If they started in one arrangement 
 for a walk, they came back in another. And, with- 
 out their thinking much of it, each of them was 
 thus making out the real life and character of the 
 others a thousand times better than they ever did 
 before. And no people can find more surprises in 
 each other than those who have seen each other 
 since they were babies. 
 
 Perhaps the only person dissatisfied with these 
 daily arrangements was the excellent Mrs. Wor-
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 195 
 
 boise, the only person who saw from the outside 
 how these foolish little pawns were moving to and 
 fro. Mrs. Worboise would get up nice, bountiful 
 teas for the young people when they came home all 
 alive with the excitement of walk or drive ; and she 
 would watch at the door oh, so earnestly ! for 
 their return. And when her dear Rachel came, a 
 little earlier than the others, with some Mr. Fay, 
 or Mr. Marsh, and not with Horace, Mrs. Wor- 
 boise did not like it at all. And when, last of all, 
 Horace came in with Jane Burgess, Mrs. Worboise 
 did not like that at all. Mrs. Worboise had been 
 sure that Horace and Rachel were meant for each 
 other, ever since they went to the Cooper Institute 
 together. And why he did not hold by Rachel, 
 she did not see ! And why Rachel did not hold to 
 him, she did not see ! She had almost a mind to 
 speak to Rachel ! She could not bear it ! 
 
 No ! dear Mrs. Worboise, no ! all the half-dozen 
 of us think you had better not speak to Rachel. 
 Speaking to them does no good, we think: we 
 think it does harm. The truth was, that Rachel 
 and Horace had helped each other, had helped 
 each other a great, great deal. He had been kind 
 to her, and she had been kind to him. In the lone- 
 liness of New York, this had been to each of them a 
 great comfort. But comfort is not every thing. 
 And it was made perfectly clear to Rachel's mind
 
 196 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 in the days when they were in Chicago, that she 
 liked this merry Mr. Marsh, and this thoughtful 
 Mr. Fay, and this kind and attentive Mr. Denison, 
 just as well as she liked Horace. And Rachel was 
 quite too true to make Horace fancy that she liked 
 him any better. What Horace found out, perhaps 
 we shall some day know. 
 
 One Saturday night, as they landed from an ex- 
 cursion on the water, Mr. Forsyth, who handed 
 Jane on shore, and walked up the street with her, 
 asked her where she was to go to church the next 
 day ; and, before the party separated, she held a 
 congress on the street-corner that they might ar- 
 range to go to church together the next day, on 
 their last Sunday in Chicago. On their other Sun- 
 days they had been broken up, by one and another 
 chance, and parted. This time they would go to- 
 gether. 
 
 To this they agreed ; and, after a little chaffer, 
 it was determined that Mark and Horace should 
 meet at the Sherman House, escort Rachel and 
 Nettie to Mr. Bardles's house, where Jane should 
 be in waiting, and they would all go together to 
 Unity Church, on the North Side, to hear Robert 
 Collyer, who had not long returned from England ; 
 and this they did accordingly. 
 
 They were not too late, certainly, but not too 
 early ; were met by a courteous gentleman at the
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHEE. 197 
 
 door of the church, who found they would be glad 
 to sit near each other, and apologized that he must 
 therefore place them near the door. The church 
 was large, without galleries ; it was already well 
 filled. The low pews, curving a little back in the 
 middle, were ranged so close to each other as to 
 give a social or congregate aspect to the congrega- 
 tion. And the first feeling with our Connecticut 
 friends was, that they were at home. 
 
 The organ was of sweet tone, and was very well 
 played ; something almost weird in the voluntary 
 started the tears in Rachel's eyes. Then the 
 preacher rose in the pulpit. A large, strongly- 
 built man, with full, cheerful face, iron-gray hair, 
 and sympathetic, though piercing eyes, he read the 
 opening hymn, with a home-like earnestness, that, 
 in an instant, made them forget him, while they 
 were lost in the emotion of the lines. This direct 
 simplicity controlled them even more when he read 
 the Scripture. The passage was that in Luke, de- 
 scribing the unfruitful fig-tree, and the allusion to 
 the eighteen men who were killed by the tower in 
 Siloam. The young people felt almost as if the 
 eighteen were their own friends, and wondered 
 why they had never before cared for their destruc- 
 tion. After prayer, the congregation sat silent, 
 while a few plaintive chords from the organ seemed 
 to take up the eager and intensely personal peti-
 
 198 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 tion. It was really a relief that no one said a word, 
 for those overcharged minutes. And when the 
 preacher rose again, with the hymn-book, and read 
 the first verse of the hymn, with intense feeling, 
 no one was surprised that he laid down the book, 
 and sat down, as if he could read no more. 
 
 " I want a principle within, 
 Of jealous, godly fear; 
 A sensibility to sin; 
 A pain to find it near." 
 
 After the hymn was sung, he gave out his 
 text. 
 
 " Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in 
 Siloam fell and slew them : think ye that they 
 were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusa- 
 lem?" 
 
 Our young friends had never heard such a ser- 
 mon. They were magnetized by the speaker's 
 personal power ; they were led along in perfect 
 sympathy by his simplicity ; they were moved to 
 intense feeling by his undisguised emotion. In 
 the beginning, this or that quaint illustration or 
 suggestion, thrown in without any reserve in his 
 curious Yorkshire dialect, made them turn to each 
 other sometimes with a sympathetic smile. But, 
 before he was done, sympathy expressed itself 
 rather by pressure of hand with hand, or stillness 
 even more rapt than ever. For he was speaking
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 199 
 
 now of the mutual and common life of men. 
 How impossible for any one of us to live for him- 
 self, or to die for himself ! We must not say nor 
 think, that those are publicans, and we are purer 
 than they : do they sin, is it not because the 
 atmosphere of their lives has been so tainted? 
 and who is responsible for that atmosphere, if 
 not we, among the rest ? He alluded to the 
 horrible frauds detected just then in the New 
 York Ring, but it was without invective ; from 
 that allusion he passed on to speak with intense 
 feeling of that average conscience of the nation, in 
 which the conception or execution of such frauds 
 could be possible ; and he held man, woman, and 
 child to the duty of purifying that conscience, 
 and quickening the common life. The whole 
 hushed assembly testified by its subdued manner, 
 as the service ended, to the power of this personal 
 appeal. 
 
 As our friends began their walk home, Nettie 
 found herself walking with Mark Hinsdale. " If 
 I lived within twenty miles of that man," she 
 said, " I would hear no other preacher. I would 
 come here if I came barefoot. O Mark! what 
 lives we lead! How can one fling away life as 
 one does, when, as he says, the thoughtless make 
 others thoughtless and the brave make others 
 brave ? "
 
 200 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 It seemed to Mark that he had never seen the 
 real side of Nettie, beneath her merry play, 
 before. 
 
 Jane and Rachel were together, Horace with 
 them. " I was never in a Unitarian church be- 
 fore," said Rachel. " Are they always so grave 
 and silent as they leave church, and as they go 
 home ? " 
 
 " I doubt if they always hear such sermons," 
 said Horace. " These people seem to me to feel 
 as I do ; as if I never knew before my duty to the 
 > world, or as if" and he paused and shuddered 
 "as if we were all on the edge of a common 
 calamity."
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 01 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 A S the five went and came on that October 
 
 Sunday, how many times they said to each 
 
 other, what they had said so many times before : 
 
 " If only Jeff Fleming were here, it would be 
 
 perfect! " 
 
 In saying this they were wholly wrong. The 
 truth was, that, if Jeff Fleming had been there, 
 they would, almost of course, have paired off in 
 one of the old and familiar combinations. They 
 would have lost just that vivacity of the new dis- 
 coveries which they were making all the time ; 
 and making precisely because their partnerships 
 changed with every new house into which they 
 entered, and, indeed, with every other change of 
 their little plans. 
 
 Meanwhile, Jeff wats coming to them, though 
 they did not know it, a good deal faster than the 
 old poetical expressions for full speed can tell. He 
 was coming a good deal faster than the average 
 wind comes. He was coming as fast as high- 
 pressure steam, thrown first on one end and then 
 9*
 
 202 BIX OF ONE EY 
 
 on the other of the pistons of a first-class engine 
 from the Boston Locomotive Shop would cany 
 him. Now, if any of the new school of poets 
 wants to write a realistic poem about Jeff Fleming, 
 let him try putting that statement into rhythm, 
 verse, and rhyme. 
 
 After he has done this, he may go on to say, 
 that a little after they left Cass Corners, on that 
 October Sunday afternoon, three or four very wild 
 cows, tormented by five or six wilder German boys, 
 left the pasture where they would fain have been 
 quiet, broke through its fence, and were rushing 
 across the railway, when the express, to which 
 Jeff had intrusted himself, struck full on the 
 whitest of the herd. She disappeared ; but the 
 engine was not so fortunate with the other cows, 
 and when it was done with them, it was lying in 
 the prairie, some feet below the level it had been 
 running on, gasping the last inarticulate word 
 which it would speak for many days. Jeff and 
 the other passengers, startled from their naps, 
 sprang up, to discover that they were not hurt, 
 and to call an unexpected town meeting for the 
 advice and assistance of the conductor and engi- 
 neer. The hours spent in contemplating the 
 wrecks of engine and cows, in repairing damages, 
 and in waiting for another engine, threw them 
 wholly out of time. The road was no longer
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 203 
 
 theirs, to take the expressive phrase of the craft. 
 Their pride was humbled, as is a great cardinal's 
 after his fall. Only this morning, and every thing 
 got out of their way! Only this evening, and 
 they must shirk off upon sidings, and get out of 
 everybody's else way ; all because four cows did 
 not understand the eternal etiquettes, and know 
 that precedence must be given to an express- 
 train. 
 
 So was it that, as Jeff and his companions at 
 last struck Lake Michigan, and thought now that 
 all was clear for them to approach Chicago, it was 
 already well advanced toward midnight. Some 
 one, who stepped in from a way station, bade Jeff 
 look out and see the prairie fire at the northward. 
 
 Prairie fire, indeed ! One passenger after an- 
 other threw up his window on each side of the 
 car, and looked into the night air ; and as they 
 rushed northward, at their old speed again now, 
 and the flames and glowing smoke-clouds grew 
 higher on the horizon, every one knew that this 
 was no fire of hay and straw and stubble, but that 
 the city itself, which was home to most of them 
 and harbor to all of them, was in flames. 
 
 They dashed into the station, wild for news, to 
 find all silent there. The throng which usually 
 welcomes the arrival of an express was elsewhere 
 now ; not one hackman to urge his claims, not one
 
 204 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 teamster to plead for a trunk. Even the few 
 women who found themselves on that Sunday 
 train, saw that their friends had not come to meet 
 them. The porters and switch-tenders on duty 
 could hardly tell them more than what they knew 
 already, that Chicago was in flames. 
 
 Few indeed had stopped to ask this, only those 
 who were strangers as completely as Jeff Fleming 
 was. The larger part had leaped from the car 
 platforms as soon as the motion was slow enough, 
 and had disappeared at once on their way to ware- 
 house or to home, which they knew must be in 
 danger. Jeff himself, who knew not the name of 
 a street, and indeed had no special place to go to, 
 as soon as he found that he could learn nothing 
 from the porters, rushed, self-directed, toward the 
 line of fire. At first the stillness and solitude 
 were terrible to him. All was light as day, and 
 yet desert as midnight. He could hear his own 
 boot-heel on the sidewalk, and in that square he 
 could see no one. But, in a moment more, when he 
 was in the presence of the fire itself, he saw why 
 there had been solitude before. For now he had 
 come into a jam of people, who did know the city, 
 as he did not, and were on one of the great gan- 
 glions of its circulation. Jeff felt a terrible pang 
 cross him, as he saw the struggles and horrors of 
 this crowd. Here was a young man, with a sick
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 205 
 
 child of four or five years old in his arms. Oh, 
 how wretched her pale face was ! " Will you 
 make way forme? this child is dying." And the 
 poor mother was close behind. Jeff felt it like a 
 personal pang cross him. Where were the three 
 Greyford girls in this wild confusion ? Were they 
 lost in the crowd, as he was? Was there any 
 one to take care of them? Point by point Jeff 
 crossed that street. Between the back wheels of 
 wagons there is a little space, even in a terrible 
 crowd, of which a resolute pedestrian can avail him- 
 self. And Jeff was not a man to shrink. He 
 crossed the avenue, pressing still towards the 
 fire ran up a street which was almost desolate 
 again, and this time faced a coffle of horses, wild 
 with fright, some of them hooded in the jackets 
 of the men who had led them from their stable, 
 others, blindfolded by such rags as could be seized 
 upon, haltered together, and flanked by as many 
 men and boys as could be brought into the service, 
 driven from the light, down into safer regions, 
 where they could be harnessed in their turn, and 
 put to the work which was so essential. Jeff 
 shrunk into a doorway till this wild cortege passed 
 on, and then started again for the line of fire. He 
 came on it in a moment, sooner than he expected, 
 came close on a steam fire-engine, whose fore- 
 man, hoarse and black, was just giving the orders
 
 206 BIX OF ONE BY 
 
 to limber up, that she might be put in a station to 
 windward. Jeff saw by the unconscious gestures 
 of the men, that the flames, or the burning brands, 
 had leaped over their heads as they worked ; he 
 could see that the treacherous eaves of a high 
 warehouse forty rods behind them were in flames. 
 Jeff had found his place now : he bore a hand man- 
 fully with the rest, at the tongue of the engine ; 
 neither questioned why, nor made reply, as one 
 order after another was given ; only admired the 
 sublime audacity of the foreman, who was doing 
 his personal duty still, and doing it cheerfully, in 
 the face of such tremendous odds. "Easy with 
 her ! Away with her ! Softly, boys ; steady. 
 Here we are ! " as she wheeled round into posi- 
 tion, as, in a miraculously short time, a line of 
 hose was run out, as a spirited fellow carried it 
 up half the height of the guilty warehouse, and, 
 amid the cheers of the few workmen, drenched 
 back the spiteful flame, and then turned his foun- 
 tain on the roof opposite. Short-lived triumph, 
 indeed ! They had not been three minutes in posi- 
 tion, sending out hose, hither and thither, to points 
 which seemed assailable, when, as Jeff rose from 
 his knees, where, in a deluge of water, he had been 
 coupling two bits of leading-hose together, he saw, 
 what the foreman did not see, so eager was he 
 in his attack, another Mansard roof, a whole
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 07 
 
 square to windward of them, all bannered and pen- 
 noned in flame. Jeff simply pointed it to the 
 foreman, who nodded in reply with a grim, hard 
 smile, called in his hose once more, coiled it 
 roughly as he might ; once more gave the order he 
 had given so often, "Limber up, boys! No 
 good here ! Easy with her ! Walk her along," 
 and directed the new station. It was as if they 
 had been spitting at the flame. 
 
 Jeff was willing to work, but not at such work 
 as this. It was the foreman's duty, very good for 
 the foreman ; but it was not his. And, as Jeff 
 saw the steamer in position once more, he ran up, 
 he knew not why, toward the Court-house, which 
 they had seen towering high in the distance. He 
 left the line of fire for the moment, called by voices 
 in the crowd which had gathered in the lighted 
 square, and turned to join them. "Take hold, 
 gentlemen ; take hold ! Do you mean to have 
 these poor fellows roasted alive?" These were 
 the first words that came to Jeff in the midst of 
 the uproar ; and, in a moment, he saw the position. 
 There had been a theory that the Court-house was 
 fire-proof. Now, the basement of the Court-house 
 was used as the county jail, and was filled with 
 prisoners. The keepers, doubtful as to their right 
 to release them, had gone to whoever had that 
 right, for some sort of sign-manual. Meanwhile,
 
 208 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 the cupola of the Court-house was in flames ; the 
 heat and horror of the fire made themselves known 
 within stone-walls below. And this army of 
 wretches, whose separate cells had all been un- 
 locked by the retiring wardens, was screaming 
 within for freedom ; while the strong outer doors 
 were bolted and locked. They were all shut up 
 together, in one undistinguished crowd. The cry 
 of oath and entreaty could be distinctly heard by 
 the smaller crowd outside. But, in that smaller 
 crowd, some man of sense had understood the 
 exigency, and had voted himself into command. 
 The workmen who were relaying the pavement 
 of the square had left, on Saturday, a convenient 
 timber with which they adjusted its grade. " Take 
 hold, gentlemen ; take hold ! Do you mean to 
 have them roasted alive ? " The sovereigns who 
 were passing understood the exigency, and rushed, 
 at this command, to the rescue. Jeff seized the 
 timber with the rest, thirty, forty of them had 
 hold of it together. " Back ! back ! a few steps 
 back ! Now ! One, two, three ! " And they rushed 
 at the gate, to be well-nigh overthrown by the 
 recoil. " Once more, men ! back ! a little back ! 
 Now ! Are you ready ? One, two, three ! " And 
 once more their hands were torn, and they thrown 
 back on each other, as the gate refused to yield. 
 But their cheerful leader, after examining its con-
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 209 
 
 dition, reported favorably of the effect. " Don't 
 give it up, men. Back again ! little more ! 
 little more ! Now ! One, two, three ! " And with 
 rather more skill, and a swing rather more elastic, 
 they rushed again at the gate, and this time it was 
 certain that something inside had given way. An 
 answering cheer from within. Some swings of 
 the battering-ram, directed with more precision, if 
 with less force, and then, in one instant, the gate 
 swung away, Jeff knew not where ; and one 
 black stream of life poured out from the gateway, 
 into the street, with howls and cheers and glad- 
 some oaths, and scattered to be seen no more. 
 Jeff stood still, almost wondering why no one 
 spoke in articulate words, and, in a moment, found 
 himself alone. He was the only man who had 
 nowhere to go. 
 
 Then recurred to him the question which had 
 come to him so often since the young man passed 
 him with the sick child, " Where are the Grey- 
 ford girls?" Where, indeed? and how was one 
 to go in search of them ? I have had just such a 
 question put itself to me in a dream, when, all of 
 a sudden, it appeared that some one who should 
 have been there was not there. Was it a little 
 strange, that Jeff's question did not first frame 
 itself into, " Where is Nettie ? " though he had a 
 provoking letter from Nettie lying next his heart,
 
 210 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 and had been wondering how he and she were to 
 meet each other, and whether he were jealous of 
 the Mr. Marsh or the Mr. Denison she had been 
 writing about ? No : the spontaneous question 
 was distinctly, not of one, but of all : " Where 
 are the Greyford girls?" Jane Burgess, whom 
 all Greyford had voted to be his ; Nettie, who had 
 said that by all that was holy she was his ; and 
 " poor Rachel," as Jeff always called Rachel 
 Holley. Jeff felt that if he could see them, or 
 help them, that was what he was dumped down in 
 Chicago at this moment for; not to be serving 
 ejectment warrants on rascals, or dragging steam- 
 ers out of the way of the flames. 
 
 Where were the Greyford girls ? Asking him- 
 self this question, he rushed into the throng 
 again ; hoping against hope that some fatality 
 would answer. 
 
 Where were the Greyford girls? They were 
 not together. 
 
 At that moment of time, if a somewhat defec- 
 tive chronology can be relied upon, Jane Burgess 
 was startled from an uneasy dream, which need 
 not be described in a story which has to do with 
 realities more terrible than visions. Ned Bardies 
 was pounding at her door. " Jane ! Jane ! there 's 
 a great fire ! Sophy is nervous, and you had
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF TEE OTHER. 211 
 
 better get up and dress yourself; it will comfort 
 her." By such weak devices does the less con- 
 fident sex attempt, in times of peril, to give 
 courage to the stronger. Not that Ned Bardies 's 
 courage or confidence gave way all that day, or 
 till this time. To this hour, he thinks that if 
 a particular Irishman had thrown a particular 
 bucket of water where he, Ned Bardies, directed, 
 half Chicago would have been saved that day; 
 and his own house, with the rest, would have 
 stood sure. Jane started up. Sure enough, the 
 light was flaring through her window, and she 
 could see every picture in her room. Sensible 
 Jane ! She had the wit at that moment to know 
 which frock would be best to work in, and that 
 if her getting up were for any good, it was for 
 work. Sensible Jane ! Frock, shoes, hair, every 
 thing, was in order for work, when Ned Bardies 
 next dashed up the stairway. She flung open her 
 door, and asked what she was to do. 
 
 Still Ned prophesied smooth things. His wife 
 was packing some trunks. Perhaps Jane would 
 feel more easy if she were ready for a sudden 
 removal. For himself, he was at that moment 
 fastening the step-ladder which led to the roof. 
 If Jane would come up in a minute, the roof \vas 
 flat at the very top, he knew her head was steady, 
 she would like to see the show.
 
 212 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 " See the show, indeed ? " Jane's packing was 
 finished right soon ; and, with her own hands, she 
 dragged her heavy trunks into the passage, and 
 down the stairway, to the front hall. Then she 
 ran up and joined Ned on his lookout. 
 
 Beauty and terror ! Such beauty and such 
 terror! The howl of the flames, the rush of the 
 tempest by her, which made Jane fear to step out- 
 side upon the roof, and made her beg Ned not to 
 step so recklessly from side to side ; the leaps from 
 point to point, now of burning brands, as one 
 called them, for want of a better name, now of 
 columns of flame, which seemed to move wholly 
 without law, or defied law; and above all, the 
 heavy canopy of smoke and flame, white below, 
 night-black above; and with its whirls between, 
 lighted or shaded with every conceivable glare or 
 cloud of white, of yellow, of orange, of scarlet, of 
 crimson, of purple ; the gamut of fire, here harmo- 
 nized, there raging in discord ; the voice of power 
 and the spectacle of power hushed Jane at first, 
 she did not know whether in terror or wonder. 
 Then she cried, " Ned ! come down, come down ! 
 You can do nothing here ; come down for the chil- 
 dren. Take them somewhere where they will be 
 safe ! " 
 
 But Ned declared, as he supposed with great 
 calmness, though Jane could detect the quickness
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 213 
 
 of his speech, that it was idle to run away from a 
 fire which was a quarter of a mile away. If she 
 would notice the way the wind was blowing, she 
 would see that it had already passed them. Un- 
 less the wind changed its direction, they must be 
 safe. Still, if Jane chose, she might have the 
 children up and dressed, if she thought Sophy 
 would feel easier. As if the children hadn't been 
 all dressed, to their India-rubbers, long before ! 
 Ned showed her the buckets which he and his 
 neighbors had been arranging on the roof. He 
 had already wetted every spout ; and indeed, 
 even in the heat in which they stood, that whole 
 range of roof-tops looked as if it had been drenched 
 with a sudden shower. But even Ned's voluble 
 eloquence was checked when Michael's voice, from 
 the foot of the attic stairs, announced that the 
 water had stopped running. This was a call that 
 did summon Ned from his commanding station, 
 and sent him downstairs, to find what faucet had 
 been turned wrong. Alas ! it was a faucet that 
 Ned even could not set right. In one fatal zig-zag 
 from the spot where it was born, the conflagration 
 had dashed across the city to the roof of the great 
 water-works, which seemed so far away. That 
 roof had fallen upon those engines which the mo- 
 ment before represented the maximum of human 
 power, as they also, like Jeff and Jane, were
 
 214 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 working their willing utmost in their great duty. 
 And so they were still. 
 
 But the indomitable Ned Bardies would not 
 quail. " It isn't as if we hadn't got the reser- 
 voir." Again he conferred with his neighbors, 
 laid off his working parties for the stairways, 
 draped his out-houses with carpets and bookings, 
 rolled a hogshead here, and another there, invok- 
 ing all the traditions of early New-England life, 
 and, as the night waned, filled them, to be in 
 readiness for the crisis. No one within the range 
 of Ned's line of battle could escape the contagion 
 of his energy. 
 
 But, for once at least, the doubtful wife was the 
 better prophet. She was preparing for retreat, 
 while Ned was preparing for fight. Does such a 
 union, perhaps, make the true general ? She com- 
 pelled Michael to harness the horses into the light 
 wagon which stood in the stable, and bring it 
 round to the door. What did not she and the 
 children pile into that wagon ! Her father's por- 
 trait, and Ned's mother's ; the basket of silver- 
 plate, which had been carried upstairs when they 
 went to bed ; two or three of those trunks of 
 hasty packing ; nay, on the floor of the little cart, 
 in the midst of all these accumulations, stood 
 sublime the easy-chair into which Ned had always 
 liked to fling himself, when he came home tired, at
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 215 
 
 night, from the office. The wagon stood there, 
 hour after hour; and from child to grandmother, 
 when any one lighted on any thing in the house 
 which seemed particularly precious, it would be 
 carried down, and by some mystery crowded into 
 this wagon. And still Ned said it was nonsense ; 
 that the fire had passed them, and there need be 
 no fear. 
 
 None the less did the last come. From a little 
 reconnoitring tour, he came rushing back ; with 
 his own hands flung little Carl upon the seat in 
 the wagon, called his wife and the others out, 
 bade Michael mount and take the reins, lifted 
 Retty upon Michael's knees, and bade him drive 
 slowly to the base-ball ground. Sophy and Jane 
 and the little procession followed, arms filled with 
 little household gods. Ned Bardies himself went 
 back into his library, swung round his neck his lit- 
 tle travelling-bag, looked his last upon his happy 
 home, locked the frpnt door, put the key in his 
 pocket, and followed the retreat. 
 
 He overtook Sophy in a moment. " Wilmarth's 
 house is gone. They were not out of it two 
 minutes before it .was gutted. All that square is 
 gone. I tell you, Sophy, it isn't like flame : it is a 
 wall of fire, sweeping down, and nothing stands 
 against it." 
 
 " Thank God, the children are aU safe I " said
 
 216 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 Sophy. And brave children they were. They 
 hugged their little treasures tightly, and stamped 
 along in firm order, at their aunt's or their 
 mother's side. 
 
 A short relief at the lake-side. Michael un- 
 loaded his wagon, and they made there their little 
 bivouac. " At least, we are safe here, where there 
 is nothing that can burn. " Retty and Carl grow 
 used to the situation, stop asking questions, and 
 begin to see which can throw stones farthest into 
 the lake. And then, in one instant, with one 
 more change in the eddy of the wind, there is a 
 column of black smoke down upon us, from some 
 pile of pitchy lumber, and Ned has Carl in his 
 arms, and Sophy has clutched up Retty, and Jane 
 is dragging John, as Michael leads the way ; thick, 
 pitchy darkness in this smoke, though we know 
 the sun has risen. Michael leads us through by- 
 paths well known to him. " This way, Miss Jane ! 
 Jump down here, Mrs. Bardies ! I have the boy, 
 ma'am. " Turning this way, turning that way ; a 
 mud-scow here, a raft of floating lumber there ; 
 now a fight with a drunken boatman, now running 
 across a tottering plank bridge, which has been 
 left for us, by some one fleeing just before us, and 
 we are safe again. 
 
 Arrived on the deck of a crowded steamer, Ned 
 Bardies eagerly calls his roll, " Retty, John, Carl, 
 grandmamma. Thank God, we are all here ! "
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 217 
 
 And then the captain of the boat called to 
 them, to say that he must put off into the lake ; 
 that any who preferred to stay on land must go on 
 shore. A tempest on the lake, and this storm of 
 fire on the land! There were but few who did 
 not prefer the chances of going to the bottom, to 
 enduring longer trial of the battle on the shore. 
 
 Ned Bardies determined to stay, with his chil- 
 dren. He gave Mike his choice, whether to stay 
 or to go; and Mike said, the faithful fellow, 
 " As ye 're all safe here, there may be some one 
 else that needs me. I think I '11 go and see. " 
 
 There is the answer to Jeff Fleming's question, 
 so far as one of the Greyford girls was concerned ; 
 and she, be it said in passing, the one whom the 
 public opinion of Greyford had assigned to him as 
 his, own property, until Nettie Sylva had turned 
 his susceptible heart in another direction. No 
 great likelihood that Jeff Fleming will find Jane 
 Burgess on that storm-tossed steamer in the offing. 
 Perhaps he will, stranger things have happened 
 in this story. But we will see. 
 
 It was indeed one of the peculiar horrors of the 
 great fire, that, in the flights and rescues, there 
 were so many different tides of human life, sweep- 
 ing in different directions at the same moment of 
 terror, and each parted from the others. The 
 10
 
 218 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 fugitives who fled to the lake were parted from 
 those who had escaped southward, and, yet again, 
 beyond that first line of fire, which swept across 
 the North Side, there was a third army of the 
 houseless, whose flight was northward ; an army 
 enlarged as every new block gave way. In a 
 thousand instances, the fathers of families had, in 
 the night, left their homes, apparently secure, and 
 gone down town to work for the safety of their 
 property; so that, when the crisis of flight came 
 for wives and children, they were parted from 
 those who were used to care for them, and on 
 whom they were used to rely. For after the tun- 
 nel was rendered useless, and the bridges gave 
 away, the North and South Sides were completely 
 parted from each other. It happened, as in a 
 thousand other cases of those who were closely 
 tied in life, that the little party of our friends was 
 so broken, that their history must be followed, not 
 on one only of the lines of retreat, but upon each 
 in turn. 
 
 Where were the Greyford girls ? 
 
 As for Rachel Holley, at the moment when Jane 
 and Sophy and the children fled from the house in 
 Erie Street, after a night of anxiety, Rachel Holley 
 was comfortably asleep in bed, wholly ignorant, of 
 course, that half the town was in flames. After a 
 day at the Sherman House, Mr. Holley had brought
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHEE. 219 
 
 Rachel down to Mrs. Worboise's, well out of 
 town on the South Side ; and that good woman 
 was only too glad to welcome so dear a friend as 
 Rachel in her new quarters. Horace was there 
 too; and, in the sight-seeing of the Greyford 
 party, they had had many a merry rendezvous and 
 jolly tea-drinking at these hospitable quarters. 
 The alarm of fire Sunday night had kept Horace 
 out ; and when Rachel went to bed, he had not 
 returned. The family at home had looked at the 
 fire from the window before going to bed, but 
 they were quite too far from the scene of it to be 
 disturbed by the noise of the alarm. Good Mrs. 
 Worboise slept too soundly to be careful whether 
 her "boarders" returned at one hour of the night 
 or another. Indeed, when she woke, with her 
 maids, to start things in the morning, it was some 
 little time, as she said afterwards, before she 
 looked out of the window. She looked then 
 toward the south; and she had been stirring 
 "nigh half an hour, zif 't was any other day," 
 before she knew that there was not a man in her 
 house, and that, a mile away, half the city was in 
 ruins. So was it that Rachel slept on. It need 
 hardly be said, that, as soon as Mrs. Worboise got 
 any information, she communicated it to Rachel, 
 and the other ladies of the family. 
 
 Horace had walked home with Mark Hinsdale on
 
 220 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 Sunday evening from the Sherman House, where 
 Nettie Sylva and her father still remained. Mark's 
 home was well out on the West Side, as has been 
 said. The young men were talking together of 
 Horace's plans, when an alarm of fire was given, 
 and, not long after, they could distinctly see the 
 light ; of which both of them spoke with some 
 anxiety, so critical had been the fire of the night 
 before, of which they had, just then, been ex- 
 amining the ruins, and so tremendous was this 
 tempest which they had both been facing as they 
 crossed the town. Neither of these young men 
 had that divine instinct for running to "a fire " 
 which is a characteristic of most young Americans. 
 But in a tempest like this, after such an experience 
 as last night's, an alarm of fire in De Koven Street 
 was no trifle ; and, without pause, each of them 
 arrayed himself for work, and Mark gave notice to 
 his landlady that he had his key, and she need not 
 sit up for him. Far to windward as they were, he 
 had of course no fear for her house ; and he was 
 right. But, as a little hose-carriage rattled along 
 and passed the young men, both of them spoke 
 with anxiety of the means of fighting the enemy ; 
 and Horace recalled with a shudder his words of 
 the morning, " as if we all were on the edge of 
 a common calamity." 
 
 They came to work, and they had enough of it
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 221 
 
 before they were done. Not with the engines. 
 There was little that they could do there. TiU 
 midnight, and after midnight indeed, the plucky 
 little steam fire-engines were thumping away with 
 precision and power ; the water-works were deliv- 
 ering deluges of water; and for the hauling the 
 machines to and fro, the volunteer crowd that runs 
 with the machine gave all the help that the fire- 
 men themselves required, " dead-beat " though 
 many of them were by the work of the night be- 
 fore. But there was plenty of work for two intel- 
 ligent young fellows with heads on their shoulders. 
 They ran first to find Fay, at the counting-room 
 of his lumber-yard. Fay was not there, no one 
 was yet there. But it was so clear that that whole 
 yard would be in the range of flame within ten 
 minutes, that Horace did not hesitate to enter the 
 counting-room through a window, open the outer 
 door with a crowbar, and then pile into an express- 
 wagon, which Mark had brought to the spot, the 
 desks of the two partners ; indeed, every thing 
 movable they could find. The safe they would 
 have taken too, but it was clearly too much for 
 the cart. This was in the early hours, when to 
 hire an express-wagon was still a possibility. Murk 
 sent the whole in triumph up to his own lodgings, 
 just as Mr. Vanderlacken, the senior clerk, ap- 
 peared. Fortunately, he had the keys to the safe ;
 
 222 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 and he and the young men made short work in 
 emptying that, and carrying the contents to places 
 supposed to be places of security. That sort of 
 sudden work, of new exigency and new provision, 
 rapid determination and action as rapid, made the 
 history of the night. It all changed, of course, as 
 well in range as in the feeling with which they 
 worked, after the fire leaped across the river, when 
 all men who were awake knew that there was 
 now a question as to the existence of the town. 
 
 The Chicago River is a sluggish little stream, 
 formed by the union of two streams about half a 
 mile back from the lake. After the union, the one 
 river flows eastward into the lake, or did, till the 
 canal changed its current. The two streams, before 
 they meet, flow, one north, one south, to the point 
 of union. The West Side, so called, is west of 
 them. Several bridges and a tunnel unite it with 
 the North Side and the South Side. These, in 
 turn, are separated from each other by the river, 
 and united with each other again by bridges and 
 a tunnel. The rivers, or river, make the harbor 
 of the city. To one who rattles over the bridges 
 in a carriage, they seem narrow as ditches. But 
 when you see two steamers pass each other, or 
 when you see a steamer turned round in the 
 stream, you see that there is more width than 
 you supposed. The fire having begun on the
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 223 
 
 West Side, our friends had supposed that its 
 havoc would at the least be checked by the 
 river ; bad enough, indeed, that it should only be 
 checked there. No little part of their service of 
 that night had been on board vessels, which seemed 
 to be in the line of fire as the terrible tempest 
 drove it on. It was, Mark thought, a little after 
 midnight, when, as they were recrossing the bridge, 
 from one of many expeditions to what then seemed 
 a region of safety, they paused a moment to look 
 northward, and first felt that their confidence in 
 the river also was a delusion. They could see 
 then how the storm, which seemed higher than 
 ever, was flinging fire-brands upon the poor lumber- 
 sloops in the river ; nay, once and again a burning 
 brand would soar, as if devils were carrying it, 
 quite across the stream. With the thought of 
 what might, nay, must happen, if the fire got 
 lodgement on the other side, Mark and Horace at 
 the same moment began to think of other duty 
 than carrying account books to a place of safety ., 
 " Do you believe they know of this in Erie 
 Street?" said Horace, thinking of Jane. And 
 Mark confessed that he had been anxious to go and 
 see if they were not frightened. While they ques- 
 tioned, a sharp flash sprang up, a very column of 
 flame, on the leeward shore of the river. A mo- 
 ment more, and a hose-carriage came rushing across
 
 224 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 the bridge, and they heard the firemen clearing the 
 way for the steamer. " Run up to Bardles's," 
 said Mark. " I will go round by the library, and, 
 if all is safe there, I will join you." 
 
 So Horace crossed back, and found his way to 
 the Lasalle-street tunnel ; but he was not to come 
 to Erie Street so easily. First a loyal effort to 
 help on her way an Irish woman and three chil- 
 dren ; then an adventure with some terrified horses, 
 who were led out from one of the North-side 
 stables, delayed him longer than he knew. He 
 promised to take and did take one of these 
 wild horses to a private stable as far up as North 
 Avenue, where it was thought he would be safe ; 
 he mounted the terrified creature bareback, as he 
 had done more good-natured beasts in old Grey- 
 ford days. But when he returned from this knight- 
 errantry he found the line of fire had crossed to the 
 lake, and that he was cut off by it from Erie Street. 
 If, as was perhaps possible, he could have crossed 
 there, he did not rightly find his way. He chose in 
 preference the Indiana-street bridge ; and, though 
 more anxious than ever about Jane and her friends, 
 he thought his best way to reach them was to re- 
 turn to the West Side, and so pass round the west 
 of the fire. He had not any fear, even then, of the 
 Sherman House and Nettie Sylva. But he had 
 thus undertaken a long journey ; and it was, as any
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 22) 
 
 one will see who knows the ground, journey long 
 enough to account for his failing to arrive at Erie 
 Street before Jane and her party fled. 
 
 Nettie and her father, meanwhile, who had gone 
 to bed early at the Sherman House, were not in the 
 absolute security which both Mark and Horace 
 imagined. As early as one o'clock they were up 
 and dressed. The nervous and careful doctor 
 himself carried their trunks downstairs. He had 
 bidden Nettie put on her hat and walking-dress, 
 and she was all ready to follow him. Every one 
 assured the doctor that he was rather rushing into 
 harm's way than away from it; but he had the 
 feeling that he should surely be safe with some old 
 Greyford friends well up on Lasalle Street. With 
 another gentleman, he secured one of the heavy 
 coaches of the house, and with their own hands 
 they piled on their trunks, and piled in the ladies 
 of their party. So swiftly was the movement 
 carried through, that in ten minutes the whole 
 party were safe at the hospitable house on Lasalle 
 Street, which the doctor had selected as " so much 
 safer than a hotel." 
 
 Alas for poor human foresight ! The doctor had 
 run just in the line of the tempest and of danger. 
 
 Not his party alone, but perhaps twenty other 
 people, had gathered in the house. A pile of 
 10* o
 
 226 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 trunks, sheet-bundles of clothes, and other rescued 
 property, encumbered the sidewalk. Everybody 
 was made welcome, but meanwhile everybody was 
 uneasy. The ladies and gentlemen of the house 
 were engaged in bringing out valuables, and their 
 guests in packing them, when, pop! the gas 
 stopped, and every one knew that the gas-works 
 had gone. Not that they needed such light much. 
 The light in the sky left few houses dark, as that 
 morning crept along from midnight to sunrise. 
 The work went on, and none too fast. One of the 
 gentlemen had just succeeded in securing a furni- 
 ture-wagon, when the scout at the corner of the 
 square rushed in, crying that it was really the last 
 moment ; that every woman must be gone ; and 
 under Mrs. Goodhue's lead, the long cortege, arms 
 heaped full, took up the line of march for a house 
 in Dearborn Street. The gentlemen promised that 
 they would bring the trunks where they would be 
 all right. And so, with less difficulty than might 
 have been expected, all came safe to Dearborn 
 Street, and again all met a cordial welcome, to 
 have just the same experience again as a few 
 hours passed by. Almost the same words describe 
 it. Nettie had long since cast loose from any 
 property of her own. She had gallantly taken 
 charge of a little portrait of Mrs. Goodhue's 
 mother, which was itself a large lif t if r Nettie
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 227 
 
 to grapple with, and of a travelling-bag of 
 Mr. Fontenelle's, which, as she knew, contained 
 a hundred and five thousand dollars in five- 
 twenty bonds. Nettie had declared to Mrs. 
 Goodhue, that the portrait should be as safe 
 as the lucre. At the Gracies' house, she had 
 worked as faithfully as the best. But when the 
 order for flight came again, she embraced the pic- 
 ture, and, by science known to herself, kept the 
 big bag hanging on three of those little fingers, 
 " they were strong, if they were so small," as Mag- 
 gie Mitchell says, and again they started for 
 some place known to Mrs. Gracie, which was " cer- 
 tainly protected." But the streets were more en- 
 cumbered here. Nettie got confused, or some one 
 else got confused. She could not cross Clark 
 Street when she would nor where she would ; and 
 when she was across, a great torrent of black smoke 
 compelled her to stop a moment; and then she 
 could not see one of the party. What strange 
 creatures New-England girls are ! The first thought 
 to Nettie little laughing flirt, as you think her, 
 dear reader was, that on Friday only, she had 
 been sitting in the High School with her friend 
 Miss White, and had heard a bright girl read 
 from the second ^Eneid, how Creusa acted when 
 she found herself in just the same scrape in 
 Troy.
 
 228 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 " For while we seek the by-ways as we run, 
 Careful the more frequented streets to shun, 
 My wife, Creusa, in the darkness blind, 
 Torn by some wretched fate, is left behind. 
 Perhaps she lost the narrow path I found ; 
 Perhaps she fell, exhausted, on the ground. 
 I looked not back, nor thought to look until 
 We reached the ancient shrine on Ceres' Hill. 
 
 But our friend Nettie had no thought, however, 
 of " going under ; " her only anxiety was about 
 Mrs. Goodhue's picture ; which, after all she had 
 said, she would have died for. She rushed on 
 bravely with the throng, and was thrown for a 
 moment against the shafts of a wagon, so that the 
 young man at the horse's head apologized to her. 
 Nettie smiled as she thanked him ; and he recog- 
 nized her, though she did not know him. Her 
 pretty face was black with smoke and dust. The 
 tears, forced by the smoke, were running help- 
 lessly in white channels dow,n her rounded cheeks. 
 There was but one attention which, in that crisis, 
 the gentleman could pay her; and he paid it. 
 "Miss Sylva, would you like to have me wipe 
 your eyes ? " 
 
 " Thank you," said Nettie, as merrily as she 
 had said " Thank you " when he took her down to 
 supper the Wednesday evening before. And this 
 true knight, whose name Avill ever be unknown, 
 with his one disengaged hand, drew a handker-
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 229 
 
 chief from his pocket, and wiped the precious 
 tear-drops from the prettiest eyes in Chicago. 
 Who wills may make a sonnet of that tale ! 
 Nettie thanked him again, and laughed heartily 
 again. He laughed as well, offered to take her 
 parcels, but she declined, and she forged on her 
 way, and he on his. 
 
 Where she went, she did not and does not 
 know. Why she went, she hardly knew. Only, 
 at last, she was all wrong. She came into an 
 empty street ; that must be wrong ! Still she 
 hurried through it, to see that, right and left, as 
 the square ended, she was blocked by fire, or 
 by smoke which she dared not pass. Back by the 
 way she came ! " Yes : this is right. This is 
 the broken elm-tree I noticed. But, no ! it is not 
 right. I never saw that hogshead in the road. 
 God help me! What is right? That smoke is 
 too thick to charge. Back here ? No ! that is all 
 too far gone. Could I have crossed back, and 
 found Clark Street? Ought I not to have held 
 by the wagon ? " Still, she did not surrender the 
 picture. No ! nor did she lose her head. The 
 loneliness was the worst. How she got there, she 
 did not know. And clearly, that street was wholly 
 abandoned. At that instant, one puff of wind 
 revealed to her the retreating line of wagons, on 
 one of the northward avenues. Only a moment ;
 
 230 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 but enough for Nettie. She sprang into the 
 smoke cloud, holding . her breath, and, with her 
 eyes shut, plunged on, running as fast as she 
 could run with the picture. She smelt such smoke 
 as she never smelt before, but she tried not to 
 breathe. Nor was this in vain ; forty paces of 
 such running was enough. The air cleared ; she 
 was within twenty paces now of the wagons ; one 
 rush more, and then the picture-frame struck on 
 some corner of a fence, and Nettie fell, helpless, 
 and for one instant senseless on the ground. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mark had found the Johnsonian 
 Library in very different plight from what he ex- 
 pected. Some fatal shaft had lighted early on a 
 wheelwright's shop, just opposite that institution ; 
 and, at the moment of Mark's arrival, this shop 
 was in flames. What a pity he had let Horace 
 leave him ! for by this time there were few enough 
 volunteers to be recruited in the work of carrying 
 out MSS., medals, and such other treasures as 
 Mark knew were most valuable of all ; or to take 
 them to shelter, if in this storm of fire there were 
 shelter. It was still early in the mornin'g ; but the 
 people who were out and at work, were at work 
 too eagerly for their own affairs to pay much heed 
 to medals or to manuscripts. Neither for love nor 
 for money could Mark find wagoner to help him,
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF TEE OTHER. 231 
 
 in the little range through which he dared to try. 
 Ready money, indeed, he had none ; having care- 
 fully left his watch and pocket-book at home when 
 he and Horace started ; and that night credit was 
 worthless. Two or three light handcarts and a 
 wheelbarrow he did impress. He and two of the 
 trustees, white-headed old clergymen, and Miss 
 Baylies, the assistant in the school hard by, did 
 yeoman's work with these in the little time they 
 had. But this was little enough ; for, within an 
 hour after Mark's appearance, the gutters of the 
 Johnsonian had caught the flames, the little scuttle 
 on the roof was on fire, and, in half an hour more, 
 Mark and his trustees were driven, beaten, from 
 the field. A stately carriage with a span of 
 smooth, high-bred horses, was piled full of the 
 manuscripts and medals ; and trustee number one, 
 mounting the box himself, drove it triumphantly 
 from the ruin. Mark and the other trustees, and 
 little Miss Baylies sought other fields of duty. 
 
 No question where Mark would go. " Where 
 are the Greyford girls ? " had been his question, 
 even when he lay out on the Johnsonian roof with 
 a hand-hose, when he descended into the Johnso- 
 nian crypts with a lantern. Now that he was 
 free, he could find out where they were, and this 
 was his first thought. Of course., the intelligent 
 reader thinks he will go for Jane. Did he not
 
 232 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 write to Jane those beautiful sonnets ? Were not 
 his letters to her, all the summer, so personal? 
 Yes ; and yet he did not go for Jane. Perhaps he 
 thought Jane well balanced enough to care for her- 
 self. Perhaps he thought that that part of Erie 
 Street was in less danger than the Sherman House ; 
 or perhaps he pretended he thought this, and 
 really, in his heart, felt that if any harm came to 
 Nettie Sylva, he should never forgive himself; 
 that if Nettie were lost in this chaos, his life would 
 not be worth living. For my part, I think this 
 storm of fire revealed a great many people to them- 
 selves. I think there was a great deal of time, 
 while people were on the roofs of houses, or sitting 
 in the night-air under the sky, when they learned 
 a great deal that nothing else could have taught 
 them. Of this I am sure : that when Mark Hins- 
 dale saw that the Johnsonian was one mass of ruin, 
 he rushed to the Sherman House by the shortest 
 route he could find open. He never once thought 
 of Rachel Holley, whom all Greyford thought he 
 ought to think of ; he did not think, more than a 
 moment, of Jane Burgess, who had been kind to 
 him and good to him ; he thought of Nettie Sylva, 
 because he knew her life was the other half of his 
 life, that if he could save her from suffering, 
 that was what God had sent him into this world 
 for; and, unless he could save her, it was not 
 worth while for him to live.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHEE. 233 
 
 He came to the Sherman House long hours after 
 Nettie had left it. It was standing, though so 
 much else around it was gone. Its white walls 
 were red with the reflected light. Mark could see 
 smoke starting from the roof, but" the building 
 seemed unchanged. How little while since he had 
 left Dr. Sylva's pleasant parlor in the corner of 
 the fourth story I He rushed in. He was ordered 
 back, and had to obey. But orders went for little : 
 the house was well-nigh empty, for its fate was too 
 certain ; and Mark was in again, and in the doc- 
 tor's parlor. There was the copy of " Bret Harte " 
 on the table, which she had read from last night. 
 Mark seized it, and put it in his pocket. There 
 were the rosebuds Mrs. Hubbard had sent her. 
 Mark seized them. Could it be that any chance 
 had neglected her and the doctor? He tried 
 the doors from the parlor. The doctor's room 
 was empty. He knocked and knocked at the 
 other door. " Nettie ! Nettie ! " No answer. He 
 turned the key, he rushed in, to meet a column 
 of smoke which blinded him. But Mark had tried 
 smoke before, that night. Down on his knees, he 
 crept across the room, and was right; for there 
 was a little space from which the smoke rose. He 
 held his breath till he pulled both pillows from the 
 bed. Certainly no one was there. But could he 
 find his way back to the door? He could not
 
 234 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 stand. He could turn to the place where he 
 thought it was, but where it was not. The door 
 was a wash-stand. " I shall be dead in ten sec- 
 onds," said Mark to himself. But in five seconds 
 he had crawled to the door, was in the parlor again, 
 was in the draught of a broken window, and was 
 safe. 
 
 He was downstairs again. A porter he found 
 declared that Dr. Sylva went north: which was 
 true. Now for a journey north ! And how ? 
 This bridge is closed, that tunnel closed : the 
 way is cut here and blocked there. But Mark 
 did it. Southward, westward, northward, east- 
 ward, he passed round the fire. And then among 
 seventy-five thousand people, Mark was looking 
 in every blackened face, to see if it were the 
 doctor or Nettie. If he met any man he ever 
 saw before, he asked for Dr. Sylva or for Nettie. 
 He rushed down one square and another, till he 
 met the line of fire. He crossed back and for- 
 ward through every street which took the line of 
 fugitives. Church after church he tried, where 
 people had sought sanctuary. And so was it, that 
 making a short cut, where he thought no one 
 blocked the way, he saw a woman emerge from 
 the smoke, heavily burdened, he saw her trip, 
 and fall upon ihe ground senseless. He ran to her, 
 and lifted her gently, and wiped her hair from her
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 235 
 
 face, and he knew he had Nettie Sylva in his 
 arms ! 
 
 It is a hard thing to keep up the chronology of 
 such chaos as this, in which few men looked at 
 their watches, and of which the chief time-marks 
 are the moments when the water failed, when the 
 gas-works gave out, and when the sun rose. We 
 have still to tell what became of Horace Vanzandt, 
 whom we left crossing Indiana-street bridge, west- 
 ward, to look for Jane Burgess ; who, as he hoped, 
 was half a mile exactly behind him. 
 
 Slow work, indeed, flanking the sea of fire on 
 that morning. But Horace was steady as he was 
 impetuous. Still, long before he had worked 
 round to the south side of the river, every bridge 
 and every tunnel to the north side was impassable, 
 and every man he questioned assured him that the 
 part of Erie Street he was asking for had gone. 
 None the less did Horace persevere. A ditch like 
 that could be crossed, if he had to swim it ! Swim 
 it he did not ; but he did bribe an Irish boatman 
 to carry him across the mouth of the river, and 
 so pressed his way up on the lake shore. Nay, he 
 came to the ball ground, had he known it, some 
 two hours after Jane and the children had left it. 
 
 He stooped down and picked up a jumping-jack 
 some child had dropped there. Surely he had 
 seen the grimace on that painted face before !
 
 236 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 It was madness to ask each fugitive if he had 
 seen a party of ladies, with three small children. 
 Madness or not, Horace asked and asked again, 
 and received answers, now wild and now coherent. 
 They sent him hither, sent him thither ; but there 
 was no Sophy Bardies and no Jane Burgess to be 
 found by this questioning. Back he was beaten to 
 the river-shore and the lake, by failure and by 
 fire ; and at last, unwillingly, after trying this 
 scow and that schooner, was fain to take shelter 
 himself on a little tug that was putting out to sea. 
 Nor was he relieved here from the wretchedness 
 that had surrounded him on the shore. Children 
 without their mothers, mothers without their chil- 
 dren, were piled together on the little deck. Wa- 
 ter, of course, the lake provided them; but a 
 little hard-tack, which was gone before night, was 
 all the edible provision. And such a night ! She 
 lay at anchor in sight of the lurid, cruel fire. And 
 how she rose and pitched in the gale. How 
 would these wretched, half-clothed children live 
 till morning ? Still, we do live till morning. And 
 then such wretchedness ! " I am so hungry ! Oh, 
 dear; I am so hungry!" The captain at last 
 pulled up his anchor, and ran down under the lee 
 of one of the larger steamers. " For the love of 
 Christ, can you give these babies something to 
 eat?" And Jane Burgess threw down into the
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 237 
 
 tug one of the four loaves which Mike's fore- 
 thought had packed in the big basket which he 
 never abandoned. And Horace Vanzandt, little 
 guessing what angel answered his prayer, caught 
 the loaf, and, in a minute was dividing it among 
 these twenty starving little ones. A minute more, 
 and he had scrambled up the steamer's side. No I 
 It was not Jane he found. It was a sort of mate, 
 who could provide some blankets for the women 
 who seemed dying in the engineer's room of the 
 little tug below. Up and down, back and forth, 
 Horace passed on his work of mercy. And it was 
 not till he had seen everybody decently comfort- 
 able there, that he' scrambled back upon the 
 steamer. He passed aft, where he saw a group of 
 children lying listlessly. He offered a little boy 
 the grinning jumping-jack. " Why, it is Carl's 
 jumping-jack ! See here, mamma ; here is Carl's 
 jumping-jack ! " 
 
 And Horace turned, and Jane turned. 
 
 " Dear Horace !" 
 
 " My dearest Jane, is it you ? " 
 
 Where are the Greyford girls ? 
 
 For Jane and Nettie we have accounted. Let 
 us go back to Rachel, at good Mrs. Worboise's 
 boarding-house. 
 
 Rachel soon understood that she was on the
 
 238 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 very edge of one of the greatest events in history, 
 and was seeing it almost as little as if it had been 
 in Moscow. She could, and did, run to the top of 
 the house, and see a lurid canopy of smoke. She 
 could and did make her way up, with Mr. Fay's 
 assistance, against the current of fugitives, as far 
 almost as Harrison Street, and saw something of 
 the methods of the fight. But she saw the flight 
 more than the fight ; and Mrs. Worboise and 
 Rachel, and all that household, instantly under- 
 stood the emergency, and the duty next their 
 hands. 
 
 " My dear child, this is sure : they will need 
 something to eat, whatever else they need, or 
 whatever else they save." 
 
 This was Mrs. Worboise's simple statement, 
 founded on a profound philosophy. By "they," 
 the good soul meant the human family in general. 
 
 Her washing-boilers were scalded out, as if 
 they needed it ! and as many hams put in as 
 they would hold. With white arms and sturdy, 
 she mixed self-raised biscuits, and plied that day 
 her ovens. Open doors in that house that day 
 long ; no sign of flight. No man nor woman 
 stopped to ask a question, but was asked to eat, 
 and ate to the full. The water had given way ; 
 but Mrs. Worboise had a little "nigger boy," 
 as, in face of better light, she obstinately called
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 2P>9 
 
 him, whom, by threats, bribes, and promises, 
 she kept plying to the lake-shore for water ; and 
 her old New York filters did the rest. When she 
 got a little ahead with her bread and ham, she 
 devoted her attention to bedding. I dare not tell 
 how many " shake-downs " she and Rachel and 
 Mrs. Plinlimmon constructed on landings and 
 floors. Mrs. Worboise could have hauled a steamer 
 into action if she had been bidden; she could 
 have sculled a scow, had she been bidden ; she 
 could have wiped a maiden's smoky tears, had she 
 been bidden ; she could have lain out on the roof 
 of the Johnsonian, with a hand-hose, had she been 
 bidden; she would have added emphasis to a 
 battering-ram, driving in a prison-door, had she 
 been bidden. As it happened, she was bidden to 
 provide for a stream of faint and roving fugitives ; 
 and reverently and faithfully, hopefully and lov- 
 ingly, she did that duty. Of course she did it 
 well. 
 
 Whether it were morning or afternoon, I do not 
 know ; nor, I think, did any of the parties know. 
 But, as the day passed, Mrs. Worboise, standing 
 on the door-steps, saw the approach, on the street, 
 of a long express-wagon, crowded with little girls, 
 frightened and crying, or sometimes dumb and 
 stolid with terror. She rushed down to ask where 
 they were going.
 
 240 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 " God knows ! " said Jeff Fleming who was on 
 the high seat, carefully driving. " They are going 
 wherever there is something to eat, and a bed for 
 the poor things to lie in." 
 
 By the divine instinct of his healthy life, Jeff, 
 who had sought vainly all day for the " Greyford 
 girls," had lighted on these inmates of the orphan 
 asylum. 
 
 " Why the little darlings ! " cried the good 
 woman. "Bring them in bring them in ! We 
 are all ready for them here. Bring them in." And 
 by this time Rachel and Mrs. Plinlimmon were at 
 the tail of the wagon, and had each a child in her 
 arms. 
 
 " Why, Mrs. Worboise ! who sent you here ? " 
 
 " Why, Mr. Fleming ! is it you ? " 
 
 So Jeff Fleming deposited his charge with Mrs. 
 Worboise. A moment more, and a fellow sover- 
 eign stopped to ask for the use of the wagon ; and 
 Jeff let him have it, on his promise to bring it 
 back at nightfall. Jeff had hired it from he knew 
 not who, for a hundred and fifty dollars down, on 
 promise to return it next morning to he knew not 
 where. Jeff had not tasted food since he left 
 Cass Corners, twenty-four hours before ; and he 
 was not sorry to smell Rachel's coffee, nor to cut 
 into the good lady's ham. 
 
 " Dear Rachel," said he, after the rage of hun-
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 241 
 
 ger was a little satisfied, and after each child was 
 in bed in some improvised night-dress, "how 
 much has passed since I saw you ! " 
 
 Yes, indeed ! how much had passed ! And as 
 the afternoon waned, and as the evening gathered, 
 and as they turned back from this or that corner, 
 how they two were revealed to themselves and to 
 each other ! How honest and brave and true Jeff 
 seemed to Rachel, though he could not expound 
 science like Horace, nor talk sentiment like Mark. 
 Of course, she did not say it to herself; but what 
 a perfect rest it was to sit and talk with this 
 hearty, simple, loyal friend, and not to be in 
 terror of one of Horace's crotchets, or one of 
 Mark's flights into the sky. The evening passed 
 on. There was an alarm about a prairie fire 
 southward. What a mercy Jeff was here ! The 
 tokens of rain came ; and Jeff returned : all 
 was well ! And he ? He kept wondering, as 
 Rachel did, where Nettie was ; and he hoped the 
 Bardies family were safe ; Nettie, to whom he was 
 betrothed, indeed; and Jane, to whom he had 
 been assigned. Still, he did not go again to look 
 for Nettie. Rachel wondered why. Perhaps he 
 knew better than Rachel did. Anyway, he was 
 determined, that, if danger came that night to 
 Rachel, he would not be far away. 
 
 Nine o'clock ! Mr. Plinlimmon has come in. 
 11 f
 
 242 SIX OF ONE BY 
 
 They say it is all done. There are patrols on the 
 streets. Gen. Sheridan is in command. The 
 children are all asleep ; but no one else wants to 
 go to bed. Half-past nine. A carriage wheels to 
 the door. A sharp ring and knock, and the door 
 flies open. The parlor door, of course, flies open 
 too, and Mark Hinsdale almost lifts Nettie into 
 the room. 
 
 " Dear, dear Nettie ! is it you ? Lie right on 
 the sofa here ! " And Rachel is caring for Nettie 
 with all the tenderness and sweetness of her own 
 lovely life. 
 
 "And where did you come from, Jeff? Dear 
 old fellow ! how are you ? " This from Mark, 
 without one thought that this dear Nettie, whom 
 all day long he had fought for, worked for, lived 
 for, and almost died for, was supposed by every- 
 body to belong to the " dear old fellow " who 
 stood before him. Nor do I know that Jeff 
 thought of it more than he. The day had taught 
 Mark a great deal. It had taught Nettie a great 
 deal. I believe Jeff had learned his lesson too. 
 
 How much they had to talk ! There was every 
 thing to tell. How much Mrs. Worboise made 
 them drink ! How much camphor she brought for 
 Nettie's forehead, where the bruise was a bad one. 
 How Nettie made them laugh ! And then, again, 
 how she made them cry ! Mrs-. Worboise could do
 
 EALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 243 
 
 nothing with them. It was Mrs. Plinlimmon who 
 appeared at midnight, and sent them all to bed. 
 
 Tuesday morning they all slept late. No wonder. 
 " Dear children," said Mrs. Worboise ; " they 
 shall have breakfast by themselves." And in a 
 little back parlor they four met, late in the morn- 
 ing. Still so much to tell ! Nettie knew she must 
 have a private talk with Jeff: she must tell the 
 honest fellow how wicked and how foolish she had 
 been. And Jeff knew he must have a private 
 talk with Nettie. He must tell her that he could 
 not, in honor to her, marry her. But Nettie and 
 Rachel came into the room together, as fresh 
 and neat as if there had never been any fire. And 
 Jeff and Mark were there before them, and could 
 not ask either of them to go away. And it was 
 not awkward, after all. " Jeff is so good-natured," 
 said Nettie to herself. " He will not mind, and I 
 can tell him by and by." 
 
 So they lingered over the breakfast, as surely no 
 other four in Chicago lingered that morning, Did 
 Mrs. Worboise guess ? I do not know. I think 
 she did. She loved Rachel with her heart's love. 
 She loved Horace too ; and yet, as she washed one 
 little orphan after another, she said again and 
 again, even aloud to the orphans, " She will do a
 
 244 SIX OF ONE J3T 
 
 hundred times better with that honest Jeff Flem- 
 ing than she would ever do with Horace." And, 
 though no one said this in the breakfast room, per- 
 haps they all felt it too. And Nettie, guilty Net- 
 tie, pretty Nettie, flirting Nettie, she had not 
 gone through storm and fire without learning what 
 she knew well enough before ; only this time she 
 knew it " perfect." She knew that such a treasure 
 as the love and life of Mark Hinsdale was not a 
 treasure to be fooled with, or thrown away. 
 
 No wonder that the coffee cooled, and the break- 
 fast was long. But it ended. It ended when the 
 door flew open, and Jane and Horace both rushed 
 in. Jane all in tears, but handsomer than ever. 
 Horace, tattered, worn, and dirty, but happier and 
 prouder than he had ever been in his life. 
 
 He had had a chance to tell Jane how he had 
 sought for her from midnight of Sunday till sun- 
 rise of Tuesday, sought her with tears and with 
 prayers. 
 
 And Jane had shown to him the one treasure 
 she had saved from Erie Street. It was the little 
 bear. 
 
 Had these young people trusted to the first pro- 
 pinquities, had they let the people of Greyford 
 pair them, they would have trusted wrong : they 
 would have lived for misery.
 
 HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER. 245 
 
 Had they trusted to the "propinquities" again, 
 had they let the accidents of life pair them, they 
 would have trusted wrong. 
 
 A terrible crisis tore away all veils, all etiquettes, 
 all falsehoods. For once they trusted to the divine 
 instincts of their own hearts ; and they are happy 
 for this life, and for ever. 
 
 Cambridge : Press of John Wilson & Son.
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 By HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD, 
 
 Author of "The Amber Gods." "New England Legends," &c. 1 vol. 
 16mo. Price $1.25. 
 
 from the Literary World. 
 
 It is a long time since Mrs. Spofford has let loose a novel upon the world, 
 but it is plain that her right hand has not lost its cunning. She manipulates 
 the thunderbolts of rhetoric with the same easy vehemence that amazed 
 the readers of " The Amber Gods" a dozen years ago. Yet there is more 
 method in her thought, and in her style. The former is deeper and more 
 intense, and the latter shows the chastening influence of time. ... In 
 reading her writings one's intellect and sensibilities are at variance ; the 
 former protesting and resit-ting, and the latter helpless, but happy under 
 the fascinations of her marvellous words. Blest is he who can give himself 
 up to the delights of her entertainment, and feast on its dainties without a 
 doubt of their wholesomeness, and without fear of possible mental bewil- 
 derment or moral headache. 
 
 " The Thief in the Night." is.a very peculiar story, not less in its con- 
 ception than in the manner of its execution. It opens with a murder, a 
 mysterious tragedy, the victim of which lies pale on his bloody bed, with 
 weeping friends about him. His widow, and the man who loves her, and 
 whom she has loved, stand together looking at the dead man; and then the 
 author drops the curtain, to be raised again in due season. The conviction 
 of every reader at the end of this scene is that the husband has been slain 
 by the wife, for love of htm who was dearer to her. . . . This book will 
 have many readers; its fascinations are undeniable; the author has no 
 superior in our literature in the deft manipulation of words, and this 
 felicity is attended, somewhat incongruously, it seems, by a power of intense 
 dramatic expression that gives substantial strength to her stories. 
 
 from a Regular Correspondent of the New York Tribune. 
 
 BOSTON, Feb. 29. The variety of thieves is infinite. Some plunder 
 custom-houses, and some steal hearts, and between these offences are 
 various gradations. The arch thief of souls is not the only one who comes 
 to us in the guise of an angel of light. A very captivating thief, indeed, was 
 the one who last night robbed me alike of sleep and ennui, " A Thief in 
 the Night; " for that is the quaint title of a book by Mrs. Harriet Prescott 
 Spotlbrd, a new and really wonderful romance, which Roberts Brothers 
 are about to publish. The reader does not willingly lay it down between 
 commencement and finis. . . . There is no break in the breathless interest ; 
 no trace of weariness or flagging anywhere; no place where it serins to 
 you that the wonderful story which holds you like the eye of the Ancient 
 Mariner could have known a pause. . . . The whole interest is concentrated 
 in three strong human souls, brought out with lights and shades as vivid 
 as Rembrandt used in his pictures, souls which terribly suffered and 
 sinned, but with the likeness of the Divine in them still. It is not un- 
 common, in books at least, to marry the wrong man, thinking him to be 
 the right one. Catherine made the less common mistake of marrying the 
 right man, believing him to be the wrong one; and out of this miscon- 
 ception grows the tragedy of the tale. 
 
 Sold everywhere. Mailed postpaid by the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.
 
 MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 THE To-MoRROw OF DEATH ; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE FUTURE LIFE ACCORDING 
 TO SCIENCE. 
 
 By LOUIS FIGUIER. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THB FRENCH, BY S. R. CROCKER, i vol. i6mo. $1.75. 
 
 From the Literary World. 
 
 As its striking, if somewhat sensational title indicates, the book deals with the 
 question of the future life, and purports to present " a complete theory of Nature, 
 a true philosophy of the Universe." It is based on the ascertained facts of science 
 which the author marshals in such a multitude, and with such skill, as must com- 
 mand the admiration of those who dismiss his theory with a sneer. We doubt if 
 the marvels of astronomy have ever had so impressive a presentation in popular 
 form as they have here. . . . 
 
 The opening chapters of the book treat of the three elements which compose 
 man, body, soul, and -ife. The first is not destroyed by death, but simply changes 
 its form ; the last is a force, like light and heat, a mere state of bodies ; the soul 
 is indestructible and immortal. After death, according to M. Figuier, the soul be- 
 comes incarnated in a new body, and makes part of a new being next superior to 
 man in the scale of living existences, the superhuman. This being lives in the 
 fc'.her which surrounds the earth and the other planets, where, endowed with senses 
 and faculties like ours, infinitely improved, and many others that we know nothing 
 of, he leads a life whose spiritual delights it is impossible for us to imagine. . . . 
 Those who enjoy speculations about the future life will find in this book fresh and 
 pleasant food for their imaginations ; and, to those who delight in the revelations 
 of science as to the mysteries that obscure the origin and the destiny of man, these 
 pages offer a gallery of novel and really marvellous views?~^Ve may, perhaps, ex- 
 press our opinion of "The To-Morrow of Death " a^^nce comprehensively and 
 concisely, by saying that to every mind that welcomeWight on these grave ques- 
 tions, from whatever quarter and in whatever shape it may come, regardless of 
 precedents and authorities, this work will yield exquisite pleasure. It will shock 
 lome readers, and amaze many ; but it will fascinate and impress all. 
 
 Sold everywhere. Matted, post-paid, by the Publisher^ \ 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 AUG 1 3 1993 
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