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 JHAP 1 6 193^Z<i. 
 OCT 17 1
 
 .osAofeles.Cai 
 
 HALF-HOURS 
 
 WITH 
 
 GREAT AUTHORS, 
 
 WM. M. THACKERAY, T. B. MACAULAY, 
 
 BRET HARTE, THOMAS HOOD, 
 
 AND OTHERS. 
 
 CHICAGO AND NEW YORK: 
 BELFORD, CLARKE & CO. ' 
 
 1884.
 
 printed and bound by 
 Donohue & Hknnkbkrry, 
 
 CHICAGO.
 
 ) 
 
 '//?*. 
 
 1 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 
 
 PAGfe 
 
 » A Terrible Temptation 
 
 F. C. Bumand 
 
 7 
 
 • George De Barnwell 
 
 W. M. Thackeray 
 
 67 
 
 » Prophetic Account of a Future Epic 
 
 T. B. Macatday . 
 
 92 
 
 St. Twel'mo .... 
 
 JohnPaul . 
 
 in 
 
 » Lessons in Biography . 
 
 Rev. J. Beresford . 
 
 174 
 
 » Mr. John Jenkins 
 
 Bret Harte 
 
 184 
 
 » Ho Fi of the Yellow Girdle 
 
 T. T. T. . 
 
 193 
 
 » Walton Redivivus . 
 
 Thomas Hood . 
 
 230
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION, 
 
 By the Author of " It is always too early to Sew," " Love me Tall, Lov« 
 me Short," "Who's Griffiths?" etc. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IR CHARLES BUSSIT was,from an early 
 age, subject to fits, but he inherited the 
 Tuppennie Bussit Estates. Mr. Robert 
 Bussit, his cousin, would have done so if Sir Charles 
 hadn't. Hence Robert's hatred of Charles. Nothing 
 more simple. 
 
 Sir Charles, being a gay young man, was on visit- 
 ing terms with the beautiful La Dorchester. Be- 
 coming, suddenly, a marrying man, he fell deeply 
 in love with Miss Isidora Spruce. Robert also 
 loved her. This was an additional reason for his 
 hating Sir Charles, and added fuel to the flame. 
 
 From this moment, Robert commenced writing 
 anonymous letters to Isidora and her father. He
 
 8 TREA SURE- TRO VE. 
 
 wrote at least twenty a-day, signing them differently 
 every time. Observing that the letters were taken 
 in, but that the young lady and her father were not, 
 he had recourse to other means. 
 
 He called on La Dorchester, who saw through 
 him at once, played him adroitly, and then ordered 
 him out of the house. 
 
 This was his third reason for hating his cousin. 
 
 He now took to shouting through the keyholes 
 and windows of Sir Alexander Spruce's house defam- 
 ations of Sir Charles's character. 
 
 These energetic means, at last, had their effect. 
 
 Sir Charles being refused admittance, had a suc- 
 cession of fits on the doorstep. He was told to 
 move on by a policeman, and was rescued from his 
 painful situation by La Dorchester in her pony- 
 chaise, who thenceforth took the matter in her own 
 hands. 
 
 Robert was now delighted, and, on the strength 
 of the probability of the Tuppennie Bussit Estates 
 coming to him, bought a secondhand brass door- 
 plate, with somebody else's name on it. 
 
 Sir Charles Bussit got over his fits, and came out 
 stronger than ever. 
 
 This sent up Robert's hatred to fever heat.
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION. g 
 
 It was evident that the Tuppennie Bussit Estates 
 had slipped from his grasp for this once. 
 Then he waited. 
 But while he waited, La Dorchester acted
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SIDORA SPRUCE was the daughter of 
 Commander-in-Chief Spruce, a retired 
 veteran much beloved by his officers and 
 men, as a genuine martinet of the old school. So 
 much was he beloved, that when he retired, the 
 entire army retired with him. This led to complica- 
 tions and subsequent alterations in the Purchase 
 System. 
 
 Isidora was a blonde, tall and mince, with gentle 
 blue wondering eyes, of about the middle height, 
 with dark brown tresses, and rather inclined to that 
 sort of embmprint which is the sure sign of gentle 
 descent. 
 
 She was always saying, "May I?" in a plaintive 
 tone, which caused her to be a favorite with every 
 one. 
 
 To this her fond doting father had but one answer, 
 "No. you mayn't," which evinced the deep sympathy 
 existing between the parent and child.
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION. IX 
 
 "May I marry Sir Charles Bussit?"she asked, 
 one morning, as they were seated together on a 
 canapb de luxe, breakfasting lightly ; " May I ? " 
 
 "No, you mayn't," answered the Commander-in- 
 Chief, his eyes filling with the moisture which so 
 often accompanies the sudden deglutition of over- 
 caloricated bohea. 
 
 " May I give him up ? " she inquired, playfully, 
 " May I ? " 
 
 "No, you mayn't," replied the Warrior. 
 
 That was all she wanted. She had gained her 
 point, and so, tapping him lightly on the head with 
 a bootjack, which she had been embroidering for his 
 especial use, she glided from the room. 
 
 " Two persons wanted to see his Commander-in- 
 Chief-ship," a servant said.' " Might they enter ? " 
 
 " No, they mightn't," returned the Veteran. So 
 they came in. 
 
 It was Sir Charles's solicitor, Mr. Slyboots, and 
 La Dorchester. 
 
 The Commander-in-Chief motioned them to a 
 chair. They took two, and seated themselves. So 
 far all was well. 
 
 Then what happened ? 
 
 Why, La Dorchester, with a woman's ready wit,
 
 1 2 TREA SURE- TRO VE. 
 
 introduced the old Solicitor to the old Warrior, and 
 the Solicitor, with the cunning of his craft, answered 
 to his cue, and introduced La Dorchester to the 
 Commander-in-Chief. 
 
 " Mr. Slyboots," — La Dorchester said. 
 
 The Commander-in-Chief bowed. So did Mr. 
 Slyboots. 
 
 "La Dor" — commenced Slyboots, courteously. 
 
 " — Chester," said the Lady, brusquely. Then 
 they sat still and wondered.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 N two minutes the Veteran was put in 
 possession of The Facts. This was owing 
 entirely to the female tact and ready wit. 
 She went to the point at once, while Slyboots, 
 with professional routine, would have read prece- 
 dents, habendum clauses, and the history of Nisi 
 Prius before coming to the object of their visit. He 
 had prepared himself with documents. Before he 
 had got them all arranged on the table, from which 
 he was obliged to sweep the Sevres cups, saucers, 
 urn and spirit-lamp, La Dorchester had stated the 
 case. She exculpated Sir Charles. 
 
 Isidora had expected these visitors, and, Love be- 
 ing capable of meannesses, had concealed herself 
 within hearing. 
 
 The Veteran suspected as much, and saw through 
 La Dorchester's plan. He quietly moved the ormolu 
 fire-screen to the front of the grate.
 
 l4 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 By this movement of the old Campaigner La Dor- 
 chester was unexpectedly checkmated. 
 
 Then she told her story, and Slyboots listened, 
 legal documents in hand, dismayed. 
 
 He would have stopped her had it been in his 
 power, but perceiving, with the true instinct of an old 
 student of Barnard's Inn, that this was not possible, 
 he carefully adjusted the red tape on the sixty parch- 
 ments he had brought with him, and sat silent, with 
 Blackstone on his knee, for warmth. 
 
 " Hush, Madam ! not so loud, please," whispered 
 the Commander-in-Chief, looking uneasily towards 
 the chimney. 
 
 " Why not ? " bawled his beautiful visitor, at the 
 top of her voice. Listeners never hear no good 
 
 OF THEMSELVES, DO THEY? " 
 
 With this the bold woman rose suddenly from her 
 chair, and, spurning the drugget, dashed at the po- 
 ker, seized it, and upset the ormolu screen. 
 
 " May I?" said a sweet voice from about two yards 
 up the chimney. 
 
 " No, you mayn't," returned the Veteran. 
 
 But she could not control herself, and gliding 
 downwards, fell at La Dorchester's feet, her head on 
 her outstretched hands.
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION. 15 
 
 Isidora, from her well-chosen place of concealment, 
 had heard every syllable. She was prostrated, writh- 
 ing, blackened. For this last she cared little. Soot 
 blackens faces, not characters ; this they well knew, 
 and felt it. 
 
 The Commander-in-Chief was the first to speak 
 and break the silence. 
 
 He addressed La Dorchester. 
 
 " For shame, Madam ! " said the Commander-in- 
 Chief. Whereupon both women began to cry. 
 
 Then the Commander-in-Chief looked at the Solic- 
 itor, and the Solicitor looked at himself in a glass, 
 and himself in a glass looked at Isidora, who, in her 
 turn, looked at La Dorchester. 
 
 They all sighed deeply, and said nothing. 
 
 In another second La Dorchester was on her legs, 
 giving eloquent screams. 
 
 " He loves you still ! " said the Solicitor, vaguely. 
 It is in some natures to be vague, and his was one of 
 those natures. Otherwise he was a clever man.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 IVE weeks after this the bells of Tuppen- 
 
 nie Bussit Church rang out a merry peal. 
 
 The ringers had practised triple bob ma- 
 jors, two bobs, bobs and tizzies, bobs and benders, and 
 other varieties of the ringer's art, until they were 
 perfect in the first two bars of the Dead March in 
 Saul. This once mastered, they gave way with a 
 will. 
 
 Then came ten outriders, ushered by six hussars, 
 each bearing a banner with a motto, and followed by 
 a van covered with pictures of celebrated fat women, 
 the Giant of Norfolk, the Lion Tamer, and the Bat- 
 tle of Trafalgar in oils and distemper. 
 
 Then there was a loud cheer from the steeple, 
 which, getting quite shaky with excitement, tried to 
 come down and join the throng. Presently several 
 Spiritualistic mediums, specially engaged for the oc- 
 casion, floated about the top of Bussit House, waving
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION. i, 
 
 flags. Murmurs. Cheers. Tears. Horses heard 
 in the distance. More distance, more horses. 
 Bussit gates flung open, and keepers, grooms, 
 peasants, cooks, housekeepers, butlers, footmen and 
 pages, all clustering about on each other's shoulders, 
 and hanging in festoons from the heights of the 
 ancient portals. 
 
 Then more outriders, riding outside their horses, 
 boldly. Then a troop of less daring horsemen, who, 
 fearing the shouts of the crowd, had got inside, and 
 pulled the blinds down. Then came the carriage itself, 
 drawn by twenty wild horses in front, and pushed up 
 behind by as many more of the same breed. The 
 drag was down, but they dashed through the little 
 village, amid roars of delight from the millions that 
 had congregated to witness this great event. 
 
 The carriage was open, and in it sat Sir Charles 
 and Isidora : she quite blinded the sun's rays with 
 her beauty, so much so that some elderly people, 
 more knowing than the rest, got out smoked glasses 
 to look at her, and others, not so learned, thought 
 the whole affair was an eclipse, and went home to 
 write to the local papers. 
 
 " May I ? " she said. 
 
 Her husband smiled assent, and, rising from her
 
 1 8 TREA SURE- TRO VE. 
 
 seat, she leapt on to the nearest horse's back, and 
 performed several feats of horsemanship, which 
 raised the enthusiasm of the spectators to an unprece- 
 dented pitch. 
 
 Robert Bussit saw, and the sight thrilled him. 
 Catching his eye, she quivered for an instant ; but 
 in another second she was back, at a single bound, 
 clearing fifty-five feet upwards, and downwards, and 
 into her husband's carriage, scattering largesse to 
 the crowd around. 
 
 Then they swept into the Mansion, smiling, caper- 
 ing, laughing, screaming, through files of retainers 
 in every sort of varied costume, radiant with squibs, 
 crackers, and Catherine-wheels in their button-holes, 
 with which they made a fine display, and Isidora 
 thought no more of Robert Bussit, than a bright 
 Bird of Paradise thinks of last year's boots. 
 
 But Birds of Paradise can't be always thinking of 
 boots ; and boots, with something living in them, 
 may rise up, thick-soled, and kick, until the Bright 
 Creature feels the pain, shudders, droops, and falls 
 into the dust
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 OBERT BUSSIT, acting upon the advice 
 
 of Sniffkin, his friend and solicitor, had 
 
 married a pale-faced wife. She was the 
 daughter of one of Sniffkin's clients, and had 
 conceived a gentle admiration for Robert's torso. 
 His torso, and his color, which was a brightish red, 
 like sunset on a carrot, with just the slightest sus- 
 picion of green in the left eye, pleased her. She had 
 fifty thousand pounds, nominally to provide her with a 
 trousseau, and this excited Robert Bussit's admiration. 
 
 It was simply Trousseau caught by Torso, or vice 
 versa if you will. 
 
 When Molly Borne, to whom Robert had artfully 
 promised himself some time before, heard the bells 
 ringing for this wedding, she writhed all over Tup- 
 pennie Bussit house, like an injured basilisk. On 
 the evening of Robert's wedding she stood by his 
 back gate and threw stones at him. He then saw 
 that for this woman his torso had no power. Then
 
 20 TREASURE- TRO VE. 
 
 he admired her. But this feeling gave way to fear : 
 the Hater was confronted by a Hatred, strong, un- 
 relenting, as his own. 
 
 Within a year of this union of Torso with Trous- 
 seau, the bells of Tuppennie Bussit church rang again. 
 
 This time they announced the first appearance of 
 a small Robert Bussit, and Robert Bussit, ptre, was 
 all over the place with prideful joy. 
 
 It was all Boy with him now. His doubts were 
 developing into certainties. His hopes boy'd him 
 up, and so inflated did he become, that, but for his 
 friend Sniffkin and a couple of stout ropes, he would 
 have risen, balloon-like, floated over the house-top, 
 and have been lost. 
 
 But Sniffkin couldn't afford to lose so valuable a 
 client. Hence his method. 
 
 After a time he calmed down. 
 
 Then the Hater came well to the front. He built 
 a tower sixteen hundred feet high, by five in circum- 
 ference, with a sort of tank at the top, roofed in, and 
 pierced with large windows, whence he could com- 
 mand a Birdseye view of the entire Tuppennie Bussit 
 estates. Here he and Mrs. Bussit, with the Future 
 Heir in Sniffkin's arms, would sit taking tea and 
 shrimps on a summer's evening.
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION. 21 
 
 Here it was his delight to point out to the child 
 all that should be his in prospect. 
 
 This tower he called the Tower of Teazer. 
 
 From here he could throw cups and saucers down 
 on Sir Charles and Lady Bussit's heads as they took 
 their evening walk. 
 
 They wondered at first where they came from. 
 After a time they ceased to wonder. 
 
 All this began to have an effect on a man naturally 
 irritable. Sir Charles 7vas naturally irritable. In 
 addition, Robert Bussit grew a magnificent mus- 
 tache. It was the talk of the whole place. This his 
 cousin had never been able to accomplish. Robert 
 now appeared with a beard perfectly Oriental and a 
 profusion of long glossy hair. Sir Charles and Lady 
 Bussit became aware of his head and face one day, 
 thrust out at them, over the top of a hedge. 
 
 Lady Bussit saw and sighed. This chafed the 
 Hairless man. He tried extra shaving, but cut him- 
 self severely. Smarting under his wound Sir Charles 
 spoke unkindly to his wife. Lady Bussit bore all 
 with resignation. Let this be remembered to her 
 credit. 
 
 Then little, meek, pale Mrs. Bussit, at the instiga-
 
 22 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 tion of her husband, let down her back hair, and 
 displayed it over the tower. It reached nearly half- 
 way to the ground. 
 
 Lady Bussit had nothing of her own but a chignon. 
 Sir Charles couldn't assist her. Then they both, 
 avoiding one another, and taking different ways, would 
 wander down into the village, and stand gazing into 
 the barbers' windows, where there were lifelike block 
 heads with Circassian hair. This constant pining 
 produced an effect purely physical on Lady Bussit. 
 
 She moulted. 
 
 Sir Charles gradually became bald. 
 
 One day, in his justice room, he sentenced a gipsy 
 for stealing a hare. The woman was led out wailing 
 and protesting her innocence. It was on Robert 
 Bussit's evidence, and a murmur of applause went 
 through the justice room, when the people saw his 
 splendid torso and glorious locks, mustache and 
 beard. Lady Bussit was, on these magisterial 
 occasions, accommodated with a seat on the bench 
 in the study. Robert walked out. Husband and 
 wife were alone. She threw herself at his knees. 
 " O Charles ! can such things be ? " 
 
 Then he tried to comfort her, but could not, and 
 the Hairless ones wept together.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OBERT BUSSIT had seen, heard, and 
 had taken to thinking. 
 
 The result of his cogitation was soon 
 obvious. 
 It was this. 
 
 There could be no doubt that Sir Charles was 
 mad. The French have their expression r or his 
 madness, we have not. Fou comme un chabelier. 
 What was to be done ? 
 
 . Robert Bussit took counsel with his old friend 
 Sniffkin. 
 
 Sniffkin saw the difficulty, and touched it. 
 Sir Charles's sanity hung on a single hair. On 
 consideration it was evident that he was only fit for 
 one place. 
 
 The Zoological Gardens. 
 But how to get him there ? 
 Sniffkin explained technically
 
 24 TREA SURE- TRO VE. 
 
 Robert Bussit was not in a humor for technicali- 
 ties. 
 
 " For heaven's sake, man," he cried, " tell me how 
 to do it, and I'll do it." 
 
 Sniffkin calmed him down by tickling him under 
 the left ear, and then, quietly lighting a cigar, ex- 
 plained his method. 
 
 It was necessary to obtain three magistrates' orders 
 and a certificate of improper vaccination. That was 
 all. 
 
 Robert Bussit slept soundly that night, for he saw 
 his way, at last, clear to the Tuppennie Bussit 
 estates. 
 
 In f ie morning he and Sniffkin swore the neces- 
 sary .nformation, and before two o'clock Sir Charles 
 was safely locked up with the bears. 
 
 At three he was fed. 
 
 The next day people brought him buns, and he 
 amused himself by climbing up the pole. There 
 was no way of escape ; he saw that, and submitted. 
 
 Finding himself in this situation, he made friends 
 as best he could with his companions, and their 
 eccentricities began to interest him. 
 
 In the mean time the other side was not idle.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OLLY BORNE saw her mistress's distress, 
 and whispered in her ear insidiously. 
 At this whisper Lady Bussit's eyes 
 flashed fire, then she became preternaturally calm, 
 and sent for the Curate. 
 
 Now, when a woman so gentle as Lady Bussit be- 
 comes preternaturally calm, and sends for a Curate, 
 it means something. 
 
 The curate, Mr. Banjo, came and had an inter- 
 view with Slyboots, the Family Solicitor. 
 
 Slyboots was of opinion, five times, that nothing 
 could be done. This amounted, ultimately, to one 
 pound thirteen and fourpence, besides expenses in 
 coming down from London. 
 
 The Curate left Slyboots in the dining-room, where 
 he continued giving his opinion to the cold chicken, 
 tongue, and viands on the table from mere force of 
 habit, and putting it down at six and eightpence, 
 every time, in his pocket-book.
 
 2 6 TREA SURE- TRO I'E. 
 
 Lady Bussit thanked Mr. Banjo, the Curate, for 
 his prompt attention to her summons. 
 
 Mr. Banjo blushed and clasped his hands. 
 
 " I would do anything fof*you. * * * Lady Bussit," 
 he said, and sat down, nervously, on a workbox, 
 among the needles, by accident. 
 
 Lady Bussit was too much absorbed to notice the 
 young man's agitation. 
 
 " Let us come to the point," she said. 
 
 " I have," murmured Mr. Banjo, removing the last 
 and sharpest needle. 
 
 Then they sat opposite one another, and fixed 
 their eyes sadly on the carpet. 
 
 " Slyboots is too slow, too timid," said Mr. Banjo ; 
 " / would art, and at once." 
 
 " How ? " 
 
 " We require a man of superhuman genius." Mr. 
 Banjo blushed as he said, this, slightly turned to the 
 right, then he'went on. " We require a man of unbound- 
 ed energy," — he blushed again, and turned slightly 
 to the left — " a man, handsome as Apollo, strong as 
 Hercules, clever as Minerva, with the will of Jove, 
 and the pluck of Mars." His face was suffused 
 with blushes. 
 
 Lady Bussit caught some of his enthusiasm.
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION. 27 
 
 " You are describing Yourself, " she exclaimed, her 
 whole face beaming with admiration of the athletic 
 form before her. 
 
 " Not so," returned the Curate, gently ; " I spoke 
 of another ; though," he added, diffidently, " I felt at 
 the moment you would recognize the portrait in me. 
 It was natural," and once more he blushed, this time 
 deeply. 
 
 " Then where is there such a person ? " 
 
 " I know." 
 
 " Who ? " 
 
 " He is a Writer, an Author, of whose stupendous 
 genius there are no two opinions,* even among his 
 enemies, for enemies he has ; no truly great man can 
 exist without making them. Everybody is raving 
 about him, everywhere. His friends rank him next 
 after Homer, and far above Shakspeare. Even his 
 enemies are forced to admit him to an equal pedestal 
 with our greatest Dramatic Poet. He never writes 
 
 *The character which the Curate here describes, and which will shortly 
 b« before my readers in these pages, is no fictitious one, but a portrait, 
 a speaking likeness, of the writer of this novel. Vandyck drew a full 
 length of himself, so did Rubsns, so Salvator Rosa and Raphael, Quen- 
 tin Matsys carved himself in iron on the top of a pump ; and not to 
 multiply instances, an eminent novelist has, in our own time, given an 
 admirable sketch of himself ; so why should not The Author of this 
 Novel*
 
 28 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 but to defend the cause of the weak and helpless. 
 His works teem with all the Christian virtues. The 
 number of people that have been converted by mere- 
 ly reading the titles on the covers of his books, 
 would alone form a small London Directory. He is 
 thoroughly in earnest. There is his secret ; and be- 
 ing so, has already contrived to get several people 
 both into and out of, the Zoological Gardens." 
 
 " Is it possible ? Let us go to him." 
 
 " I will write, and make an appointment with him." 
 
 " Do. A writer ? What does he write ? " 
 
 " Everything." 
 
 After an instant's thought she replied, " Indeed ! 
 Then I am acquainted with many of his works." 
 
 The Curate sailed over the carpet like an antelope, 
 and approached his lips to her ear. He whispered, 
 " He writes for P—neh." 
 
 At the mention of this name a thrill of ecstatic plea- 
 sure ran through her frame. Then, recovering herself 
 wtih a strong effort, she exclaimed, joyfully, " Do not 
 delay an instant. He is evidently the friend we need." 
 
 Mr. Banjo went into the study, and dispatched 
 his note to Mr. Juff, the celebrated Author. Then 
 Mr. Banjo came down again, looking flushed and 
 handsome. Then he blushed.
 
 CHAPTER VIII.* 
 
 EXT morning in came Mr. Banjo. Glow- 
 ing with health and high spirits, the 
 Athlete crashed through the conservatory 
 window, and stood before Lady Bussit. " Coo ! " 
 said the gentle Curate. Whereat Lady Bussit raised 
 her head, and listened. 
 " Shall I read you Juff 's letter ? " he asked. 
 "You shall." 
 
 "'Dear Sir, — The case of a gentleman confined in 
 the Zoological Gardens among the bears, by an interest- 
 ed relative, is a first-rate notion, and looks like truth. 
 There is matter in it for a novel, a drama, a poem, 
 ultimately a burlesque, and at Christmas time a pan- 
 tomime. Let the lady call on me in person. Perhaps 
 I can get her an engagement hi London, or the provinces, 
 
 * " The length of this chapter is exceptional, but so is its subject. I 
 have attempted to portray the author of this novel — myself. It has been 
 a delicate task, but I think I have succeeded." — Extract from Author's 
 iMter to the Editor.
 
 30 TREA SURE-TRO VE. 
 
 where, by the way, she might "star" in a play of mine 
 on this very subject. At home every day, and to 
 special visitors at any hour, if you touch the little ivory 
 knob on the right side of my door, one foot from the 
 step. As for you, I know you. You pulled A r o. 6 in 
 the University Fours at Henley, and took a threepenny 
 'bus, instead of a cab, from the Marble Arch to the 
 Haymarket, to save nincpence. See " Ride Journal" 
 April I, cited in my " Joke Book," same date, and also 
 in my " Indices Subjicientes Spectacula, Comadias, et 
 Ludicra," under « B " for " Banjo." 
 
 " ' Yours very heartily, 
 
 << « juff: " 
 
 " And did you ? " 
 
 "Did I what?" 
 
 " Save ninepence ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " How noble and how bold you are ! " 
 
 Banjo blushed all over. It took him exactly three 
 minutes to do this, and unblush again. 
 
 Then he resumed : — 
 
 "You'll call on Mr. Juff." She hesitated, and he 
 continued. " He won't come down here. A marvel- 
 lously popular writer, like Juff, is spoiled by the 
 ladies. They won't let him alone. They pet him,
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION. 31 
 
 play with him, write to him, dance round him, in 
 crowds, all day long. So you can't expect Him to 
 come down here on a stranger's business." 
 
 Lady Bussit decided to go, took her maid, Molly 
 Borne, with her, and travelling by the Unlimited 
 Express from Bussit Station, was at Mr. Juff's door 
 by half-past exactly. 
 
 It was a magnificent house in the finest quarter of 
 Belgravia. 
 
 Its site had been formerly a square, but had been 
 purchased (out of the receipts from one of his papers 
 in P-ncti), by Mr. Juff, whose quick eye had at once 
 seized upon its capabilities. 
 
 Chestnuts, oaks, Scotch firs, and the African pine, 
 so rarely seen in the metropolis, stood between the 
 busy thoroughfare and Mr. Juff's front door. 
 
 There were two entrance lodges, which were gems 
 of the best architectural design, and the drive was 
 divided from the pathway by a narrow but clear 
 running stream, whereon a gondola was in waiting 
 to convey such visitors as might prefer this mode of 
 arriving at the house. 
 
 Lady Bussit could not conceal her admiration and 
 wonder at all she saw. She had been reared in the 
 idea that authors lived on airy flights, in Bohemia,
 
 3a rREASCTRh-lAUP*.. 
 
 not Belgravia, and this palace — for it was no less 
 — astonished her. 
 
 At first she thought she must have made a mis- 
 take ; but the name " Juff " over the lodges, on the 
 gate-pillars, on the gravel of the tramway, on the 
 tesselated pavement (where it was inlaid with costly 
 stones), and on the prow and flag of the gondola, at 
 once dissipated any such idea. 
 
 A slave, black as ebony, suddenly stood before 
 her, and facing round, led the way to the Italian por 
 tico. 
 
 At the front door she called to mind Mr. Juff's 
 own instructions, and pointed to the small ivory 
 knob. 
 
 The negro pressed it lightly. He then respect- 
 fully salaamed and, drawing himself up to his full 
 height, disappeared. 
 
 There was no time allowed Lady Bussit for spec- 
 ulation on this new wonder, for the hall-door, mov- 
 ing noiselessly, and apparently of its own accord, 
 stood open before her. 
 
 She summoned up all her resolution, repeating to 
 herself several times, " Charles, — Husband, — Zoo- 
 logical Gardens." 
 
 " Mew I?" she asked timidly of nobody. She
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION. 33 
 
 was standing on a door mat of the purest Circassian 
 tresses, prepared after some occult receipt. 
 
 Silence assents. There was no answer. She 
 advanced a step, and the hall door closed. 
 
 So noiselessly was this done, and so admirably 
 did the door fit into the wall, that neither sound nor 
 seam could show her where she had entered. 
 
 The hall was of Basilica pattern, lighted round 
 the dome by some thousands of rose-colored lanterns 
 which, entirely hidden from sight, shed warm and 
 cheering bloom upon the interior. Frescoes by the 
 greatest masters of the Italian school, rendered the 
 dome glorious and illustrated the chief events of 
 Mr. Juff's career. 
 
 Accustomed to the grandest houses, Lady Bussit 
 was utterly overwhelmed by these simple, but artistic 
 effects. 
 
 Then it struck her that it was either all a dream, 
 or that she had gone into St. Peter's at Rome by 
 mistake. 
 
 " Well, I NEVER ! ! " exclaimed Molly. 
 
 This observation recalled Lady Bussit to herself. 
 
 She now became aware of a fragrant aromatic 
 
 breeze pervading the Hall. This seemed to refresh 
 
 her, and she approached the fountain which was 
 
 3
 
 34 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 musically splashing in the centre. This was so 
 contrived that every single drop of water from the 
 jet fell upon a peculiarly-fashioned stone, and gave 
 forth such varied sounds as produced a harmony, 
 the like of which Lady Bussit had never heard. 
 
 In the centre of the fountain now appeared a 
 lovely maiden habited like a Naiad, who, presenting 
 an oyster shell made of rare Indian pearl enshrined 
 in gold, chased by Benvenuto Cellini, bade Lady 
 Bussit note her name and business upon it with an 
 electric pencil. She thought a few lines, which were 
 suddenly reproduced in writing on the shell, which 
 she forthwith returned to the maiden, who instantly 
 disappeared, while soft music penetrated the air. 
 Turning her head towards the quarter whence these 
 sounds came, she perceived a beautiful Indian girl 
 motioning her to follow. 
 
 She did so. Not a sound of London could be 
 beard. Not the roll of an omnibus, not the rattle of 
 a cab, not the footfall of a policeman. Yet, this was 
 Belgravia. 
 
 At the maid's touch two huge glass doors flew 
 open. These disclosed a Tropical grove. Man- 
 goes, cocoa-nuts, oranges, hung in clusters. Birds of 
 the brightest plumage and most enchanting song
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATICV. 35 
 
 fluttered hither and thither, cooling the air by the 
 fan-like motion of their gorgeous wings. 
 
 Parrots had built in the sycamores, and were 
 teaching their young to speak such words ^s they 
 themselves had learnt. 
 
 They had one or two varieties of cry. The sounds 
 that Lady Bussit caught were "Juff," " The G^eat 
 Juff," " Juff's at home." So she passed on. 
 
 More glass doors, which opening, showed, as '< 
 were, the Depths of the Ocean. 
 
 Here fish disported themselves, and Lady Lussi 
 and her maid walked on a carpet of the finest sand 
 through stalactite caves, cool crystal grots, and 
 beneath arches of flowering seaweed trees. 
 
 Then they were ushered into a Hall of more than- 
 Peruvian splendour. 
 
 Masterpieces of painting and sculpture surround- 
 ed her. A soft clear light was diffused through the 
 apartment. Mirrors dexterously let into the walls 
 reflected, noiselessly, the outside world, and pictured 
 as it were, the most beautiful spots in the London 
 Parks, showing how adroitly the Designer had fixed 
 the site of his residence. 
 
 So far all was romantic : but in a corner, beneath 
 a palm tree, stood a writing table, and over various
 
 36 TREASURE- TRO VE. 
 
 doors, which Lady Bussit now noticed for the first 
 time, were written " Tragedies," " Comedies," " Nov- 
 els," " Romances," " Burlesques," " Magazines," and 
 other inscriptions, which she could not at once un- 
 derstand. 
 
 By the writing table were huge baskets of gold, 
 silver and iron. These were labelled, severally, 
 Jokes, Good Things, Repartees, Impromptus, Plots, 
 Puns, Used, Unused. 
 
 For Mr. Juff was not one of those writers who trust 
 to the Inspiration of the Moment for success. He 
 held that a good thing, once said, no matter by whom, 
 ought never to be thrown away and lost, but cata- 
 logued and classed for reference, so as to be found 
 when wanted. 
 
 Lady Bussit had barely time to form some idea of 
 The Stupendous Genius which had done all this, 
 when a bevy of laughing damsels, pelting with choice 
 flowers some object at present hidden from her 
 sight, entered the room. 
 
 " Our game is over," said a sweet voice, apparent- 
 ly from the Rosery whence the girls had issued. 
 " Go to your ices. We will meet anon." 
 
 The ladies wandered away in various directions : 
 and were soon lost to sight and hearing.
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION. 37 
 
 Then The Author, who had been enjoying a 
 moment's recreation, approached the open window. 
 
 He was tall, classically handsome, and wore a 
 suit of bright orange velvet turned up with blue \ his 
 mauve shirt, made of a material unknown in this 
 country, was fastened at the throat by one magnifi- 
 cent diamond. His delicately chiselled hands 
 peeped out, small and white, from the ruffles of the 
 real point lace with which his wristbands were 
 trimmed. 
 
 His shoes were of a rich crimson, which afford- 
 ed an admirable setting for the amethysts, rubies, and 
 smaller diamonds with which they were bespangled. 
 
 He was smoking a delicately-perfumed cigarette, 
 and playing a mandoline, as he entered the room 
 and stood before them.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 il ADY BUSSIT was agitated. 
 
 Mr. Juff saw this at once, and touched a 
 spring in the wall. Thence issued a small 
 silver salver, bearing an ancient beaker. He touched 
 another spring just above. Thence flowed out a 
 liquid bright and sparkling. . With this he filled the 
 beaker, and handed it to Lady Bussit? 
 
 "May I ?" she inquired, faintly. 
 
 " Certainly. It will not hurt you. It is simply 
 Allsopina. If it was Bass I should say something 
 about Basso profondo. 
 
 Saying this he turned to one of his buckets, then 
 to a large ledger, and made a formal entry under the 
 letter B. The book was labelled " Good things to 
 say." He then referred to a quarto index, which was 
 standing, open, on a gothic brazen eagle near the 
 writing-table. In this he made a private mark, for 
 reference, also under letter B ; and this being done, 
 he turned to attend to his visitor.
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION. ^ 
 
 Then she told him all. 
 
 Mr Juff appeared to be thinking intently. 
 
 The result was soon apparent. 
 
 " How are you ? " he inquired, 
 
 She glanced at her maid. 
 
 Mr. Juff was on the alert in an instant, and spiing- 
 ing from his chair, placed himself, at one bound, be- 
 tween them. 
 
 " Now then," he cried, " No larks : I want the 
 truth." Then he repeated, " How are you ? " 
 
 Lady Bussit paused. Reflecting, however, that 
 she could gain nothing by concealment, she replied, 
 " Pretty well, thank you ; how are you ? " 
 
 Mr. Juff thus challenged, begged a moment's delay. 
 Then he put his hands into his pockets and drew 
 forth a pair of shining bones. On these he perform- 
 ed several sonatas. After he had finished, this 
 strange romantic creature danced a saraband, and 
 then pushing forward from a corner a small rostrum 
 made of cedar wood inlaid with gold and ivory, he 
 mounted it, and addressed them. 
 
 " Lady Bussit and Maid, your husband is locked 
 up in the Zoological Gardens. From what I have 
 heard, I gather that loss of hair has affected his brain. 
 He has become light-headed. Robert Bussit thinks
 
 4 o TRE A SURE- TRO VE. 
 
 this an opportunity for confining his cousin, and 
 putting him under lock and key." He reflected for 
 an instant, and then descending, rushed to his folio 
 labelled " Jokes," wherein he made a note under the 
 letter H, " Hair. . . Locks . . . double meaning." 
 Then he wrote a reference in his index. After this he 
 resumed his position. 
 
 " This misfortune has reacted upon you. I have 
 eyes and see it. The question simply is, Do you 
 want luxuriant //air, whiskers and mustachios ? 
 Don't be alarmed. You sha'n't be like Julia Pastrana, 
 a very amiable young lady with whom I have the 
 pleasure to be acquainted." Here he kissed the 
 tips of his fingers, and then continued. "No; you 
 shall not even be compelled to dye." Here he 
 dashed down again, and made another couple of en- 
 tries under the letter " D — Die — Dye " — for future 
 use, while Lady Bussit watched him with anxious 
 interest. Gradually she came to respect his manli- 
 ness, his courtesy, and to admire and understand 
 his brilliant genius. He went on, " We will bide our 
 time. In a week you will be ready to act. So will 
 Sir Charles, to whom you shall convey a receipt with 
 which I will furnish you." 
 
 " How great ! how clever you are ! "
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION. 41 
 
 " I am. But, as the French say, cela va sans dire. 
 Let us fix our attention on the one point. Leave all 
 to me. When you feel that the moment has come, 
 merely drop me a line, saying ' Hair you ready I If 
 so go a-head? I shall then act. By the way, what is 
 the name of the man who feeds the bears at three 
 o'clock ? " 
 
 Lady Bussit thought for an instant. Then she 
 replied, " Smith." 
 
 Mr. Juff turned to his index, and under the letter 
 " S " found the name required. 
 
 " Good," he said, " he comes of an old French 
 family. Now listen to me. I know how to deal 
 with Smith. Smith is a snob. Go to the Zoological 
 in State. Outriders, trumpets, flags, you under- 
 stand." 
 
 " I do. I've got them all." 
 
 Juff bounded into the air with a loud cry, " Eureka ! 
 Hooray ! Bravo ! My ! Here we are again ! How 
 are you to-morrow! See what I've found!" he 
 shouted, like an elephant in an ecstasy. 
 
 Lady Bussit clasped her hands with joy. Electric 
 fire coursed through her veins. She caught his 
 enthusiasm. So did Molly. With a wild triumphant 
 roar they all three sprang from their seats, and
 
 42 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 joining hands, bounded about the room. Guns 
 went off in the ante-room, and jubilant music on 
 hidden organs pealed forth a victorious chorus. 
 
 Then they cooled down, and Mr. Juff stamping 
 his foot, the floor opened, and therefrom arose an 
 elegantly-served table, bearing upon its marble top, 
 gooseberries stuffed with cream, and iced flounders. 
 He made both mistress and maid drink a bottle 
 of Pommery & Greno's driest champagne each. 
 
 Then he wrote the receipt to be given to Sir 
 Charles. Then he wished them good-day. 
 
 After this he measured three paces, carefully, 
 backwards. Then running six forward, he stretched 
 out his hands, and with a tremendous impetus, 
 jumped through a small square window in the wall, 
 about six feet from the floor. On his disappearance 
 the window was immediately covered with a large 
 flap on which was printed Not at Home. Taking 
 the hint, they withdrew. 
 
 As Lady Bussit passed into the street she heard 
 behind her a tremendous bang, and then a roar 
 which startled her. 
 
 It was Mr. Juff letting off a pun and laughing at 
 it himself, for he was hard at work on a pantomime 
 for Christinas, and their visit had disturbed him. 
 Now he was returning to his toil.
 
 t 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ADY BUS SIT, acting upon instructions, 
 appeared before the gate of the Zoological 
 Gardens with outriders dressed in scarlet 
 and pink. They had white hats turned 
 up with blue, and yellow boots. A dozen running 
 footmen accompanied the carriage, dressed as 
 Tritons, and blowing conchs. 
 
 All this was not without its effect on Smith. 
 On the pretence of asking him at what time the 
 bears were fed, she slipped a thousand-pound note 
 into his hand, and a letter for Sir Charles. 
 
 This was duly delivered. Juff's receipt she put 
 inside a bun, and threw it over the railings. Sir 
 Charles seized it and devoured its contents. Then 
 
   
 
 he nodded, passed his finger over his bald head 
 thoughtfully, jotted something on the letter, and 
 replacing it in the bun threw it playfully up to Lady 
 Bussit. Thenceforward he was cheerful and resign- 
 ed. The bears amused him with their absurdities.
 
 44 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 They were all mad. One bear thought he was on the 
 Stock Exchange, and showed Sir Charles a plan for 
 rigging the market. The plan was marked method- 
 ically, A, B, C, D, etc., and the poor animal imag- 
 ined himself a bear of Consols. 
 
 Sir Charles saw at once that he would never get 
 out. 
 
 But from their conversation he learnt something 
 which was ultimately of signal service to him. 
 
 They confided to him their secret griefs. 
 
 One, a she-bear, informed him that she would not 
 have been there but for the wickedness of a barber 
 in the city, who loved her, though she hated him, 
 and who had paid Smith to fatten her up, and if he 
 could not possess her alive, he would, by Smith's 
 help, obtain her hand, and herself entirely, when 
 dead. 
 
 Sir Charles passed his hand over his hairless 
 scalp, and meditated. 
 
 Five clays later the she-bear was removed. Smith 
 informed Sir Charles of her destination. And now 
 he was really anxious for his delivery. 
 
 Juff, too, wondered at the delay. 
 
 At last there came a note. " Hair you ready ? Go 
 a-h'.ad! " Then Juff went to work.
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION. 45 
 
 He called on a manager of a metropolitan theatre. 
 
 The manager had just got together, with some 
 trouble, a " double company " for Mr. Juff's forth- 
 coming pantomime. 
 
 He also took the precaution of securing five large 
 pantomime heads with various expressions of coun- 
 tenance. To wear these, he engaged four artists ac- 
 customed to this sort of work. 
 
 The fifth mask they carried. 
 
 Thus armed, Juff went to the Zoological. 
 
 The men with the large heads, being taken for 
 distinguished foreigners, were received by the author- 
 ities, who showed them over the gardens with the 
 greatest possible respect. 
 
 This drew the officials and the visitors away from 
 the bears'-den. 
 
 Smith and another keeper came out to feed the 
 bears. 
 
 The second keeper wheeled a barrow before him 
 in which was the bears' meat. 
 
 At a signal from Juff, the first clown and panta- 
 loon engaged Smith in an animated conversation. 
 
 Obeying another sign, the second pair of panto, 
 mimists stopped the barrow, and commenced tasting 
 and bargaining for the meat.
 
 4 6 TREA SURE- TRO VE. 
 
 From Smith's pocket, Clown number one extracted 
 the keys. 
 
 The man, missing these, turned upon him. 
 
 Then the clown, with the utmost politeness, pro- 
 tested, on his honor, with his hand at his heart, 
 that he could not be guilty of such a fraud, and 
 pointed to his companion, who had already run away, 
 as the culprit. The keeper strode off in search of 
 the latter. 
 
 In the mean time similar manoeuvres had been ex- 
 ecuted by the other artistes, and the under-keeper 
 was in full chase of the second pantaloon, who he 
 supposed, had filched several pounds weight of the 
 fattest meat. 
 
 The first clown handed the keys to Mr. Juff. 
 
 Then the two drolls engaged themselves upon a 
 work of marvellous cunning. 
 
 They divided the fat purloined from the barrow, 
 and with two lumps of this stuff, they scrubbed the 
 walks of the Gardens, as if they were housemaids, 
 cleaning a floor. 
 
 In the mean time, Juff had descended, opened the 
 cage, released Sir Charles, placed the spare large 
 head on his shoulders, and thus disguised, he led
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION. 47 
 
 him by the grass borders, and, avoiding the paths, to 
 the gate. 
 
 So far all was satisfactory. 
 
 But the alarm had been given. 
 
 Smith and the other keeper, finding themselves 
 deceived, shouted out to the officials, who attempted 
 to secure their larga-headed visitors. This led to a 
 
 scrimmage. 
 
 The clowns and pantaloons threw about everything 
 they could find. 
 
 The police outside, hearing the noise, rushed in, 
 and would have joined the affray, but for the precau- 
 tions taken by the two clowns, who had rendered the 
 walks so slippery with lard, that no one was able to 
 stand upright for one second. 
 
 Then followed a scene of indescribable confusion, 
 taking advantage of which, Juff and Sir Charles drove 
 off, safely, in a cab. 
 
 In a few minutes, Lady Bussit held him, panting, 
 shouting and dancing, in her arms. 
 
 It was a pretty picture. 
 
 Then Juff went home to work.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 ADY BUSSIT was the first to speak. 
 " May I ? " she asked. 
 " You may," was his reply. 
 
 Then she produced first of all Juff's 
 receipt and the note added by Sir Charles. 
 
 She accounted for her delay by showing that the 
 Perruquicr to whom she had applied could not have 
 performed his work quicker under the circumstances. 
 It was to be a temporary arrangement. 
 Juff's receipt had simply said, 
 " Measure round the head in manner of a fillet, clas- 
 sically" 
 
 "From the forehead over to the poll, elect ioneeringly." 
 " From one temple to the other, religiously" 
 " Write result down in inches. Your wife will ap- 
 ply it to a photograph, and the thing is done." 
 
 It was the answer to this that Sir Charles had 
 written.
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION. 49 
 
 "Here is the photograph," said Lady Bussit, 
 "with your own measurement applied." 
 
 She showed it him. A skilfully executed likeness, 
 taken in his baldest time, before his whiskers disap- 
 peared. 
 
 " And here," she continued, producing a magnifi- 
 cent false head of hair, " is the result." 
 
 A loud cry of delight escaped from her husband, 
 as he gently fitted the perruque on his marble-like 
 head. 
 
 Lady Bussit whispered in his ear, " You won't 
 mind Robert's beard and mustache now?" 
 
 " Not I. " 
 
 " You will never have another fit." 
 
 " I never wish for a better one than this." 
 
 So they sat together murmuring in each other's 
 ears. 
 
 Then Lady Bussit plucked up courage, and showed 
 him her magnificent chignon. 
 
 " Let us be grateful to Heaven," said Sir Charles. 
 That night they rested happily. 
 
 Sir Charles rose at dawn. He was for driving 
 over to Tuppennie Bussit in triumph. 
 
 Horses, flags, drums, trumpets, and two troops of 
 
 his own raising, with colors. 
 
 4
 
 5 o TREASURE-TRO VE. 
 
 On their road, Sir Charles, remembering the 
 address to which the she-bear had been carried, 
 drove a little out of his way, and called there. 
 
 It was a Barber's shop. Over the door was an 
 announcement to the effect that a large bear had just 
 been slaughtered, and that the grease was invaluable. 
 
 Sir Charles's servants returned laden with three 
 dozen pots of the " Capillary Confection." This 
 was the title given to the pomade by the barber, 
 who had invented it himself. 
 
 Robert, from the Tower of Teazer, saw the happy 
 pair drive into the village. 
 
 Young farmers were out cantering about. Old 
 peasants in their carts. Children on donkeys. 
 Peasants from the plough. All shouting together in 
 their joy at the return of their kind landlord and his 
 loving wife, and unable to restrain their admiration 
 of Sir Charles's glossy locks, flowing beard, and 
 brown mustache. 
 
 Before they reached the village four hundred 
 horsemen accompanied the carriage, while at least 
 four hundred more, unaccustomed to the saddle, 
 were on their backs in the dust. 
 
 The church-bells rang ; everybody cheered ; and 
 seventy-five pensioners, whose united ages amounted
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION. 51 
 
 > six thousand seven hundred and fifty years, sang a 
 horus of one hour and a half's duration, by the 
 Church clock, which played the accompaniment. 
 
 At this Lady Bussit began to cry : Sir Charles 
 bowed right and left, taking off his wig to the people 
 with great delight and pride. It was a Royal 
 Progress. 
 
 Molly Borne, seated on the back seat of the car- 
 riage, threw her boots in the air for luck. 
 
 A roar of cheers burst from the crowd at that in- 
 spired action of a woman whose face and eyes seem- 
 ed to be on fire. Lady Bussit turned pale, but a 
 skilful movement of her head avoided the second 
 boot. Then they all stood up and shouted. 
 
 It was open house that night to every one. 
 
 Paupers from the workhouse came into Tuppennie 
 Bussit Hall, and slept wherever they liked, only re- 
 questing to have their shoes well polished and bright 
 early, and a cup of chocolate half an hour before 
 they got up in the morning. 
 
 Farmers played the piano, and their elders danced 
 in the drawing-room. Others spent the night in the 
 wine-cellars. No man or woman was denied. Oxen 
 were roasted whole in every room in the house, kegs
 
 52 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 were broached, and ale, cider, port, sherry, and 
 champagne flowed down the stairs in rich, frothy 
 streams. It was open house that night to all as it 
 had been four hundred years ago.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 OBERT BUSSIT was served with a Decla- 
 ration and a Writ. It was in three counts 
 in their shortest and most simple form : — 
 i st. That the said Robert Bussit of 
 
 , in the county of , on the day of , 
 
 in the year of , did, of his own malice afore- 
 thought, and all to the contrary notwithstanding, 
 molest, annoy, and evict, vi et armis, from statutable 
 and possessory rights the plaintiff in this action, and 
 that the aforesaid Robert Bussit did, on the same 
 
 day as aforesaid, that is, on the day of , in 
 
 the year of , cause the plaintiff as aforesaid to be 
 
 seized and removed against his will and consent to 
 a place set apart by law for the legal retention of 
 such Quadrupeds, Bipeds, and others not being force 
 naturce or lusus natures, in the Park of the Regent in 
 the County of Middlesex. 
 
 2d. That the said Robert Bussit (etc., etc., as 
 before) did (much the same as mentioned in the
 
 54 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 above count) . . . and in consequence of such act 
 or acts done and executed of malice aforethought as 
 aforesaid, the plaintiff, Sir Charles Bussit, of Tupen- 
 
 nie Bussit, in the county of , on the day of , 
 
 m the year of , does claim and cause to be claim- 
 
 ed all that part, portion, and inalienable right of 
 quod ei deforceal, such right not being barred by the 
 usurpation of the incorporeal hereditament whereof 
 as aforesaid the afore-mentioned Robert, etc., etc. 
 
 3d Count. And that (all re-stated as above at 
 full length) the plaintiff' thereupon claims £36,000 for 
 
 damnum et injuria, and hereby on the day of , etc., 
 
 etc. 
 
 Robert Bussit sold his house, pulled down the 
 Tower of Teazer, and paid the money. It was a 
 sickener ; it broke his spirit. 
 
 Defeated at every point, Robert fell into a deep 
 • dejection, and took to tumbling for a livelihood. 
 He and his wife and child hired themselves out as 
 " Signor Bussittini and Talented family." They 
 practised standing on their heads for hours every 
 day. One thing was clear : they would never again 
 alight on their legs. 
 
 His father-in-law once took tickets for his benefit. 
 This was all they had to live upon.
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION. 55 
 
 He applied to Mr. Juff for an equestrian drama. 
 Mr. Juff wrote it. This crushed him utterly. 
 
 He travelled about the country with it for some 
 time ; then he travelled about without it. 
 
 Much journeying brought him in contact with all 
 sorts of people, for whom he had but one question, 
 " Do you know my cousin, Lady Bussit ? " 
 
 Persons to whom this query was put, thought it 
 was a conundrum, and gave it up. 
 
 Then he hated everybody worse than ever. 
 
 One day he heard the bells of some church ringing. 
 
 " What's that for ? " he asked, sharply. 
 
 " Young Bussit," answered the man. 
 
 Robert took up a log of wood, and rushed at him. 
 " I'll teach you," he cried, " to ring bells." 
 
 The man ducked, and ran out.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 UR story now makes a bold jump. 
 Everybody is twenty years older. 
 Sir Charles Bussit has one son ; 
 Robert one daughter. 
 Robert is once more residing at Bussit, in a small 
 cottage. He hates his cousin worse than ever. 
 
 One day Mr. Banjo, now the Perpetual Curate of 
 Tuppennie Bussit, came to Sir Charles to complain. 
 " There was," he said, " a middle-aged person, 
 in fact a female, preaching in the village ; and as 
 she preached better than he did, nobody came to 
 hear him" 
 
 Sir Charles decided to judge for himself. Being 
 a Magistrate, he was legally entitled to do so. 
 
 A large crowd was gathered round the woman, 
 who was perched on a tub. 
 
 He recognized her at once — La Dorchester. 
 She spoke briefly, but forcibly.
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION. 57 
 
 She lashed Drunkenness, and then took another 
 subject in hand, Quarrels in families. 
 
 " Look here," she exclaimed, " why do you quar- 
 rel ? Birds in their little nests agree, and 'tis a shame- 
 ful sight," {murmurs from the crowd?) " When chil- 
 dren of one family " {more murmurs) " fall out, and 
 scratch and fight." ("So be it/" from the crowd.) 
 "What's that? Watts. Well now, is that true? 
 ("JVo/" heartily from the crowd.) " You know better 
 than that." (" We do I " from crowd?) " Very well, 
 then. If you know better, do better." (" We> will, 
 we will I " from crowd?) " Set an example to Sir 
 Charles " (" Hooray ! " from crowd?) " and Robert." 
 (" 'Yah /" from crowd?) Teach 'em that their little 
 hands were never made to tear, and bite, and fight ? 
 Ask them, How are you to-morrow ?" ("Ah /" from 
 Sir Charles and the crowd?) " Ask 'em, How they'd 
 like it themselves ? " (" Ah I " from Robert and the 
 erowd?) " Oh ! my friends, be assured that I'm right, 
 and everybody else is wrong." (" You are I you are I") 
 " Why do you beat your carpets ? Why give more ? " 
 (Sobs.) " Many to whom this question is put will 
 reply, I can read, write, but I cannot speak it." 
 (" Yes, yes/") " Oh, my Christian friends, the Christy 
 Minstrels never perform out of London, and none
 
 5 8 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 other is genuine unless signed with the trade mark." 
 {Convulsions in crowd, and several people led away 
 howling?) " What matters it, after all, if we can only 
 strike on the box ? Let us act up to it ! More ! Let 
 us double up our perambulators, and moisten the 
 starch of Glenfield with the soothing syrup of the 
 maternal Winslow ; then while we Bantingize in a 
 daylight of Ozone, we can indeed aspire to the glori- 
 ous light of the Ozokerit ! ! " . 
 
 The fair orator delivered these words with such 
 fire, such feeling, such clarion-like eloquence, that 
 from the people, at first spell-bound, there arose so 
 loud, so heartfelt a cry of grateful joy as is seldom 
 heard from the lips of those who are perfectly satis- 
 fied with themselves, in their glossy hats and shiny 
 boots, on Sunday afternoons.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 HE Preacher had vanished. But the fire 
 of her words remained, and moved statues. 
 The Cousins quivered 
 
 Then Robert spoke. " Chawles . . . . " 
 
 Sir Charles lifted his head loftily, but there was a 
 tear in his right eye, unwiped. 
 
 Robert continued, behind his hat, " Chawles 
 .... I have been wrong. I am sorry we are 
 enemies. Good-morning." 
 
 Then Sir Charles's Boy ran out, and Robert's 
 Daughter rushed into his arms. 
 
 Thus the Children's love wore out their father's 
 hate. 
 
 La Dorchester meeting Molly Borne in the lane, 
 called upon her to repent. 
 " Never 1 " answered Molly.
 
 60 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 And she never did ; not having, as she said, any- 
 thing to repent of. 
 
 Robert Bussit one evening said to Sniffkin, " Old 
 boy, never hate anybody." 
 
 Sniffkin bowed coldly. He didn't like being 
 called " old boy," and never spoke to Robert again. 
 
 Sir Charles and Lady Bussit lead a peaceful life. 
 They both wear their own hair now, and it is quite 
 gray. 
 
 Their son and his wife often come to dinner, and 
 have excellent appetites. After the meal, Juff, who 
 has made the house one of his homes, reads them 
 his plays, and sings little compositions of his own 
 to them, playing on the mandoline. In consequence, 
 they go to bed early. 
 
 You, Gentlemen and Ladies, who read this, be 
 firm, and if you've done anything wrong, don't be 
 misled by this novel into doing it again.
 
 A TREBLE TEMPTATION. 61 
 
 Be kind, be generous, buy Juff's books, and read 
 Juff's writings. 
 
 When in doubt, ask Juff. 
 
 Never consult a Solicitor, — go to Juff. 
 
 My experience is, that we're, all of us, generally 
 very nice sort of people, except the nasty ones. 
 
 So let us end with a couplet of one of England's 
 greatest writers : 
 
 " Where is the man of truest stuff— 
 The Best, the Greatest . . It is JUFF."
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 From the Editor * to the Author of " A Treble Temp- 
 tation." 
 My deak Old Juffy, — Your Novel is excellent. 
 Of course I congratulate you upon its admirable finish. 
 Permit me to ask you, in consequence of various inquiries 
 on the subject, addressed to me in my editorial capacity, 
 why is it called " A Treble Temptation ? " 
 
 /remain, my dear old Juffy, yours most Affectionately, 
 
 The Editor. 
 
 From Mr. J., Author of 6rc, &*c, to the Editor 
 of P. 
 
 Dear Sir, — May not a father christen his own 
 child as he will? I choose to call this Novel " A Treble 
 Temptation^ Don't call me " Old Juffy" 
 
 Yours, decidedly. 
 
 * The Editor of P-nck, to which journal, as has been already stated 
 in this novel, Mr. Juff was a constant contributor. The Treble Temp- 
 tation first appeared in P-nch.
 
 6 4 TREA SURE- TRO VE. 
 
 From the Editor /(5 Mr J. 
 
 My dear Juff, — I do not dispute your right to 
 christen your own charming Novel. But how does the 
 
 title apply f 
 
 I remain, yours, dear Juff, affectionately, 
 
 The Editor. 
 
 From Mr. J. to the Editor. 
 
 Sir — I can't be CEdipus and Sphinx. It is a 
 Treble Temptation, and the best Novel Eve ever done. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 J- 
 
 From the Editor to Mr. J. 
 
 Dear Mr. Juff — You are perfectly at liberty to 
 hold your own opinion as to the merits of the Novel in 
 question. I shall not discuss that point with you. I 
 confess I do not see what the temptation was, or why it 
 was treble. Permit me to add that I am not alone in 
 my failure of perception. 
 
 I remain, Sir, yours sincerely, 
 
 The Editor.
 
 APPENDIX. 6$ 
 
 From Mr. J. to the Editor. 
 
 Sir — Quod scripsi scripsi. What I have scribbled I 
 have scribbled. I am answerable to no man. Certain- 
 ly not to you. You have been a dramatic author, and 
 probably are acquainted with French. If so, mark my 
 reply to your question, " Peche et Cherche I 
 
 J- 
 
 From the Editor of P. to Mr. J. 
 
 Sir — You are, I regret to say, begging the question, 
 while I am begging the answer. The point at issue be- 
 tween yourself and the public, which I now editorially 
 represent, is the exact application of the title, " Treble 
 Temptation,'" bestowed by you upon your Novel, Tale, or 
 whatever the work may be out of your own estimation. 
 Oblige me tvith a satisfactory answer. Should you fail 
 to comply with my request, I shall certainly publish the 
 correspondence. 
 
 Yours, &C, &>c. 
 
 From Mr. J. ic the Editor. 
 
 Publish what you like. The na?ne of the Novel is 
 " The Treble Temptation." 
 
 J-
 
 66 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 [The Editor owes it to himself and the public, to 
 inform them that, after some search, he has dis- 
 covered that the trebkness of the Temptation must 
 be looked for in the three reasons for Robert's ha- 
 tred of his cousin Charles. These will be found in 
 the First Chapter. Our readers may perhaps have 
 formed some other conclusion ; but at all events 
 they will agree with the one at which Mr. Juff has 
 arrived, namely, the conclusion of his novel. And 
 here let the Editor explain, that, in his first letter to 
 he author, he congratulated him " upon its admira- 
 >le finish." This expression might be taken as ap- 
 plicable to the style : it is not to be so taken. — 
 
 Ed. P.] 
 
 F. C. BURNAND.
 
 GEORGE DE BARNWELL. 
 
 By Sir E. L. B. L., Bart 
 VOL. I. 
 
 N the Morning of Life the Truthful wooed 
 the Beautiful, and their offspring was 
 Love. Like his Divine parents. He is 
 eternal. He has his Mother's ravishing smile ; his 
 Father's steadfast eyes. He rises every day, fresh 
 and glorious as the untired Sun-God. He is Eros, 
 the ever young. Dark, dark were this world of ours 
 had either Divinity left it — dark without the day- 
 beams of the Latonian Charioteer, darker yet with- 
 out the daedal Smile of the God of the Other Bow ! 
 Dost know him, reader ? 
 
 Old is he, Eros, the ever young. He and Time 
 were children together. Chronos shall die, too ; 
 but Love is imperishable. Brightest of the Divinities, 
 where hast thou not been sung ? Other worships
 
 68 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 pass away ; the idols for whom pyramids were raised 
 lie in the desert crumbling and almost nameless , 
 the Olympians are fled, their fanes' no longer rise 
 among the quivering olive-groves of Ilissus, or crown 
 the emerald-islets of the amethyst ^Egean ! These 
 are gone, but thou remainest. There is still a garland 
 for thy temple, a heifer for thy stone. A heifer? 
 Ah, many a darker sacrifice. Other blood is shed 
 at thy altars, Remorseless One, and the Poet Priest 
 who ministers at thy Shrine draws his auguries from 
 the bleeding hearts of men ! 
 
 While Love hath no end, can the Bard ever cease 
 singing ? In Kingly and Heroic ages, 'twas of Kings 
 and Heroes that the Poet spake.   But in these, our 
 times, the Artisan hath his voice as well as the Mon- 
 arch. The people To-day is King, and we chronicle 
 his woes, as They of old did the sacrifice of the 
 princely Iphigenia, or the fate of the crowned Aga- 
 memnon. 
 
 Is Odysseus less august in his rags than in his 
 purple ? Fate, Passion, Mystery, the Victim, the 
 Avenger, the Hate that harms, the Furies that tear, 
 the Love that bleeds, are not these with us Still ? 
 are not these still the weapons of the Artist? the 
 colors of his palette ? the chords of his lyre ? Listen I
 
 GEORGE DE BARNWELL. . 69 
 
 I tell thee a tale — not of Kings — but of Men — not 
 of Thrones, but of Love, and Grief, and •Crime. 
 Listen, and but once more. 'Tis for the last time 
 (probably) these fingers shall sweep the strings. 
 
 E. L. B. L. 
 
 NOONDAY IN CHEPE. 
 
 'Twas noonday in Chepe. High Tide in the 
 mighty River City ! — its banks well-nigh overflowing 
 with the myriad-waved Stream of Man ! The top- 
 pling wains, bearing the produce of a thousand marts ; 
 the gilded equipage of the Millionary ; the humbler, 
 but yet larger vehicle from the green metropolitan sub- 
 urbs (the Hanging Gardens of our Babylon), in which 
 every traveller might, for a modest remuneration, 
 take a republican seat ; the mercenary caroche, with 
 its private freight ; the brisk curricle of the letter- 
 carrier, robed in royal scarlet : these and a thousand 
 others were laboring and pressing onward, and locked 
 and bound and hustling together in the narrow chan- 
 nel of Chepe. The imprecations of the charioteers 
 were terrible. From the noble's broidered hammer- 
 cloth, or the driving-seat of the common coach, each 
 driver assailed the other with floods of ribald satire 
 The pavid matron with the one vehicle (speeding to
 
 7 o 
 
 TREASURE-TRO VE. 
 
 the Bank for her semestrial pittance) shrieked and 
 trembled ; the angry Dives hastening to his office 
 (to add another thousand to his heap), thrust his 
 head over the blazoned panels, and displayed an 
 eloquence of objurgation which his very Menials 
 could not equal ; the dauntless street urchins, as 
 they gayly threaded the Labyrinth of Life, enjoyed 
 the perplexities and quarrels of the scene, and ex- 
 acerbated the already furious combatants by their 
 poignant infantile satire. And the Philosopher, as 
 he regarded the hot strife and struggle of these Can- 
 didates in the race for Gold, thought with a sigh of 
 the Truthful and the Beautiful, and walked on 
 melancholy and serene. 
 
 'Twas noon in Chepe. The warerooms were 
 thronged. The flaunting windows of the mercers 
 attracted many a purchaser : the glittering panes 
 behind which Birmingham had glazed its simulated 
 silver, induced rustics to pause : although only noon, 
 the savory odors of the Cook Shops tempted the 
 over-hungry citizen to the bun of Bath, or to the 
 flagrant pottage that mocks the turtle's flavor — the 
 turtle! O dapibus s up remi grata testudo Jovis 1 I 
 am an Alderman when I think of thee ! Well : it 
 was noon in Chepe.
 
 GEORGE DE BARNWELL. 71 
 
 But were all battling for gain there ? Among the 
 many brilliant shops whose casements shone upon 
 Chepe, there stood one a century back (about which 
 period our tale opens) devoted to the sale of Colonial 
 produce. A rudely carved image of a negro, with 
 a fantastic plume and apron of variegated feathers, 
 decorated the lintel. The East and West had sent 
 their contributions to replenish the window. 
 
 The poor slave had toiled, died perhaps, to pro- 
 duce yon pyramid of swarthy sugar marked " Only 
 £>\d." — That catty box, on which was the epigraph 
 " Strong Family Congo only 3-$-. 9^/.," was from the 
 country of Confutzee — that heap of dark produce 
 bore the legend " TRY OUR REAL NUT "— 'Twas 
 Cocoa — and that nut the Cocoa-nut, whose milk has 
 refreshed the traveller and perplexed the natural 
 philosopher. The shop in question was, in a word, 
 a Grocer's. V 
 
 In the midst of the shop and its gorgeous contents 
 sat one, who, to judge from his appearance (though 
 'twas a difficult task, as, in sooth, his back was turned), 
 had just reached that happy period of life when the 
 Boy is expanding into the Man. O Youth, Youth ! 
 Happy and Beautiful ! O fresh and roseate dawn 
 of life ; when the dew yet lies on the flowers, ere
 
 j 2 TREA SURE-TRO VE. 
 
 they have been scorched and withered by Passion's 
 fiery Sun ! Immersed in thought or study, and in- 
 different to the din around him, sat the boy. A 
 careless guardian was he of the treasures confided 
 to him. The crowd passed in Chepe ; he never 
 marked it. The sun shone on Chepe j he only asked 
 that it should illumine the page he read. The knave 
 might filch his treasures ; he was heedless of the 
 knave. The customer might enter ; but his book 
 was all in all to him. 
 
 And indeed a customer was there ; a little hand 
 was tapping on the counter with a pretty impatience ; 
 a pair of arch eyes were gazing at the boy, admiring, 
 perhaps, his manly proportions through the homely 
 and tightened garments he wore. 
 
 " Ahem ! sir ! I say young man ! " the customer 
 exclaimed. 
 
 ' ; Ton d ' apameibomenos proseplie," read on the stu- 
 dent, his voice choked with emotion. "What lan- 
 guage ! " he said ; " how rich, how noble, how sonor- 
 ous ! prosephe podas " — 
 
 The customer burst out in a fit of laughter so shrill 
 and cheery, that the young Student could not but 
 turn round, and blushing, for the first time remark- 
 ed her, "A pretty grocer's boy you are," she cried,
 
 GEORGE DE BARNWELL. 73 
 
 "with your applepiebomenos and your French and 
 lingo. Am I to be kept waiting for hever ! " 
 
 " Pardon, fair Maiden," said with high-bred cour- 
 tesy ; " 'twas not French I read, 'twas the Godlike 
 language of the blind old bard. In what can I be 
 serviceable to ye, lady ? " and to spring from his 
 desk, to smooth his apron, to stand before her the 
 obedient Shop Boy, the Poet no more, was the work 
 of a moment. 
 
 " I might haved prigged this box of figs," the 
 damsel said good-naturedly, "and you'd never turned 
 round. 
 
 " They came from the country of Hector," the boy 
 said. "Would you have currants, lady? These 
 once bloomed in the island gardens of the blue 
 ^Egean. They are uncommon fine ones, and the 
 figure is low ; they're fourpence-halfpenny a pound. 
 Would ye mayhap make trial of our teas ? We 
 do not advertise, as some folks do : but sell as 
 low as any other house." 
 
 " You're precious young to have all these good 
 things," the girl exclaimed, not unwilling, seemingly, 
 to prolong the conversation. " If I was you, and 
 stood behind the counter, I should be eating figs the 
 whole day long."
 
 7 4 TREA SURE- TRO VE. 
 
 " Time was," answered the lad, "and not long since, 
 I thought so too. I thought I never should be tired 
 of figs. But my old uncle bade me take my fill, 
 and now in sooth I am aweary of them." 
 
 " I think you gentlemen are always so," the coquette 
 said. 
 
 " Nay, say not so, fair stranger ! " the youth re- 
 plied, his face kindling as he spoke, and his eagle eyes 
 flashing fire. " Figs pall ; but oh ! the Beautiful 
 never does. Figs rot ; but oh ! the truthful is Eternal. 
 I was born, lady, to grapple with the Lofty and the 
 Ideal. My soul yearns for the Visionary. I stand 
 behind the counter, it is true ; but I ponder here 
 upon the deeds of heroes, and muse over the thoughts 
 of sages. What is grocery for one who has ambition ? 
 What sweetness has Muscovado to him who hath 
 tasted of Poesy? The Ideal, lady, I often think, is 
 the true Real, and the Actual but a visionary 
 hallucination. But pardon me ; with what may I 
 serve thee ? " 
 
 " I came only for sixpenn'orth of tea-dust," the 
 girl said, with a faltering voice ; " but oh, I should 
 like to hear you speak on forever ! " 
 
 Only for sixpenn'orth of tea-dust ? Girl, thou 
 earnest for oilier things! Thou lovedst his voice?
 
 GEORGE DE BARNWELL. 
 
 75 
 
 Siren ! what was the witchery of thine own ? He 
 deftly made up the packet, and placed it in the 
 little hand. She paid for her small purchase, and 
 with a farewell glance of her lustrous eyes, she left 
 him. She passed slowly through the portals, and in 
 a moment more was lost in the crowd. It was noon 
 in Chepe. And George de Barnwell was alone.
 
 VOT,. II. 
 
 E have selected the following episodical 
 chapter in preference to anything relating 
 JH§j to the mere story of George de Barnwell, 
 with which most readers are familiar. 
 
 Up to this passage (extracted from the beginning 
 of Vol. II.) the tale is briefly thus : 
 
 The rogue of a Millwood has come back every 
 day to the grocer's shop in Chepe,wanting some sugar 
 or some nutmeg, or some figs, half a dozen times in 
 the week. 
 
 She and George de Barnwell have vowed to each 
 other an eternal attachment. 
 
 This flame acts violently upon George. His 
 bosom swells with ambition. His genius breaks out 
 prodigiously. He talks about the Good, the Beauti- 
 ful, the Ideal, etc., in and out of all season, and is 
 virtuous and eloquent almost beyond belief — in fact 
 like Devereux or P. Clifford, or E. Aram, Esquires.
 
 GEORGE DE BARNWELL. 77 
 
 Inspired by Millwood and love, George robs the 
 till, and mingles in the world which he is destined to 
 ornament. He outdoes all the dandies, all the wits, all 
 the scholars, and all the voluptuaries of the age — an 
 definite period of time between Queen Anne and 
 George II. — dines with Curll at St. John's Gate, 
 pinks Colonel Charteris in a duel behind Montague 
 House, is initiated into the intrigues of the Cheva- 
 lier St. George, whom he entertains at his sumptuous 
 pavilion at Hampstead, and likewise in disguise at 
 the shop in Cheapside. 
 
 His uncle, the owner of the shop, a surly curmud- 
 geon with very little taste for the True and Beau- 
 tiful, has retired from business to the pastoral village 
 in Cambridgeshire from which the noble Barnwell 
 came. George's cousin Annabel is, of course, con- 
 sumed with a secret passion for him. 
 
 Some trifling inaccuracies   may be remarked in 
 the ensuing brilliant little chapter; but it must be 
 remembered that the author wished to present an 
 age at a glance : and the dialogue is quite as fine 
 and correct as that in the " Last of the Barons," or 
 in "Eugene Aram," or other works of our author, in 
 which Sentiment and History, or the True and Beau- 
 tiful, are united.
 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 button's in pall mall. 
 
 'HOSE who frequent the dismal and 
 enormous Mansions of Silence which 
 society has raised to Ennui in that 
 Omphalos of town, Pall Mall, and which, be- 
 cause they knock you down with their dulness, 
 are called Clubs no doubt ; those who yawn from 
 a bay-window in St. James's Street, at a half- 
 score of other dandies gasping from another bay- 
 window over the way ; those who consult a dreary 
 evening paper for news, or satisfy themselves with 
 the jokes of the miserable " Punch " by way of wit ; 
 the men about town of the present day, in a word, 
 can have but little idea of London some six or eight 
 score years back. Thou pudding-sided old dandy 
 of St. James's Street, with thy lacquered boots, thy 
 dyed whiskers, and thy suffocating waistband, what 
 art thou to thy brilliant predecessor in the same 
 quarter ? The Brougham from which thou descend-
 
 GEORGE DE BARNWELL. 79 
 
 est at the portal of the " Carlton " or the " Travel 
 ler's," is like everybody else's ;thy black coat has no 
 more plaits, nor buttons, nor fancy in it than thy 
 neighbor's ; thy hat was made on the very block 
 on which Lord Addlepate's was cast, who has just 
 entered the Club before thee. You and he yawn to- 
 gether out of the same omnibus-box every night ; 
 you fancy yourselves men of pleasure ; you fancy 
 yourselves men of fashion ; you fancy yourselves 
 men of taste ; in fancy, in taste, in opinion, in philos- 
 ophy, the newspaper legislates for you ; it is there 
 you get your jokes and your thoughts, and your facts 
 and your wisdom — poor Pall Mall dullards. Stupid 
 slaves of the press, on the ground which you at pres- 
 ent occupy, there were men of wit and pleasure and 
 fashion, some five and twenty lustres ago. 
 
 We are at Button's — the well-known sign of the 
 "Turk's Head." The crowd of periwigged heads at 
 the windows — the swearing chairmen round the steps 
 (the blazoned and coronalled panels of whose ve- 
 hicles denote the lofty rank of their owners), — the 
 thong of embroidered beaux entering or departing, 
 and rendering the air fragrant with the odors of 
 pulvillio and pomander, proclaim the celebrated 
 resort of London's Wit and Fashion. It is the cor-
 
 80 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 ner of Regent Street. Carlton House has not yet 
 been taken down. 
 
 A stately gentleman in crimson velvet and gold is 
 sipping chocolate at one of the tables, in earnest 
 converse with a friend whose suit is likewise em- 
 broidered, but stained by time, or wine mayhap, or 
 wear. A little deformed gentleman in iron-gray is 
 reading The Morning Chronicle newspaper by the 
 fire, while a divine, with a broad brogue and a shovel 
 hat and cassock, is talking freely with a gentleman, 
 whose star and ribbon, as well as the unmistakable 
 beauty of his Phidian countenance, proclaim him to 
 be a member of Britain's aristocracy. 
 
 Two ragged youths, the one tall, gaunt, clumsy, 
 and scrofulous, the other with a wild, careless, 
 beautiful look, evidently indicating Race, are gaz- 
 ing in at the window, not merely at the crowd in 
 the celebrated Club, but at Timothy the waiter, 
 who is removing a plate of that exquisite dish, the 
 muffin (then newly invented), at the desire of some 
 of the revellers within. 
 
 " I would, Sam," said the wild youth to his com- 
 panion, " that I had some of my mother Maccles- 
 field's gold, to enable us to eat of those cates and 
 mingle with yon springalds and beaux."
 
 GEORGE DE BARNWELL. 81 
 
 " To vaunt a knowledge of the stoical philosophy," 
 said the youth addressed as Sam, " might elicit a 
 smile of incredulity upon the cheek of the parasite 
 of pleasure ; but there are moments in life when 
 History fortifies endurance ; and past study renders 
 present deprivation more bearable. If our pecuni- 
 ary resources be exiguous, let our resolution, Dick, 
 supply the deficiencies of Fortune. The muffin we 
 desire to-day would little benefit us to-morrow. 
 Poor and hungry as we are, are we less happy, Dick, 
 than yon listless voluptuary who banquets on the 
 food which you covet ? " 
 
 And the two lads turned away up Waterloo Place, 
 ind pastthe " Parthenon " Club-house, and disappear- 
 ed to take a meal of cow-heel at a neighboring 
 look's shop. Their names were Samuel Johnson 
 and Richard Savage. 
 
 Meanwhile Ihe conversation at Button's was fast 
 and brilliant. " By Wood's thirteens, and the div- 
 vle go wid 'em," cried the Church dignitary in the 
 cassock, " is it in blue and goold ye are this morning, 
 Sir Richard, when you ought to be in seebles ? " 
 
 " Who's dead, Dean ? " said the nobleman, the 
 
 dean's companion. 
 
 " Faix mee Lard Bolingbroke, as sure as mee 
 
 6
 
 82 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 name's Jonathan Swift — and I'm not so sure of 
 that neither, for who knows his father's name? — 
 there's been a mighty cruel murther committed 
 entirely. A child of Dick Steele's has been bar- 
 barously slain, dthrawn, and quarthered, and it's 
 Joe Addison yondther has done it. Ye should 
 have killed one of your own, Joe, ye thief of the 
 world." 
 
 " I ! " said the amazed and Right Honorable 
 Joseph Addison ; " I kill Dick's child ! I was god- 
 father to the last." 
 
 " And promised a cup and never sent it," Dick 
 ejaculated. Joseph looked grave. 
 
 " The child I mean is Sir Roger de Coverley, 
 Knight and Baronet. What made ye kill him, ye 
 savage Mohock ? The whole town is in tears about 
 the good knight; all the ladies at Church this 
 afternoon were in mourning ; all the booksellers are 
 wild ; and Lintot says not a third of the copies of 
 'The Spectator' are sold since the death of the 
 brave old gentleman. And the Dean of St. Patrck's 
 pulled out " The Spectator " newspaper, containing 
 the well-known passage regarding Sir Roger's death. 
 " I bought it but now in ' Wellington Street,' " he said ; 
 " the newsboys were howling all down the Strand."
 
 GEORGE DE BARNWELL. 83 
 
 " What a miracle is Genius — Genius, the Divine 
 ind Beautiful," said a gentleman leaning against the 
 same fire-place with the deformed cavalier in iron- 
 gray, and addressing that individual, who was in 
 fact Mr. Alexander Pope. " What a marvellous gift 
 is this, and royal privilege of Art ! To make the 
 Ideal more credible than the Actual : to enchain 
 our hearts, to command our hopes, our regrets, our 
 tears, for a mere brain-born Emanation : to invest 
 with life the Incorporeal, and to glamour the cloudy 
 into substance, — these are the lofty privileges of 
 the Poet, if I have read poesy aright ; and I am as 
 familiar with the sounds that rang from Homer's 
 lyre, as with the strains which celebrate the loss of 
 Belinda's lovely locks " — (Mr. Pope blushed and 
 bowed highly delighted) — " these, I say, are the 
 privileges of the Poet — the Poietes — the Maker — 
 he moves the world, and asks no lever ; if he cannot 
 charm death into life, as Orpheus feigned to do, he 
 can create Beauty out of Nought, and defy Death 
 by rendering Thought Eternal. Ho ! Jemmy, anoth- 
 er flask of Nantz." 
 
 And the boy — for he who addressed the most 
 brilliant company of wits in Europe was little more 
 — emptied the contents of the brandy-flask into a
 
 84 TREA S URE- TRO VE. 
 
 silver flagon, and quaffed it gayly to the health of 
 the company assembled. 'Twas the third he had 
 taken during the sitting. Presently, and with a 
 graceful salute to the Society, he quitted the coffee- 
 house, and was seen cantering on a magnificent 
 Arab past the National Gallery. 
 
 " Who is yon spark in blue and silver ? He beats 
 Joe Addison himself, in drinking, and pious Joe 
 is the greatest toper in the three kingdoms," Dick 
 Steele said, good-naturedly. 
 
 " His paper in the ' Spectator ' beats thy best, 
 Dick, thou sluggard," the Right Honorable Mr. 
 Addison exclaimed. " He is the author of that 
 famous No. 996, for which you have all been giving 
 me the credit." 
 
 " The rascal foiled me at capping verses," Dean 
 Swift said, " and won a tenpenny piece of me, 
 plague take him ! " 
 
 " He has suggested an emendation in my ' Homer,' 
 which proves him a delicate scholar," Mr. Pope ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 " He knows more of the French king than any 
 man I ever met with ; and we must have an eye 
 upon him," said Lord Bolingbroke, then Secretary 
 of State for Foreign Affairs, and, beckoning a sus-
 
 GEORGE DE BARNWELL. 85 
 
 picious-looking person who was drinking at a side- 
 table, whispered to him something. 
 
 Meantime, who was he ? where was he, this youth 
 who had struck all the wits of London with admira- 
 tion ? His galloping charger had returned to the 
 City ; his splendid court-suit was doffed for the 
 citizen's gaberdine and grocer's humble apron. 
 
 George de Barnwell was in Chepe — in Chepe, at 
 the feet of Martha Millwood.
 
 VOL. III. 
 
 THE CONDEMNED CELL. 
 
 UID me ?nol/il>!is implicas lacertis, my 
 Ellinor ? Nay," George added a faint 
 smile illumining his wan but noble 
 features, "why speak to thee in the ac- 
 cents of the Roman poet, which thou comprehendest 
 not ? Bright One, there be other things in Life, in 
 Nature, this Inscrutable Labyrinth, this Heart on 
 which thou leanest, which are equally unintelligible 
 to thee ! Yes, my pretty one, what is the Unintelligi- 
 ble but the Ideal ? what is the Ideal but the Beautiful ? 
 what the Beautiful but the Eternal ? And the Spirit 
 of Man that would commune with these is like Him 
 who wanders by the thin poluphloiboio thalasses, 
 and shrinks awe-struck before that Azure Mystery." 
 Emily's eyes filled with fresh-gushing dew. "Speak 
 on, speak ever thus, my George," she exclaimed. 
 Barnwell's chains rattled as the confiding girl clung 
 to him. Even Snoggin, the Turnkey appointed to
 
 GEORGE DE BARNWELL. 87 
 
 sit with the prisoner, was affected by his noble and 
 appropriate language, and also burst into tears. 
 
 " You weep, my Snoggin," the Boy said ; " and 
 why? Hath Life been so charming to me that I 
 should wish to retain it ? Hath Pleasure no after- 
 Weariness ? Ambition no Deception ; Wealth no 
 Care ; and Glory no Mockery ? Psha ! I am sick of 
 Success, palled of Pleasure, weary of Wine and Wit, 
 and — nay, start not, my Adelaide — and Woman. I 
 fling away all these things as the Toys of Boyhood. 
 Life is the Soul's Nursery. I am a man, and pine 
 for the Illimitable ! Mark you me ! Has the Mor- 
 row any terrors for me, think ye ? Did Socrates fal- 
 ter at his poison ? Did Seneca blench in his bath ? 
 Did Brutus shirk the sword when his great stake 
 was lost ? Did even weak Cleopatra shrink from the 
 Serpent's fatal nip. And why should I ? My great 
 Hazard hath been played, and I pay my forfeit. Lie 
 sheathed in my heart, thou flashing Blade ! Welcome 
 to my Bosom, thou faithful Serpent ; I hug thee, 
 peace-bearing Image of the Eternal ? Ha, the hem- 
 lock cup ! Fill high, boy, for my soul is thirsty for 
 the Infinite! Get ready the bath, friends   prepare me 
 for the feast To-morrow — bathe my limbs in odors, 
 and put ointment in my hair."
 
 88 TREA SURE- TRO VE. 
 
 " Has for a bath," Snoggin interposed, " they'r 
 not to be 'ad in this ward of the prison ; but I dussay 
 Hemmy will get you a little hoil for your 'air." 
 
 The Prisoned One laughed loud and merrily. 
 " My guardian understands me not, pretty one — and 
 thou ? what sayest thou ? From those dear lips me- 
 thinks — plura sunt oscula quam sententicz — I kiss 
 away thy tears, dove ! — they will flow apace when I 
 am gone, then they will dry, and presently these fair 
 eyes will shine on another, as they have beamed on 
 poor George Barnwell. Yet wilt thou not all forget 
 him, sweet one. He was an honest fellow, and had 
 a kindly heart for all the world said " — 
 
 " That, that he had," cried the jailer and the girl 
 in voices gurgling with emotion. And you who 
 read ! you unconvicted Convict — you murderer, 
 though haply you have slain no one — you Felon in 
 posse if not in esse — deal gently with one who has 
 used the Opportunity that has failed thee — and be- 
 lieve that the Truthful and the Beautiful bloom 
 sometimes in the dock and the convict's tawny Gaber- 
 dine 1 
 
 In the matter for which he suffered, George could
 
 GEORGE DE BARNWELL. 89 
 
 never be brought to acknowledge that he was at all 
 in the wrong. " It may be an error of judgment," 
 he said to the Venerable Chaplain of the jail, " but 
 it is no crime. Were it Crime, I should feel Remorse. 
 Where there is no remorse, Crime cannot exist. I 
 am not sorry : therefore, I am innocent. Is the 
 proposition a fair one ? 
 
 The excellent Doctor admitted that it was not to 
 be contested. 
 
 " And wherefore, sir, should I have sorrow," the 
 Boy resumed, "for ridding the world of a sordid 
 worm ; * of a man whose very soul was dross, and 
 who never had a feeling for the Truthful and the 
 Beautiful? When I stood before my uncle in the 
 moonlight, in the gardens of the ancestral halls of 
 the De Barnwells, I felt that it was the Nemesis come 
 to overthrow him. ' Dog,' I said to the trembling 
 slave, ' tell me where thy Gold is. Thou hast no 
 
 * This is a gross plagiarism : the above sentiment is expressed much 
 more eloquently in the ingenious romance of " Eugene Aram : " — 
 " The burning desires I have known — the resplendent visions I have 
 nursed — the sublime aspirings that have lifted me so often from sense 
 and clay : these tell me, that whether for good or ill, I am the thing of 
 an immortality, and the creature of a God. ... I have destroyed 
 a man noxious to the world ! with the wealth by which he afflicted 
 society, I have been the means of blessing many."
 
 9 o TREASURE-TRO VE. 
 
 use for it. I can spend it in relieving the Poverty 
 on which thou tramplest ; aiding Science, which 
 thou knowest not ; in uplifting Art, to which thou 
 art blind. Give Gold, and thou art free.' But he 
 spake not, and I slew him." 
 
 " I would not have this doctrine vulgarly promul- 
 gated," said the admirable chaplain, " for its general 
 practice might chance to do harm. Thou, my son, 
 the Refined, the Gentle, the Loving and Beloved, 
 the Poet and Sage, urged by what I cannot but think 
 a grievous error, hast appeared as Avenger. Think 
 what would be the world's condition, were men with- 
 out any Yearning after the Ideal to attempt to re- 
 organize Society, to redistribute Property, to avenge 
 Wrong." 
 
 " A rabble of pygmies scaling Heaven," said the 
 noble though misguided young Prisoner. " Prome- 
 theus was a Giant, and he fell." 
 
 "Yes, indeed, my brave youth !" the benevolent 
 Dr. Fuzwig exclaimed, clasping the Prisoner's mar- 
 ble and manacled hand ; " and the Tragedy of To- 
 morrow will teach the World that Homicide is not to 
 be permitted even to the most amiable Genius, and 
 that the lover of the Ideal and the Beautiful, as thou 
 art, my son, must respect the Real likewise."
 
 GEORGE DE BARNWELL. 
 
 9i 
 
 " Look ! here is supper ! " cried Barnwell gayly. 
 " This is the Real, Doctor ; let us respect it and fall 
 to." He partook of the meal as joyously as if it had 
 been one of his early festals ; but the worthy chap- 
 lain could scarcely eat it for tears. 
 
 WILLIAM M. THACKERAY.
 
 A PROPHETIC ACCOUNT OF A GRAND 
 NATURAL EPIC POEM, TO BE ENTI- 
 TLED "THE WELLINGTONIAD," AND 
 TO BE PUBLISHED a.d. 2824. (Novem- 
 ber, 1824.) 
 
 OW I became a prophet it is not very 
 important to the reader to know. Nev- 
 ertheless I feel all the anxiety which, 
 under similar circumstances, troubled the sensi- 
 tive mind of Sidrophel ; and, like him, am eager to 
 vindicate myself from the suspicion of having prac- 
 ticed forbidden arts, or held intercourse with beings 
 of another world. I solemnly declare, therefore, that 
 I never saw a ghost, like Lord Lyttleton ; consulted 
 a gipsy, like Josephine ; or heard my name pronounced 
 by an absent person, like Dr. Johnson. Though it is 
 now almost as usual for gentlemen to appear at the 
 moment of their death to their friends as to call on 
 them during their life, none of my acquaintance have 
 been so polite as to pay me that customary attention 
 I have derived my knowledge neither from the deav. 
 nor from the living ; neither from the lines of a hand,
 
 "THE WELLINGTONIAD." 93 
 
 nor from the grounds of a tea-cup ; neither from the 
 stars of the firmament, nor from the fiends of the abyss. 
 I have never, like the Wesley family, heard "that 
 mighty leading angel," who " drew after him the 
 third part of heaven's sons," scratching in my cup- 
 board. I have never been enticed to sign any of 
 those delusive bonds which have been the ruin of so 
 many poor creatures ; and, having always been an 
 indifferent horseman, I have been careful not to ven- 
 ture myself on a broomstick. 
 
 My insight into futurity, like that of George Fox the 
 Quaker, and that of our great and philosophic poet, 
 Lord Byron, is derived from simple presentiment. 
 This is a far less artificial process than those which 
 are employed by some others. Yet my prediction 
 will, I believe, be found more correct then theirs, or 
 at all events, as Sir Benjamin Backbite says in the 
 play, "more circumstantial." 
 
 I prophesy then, that in the year 2824, according 
 to our present reckoning, a grand national Epic Poem, 
 worthy to be compared with the Iliad, the ^neid, or 
 the Jerusalem, will be published in London. 
 
 Men naturally take an interest in the adventures 
 of every eminent writer. I will, therefore, gratify the 
 laudable curiosity, which, on this occasion, will
 
 94- TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 doubtless be universal, by prefixing to my account of 
 the poem a concise memoir of the poet. 
 
 Richard Quongti will be born at Westminster on 
 the ist of July, 2786. He will be the younger son 
 of the younger branch of one of the most respectable 
 families in England. He will be lineally descended 
 from Quongti, the famous Chinese liberal, who, after 
 the failure of the heroic attempt of his party to ob- 
 tain a constitution from the Emperor Fim Fam, will 
 take refuge in England, in the twenty-third century. 
 Here his descendants will obtain considerable note ; 
 and one branch of the family will be raised to the 
 peerage. 
 
 Richard, however, though destined to exalt his 
 family to distinction far nobler than any which wealth 
 or titles can bestow, will be born to a very scantv 
 fortune. He will display in his early youth such 
 striking talents as will attract the notice of Viscount 
 Quongti, his third cousin, then secretary of state for 
 the Steam Department. At the expense of this emi- 
 nent nobleman, he will be sent to prosecute his 
 studies at the university of Timbuctoo. To that 
 illustrious seat of muses all the ingenuous of youth of 
 every country will then be attracted by the high 
 scientific character of Professor Quashaboo, and the
 
 "THE WELLINGTONIAD." 95 
 
 eminent literary attainments of Professor Kissey 
 Kicky. In spite of this formidable competition, 
 however, Quongti will acquire the highest hon- 
 ors in every department of knowledge, and will 
 obtain the esteem of his associates by his amiable 
 and unaffected manners. The guardians of the 
 young Duke of Carrington, premier peer of England, 
 and the last remaining scion of the ancient and 
 illustrious house of Smith, will be desirous to secure 
 so able an instructor for their ward. With the Duke, 
 Quongti will perform the grand tour, and visit the 
 polished courts of Sydney and Capetown. After pre- 
 vailing on his pupil, with great difficulty, to subdue a 
 violent and imprudent passion which he had con- 
 ceived for a Hottentot lady, of great beauty and ac- 
 complishments indeed, but of dubious character, he 
 will travel with him to the United States of America. 
 But that tremendous war which will be fatal to 
 American liberty will, at that time, be raging through 
 the whole federation. At New York the travellers 
 will hear of the final defeat and death of the illustri- 
 ous champion of freedom, Jonathan Higginbottom, 
 and of the elevation of Ebenezer Hogsflesh to the 
 perpetual Presidency. They will not chose to pro- 
 ceed in a journey which would expose them to the
 
 96 TREA SURE- TRO VE. 
 
 insults of that brutal soldier}', whose cruelty and 
 rapacity will have devastated Mexico and Columbia, 
 and now, at length, enslaved their own country. 
 
 On their return to England, a. d. 2810, the death 
 of the Duke will compel his preceptor to seek for a 
 subsistence by literary labors. His fame will be 
 raised by many small productions of considerable 
 merit ; and he will at last obtain a permanent place 
 in the highest class of writers by his great epic 
 poem. 
 
 The celebrated work will become, with unexampled 
 rapidity, a popular favorite. The sale will be so 
 beneficial to the author that, instead of going about 
 the dirty streets on his velocipede, he will be enabled 
 to set up his balloon. 
 
 The character of this noble poem will be so finely 
 and justly given in the Timbuctoo Review for April, 
 2825, that I cannot refrain from translating the 
 passage. The author will be our poet's old preceptor, 
 Professor Kissey Kickey. 
 
 " In pathos, in splendor of language, in sweet- 
 ness of versification, Mr. Quongti has long been 
 considered as unrivalled. In his exquisite poem on 
 the Ornithorhynchus Paradoxus all these qualities are 
 displayed in their greatest perfection. How exquis-
 
 "THE WELLINGTONIAD? 97 
 
 itely does that work arrest and embody the undefined 
 and vague shadows which flit over an imaginative 
 mind. The cold worlding may not comprehend it ; 
 but it will find a response in the bosom of every 
 youthful poet, of every enthusiastic lover, who has 
 seen an Omithorhynchus Paradoxus by moonlight. 
 But we were yet to learn that he possessed the com- 
 prehension, the judgment, and the fertility of mind 
 indispensable to the epic poet. 
 
 " It is difficult to conceive a plot more perfect 
 than that of the 'Wellingtoniad.' It is most faithful 
 to the manners of the age to which it relates. It 
 preserves exactly all the historical circumstances, 
 and interweaves them most artfully with all the 
 speciousa mirada of supernatural agency." 
 
 Thus far the learned Professor of Humanity in the 
 university of Timbuctoo. I fear that the critics of 
 our time will form an opinion diametrically opposite 
 as to these very points. Some will, I fear, be dis- 
 gusted by the machinery, which is derived from the 
 mythology of ancient Greece. I can only say that, 
 in the twenty-ninth century, that machinery will be 
 universally in use among poets ; and that Quongti 
 will use it, partly in conformity with the general 
 practice, and partly from a veneration, perhaps ex-
 
 9 8 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 cessive, for the great remains of classical antiquity, 
 which will then, as now, be assiduously read by every 
 man of education ; though Tom Moore's songs will 
 be forgotten, and only three copies of Lord Byron's 
 works will exist : one in the possession of King 
 George the Nineteenth, one in the Duke of Carring- 
 ton's collection, and one in the library of the British 
 Museum. Finally, should any good people be con- 
 cerned to hear that Pagan fictions will so long retain 
 their influence over literature, let them reflect that, 
 as the Bishop of St. David's says, in his " Proofs of 
 the Inspiration of the Sibylline Verses," read at the 
 last meeting of the Royal Society of Literature, " at 
 all events, a Pagan is not a Papist." 
 
 Some readers of the present day may think that 
 Quongti is by no means entitled to the compliments 
 which his Negro critic pays him on his adherence to 
 the historical circumstances of the time in which he has 
 chosen his subject : that, where he introduces any 
 trait of our manners, it is in the wrong place, and 
 that he confounds the customs of our age with those 
 of much more remote periods. I can only say that the 
 charge is infinitely more applicable to Homer, Virgil 
 and Tasso. If, therefore, the reader should detect, in 
 the following abstract of the plot, any little deviation
 
 "THE WELLINGTONIAD." 99 
 
 from strict historical accuracy, let him reflect, for a 
 moment, whether Agamemnon would not have found 
 as much to censure in the Iliad, — Dido in the y£neid, 
 — or Godfrey in the Jerusalem. Let him not suffer 
 his opinions to depend on circumstances which cannot 
 possibly affect the truth or falsehood of the represen- 
 tation. If it be possible for a single man to kill hun- 
 dreds in battle, the impossibility is not diminished 
 by distance of time. If it be as certain that Rinaldo 
 never disenchanted a forest in Palestine as it is that 
 the Duke of Wellington never disenchanted the forest 
 of Soignies, can we, as rational men, tolerate the one 
 story and ridicule the other ? Of this, at least, I am 
 certain, that whatever excuse we have for admiring 
 the plots of those famous poems, our children will 
 have for extolling that of the " Wellingtoniad." 
 
 I shall proceed to give a sketch of the narrative. 
 The subject is " The Reign of the Hundred Days." 
 
 Book I. The poem commences, in form, with a 
 solemn proposition of the subject. Then the muse 
 is invoked to give the poet accurate information as 
 to the cause of so terrible a commotion. The answer 
 to this question, being, it is to be supposed, the joint 
 production of the poet and the muse, ascribes the 
 event to circumstances which have hitherto eluded
 
 r oo TREASURE- TRO VE. 
 
 all the research of political writers, namely, the 
 influence of the god Mars, who, we are told, had 
 some fort)' years before usurped the conjugal rights 
 of old Carlo Buonaparte, and given birth to Napo- 
 leon. By his incitement it was that the emperor 
 with his devoted companions was now on the sea, 
 returning to his ancient dominions. The gods were 
 at present, fortunately for the adventurer, feasting 
 with the Ethiopians, whose entertainments, according 
 to the ancient custom described by Homer, they 
 annually attended, with the same sort of condescend- 
 ing gluttony which now carries the cabinet to Guild- 
 hall on the 9th of November. Neptune was, in con- 
 sequence, absent, and unable to prevent the enemy 
 of his favorite island from crossing his element. 
 Boreas, however, who had his abode on the banks of 
 the Russian ocean, and who, like Thetis in the Iliad, 
 was not of sufficient quality to have an invitation to 
 Ethiopia, resolves to destroy the armament which 
 brings war and danger to his beloved Alexander. 
 He accordingly raises a storm which is most power- 
 fully described. Napoleon bewails the inglorious 
 fate for which he seems to be reserved. " Oh ! 
 thrice happy," says he, " those who were frozen to 
 death at Krasnoi, or slaughtered at Leipsic Oh,
 
 "THE WELLINGTONIAD." 101 
 
 Kutusoff, bravest of the Russians, wherefore was I 
 not permitted to fall by thy victorious sword ? " He 
 then offers a prayer to ^Eolus, and vows to him a 
 sacrifice of a black ram. In consequence, the god 
 recalls his turbulent subject ; the sea is calmed ; and 
 the ship anchors in the port of Frejus. Napoleon 
 and Bertrand, who is always called the faithful 
 Bertrand, land to explore the country ; Mars meets 
 them disguised as a lancer of the guard, wearing 
 the cross of the Legion of Honor. He advises them 
 to apply for necessaries of all kinds to the governor, 
 shows them the way, and disappears with a strong 
 smell of gunpowder. Napoleon makes a pathetic 
 speech, and enters the governor's house. Here he 
 sees hanging up a fine print of the battle of Ausier- 
 litz, himself in the foreground giving his orders. 
 This puts him in high spirits ; he advances and salutes 
 the governor, who receives him most loyally, gives him 
 an entertainment, and, according to the usage of all 
 epic hosts, insists after dinner on a full narration of 
 all that has happened to him since the battle of Leipsic. 
 Book II. Napoleon carries his narrative from the 
 battle of Leipsic to his abdication. But, as we shall 
 have a great quantity of fighting on our hands, I think 
 it best to omit the details.
 
 ro2 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 Book III. Napoleon describes his sojourn at Elba 
 and his return ; how he was driven by stress of 
 weather to Sardinia, and fought with the harpies 
 there ; how he was then carried southward to Sicily, 
 where he generously took on board an English sailor, 
 whom a man-of-war had unhappily left there, and who 
 was in imminent danger of being devoured by the 
 Cyclops ; how he landed in the bay of Naples, saw 
 the Sibyl, and descended to Tartarus ; how he held 
 a long and pathetic conversation with Poniatowski 
 whom he found wandering unburied on the banks of 
 the Styx ; how he swore to give him a splendid funer- 
 al ; how he had also an affectionate interview with 
 Desaix ; how Moreau and Sir Ralph Abercrombie 
 fled at the sight of him. He relates that he then 
 re-embarked, and met with nothing of importance 
 till the commencement of the storm with which the 
 poem opens. 
 
 Book IV. The scene changes to Paris. Fame, in 
 the garb of an express, brings intelligence of the 
 landing of Napoleon. The king performs a sacrifice : 
 but the entrails are unfavorable ; and the victim is 
 without a heart. He prepares to encounter the invader. 
 A young captain of the guard, — the son of Maria 
 Antoinette by Apollo, — in the shape of a fiddler,
 
 " THE WELLINGTON/A D." 103 
 
 rushes in to tell him that Napoleon is approaching 
 with a vast army. The royal forces are drawn out 
 for battle. Full catalogues are given of the regiments 
 on both sides: their colonels, lieutenant-colonels, and 
 uniform. 
 
 Book V. The king comes forward and defies Napo- 
 leon to single combat. Napoleon accepts it. Sacri- 
 fices are offered. The ground is measured by Ney 
 and Macdonald. The combatants advance. Louis 
 snaps his pistol in vain. The bullet of Napoleon, on the 
 contrary, carries off the tip of the king's ear. Napoleon 
 then rushes on him sword in hand. But Louis snatches 
 up a stone, such as ten men of those degenerate days 
 will be unable to move, and hurls it at his antagonist. 
 Mars averts it. Napoleon then seizes Louis, and is 
 about to strike a fatal blow, when Bacchus intervenes, 
 like Venus in the third book of the Illiad, bears off the 
 king in a thick cloud, and seats him in an hotel at 
 Lille, with a bottle of Maraschino and a basin of soup 
 before him. Both armies instantly proclaim Napoleon 
 emperor. 
 
 Book VI. Neptune, returned from his Ethiopian 
 revels, sees with rage the events which have taken 
 place in Europe. He flies to the cave of Alecto 
 and drags out the fiend, commanding her to excite
 
 104 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 universal hostility against Napoleon. The Fury repairs 
 to Lord Castlereagh ; and as, when she visited Turnus, 
 she assumed the form of an old woman, she here 
 appears in the kindred shape of Mr. Vansittart, and 
 in an impassioned address exhorts his lordship to war. 
 
 His Lordship, like Turnus, treats this unwonted mon- 
 itor with great disrespect, tells him that he is an old 
 doting fool, and advises him to look after the ways 
 and means and leave questions of peace and war to his 
 betters. The Fury then displays all her terrors. The 
 neat powdered hair bristles up into snakes ; the 
 black stockings appear clotted with blood ; and 
 brandishing a torch, she announces her name and 
 mission. Lord Castlereagh, seized with fury, flies 
 instantly to the Parliament, and recommends war with 
 a torrent of eloquent invective. All the members 
 instantly clamor for vengeance, seize their arms 
 which are hanging round the walls of the house, and 
 rush forth to prepare for instant hostilities. 
 
 Book VII. In this book, intelligence arrives at 
 London of the flight of the Duchess d'Angouleme 
 from France. It is stated that this heroine, armed 
 from head to foot, defended Bordeaux against the 
 adherents of Napoleon, and that she fought hand to 
 hand with Clausel, and beat him down with an
 
 " THE WELLINGTUNIAD." 
 
 io 5 
 
 enormous stone. Deserted by her followers, she at 
 last, like Turnus, plunged, armed as she was, into 
 the Garonne, and swam to an English ship which lay 
 off the coast. This intelligence yet more inflames 
 the English to war. 
 
 A yet bolder flight than any which has been 
 mentioned follows. The Duke of Wellington goes 
 to take leave of the duchess ; and a scene passes 
 quite equal to the famous interview of Hector and 
 Andromache. Lord Douro is frightened at his fa- 
 ther's feather, but begs for his epaulette. 
 
 Book VIII. Neptune, trembling for the event of 
 the war, implores Venus, who as the offspring of his 
 element, naturally venerates him, to procure from 
 Vulcan a deadly sword and a pair of unerring pistols 
 for the Duel. They are accordingly made, and 
 superbly decorated. The sheath of the sword, like 
 the shield of Achilles, is carved in exquisitely fine 
 miniature, with scenes from the common life of the 
 period ; a dance at Almack's, a boxing match at the 
 Fives-court, a lord mayor's procession, and a man 
 hanging. All these are fully and elegantly described. 
 The Duke thus armed hastens to Brussels. 
 
 Book IX. The Duke is received at Brussels by the 
 King of the Netherlands, with great magnificence.
 
 xo6 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 He is informed of the approach of the armies of all 
 the confederate kings. The poet, however, with a 
 laudable zeal for the glory of his country, completely 
 passes over the exploits of the Austrians in Italy, 
 and the discussion of the congress. England and 
 France, Wellington and Napoleon, almost exclusively 
 occupy his attention. Several days are spent at 
 Brussels in revelry. The English heroes astonish 
 their allies by exhibiting splendid games, similar to 
 those which draw the flower of the British aristocracy 
 to Newmarket and Moulsey Hurst, and which will 
 be considered by our descendants with as much ven- 
 eration as the Olympian and Isthmian contests by 
 classical students of the present time. In the combat 
 of the cestus, Shaw, the life-guardsman, vanquishes 
 the Prince of Orange, and obtains a bull as a prize. 
 In the horse-race, the Duke of Wellington and Lord 
 Uxbridge ride against each other ; the Duke is vic- 
 torious, and is rewarded with twelve opera-girls. 
 On the last clay of the festivities, a splendid dance 
 takes place, at which all the heroes attend. 
 
 Book X. Mars, seeing the English army thus in- 
 active, hastens to rouse Napoleon, who, conducted 
 by Night and Silence, unexpectedly attacks the 
 Prussians. The slaughter is immense. Napoleon
 
 "THE WELLINGTONIAD." io j 
 
 kills many whose histories and families are happily 
 particularized. He slays Herman, the craniologist, 
 who dwelt by the linden-shadowed Elbe, and meas- 
 ured with his eye the skulls of all who walked through 
 the streets of Berlin. Alas ! his own skull is now 
 cleft by the Corsican sword. Four pupils of the 
 University of Jena advance together to encounter the 
 Emperor ; at four blows he destroys them all. Blu- 
 cher rushes to arrest the devastation ; Napoleon 
 strikes him to the ground, and is on the point of kill- 
 ing him, but Gneisenau, Ziethen, Bulow, and all the 
 other heroes of the Prussian army, gather round him 
 and bear the venerable chief to a distance from the 
 field. The slaughter is continued till night. In the 
 mean time Neptune has despatched Fame to bear 
 the intelligence to the Duke, who is dancing at 
 Brussels. The whole army is put in motion. The 
 Duke of Brunswick's horse speaks to admonish him 
 of his danger, but in vain. 
 
 Book XL Picton, the Duke of Brunswick, and 
 the Prince of Orange, engage Ney at Quatre Bras. 
 Ney kills the Duke of Brunswick, and strips him, 
 sending his belt to Napoleon. The English fall 
 back on Waterloo. Jupiter calls a council of the 
 gods, and commands that none shall interfere on
 
 108 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 either side. Mars and Neptune made very eloquent 
 speeches. The battle of Waterloo commences. Na- 
 poleon kills Picton and Delancy. Ney engages 
 Ponsonby and kills him. The Prince of Orange is 
 wounded by Soult. Lord Uxbridge flies to check 
 the carnage. He is severely wounded by Napoleon, 
 and only saved by the assistance of Lord Hill. In 
 the mean time the Duke makes a tremendous car- 
 nage among the French. He encounters General 
 Duhesme and vanquishes him, but spares his life. 
 He kills Toubert, who kept the gaming-house in the 
 Palais Royal, and Maronet, who loved to spend 
 whole nights in drinking champagne. Clerval, who 
 had been hooted from the stage, and had then be, 
 come a captain in the Imperial Guard, wished that he 
 had still continued to face the more harmless enmity of 
 the Parisian pit. But Larre, the son of Esculapius, 
 whom his father had instructed in all the secrets of 
 his art, and who was surgeon-general of the French 
 army, embraced the knees of the destroyer, and con- 
 jured him not to give death to one whose office it 
 was to give life. The Duke raised him, and bade 
 him live. 
 
 But we must hasten to the close. • Napoleon rushes 
 to encounter Wellington. Both armies stand in
 
 « THE WELLINGTONIAD? 109 
 
 mute amaze. The heroes fire their pistols ; that of 
 Napoleon misses, but that of Wellington, formed by 
 the hand of Vulcan, and primed by the Cyclops, 
 wounds the Emperor in the thigh. He flies, and 
 takes refuge among his troops. The flight becomes 
 promiscuous. The arrival of the Prussians, from a 
 motive of patriotism, the poet completely passes 
 over. 
 
 Book XII. Things are now hastening to the ca- 
 tastrophe. Napoleon flies to London, and seating 
 himself on the hearth of the Regent, embraces the 
 household gods, and conjures him, by the venerable 
 age of George III., and by the opening perfections 
 of the Princess Charlotte to spare him. The Prince 
 is inclined to do so ; when, looking on his breast 
 he sees there the belt of the Duke of Brunswick. 
 He instantly draws his sword and is about to stab 
 the destroyer of his kinsman. Piety and hospitality, 
 however, restrain his hand. He takes a middle 
 course, and condemns Napoleon to be exposed on a 
 desert island. The king of France re-enters Paris ; 
 and the poem concludes. 
 
 THOMAS B. MACAULAY.
 
 ST. TWEL'MO; 
 
 OR, THE 
 
 ©unciform ©sclopctitet of ©fjattanooga.
 
 ARGUMENT. 
 
 It will perhaps be complained that in this story the Author 
 "aims at nothing." If so, let me reply, in his behalf, that if he 
 hits it he will be peifectly satisfied. 
 
 Originally, I intended to address myself only to the half-edu- 
 cated idiots of the land who are unfamiliar with the Coptic and 
 do not take dictionaries with them into the country by way of 
 light summer reading. But if the learned are attracted to my 
 net, so much the better — all is fish. In the outset I own to an 
 endeavor to catch a spark of St. Elmo's fire — there's nothing 
 mean about me. As old Thomas Fuller quaintly puts it, " Let 
 my candle go out in a stink when I refuse to confess from 
 whom I have lighted it." If it be further urged that not con- 
 tent with a spark, I have in some instances raked the entire 
 hearth, I fear I must still plead guilty to the charge. For 
 where it was impossible to pile on the agony of erudition, I 
 took whole pages as well as paragraphs, from the original, dis- 
 pensing with quotation remarks. If it be complained that, in 
 consequence, the reader can not tell where the original ends 
 and travesty begins, certainly a higher compliment, or a more 
 complete justification of purpose could not fall to my lot. 
 
 John Paul.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 T. TWEL'MO was an extraordinary char- 
 acter, living under the shadow of Look- 
 out Mountain. 
 
 Whether he lived there because of the blind fumb- 
 ling of Atheistic Chance, or in accordance with a 
 rigid edict of Pantheistic Necessity, will never be 
 known to any one ; but it is quite likely that necessity 
 had something to do with it, since it is otherwise 
 impossible to understand why a man should live so 
 far from civilization — and so near Chattanooga ! 
 
 Eccentricities may have compelled him to seek 
 this retirement, for it is quite certain that a man of 
 his manners would have been tolerated in no re- 
 spectable society ; and had he attempted to pitch his 
 tent further north, the catholic chances are that he 
 would have been speedily committed to an asylum 
 
 for the insane. 
 
 8
 
 1 1 4 TREASURE- TRO VE. 
 
 Southern gentlemen generally are given to stock 
 raising ; but under the shadow of Lookout Moun- 
 tain St. Twel'mo gathered about him some of the 
 most extraordinary horned cattle that ever were 
 seen in a farm-yard. Instead of dun cows from 
 Durham, he imported a white cow from Ava, utterly 
 regardless of expense and the remonstrance of the 
 negress dairy-maid (the beast, had no milk-giving 
 medium) that she should much prefer "an udder 
 kine." 
 
 Then there were reindeer from Lapland, walruses 
 from the cold Arctic seas, goats from Cashmere, 
 (which were mere goats after all), chamois from the 
 Jungfrau, gorillas and guerillas from Central Africa 
 and Missouri, and pelicans from Louisiana. 
 
 These, with the polecat, native to the State, 
 furnished him fragrant food for reflection and 
 employment of his leisure hours. Swearing and 
 stirring up the animals were the only amusements in 
 which he indulged, quoting poetry and rudeness to 
 his mother constituting the serious business of his 
 life. 
 
 He was accustomed to speak of his menage ; but 
 the uneducated whites of the district understood the 
 term only as an abbreviation of " menagerie." It is
 
 ST. TWEL'MO. 115 
 
 little wonder that they roundly swore, in the vernacu- 
 lar of that region, that St. Twel'mo had " the dog- 
 gonedest • and the ^Vz^-stavingest and the r/)>-snort- 
 
 Lngest queerest cattle, that ever one sot eyes on ! " 
 For all his cattle, however, and his fifteen acres 
 
 of pasture, St. Twel'mo could not be called a 
 
 "gentleman-farmer." For, besides swearing at his 
 
 mother, he had a habit of yelling ha ! ha ! at young 
 
 ladies, and lighting cheap cigars in their presence 
 
 without asking them if they " objected to smoking," 
 
 practices in which gentlemen, whether farmers or not, 
 
 never indulge. 
 
 But I am managing my story very inartistically. 
 Let me introduce the heroine. 
 
 Etna Early was another singular character ; and I 
 may as well remark, right here, that Lookout Moun- 
 tain must be continually in labor with queer characters 
 as well as with queer cattle, for certainly it brings 
 forth nothing else, if cotemporary history may be 
 relied on. 
 
 At the hour and minute at which our story opens, 
 Etna was carrying a pail of water upon her head, 
 which will fully account for the " classic Caryatides" 
 attitudes for which she afterwards became famous, as
 
 1 1 6 TREA SURE- TRO VE. 
 
 well as for the symptoms of " water on the brain " 
 which she exhibited at times in the course of her 
 subsequent brilliant career. And while she carried 
 she sang, waking the echoes of Lookout with the 
 chaunt of A Bucket. 
 
 Etna's occupation at the moment of introduction 
 was fortunate ; it enabled her to turn pail and throw 
 cold water upon a duel over which she happened to 
 stumble, too late to prevent a fatal consummation to 
 one of the parties, and not early enough, unfortunately, 
 to ensure the drowning of both. However, she was 
 quite in time to deliver a lecture on the sinfulness 
 of duelling, to which, as might have been expected, 
 only the dead man turned an ear, neither of the 
 seconds having a minute to spare, and the sur- 
 viving principal having another engagement on hand. 
 
 The next, and perhaps a more important epoch in 
 Etna's life, was her discovery of a dictionary, though 
 how such a thing got under the shadow of Look- 
 out Mountain only the Lord and the colporteurs 
 know. This was worse than the duel ; it proved, in 
 fact, a triple calamity, for she acquired in conse- 
 quence a fatal fondness for polysyllables, a trick of 
 speaking them trippingly and a contempt for com- 
 mon English, from which she never recovered.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HAD forgotten to mention that Etna 
 had a grandfather, Aaron Hunt, a 
 bl acksmith, a useful, and withal a rather 
 sensible man ; reasons enough, and too many, why 
 he should be dismissed from the story and buried 
 under the shadow of Lookout Mountain at the 
 earliest possible moment. 
 
 On this occasion Etna, accompanied by her dog 
 " Grip " (his name was Agrippa — and so was he, as 
 many a school-boy could testify to his sorrow), was 
 skipping along the path that led to the shop. On 
 the way she encountered a solitary horseman, who 
 asked her if there was a blacksmith in the vicinity 
 — his horse had lost a shoe. 
 
 With that keen eye to business which everywhere 
 forms an element of the feminine character, Etna
 
 1 1 8 TREA SURE- TRO VE. 
 
 replied that her grandfather was in the "profession," 
 and was counted the best " tharabout," pointing the 
 stranger so plainly to the shop that he could only 
 wilfully blunder upon the forge of a rival. 
 
 Arrived at the smithy, she found the stranger 
 already there, a natural result of his being on 
 horseback and her on foot. Not at aH regardful of 
 the fact that work was on the anvil, and that the 
 stranger was waiting, she seated herself on a keg of 
 nails and asked her grandfather whether he thought 
 Jupiter treated Juno exactly right in the matter- of 
 io ; for she had not yet encountered a full-grown 
 classical dictionary, and scarcely knew IO even by 
 sight. Her mistake in this instance may, perhaps, 
 be set down to a Ten-nes-see education. 
 
 With that ingenuousness and inattention to busi- 
 ness for which old age is sometimes remarkable, 
 Aaron dropped the horse's hoof from his lap and 
 proceeded to discuss the mythology in all its 
 bearings and interpretations. 
 
 The strartger waxed as wroth with this Aaron, 
 under the shadow of Lookout Mountain, as did 
 Moses with the old-time Aaron under the shadow of 
 Sinai ; and scowled and stamped and clamored to 
 have his horse shod. But it was impossible to
 
 ST. TWEUMO. 119 
 
 quench Etna when eruptive with erudition, and still 
 the lava of learning flowed from the "cratur's" 
 mouth. 
 
 " Dog-gone Jupiter and Io ! How much do /owe 
 you ? " shouted the stranger at last, flinging a gold 
 dollar down in the tall grass and galloping away 
 with his fingers in his ears* 
 
 " He is a rude, blasphemous, wicked man," said 
 Aaron Hunt, after hunting for the coin an hour or 
 two without finding it. " I don't care for the dollar," 
 he added, as he returned his spectacles to his pocket 
 and lit his pipe at the forge, " but I would mainly 
 like to know where the darned thing got to. " 
 
 Etna continued the search. It was vain so far as 
 finding the money was concerned ; but judge of her 
 surprise and. delight when she found, on the stran- 
 ger's late stamping-ground, an Unabridged Webster's 
 Dictionary, a complete set of the Cyclopedia Britan- 
 nicaj Piper's Operative Surgery, and a Dictionary 
 of Familiar Quotations. On the fly-leaf of one of 
 the volumes was printed " i2mo," and on that of the 
 " Unabridged," Lasciaogui speranzivoi ch f entrate. 
 
 Turning to the book of quotations, she found that 
 the phrase was translated, " Who enters here leaves 
 Hope behind."
 
 1 2 o TREA SURE- TRO VE. 
 
 Seating herself on the grass, she committed to 
 memory all the big words of the Dictionary, and half 
 the contents of the Cyclopedia, before sundown. 
 Returning home, she found her grandfather peace- 
 fully smoking a pipe at his cottage door. 
 
 " Welcome, my child, " said he, " come, tell me 
 how you have amused yourself this bright, beautiful 
 afternoon." 
 
 " Aged grandsire," replied the child, " to plunge 
 in medias res, inaugurating my narration without an 
 appogiatura ; touching the origin of the infusoria, 
 Leuwenhoek, Gleichen, Zenzis-Khan, Alexander, 
 Attila, Gurowski, to say nothing of the iridiscent 
 Illuminati of Boston (this last was spoken sarcastic- 
 ally, for Etna was a true Southern girl), all entertain 
 different opinions. Also, in the course of varied 
 studies, I observe with regret that, as regards the 
 Rhinoplastic or Taliacotian operation, as to whether 
 the cellular tissue should be dissected down to the 
 periosteum, leaving the os humerus or lumbar region 
 to infringe upon the pericardium, to the disarrange- 
 ment and displacement of the arbor vitce, chirur- 
 geons differ, nor are they even united as to the best 
 method of demephitization ; ischuretics also are still 
 a matter of dispute. And when chirurgeons who
 
 ST. TWEUMO. • 121 
 
 have passed beyond the stormy esophagus of science 
 and gained the smooth Bahr-Shei-tan beyond (here 
 " Grip " barked) differ by so much as a dodecatemo- 
 rion, who shall decide ? You may ', par example, imag- 
 ine that, because I am a woman, I have no right to 
 express an opinion thus freely and con amore; but, is 
 woman merely an adscriptus gfeb/z chameleon-like — 
 but here I will explain that the old theory about the 
 chameleon taking its hue from — 
 
 " O grandy ! what's the matter ? " 
 
 For she now noticed that the old man's head re- 
 clined peacefully on his breast. 
 
 Alas! as Etna expressed it in her diary, Aaron 
 Hunt had "passed to everlasting repose." As a 
 gambling friend of the family told it at the tavern 
 that evening, somewhat more tersely, he had "passed 
 in his chips." 
 
 To put it in plain English, he was dead. The 
 appogiatura staggered him some, but the dodecatemo- 
 rion knocked him cold as a wedge. 
 - Quite satisfied with the result of her first experi- 
 ment, Etna packed her dictionaries and cyclopdias 
 and her dog " Grip," and started by the next train 
 from Chattanooga.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 T seems that they have a branch of the 
 Camden and Amboy railroad down in 
 Tennessee. 
 There was a smash and a crash of silver cords and 
 golden bowls, and china soup tureens, and other 
 crockery, a blind fumbling to save the pieces, cherry 
 beams and butternut timbers dropped down .on the 
 astonished passengers, and Etna was rudely snatched 
 from the banks of Bahr-Sheitan, whereon she basked 
 in a delicious dream, to find herself buried under 
 dead bodies and dictionaries and car wheels and 
 cord wood which had fallen on her in the general 
 wreck and ruin. 
 
 " The kind and gentlemanly conductor " came 
 around to look after the tickets. Spying Etna, stand-
 
 ST. TWEE MO. 123 
 
 ing on her head with her feet sticking out of the rub- 
 bish, he inquired, with a polite bow, if he could do 
 any thing for her. She said yes ; that sundry im- 
 pedimenta excoriated her cuticle and that it was im- 
 possible for her to recalcitrate. He understood the 
 trouble at once, and replied, " Certainly with pleas- 
 ure," swinging his lantern three times round his head 
 — a signal which all the world over is understood to 
 mean " down brakes." Men came rushing from all 
 sides, and after two hours' dry digging a la grec, by 
 two stout Irishmen with shovels, Etna was excavated. 
 She had sustained some slight injuries — a dislocated 
 shoulder, broken ankles, and a few shattered tibia — 
 but not enough to prevent her from entering into 
 cheerful conversation with the surgeon, discussing 
 cartilaginous capsules, provisional calli, and repara- 
 tion of fractures in a fashion which astonished, if it 
 did not enlighten that worthy man. 
 
 Having exhausted her subjects and the surgeon, 
 first she inquired for hear dictionary, and than for b*r 
 dog. 
 
 The dictionary, somewhat scraped and dusty, but 
 otherwise quite uninjured, was placed in her hands. 
 Clasping it to her heart, she expressed a desire that 
 it should be buried with her in event of her injuries
 
 124 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 terminating fatally ; its presence, she said was neces- 
 sary to her " everlasting repose." 
 
 On being told that her dog was dead, she mani- 
 fested much emotion and wept bitterly. It was plain 
 to the most casual observer that the poor girl had 
 lost her Grip. 
 
 Indeed it was a terrible scene, waterfalls, lunch- 
 baskets, bird-cages, and hoop-skirts were piled up on 
 all sides in the most promiscuous confusion. 
 
 A middle-dressed, elegantly-aged lady, who was 
 fumbling around in the debris for her false teeth, 
 found Etna. She had previously overheard her con- 
 versation with the surgeon. 
 
 " Bless my soul ! " cried she, " here is a girl of 
 twelve talking like a long-bearded rabbi ; here 
 is another curiosity for the bear-garden." And 
 she whisked Etna away to her chateau, known 
 thereabout as Le Beaucage, which lay conveniently 
 near. 
 
 The lady was St. Twel'mo's mother, and her name 
 was Murray. 
 
 With the proud independence of a noble nature, 
 Etna refused to accept the home which was offered her 
 unless permitted to "pay for it." This Mrs. Mur- 
 ray would not allow — one reason of her refusing to
 
 ST. TWEVMO. 
 
 "5 
 
 " take any thing " being that the orphan had nothing 
 to give. She agreed to " charge it," however, which, 
 in some degree, satisfied Etna's scruples, and recon- 
 ciled her to become a permanent fixture of Le 
 Beaucage.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 fTNA'S first introduction to St. Twel'mo 
 happened in this wise : 
 
 She was seated in her bedroom one 
 morning in earnest conversation with Mrs. Murray. 
 The discourse was about board, lodgings, and music- 
 lessons ; and Etna having pledged her word to pay 
 nothing for anything until she had some thing to pay 
 with, Mrs. Murray was delighted, and embraced her 
 sur P ceil gauche, in a very fervent fashion. 
 
 Suddenly the door opened, and a " gentleman " 
 strode into the room, carrying a bag of game. At 
 sight of Etna, he stopped, dropped his dead ducks 
 and snipe on the floor, and shouted : 
 
 " What the devil does this mean ? " 
 
 Had Etna then possessed that coolness and 
 savoir /aire which she acquired later in life, she 
 might have replied to the rude conundrum by pro-
 
 ST. TWEVMO. I27 
 
 pounding one much more impertinent. Pointing to 
 the mess on the floor, she might have asked : 
 
 " Is that your Little Game ? " 
 
 But it is recorded of her on this occasion that she 
 spoke not a single syllable. Indeed, she was never 
 much given to single syllables, rarely, at any period . 
 of her career, troubling her lips with a word of less 
 than five. 
 
 Mrs. Murray having explained that the young lady 
 was one of the sufferers by the late disaster, picked 
 up the game-bag, and taking her son affectionately 
 by the arm, led him from the room, without giving 
 him a chance to apologize for his rudeness. 
 
 Had he been led out by the nose, he would have 
 had no more than his desert, and scarcely that ; but 
 mark you how Etna was affected. 
 
 A thrill shot along her nerves ; she felt a blind 
 fumbling at her heart-strings ; a presentiment over- 
 whelmed her ; the Pantheistic Necessity that she 
 should marry the rude intruder became evident and 
 apparent — in him she recognized the coming man. 
 
 The coming man — that is, the one who had just 
 gone out — was tall and athletic, not exactly young 
 and not precisely elderly ; it would be safe to set 
 him down as middle-aged. According to all accounts,
 
 I2 8 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 he must have been a rather rum-looking customer ; 
 for his fair chiselled lineaments were spotted by dis- 
 sipation and blackened and distorted by the baleful 
 fires of a fierce, passionate nature, and a restless, 
 powerful, and unhallowed intellect. Furthermore, 
 he was symmetrical and grand 
 
 As some temple of Juno, 
 
 Whose polished shafts 
 Gleam' d centuries ago, 
 
 In the morning sunshine 
 Of a day of wo 
 
 (this thing resolves itself into rhyme), whose untimely 
 night has endured for nineteen hundred years; so in 
 the glorious flush of his youth this man had stood 
 facing a noble and possibly sanctified future (and 
 things); but the ungovernable flames of sin had 
 reduced him, like that blackened and desecrated 
 fane, to a melancholy mass of ashy arches and black- 
 ened columns, where ministering priests, all holy 
 aspirations, slumbered in the dust. 
 
 The dress of this melancholy mass of ashy arches 
 and blackened columns was costly but negligent, and 
 the red stain on his jacket told that his errand had 
 not been fruitless (from which it might be inferred
 
 ST. TWEDMO. 129 
 
 that he had been strawberrying as well as ducking). 
 As part of this costly but negligent dress, the melan- 
 choly mass wore a straw hat belted with broad black 
 ribbons, and his spurred boots (hunters down there 
 always put spurs on when they chase the wild duck 
 and the fierce snipe to their Lookout Mountain fast- 
 nesses) were damp and muddy. 
 
 It seems rather melancholy, at first glance, that 
 this melancholy mass of mud and ministering priests, 
 and arches and columns, and spurs and straw hats, 
 and broad black ribbons, should demean itself in the 
 way he did, striding into a young lady's bed-chamber, 
 dumping dead ducks on the carpet, braying out Ha ! 
 ha ! like Mephistopheles in the play or a jackass in 
 a corn-field, and asking, " What the devil does this 
 mean ? " of its own mother. Indeed, nothing but a 
 blackened column or a negro minstrel could do such 
 things without a blush. 
 
 Something in the column's tones — I almost said 
 the column's base — recalled to Etna's memory the 
 rude, wicked, blasphemous man who said, " Dog- 
 gone it ! " to her grandfather, and left dictionaries 
 and cyclopedias lying around loose on the grass be- 
 fore the shop. 
 
 She could hear him in the next room, talking to 
 
 9
 
 I3 o TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 his mother. He called her " ma mere " (perhaps the 
 least objectionable way in which he could dam her) 
 and Etna an ancolyte, prophesying that some day 
 the latter would turn up non est, ditto silver forks, 
 ditto diamonds, ditto gold spoons. 
 
 Etna all this while felt the indignant blood burn- 
 ing her cheeks ; but having plenty of cheek and to 
 spare, she simply let it burn on, and sat and heard 
 the conversation through. At the doubts expressed 
 of her honesty, she started ; for she remembered the 
 dictionaries and cyclopedias of the smithy, for which 
 she had never endeavored to find an owner, and she 
 wondered whether St. Twel'mo remembered them too. 
 Feeling rather apprehensive that he might recognize 
 them if they fell in his way, she determined to return 
 them in the morning. 
 
 But in the morning an unforeseen accident oc- 
 curred. Going out on the lawn, to play with the ele- 
 phants, and rhinoceroses, and pelicans, a huge dog 
 came tearing along, and after biting off an elephant's 
 ear, and strangling a rhinoceros or two, turned on 
 Etna. 
 
 Faint with terror, she was incapable of lifting a 
 hand in her defense, and even forgot to quote — the 
 first time in life that she ever missed an opportunity.
 
 ST. TWEVMO. I3 i 
 
 It galled her afterwards to think how patly she could 
 have put in the lines of Dr. Watts, beginning 
 
 " Let dogs delight to bark and bite ; " 
 
 but the circumstances were not favorable for classic 
 indulgences. 
 
 Of course St. Twel'mo came on opportunely and 
 called off his dog. He did more, he picked up a 
 club and belabored the dog, which howled, and St. 
 Twel'mo howled, and the rhinoceros bellowed, while 
 Etna, fully restored to a sense of her mission in life, 
 mounted a stump and chanted the prayer of Habak- 
 kuk in the original Hebrew, so that altogether they 
 had a very effective quartet and quite a lively and 
 interesting time of it. 
 
 And after it was all over, and St. Twel'mo had 
 done licking the dog, the dog, probably thinking that 
 one good turn deserved another, turned and licked 
 his master's feet, which gave St. Twel'mo an oppor- 
 tunity to cry Ha ! and remark that that was the way 
 of all natures, human as well as brute. 
 
 Mem. The behavior of the dog in thzjinakol this 
 matter leads me to the inevitable conclusion that it 
 was a female dog.
 
 i 3 2 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 I mean no disrespect to the sex by the preceding 
 annotation ; I simply mean that such would be the 
 logical deduction did we accept the heroines of most 
 women's novels as types of womanhood at large. 
 For here was St. Twel'mo, whose face was blotted 
 with dissipation, and blackened and distorted by 
 baleful fires, and who looked like a melancholy mass 
 of ashy arches and blackened columns, and who was 
 always damning his mother and his sweethearts, and 
 crying ha ! to them, and saying par parenthese, and 
 tar excellence, and par exemple, and par nobile fratrum, 
 and parbleu — 
 
 (His French and his Latin were seldom or never 
 above par) — 
 
 Yet carrying innumerable female scalps at his 
 belt. How such a fellow could win the affections 
 of refined and cultivated women, I cannot under- 
 stand. For I have tried original verses, and pet 
 names, and bouquets, and gentlemanly behavior, and 
 the sweet influences of modest and unpretending 
 merit, all in vain. 
 
 The moral that women with " intellect into them," 
 can be best won by pelting them with vituperation 
 and junk-bottles instead of with bon-bons, and tell- 
 ing them to go to the devil instead of to Delmonico's
 
 ST. TWELWTO. 
 
 m 
 
 where any thing they choose to fancy in the way of 
 lunch awaits them, I do not believe, and do here 
 resolutely refuse to accept, though all the authoresses 
 in Christendom and out of it are leagued together to 
 persuade me to the contrary ; after which personal 
 explanation I resume the thread of my story.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 HE same evening Etna determined to call 
 at St. TweI'mo's apartments — notwith- 
 standing the injunction from all about 
 the house that she must never cross the threshold of 
 his room — and return the dictionaries and cyclo- 
 pedias. 
 
 As already remarked, it was the evening of the 
 day on which the encounter with the dog occurred. 
 By some strange fumbling or thimble-rigging of the 
 planets, Sirius was just wagging its tail in the eastern 
 horizon, when Etna knocked at the terrible doors. 
 
 Was it an omen ? Was the dog-star indeed to 
 prove the star of her destiny ? 
 
 Rat ! tat ! tat 1 
 
 Etna executed the long roll which a woman beats, 
 echoing her heart-taps, when in doubt as to the pro- 
 priety of a step, but has already determined to " go 
 in," cost what it may. 
 
 " Come in ! "
 
 ST. TWEVMO. 13S 
 
 The voice was gruff as that of the wolf in reply to 
 Red Riding Hood's tattoo. 
 
 She opened the door and waited for a second in- 
 vitation. It came. 
 
 " Come in, damn you ! " growled the inmate, blow- 
 ing the smoke of a very bad cigar, which smelt like 
 brimstone, in scattered spirals to the vaulted and 
 fluted ceiling. 
 
 On this she entered. St. Twel'mo did not rise, 
 and the tableau was a peculiar one. There sat our 
 hero, gaunt and peculiar. The peculiarity of the 
 gaunt look which enveloped him, as with a mantle, 
 is readily enough explained when we consider " that 
 for nearly fifteen dreary years, nothing but jeers, and 
 oaths, and sarcasms, had crossed his finely sculptured 
 lips." It is little wonder that on such diet he had 
 not fleshed up much ; but it is indeed singular that 
 some of the oaths and things had not strangled him. 
 
 The reflection occurs that he must at times have 
 felt thirsty ; but perhaps, like the lover mentioned 
 in the lyric, he drank only with his eyes. A hy- 
 pothesis which is strengthened by the fact that it 
 was out from his glowing gray eyes that the mocking 
 demon of the wine-cup looked. 
 
 But to resume. On his swarthy and colorless
 
 136 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 face, midnight orgies and habitual excesses had left 
 their unmistakable plague spot, and Mephistopheles 
 had stamped his signet. Is it any wonder that 
 Etna's love fed as she gazed, and that, lost in con- 
 templation of the pleasant picture, and a possibly 
 bright future before her, she wholly forgot the errand 
 which brought her thither? 
 
 " What the devil does this mean, and what do 
 you want?" growled St. Twel'mo. " Squattez 
 vous la," and he pointed to a chair. 
 
 " No, I thank you," replied Etna with a graceful 
 courtesy, " I only come to return some books I 
 borrowed of you." 
 
 And turning to a black servant who stood behind 
 her with a hand cart, she bade him wheel it in. 
 
 He obeyed, and she rapidly began to unload it of 
 dictionaries and cyclopedias. With a sudden ex- 
 pression of interest in his countenance, the master of 
 the apartment rose from his gracefully recumbent 
 position and approached her. 
 
 " In the name of the Great Horned Dromedary 
 of Eblis, whose hump, bright with the glitter of 
 eternal snows, gleams across the northern horizon 
 at midnight, and is mistaken by sciolists and the 
 half-educated idiots, who at that time burnt expen-
 
 ST. TWEUMO. 
 
 137 
 
 sive kerosene in a vain attempt to review books 
 which they can not understand, for the aurora 
 borealis — the origin of which phenomenon I have 
 not time just now to explain — tell me what is this 
 mystery ? " 
 
 He took the huge volume " mechanically" — that 
 is by the aid of a derrick, which was rigged up at 
 that end of the apartment, and his stern swarthy 
 face lighted up joyfully. 
 
 " Is it possible ? my dear Unabridged ! the very 
 copy that has travelled round the world in my vest 
 pocket, and without which I was lost. Can it be ? 
 Tell me, girl, where did you get it ?" 
 
 She explained the circumstances as well as she 
 could. But lost in rapture as he rapidly turned over 
 its well-thumbed pages, he bade no heed to her 
 words. 
 
 Suddenly his brow darkened, his eye flashed, and 
 his nostrils dilated, as turning to her in a voice of 
 thunder, he roared : 
 
 " Damnation ! you have stolen all the big words 
 out of it ! Bithus contra Bacchium ! Get out of 
 this I" 
 
 Sorrowfully thinking what a pity it was that such 
 a noble intellect, and such an ornament to society
 
 138 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 should be lost to the world, Etna turned and left 
 the apartment. 
 
 As she turned a corner in the corridor, St. Twel'mo, 
 with a Dutch oath, which unfortunately she could 
 not understand, hurled the dictionary at her ; miss- 
 ing her fragile form, it struck a plaster bust of Lord 
 Chesterfield which stood in range, inflicting several 
 compound fractures which no plaster could mend. 
 The back of the book was also bust. Cyclopedias 
 and yellow-covered novels came hurling after. Safe 
 in the sanctuary of a convenient closet, Etna dropped 
 upon her knees and softly murmured, " Who smote 
 the marble gods of Greece ? " 
 
 St. Twel'mo howling his favorite slogans, Bithus 
 contra Bacchium and Chacun a son gofit, rushed into 
 his solitary apartments, slammed the doors behind 
 him, and spent the rest of the night in horrible dissi- 
 pation over a small Jenkins's Vest Pocket Dictionary, 
 but it consoled him not for the loss of his Un- 
 abridged.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ,TNA'S curiosity was awakened by the 
 glimpse she had obtained of bachelor 
 quarters, and she determined to explore 
 them at her leisure, immediately an opportunity 
 offered. 
 
 She had not long to wait. The next day St. 
 Twel'mo mounted his horse and galloped over to 
 Chattanooga to purchase a spelling book, for which 
 he had need in writing a business letter to a greasy 
 mechanic who had agreed to construct a hydraulic 
 ram on the premises for the benefit of the Merino 
 sheep, and Cashmere goats — the poor creatures suf- 
 fered sadly from want of an adequate supply of water. 
 
 No sooner had the echoing tramp of his horse's 
 hoofs died away in the distance, than Etna installed 
 herself in the vacant rooms, and made herself per- 
 fectly at home. 
 
 Indeed St. Twel'mo's apartments were curiously 
 furnished. In lieu of sofas, and ottomans, and 
 Turkish chairs, and meerschaums, and spittoons, and
 
 i 4 o TREA SURE-TRO VE. 
 
 photograph albums, and coal-scuttles, and hand- 
 somely bound copies of Liffith Lank, and The Jump- 
 ing Frog, and boxing-gloves, and foils, and cheese- 
 toasters, and tailors' bills, and old boots, and 
 embroidered slippers, and dressing-gowns, and cigar- 
 stumps, and soda water, and empty bottles, and 
 portraits of popular actresses, and other things that 
 men's rooms are generally full of, she found only old 
 vases and antique jars — family jars — of no possible 
 use, not even to " sit down " on ; and cameos, and 
 cameras, and intaglios, and entanglements, and pro- 
 spectuses of new gas companies for supplying the 
 pyramids with cheap light, and Turcoman cimetars 
 — croocked as rams' horns — Bedouin lances, Bowie 
 knives, flint-lock muskets, and other queer weapons 
 which afterwards contributed so largely to the arma- 
 ment of the Confederate forces. Besides, there was 
 an astonishing pile of cyclopedias, dictionaries, lan- 
 guages without masters and masters without lan- 
 guages, a volume entitled A Thousand Things Worth 
 Knowing, and a whole library which might have 
 been labelled, not Worth Knowing ! More things, in 
 fact, were in these bachelor's quarters — he never did 
 things by halves — than Horatio or even the fanciful 
 Philes ever dreamed of in their Philosophies.
 
 ST. TWEVMO. 141 
 
 But what most attracted Etna's attention was one 
 of those mysterious contrivances known as a " Her- 
 ring's Safe," whether because a herring in them is safe 
 from roasting or sure to be done to a turn, no philolo- 
 gist has yet proclaimed. It was modeled after a 
 miracle of Saracenic architecture, and had a lock 
 which defied gunpowder, and extemporized keys 
 made of crooked nails ; the door was painted to 
 resemble live oak, but the inscription thereon was 
 written in a dead language. 
 
 Etna would have liked to know what the thing con- 
 tained, but the combination-lock refused to respond 
 to the pass-keys she carried about her, and all her 
 blind fumbling at the mystic key-hole proved of no 
 avail. 
 
 She sighed and wished that her grandfather was 
 around with his sledge-hammer. 
 
 As she turned away and retraced her steps among 
 the costly bizarrerie it suddenly occurred to her that 
 no light childish feet had ever pattered down the 
 long rows of shining tiles, and she suddenly thought 
 " What a pity, oh ! if " 
 
 (Why do such things always occur to women when 
 men never think of them ?) 
 
 And then, with a sorrowful sigh, she sought her
 
 143 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 own apartment. Her dreams that night were of 
 wedding favors — sometimes written " fevers " by the 
 illiterate — and the altar assumed the shape of a 
 burglar and fire-proof safe. 
 
 Pressing her lips closely to the open end of the 
 bolster, under the natural but mistaken impression 
 that it was the happy bridegroom's ear, she whis- 
 pered softly, " Ducky, deaiy, what on earth do you 
 keep in that big iron bandbox ? " 
 
 
 W
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 O the days wore on at Le Beaucage — and 
 that every thing did not wear out was 
 very strange indeed And Etna progressed 
 in knowledge. In company with a fine and eru- 
 dite old clergyman, named Gammon, she committed 
 to memory nearly all the books which no gentleman's 
 library should be without, all the quotable passages 
 in Diodorus, Tupper, Owen Meredith, Mark Twain, 
 Plutarch, John Ruskin, Charles Algernon Swinburne, 
 Thucydides, and Walt Whitman. For she had made 
 up her mind to go forth and face the world — out- 
 face it, if necessary. 
 
 The only subject on which there was not full 
 sympathy and perfect communion between Etna and 
 the Rev. Mr. Gammon was that mauvais sujet, St. 
 Twel'mo. Etna feared that her tutor did not love 
 her hero, and one day asked him how ? and if not, 
 wherefore ? The reverend gentleman clasped his 
 hands and declared that he loved St. Twel'mo 
 as well as his own life, if not better. At first
 
 144 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 Etna would not believe this declaration, but 
 when she learned that St. Twel'mo had murdered a 
 couple of the clergyman's children, she gave it 
 implicit credence. For she herself had not been 
 entreated over and above well at his hands, and the 
 seething of love in her own heart in consequence 
 convinced her that some pork would boil so — pardon 
 the homeliness of the proverb. 
 
 If I have until now forgotten to mention one pe- 
 culiarity about St. Twel'mo, let me at once remedy 
 the omission. He was wonderfully fond of travel, 
 the result, perhaps, of his pedigree. For his father, 
 also named Murray, was none other than the illus- 
 trious author of those guide books, so familiar and 
 famous all Europe through. The mistaken impres- 
 sion which obtained on some sides, that he was de- 
 scended from Lindley Murray, St. Twel'mo de- 
 nounced with disdain, proudly boasting that there was 
 never a grammarian in the family — a fact too patent 
 to be gainsaid by any. 
 
 Impatient of home and never at rest, his footsteps 
 had sounded among the steppes of Tartary ; Arabs 
 on the great desert were acquainted with his war-cry 
 of Bithus contra Bacchium ; Fejee chieftains, while 
 breakfasting on underdone missionary, had been
 
 ST. TWEVMO. 145 
 
 made familiar with his favorite apophthegm, Chacun 
 h son go&t. As an explorer of equatorial Africa, he 
 divided the honors with Du Chaillu, and was certain- 
 ly entitled to the odd trick, for it could not be denied 
 that he brought home with him more of the habits 
 and manners of the gorillas than Du Chailla did. In 
 short, there was only one spot on the face of the 
 earth which he had not visited — that was the State 
 of New-Jersey. And one morning, at the breakfast 
 table, he announced to his mother his intention of 
 making a journey thither. With a wild shriek, she 
 dropped the tea-pot from her hand, and was carried 
 away from the table upon the tray. 
 
 Without minding the old lady at all, he strode out 
 to the stable, ordered his horse saddled and some 
 pork and hominy packed up, and galloped away. 
 
 After galloping as far as the gate, he paused 
 
 turned and beckoned to Etna. She approached 
 
 him. Drawing a huge key from his pocket, he told 
 
 her that it belonged to the big safe — he called it Taj 
 
 Mahal, which is Dutch for Red Herring — informed 
 
 her that the safe contained papers of no value to 
 
 any une but the owner, and of very little to him, 
 
 and that he intended to intrust the key to her 
 
 care. But he forbade her opening it unless he was 
 
 10
 
 146 TREASURE-TROVE- 
 
 four years absent, in which event she might conclude 
 that he had been elected governor and would never 
 more return. 
 
 Etna pertinently remarked that if she was not al- 
 lowed to use the safe to keep her chignon, and hair- 
 pins, and pearl-powder in, she didn't see what use 
 there was in leaving her the key ; but fir.aiiy con- 
 sented to accept the trust, sagely saying to herself 
 that very possibly it might turn to some account. 
 
 He plunged spurs in his horse and was gone. 
 
 Etna at once returned to the house and examined 
 the safe. A small spider had crawled into the key- 
 hole, and thinking he might injure the lock, she put 
 in the key and turned it gently, to drive him out. 
 She was afraid that the door might accidentally 
 open ; but no — the bolt was rusty and refused to 
 stir ; for fifteen years it had known no other assuage- 
 ment of fiction than oaths, and jeers, and sarcasms 
 — in which respect it resembled St. Twel'mo's lips. 
 
 After turning for an hour or two, she finally turned 
 away, and buried herself in a reprint of the Bhagvat- 
 Geeta, just republished by Philes. The Targum 
 had hitherto been her pabulum during solitary mo- 
 ments, but she had chewed upon it so long that she 
 desired a change.
 
 ST. T IV ELMO. 147 
 
 Suddenly she was recalled from the delicious 
 dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon by a mellow 
 voice under the window, singing : 
 
 " I will chase the elephant over the plain, 
 The rhinoceros I'll bind with a chain, 
 And the hippopotamus, with his silvery feet, 
 I'll give thee for a playmate sweet." 
 
 Approaching the window, she recognized Gordon 
 Lee, a distant relative of the general of that name 
 who was lately presented with a pair of game-cocks. 
 He addressed her a few words in Greek, to which 
 she coyly replied in Coptic. After this cheerful 
 interchange of greetings, she went down and sat with 
 him in the bear-garden in front of the house. They 
 talked of megatheriums, acephala, mastodons, cubic 
 roots, rhomboids, and cognate ideas that the youth- 
 ful imagination gererally runs riot with of moonlight 
 evenings. 
 
 Gordon was a handsome young fellow, well born, 
 well educated, and of good connections — though he 
 missed some of them when the gun-boats were re- 
 ported as steaming down the river. Courteous to 
 his equals and kind to his inferiors, he was a general 
 favorite in Chattanooga. Etna, and he had studied
 
 148 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 the Sanskrit together, sitting at the feet of Gamaliel 
 Gammon, (who, like many others of the cloth, was 
 familiar with most languages except English,) and 
 latterly they had been deep in a translation of the 
 Manavad-harmasastra, each trying to distance the 
 other, but so far it had been a tie between them. 
 Now the tie was all on Gordon's side, and so difficult 
 a one was it to undo that it might be called a Gor- 
 dian knot. He was in love with Etna, and had 
 wooed her in Chinese, Cufic, Hebrew, and Massa- 
 chusetts French, but without effect. Unfortunately 
 for the success of his suit,, he was not scorched by 
 baleful fires, nor blotted by dissipation, and didn't 
 look, like a ruined temple, nor a dilapidated tar-kiln, 
 nor a melancholy mass of ashy arches, and charcoal 
 pits, and whisky cock-tails. Besides, he was neat 
 in his dress and respectful to his mother, and didn't 
 quote and swear. Had he ever seduced a woman, 
 or shot a man, or even robbed a contribution-box, 
 there might have been some chance for him j but as 
 it was, his case was hopeless. 
 
 This evening the moon was mellow and so was 
 Gordon ; for the one had filled her horns and the 
 other had emptied his. Under these conditions and 
 combinations lie had more courage than usual, and
 
 ST. TWEVMO. 1 49 
 
 skillfully turned the conversation upon trilobites — 
 though musquito bites would have been more 
 apropos to the season — as a neat way of approaching 
 the subject which was nearest his heart. He had 
 found one of rare beauty during the day, and 
 begged her acceptance of it ; but she declined on 
 the plea that there was no vacancy in her cabinet. 
 He then besought her acceptance of a ring, taking a 
 California diamond of fabulous value — wholly fabu- 
 lous — from his pocket. 
 
 " It is beautiful in this light," he said, holding it 
 up to the stars, " how it glistens ; do you see it ? " 
 
 " Alas ! no, not in those lamps," she replied, and 
 though she finally consented to accept the ring, she 
 gave him definitely to understand that he was 
 out of it. 
 
 On returning to the house Etna looked as though 
 she had been doing something foolish, and Mrs. 
 Murray divined the truth. " How could you ? " she 
 cried. " A young man of excellent principles, 
 sound religious convictions, five hundred niggers, not 
 counting piccaninnies, and raising rather more than 
 a bale to the acre ! How could you be so foolish, and 
 so cruel ? " 
 
 " Alas ! mamma," sobbed Etna, hiding her face on
 
 1 5 o TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 Mrs. Murray's bosom, " he mispronounced a Greek 
 quantity." 
 
 And Mrs. Murray, who knew how sensitive the 
 child was on such points, but did not dream that a 
 deeper reason underlay the refusal, forgave at once, 
 and comforted her with the hope that one of the 
 Harvard professors might yet happen that way, and 
 she could have a husband to her liking.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 FTER learning that Gordon Lee was 
 spoony on her, it became manifestly 
 necessary that they should no longer 
 study together. Geometry must specially be given 
 up as tending to excite the blood, and there was no 
 telling even what trouble might be Hebrewing if 
 they met upon the plains of that primitive lan- 
 guage. 
 
 Suddenly a brillant idea occurred to Etna. She 
 would be an authoress. She would elevate her sex, 
 she would write essays, poetry, tales, novels. There 
 were no bounds to her ambition. Clasping her 
 hands — in default of any one else's a woman is apt 
 to clasp her own — she cried, " To what may I not in 
 time aspire ? Even Godey's Lady's Book is not be- 
 yond my reach ! " 
 
 Down there the ladies add a syllable to the favorite 
 oath of the sterner sex, and swear by Godey. It is 
 so easy to understand, and has so many pretty 
 pictures.
 
 152 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 " Yes," mused Etna, " the true end and aim 
 of woman's life should be to write a novel" And 
 
   
 
 immediately she seated herself at her escritoire, and 
 wrote to all the editors in New- York, Boston, and 
 Philadelphia, inclosing to each a few hundred pages 
 of ms., and requesting an insertion in their next 
 numbers. 
 
 Pending replies, St. Twel'mo came home. 
 
 The first question he asked — before even swear- 
 ing at his mother — was of Etna. 
 
 " Have you opened the Taj Mahal ? " 
 
 " No," she replied. 
 
 Of course he intimated with his usual courtesy that 
 she lied, and dragged her off to the library. 
 
 She stood trembling while he fumbled at the 
 keyhole- " I know you have opened the door," he 
 exclaimed; "but we will see." Another spider has 
 been at work ; with one sweep of his powerful arm 
 he scattered the web to the winds. " If you have 
 not opened it, there will be an explosion," he said. 
 
 It occurred to her that there would also be an 
 explosion if she had ; but she stood her ground with 
 the calmness befitting one who. aspired to period- 
 ical, and was not afraid of magazine. 
 
 He swung the door open and a columbiad was
 
 ST. TWEL'MO. 153 
 
 discharged, belching forth its fire and smoke into 
 the room, hoisting St. Twel'mo and Etna to the 
 ceiling, to the dislocation of the latter's waterfall, and 
 so startling her that for the second time in life, she 
 quailed instead of quoting. 
 
 St. Twel'mo was so surprised to find that the 
 door had not been opened in his absence to the igni- 
 tion of his infernal machine, and that Etna was 
 alive, and he was alive, and there was nothing dead 
 in the room but a few languages, that he pulled from 
 his finger a ring, engrossed with a Chaldaic charac- 
 ter, and insisted upon her acceptance of it. 
 
 Etna's eyes glistened as she gazed upon the jewel 
 and recognized the talismanic sign it bore. 
 
 But other visions unfolded themselves to her. Be- 
 yond blazed the torch, that ignis fatuns which has 
 led so many up the steep and winding stairs of the 
 great white fane in Franklin Square, to find no rest 
 for their feet, nor acceptance of their handiwork 
 when their story reached that third story, known 
 as the Aisle of Guernsey. And over a distant frog 
 pond stood the nebulous
 
 i 5 4 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 familiar to all who have sought the Philosopher's 
 Tone, and hateful to those who have found it not. 
 And she determined not to be in a hurry about 
 accepting any thing. 
 
 With an angry hand he dashed the 
 
 into the grate. " The badge of my race," he said ; 
 "it will be quite at home among the congenial 
 flames — there at least it will be red. Many a stout 
 Twel'mo has had the same grate circulation," and 
 he laughed savagely. 
 
 With the glare of the grate in his face and its 
 smoke in his hair, he looked so supernaturally ugly 
 and so unusually wicked, that Etna's heart warmed 
 toward him, and she hung out that light in her eyes 
 which all the world over is accepted and recognized 
 as the signal for a flirtation. This was seven o'clock 
 in the evening. 
 
 About nine o'clock, two hours later, the affair was 
 progressing as follows — St. Twel'mo loquitur : 
 
 " Pardon me if I remind you," he said, " of the 
 preliminary and courteous en garde / which should 
 be pronounced before a thrust. De Guerin felt
 
 ST. TWEVMO. 155 
 
 starved in Languedoc, and no wonder! But had 
 he penetrated every nook and cranny of the habit- 
 able globe and traversed the Zaharas which science 
 accords the universe, he would have died at last as 
 hungry as Ugolino. I speak advisedly, for the true 
 Io gadfly ennui has stung me from hemisphere to 
 hemisphere, across tempestuous oceans, scorching 
 deserts, and icy mountain ranges. I have faced 
 alike the bourrans of the steppes and the Samieli of 
 Shamo, and the result of my vandal life is best 
 epitomized in those grand but grim words of Bossuet: 
 ' On trouve au fond de tout le vide et le neant.' Nine- 
 teen years ago, to satisfy my hunger, I set out to 
 hunt the daintiest food this world would furnish, and, 
 like other fools, have learned finally, that life is but 
 a huge mellow golden Osher, (short for pumpkin,) 
 that mockingly sifts its bitter dust upon our eager 
 lips. Ah ! truly, On trouve au fond de tout le vide et 
 le niant?" Etna promptly made answer to this 
 sprightly little sally : " Mr. Murray, if you insist 
 upon your bitter Osher simile, why shut your eyes to 
 the palpable analogy suggested ? Naturalists assert 
 that the Solanum, or apple of Sodom, contains in 
 its normal state neither dust nor ashes, unless it is 
 punctured by an insect, (the Tenthredo, ) which
 
 1 5 6 TREASURE- TRO VE. 
 
 converts the whole of the inside into dust, leaving 
 nothing but the rind entire, without any loss of 
 color. Human life is as fair and tempting as the 
 fruit of Ain Jidy, till stung and poisoned by the 
 Tenthredo of sin." 
 
 "Will you favor me," he replied, "by lifting on 
 the point of your dissecting-knife this stinging sin of 
 mine to which you refer ? The noxious brood swarm 
 so teasingly about my ears that they deprive me of 
 your cool, clear, philosophic discrimination. Which 
 particular Tenthredo of the buzzing swarm around 
 my spoiled apple of life would you advise me to 
 select for my anathema maranatha ? " 
 
 (At this point the servant girl, who was dusting 
 the drawers with a peacock's tail, looked around ; 
 for her name was Anna Maria, and she thought she 
 was called.) 
 
 " Of your history, sir," returned Etna, " I am 
 entirely ignorant ! and even if I were not, I should 
 not presume to levy a tax upon it in discussions with 
 you ; for however vulnerable you may possibly be, I 
 regard an argumentwn ad hominem (here the servant 
 girl, thinking that hominy was meant and mentioned, 
 brightened up and put on an intelligent look) as the
 
 ST. TWEUMO. 157 
 
 weakest weapon in the army of dialectics — a weapon 
 
 too- 
 
 But that will do for the present. Suffice it to say 
 that this thing went on for two hours more, and that 
 a full report of the speeches would occupy twenty 
 pages o£ foolscap, and could only be made tolerable 
 by an accompanying jingle of as many bells. When 
 the little coquetterie ended at a time for putting out 
 the lights, both sat asleep in their respective chairs 
 whispering big words in each other's ears from sheer 
 force of habit.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 T. TWEL'MO was a decidedly original 
 wooer. Like an Indian chief, the mo- 
 ment he set out on the war path he began 
 to recount how many scalps he had previously taken. 
 Thus, cornering Etna in a church one evening, 
 while she was practicing, in preparation for the next 
 Sunday, upon the hand organ, which did duty in 
 lieu of a larger wind instrument, he breathed a soft 
 confession into her ear. 
 
 Printed, I am aware that it will read very much 
 like a page from the Newgate Calendar. 
 
 It seemed that a son of the Rev. Mr. Gammon had 
 cut him out with the daughter of another clergyman, 
 by wearing higher shirt collars and indulging more 
 lavishly in pomatums and macassar. A challenge 
 passed between them, and St. Twel'mo killed his 
 antagonist at the first fire. 
 
 Thenceforth his cai eer was a strange one, and its
 
 ST. TWEVMO. 159 
 
 recital must have been edifying to Etna's ears. He 
 seduced every " brilliant and accomplished woman " 
 that the village of Chattanooga and the surrounding 
 swamps contained, "winning her love and then 
 leaving her a target for the laughter of her circle " — 
 to be blasted, as it were, by blow-guns. This he told 
 his sweetheart. " One of the fairest faces that ever 
 brightened the haunts of fashion — a queenly, elegant 
 girl — the pet of her family and of society," he seduced 
 and reduced to a melancholy mass of ashy arches and 
 things somewhat a-kiln to himself. At the time that 
 he told this story, she was " wearing serge garments" 
 in an Italian convent. Serge was her life ! St. 
 Twel'mo was wearing spurred-boots the while, and tell- 
 ing these tales to his sweetheart. 
 
 But the exploit on which he most prided himself, 
 
 the one he " norated " with the greatest zest, assuming 
 
 the half-deprecating air of those excessively virtuous 
 
 persons who " do good by stealth and blush to find 
 
 it fame," was as follows. The scene occured at the 
 
 parsonage, and I allow St. Twel'mo to tell the story 
 in his own words : 
 
 " During one terribly fatal winter, scarlet fever had 
 deprived the Rev. Mr. Gammon of four children, 
 (St. Twel'mo and scarlet fever seem to have run in
 
 160 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 the family,) leaving him an only daughter, Annie, the 
 image of her brother, (the brother whom he had 
 taken the precaution to kill.) Her health was feeble ; 
 consumption was stretching its skeleton hands 
 toward her, and her father watched her as a gardener 
 tends his pet, choice, delicate exotic. She was about 
 sixteen, very pretty, very attractive. After her 
 brother's death, I never spoke to Mr. Gammon, 
 never crossed his path ; but I met his daughter with- 
 out his knowledge, and finally I made her confess 
 her love for me. I offered her my hand ; she ac- 
 cepted it. A day was appointed for an elopement 
 and marriage; the hour came; she left the parson- 
 age, but I did not meet her here on the steps of this 
 church as I had promised, and she received a note, 
 full of scorn and derision, explaining the revengeful 
 motives that had actuated me. Two hours later, 
 her father found her insensible on the steps, (she 
 could scarcely have been sensible when she took the 
 step,) and the marble was dripping with a hemorrhage 
 of blood (alas ! that it was of blood) from her lungs. 
 The dark stain is still there ; you must have noticed 
 it. I never saw her again. She kept her room 
 (better it must have been than St.Twel'mo's company) 
 from that day, and died three months after. When
 
 ST. rWEVMO. 161 
 
 on her death-bed she sent for me, but I refused to 
 obey the summons." 
 
 The story of our hero's loves and triumphs by no 
 means ended here ; but sufficient for this day is the 
 evil thereof. Ex prde Herculem — it is not expedient 
 to prolong the agonies ; the devil, quite as well as 
 Hercules, maybe recognized by a single hoof. 
 
 The only wonder is that Etna had not married, out 
 of hand, this chivalric Chattanoogian, who selected 
 consumptive little girls, whom even the scarlet fever 
 and the measles spared, for victims — having first 
 killed off their big brothers — who told over his adul 
 teries as a monk might his beads, and as little blushed 
 in telling them. 
 
 Seducing the sister, by way of getting even with 
 her brother, certainly commends itself as an original 
 enterprise, which should have stirred the depths of a 
 refined and cultivated woman, emulous of elevating 
 her kind by writing for the fashion magazines, to love 
 and admiration. However, Etna declined the honor 
 of a betrothal. It may have been that she was not 
 ambitious of being set up as a target, etc., or wear- 
 ing serge garments, etc., and early habits may have 
 led her to object to even the remote possibility of 
 
 being smothered with a pillow. At all events, she 
 
 1 1
 
 1 62 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 said No, though she felt in her own heart that she 
 loved him more than ever. 
 
 Oh, the feminine bosom ! is it not fearfully and 
 wonderfully made up ! 
 
 Even the picture of the apple-trees, where he and 
 his " idol had chatted, and romped, and whistled in 
 in the far past " (think of that idle whistling !) failed 
 to move her. She did not wish to incur the risk of 
 having a " hemorrhage of blood" and besides, am- 
 bitious of authorship, she was determined to do it or 
 die. It was a clear case of noblesse oblige.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 HE night mail brought her an offer of a 
 situation as nurse in a rich but respect- 
 able family in New-York, and replies to 
 her letters to the editors. 
 
 The Boston Illuminati wrote that they did not think 
 that her style would do for the Atlantic — it was 
 scarcely salt enough ; Philadelphia, speaking through 
 Godey, replied that neither her essay on Ramayana, 
 nor her very elaborate treatise on Comparative An- 
 atomy was calculated to interest lady readers. They 
 were declined with thanks — a polite editorial phrase- 
 which may always be interpreted as meaning thanks 
 that there is no more. The Harpers wanted practical 
 articles that themselves and others could understand, 
 without foot-notes, or condensations of their last 
 published books, though they would publish extracts
 
 1 64 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 frurn her more serious essays in the Editor's Drawer, 
 at the usual compensation in that department. 
 
 Seeing a gleam of hope here, Etna telegraphed to 
 know what that rate was. The reply came, " Noth- 
 ing, and pay your own postage." 
 
 But there was one ray of comfort. A new maga- 
 zine had been started, and its proprietors were 
 pushing it vigorously — so vigorously that they nearly 
 pushed it to the wall in the first year of its existence. 
 The public are not always in a milky and watery way, 
 and sometimes crave something with an edge — 
 meat-axy, rather than any other "axy." Hearing 
 that the new magazine was then publishing some 
 story by A trollop, Etna at first shrank sensitively 
 back from such association, but finally made over- 
 tures of a glorious piece on favorable terms, inclosing 
 to it an essay, " Who smote the marble brow of Billy 
 Patterson ? " In accordance with his usual custom 
 the editor carried it home and read it to his wife, his 
 father-in-law, his maid-servant, his man-servant, and 
 the stranger that was within his gates. Not one of 
 them being able to understand it, they unanimously 
 voted it a delightful and excellent article, especially 
 "magaziny," whatever that may mean; and Etna 
 was informed that it would appear in the next number
 
 ST. TWEVMO. ^5 
 
 if another was issued. The editor added that it 
 would be paid for at the regular rate, which was 
 $1.10 a page. 
 
 At this latter clause Etna smiled a smile of love 
 and triumph ; " For," she said, " there are forty pages, 
 and I can buy a new dictionary for myself, of which 
 I stand in need, and a New Testament for St. Twer- 
 mo, of which he stands in need, and also" — 
 
 But her countenance fell as she went on and read 
 that they paid nothing for quotations, which would 
 cut her article down to something less than three 
 pages. 
 
 She sighed, and thought how hard it is to earn 
 one's living by one's pen.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 ^TNA went to New-York, and assumed 
 her duties as nurse. It is recorded of 
 her that she made a very dry nurse indeed. 
 
 Two children were entrusted to her care ; one a 
 babe at the breast ; the other a precocious little fel- 
 low, with a weak back, named Felix. 
 
 The children made astonishing progress under her 
 tuition. The baby spoke an unintelligible tongue 
 before it was weaned, and Felix was well up in Hebrew 
 before the first six months were ended. Felix, how- 
 ever, though very proud of the language, remarked 
 that he didn't like the prayer of Habakkuk, or, as 
 he pronounced it, " A back ache." 
 
 Her manner of instilling knowledge into the young 
 mind was original and peculiar to herself. She en- 
 couraged them to ask questions which no one could 
 answer, and never lost an opportunity of telling them 
 something that they didn't know, and ought not to.
 
 ST. TWEVMO. r 67 
 
 The system is known as " object teaching," I think. 
 Thus to Felix one day, " No, my dear, the young 
 oyster does not derive nourishment in the same way 
 that your little brother does. The young oyster has 
 a mamma, but the maternal oyster has no mamma" 
 
 " That is singular," cried Felix. 
 
 " No, my dear," replied Etna, " it is plural." 
 
 " This is a great deprivation," she continued, " but 
 the meek resignation with which he submits to the 
 dispensation, the patience with which he blindly fum- 
 bles about the rocks for his food, should teach little 
 boys a lesson. 
 
 The parents of the children voted her a treasure, 
 for she talked the children to sleep, and the pare- 
 goric and soothing-syrup account dwindled down to 
 a merely nominal sum. In return, they allowed her 
 to receive as many calls as she pleased, provided 
 she herself answered the bell. 
 
 That her visits were not those. of angels may be 
 inferred from the number • they were neither few 
 nor far between. Her article in the magazine had 
 sent all the Galactophagists to their dictionaries, 
 and they could not find more than half the words 
 there. In consequence, they came to Etna for elu- 
 cidation, but she, unfortunately, had forgotten what
 
 1 68 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 the largest ones meant. The effect of Etna's article 
 was such that the magazine in which it appeared was 
 afterwards published only once in two months instead 
 of twice a month as at first, which was a vast im- 
 provement and delighted the public greatly. All 
 this won for Etna great reputation, and finally she 
 had an offer to write for the Ledger. 
 
 Among the many who came to call, came an editor 
 with a " granite mouth." 
 
 No, it was not Marble, nor yet the late Dr. Stone, 
 and the reader need not indulge in conjectures as to 
 what editor it may be. It is quite enough to say that 
 he wanted to marry Etna — a fact which at once estab- 
 lishes him as a man of determination and daring. 
 
 Etna refused him. No one could guess why, for 
 he owned a paper of his own, and was in a fair way 
 of obtaining a foreign mission, as his party, then in 
 power, had long been looking for a pretext to get him 
 out of the country.* When asked the reason of her 
 refusing so eligible an offer, Etna replied it was his 
 granite month; she did not like the formation. 
 
 Indeed, she had no end of offers. An English 
 lord, tall and handsome, with long side-whiskers and 
 a double-barrelled eye-glass (it was «tf/Lord Lyons), 
 offered her marriage at sight.
 
 ST. TWELWTO. 169 
 
 It could scarcely be called a case of second sight, 
 on her part, for she didn't see it. 
 
 She replied by reciting three chapters from the 
 Gita-Govinda. " Great 'Evans ! " cried the lord, and 
 took passage for England the next day. .He will 
 probably never return to this country, unless it be 
 as a commissioner to settle the Alabama claims. 
 
 This thing must be kept up, thought Etna, and she 
 next published a book. This made a hit — striking 
 the publisher favorably, as he announced in a series 
 of fantastic advertisments. Type of the most won- 
 derful characters had to be cast expressly for the 
 production of this work, and the services of the 
 Learned Blacksmith were engaged as a chief proof- 
 reader — he should be kept well up in tongs, said 
 Etna. Fifteen cylinder presses were kept running 
 night and day to supply the demand, and the pub- 
 lisher was so broken down in health by the labor of 
 writing advertisements, answering questions, and 
 doing battle with the half-educated idiots who 
 couldn't understand the book that he took in a part- 
 ner and sailed himself for an uninhabited island to 
 recuperate his shattered constitution. He had a 
 good time on the island, and discovered some big 
 things in ornithology.
 
 i 7 o TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 In fact, never was there seen such a time. Peo- 
 ple came from all parts of the earth, including Bos- 
 ton, to see the authoress. She was photographed 
 and photosculptured, and the dear dickens only 
 knew what wasn't done to her ; and everybody 
 wanted to marry her, even little Felix, whom too 
 much learning had made mad. 
 
 But Etna wouldn't marry any body, and finally 
 sailed for England with the children, to get away 
 from importunities, and it is said that she even 
 turned longing eyes to Heaven — where it is popular- 
 ly supposed that there is neither marriage nor 
 giving in marriage — as a refuge. 
 
 In England every body wanted to marry her, and 
 the yacht club gave her a dinner. In return she 
 offered to present Prince Alfred with a copy of her 
 book, which he respectfully declined, saying that he 
 could not think of accepting any thing so valuable. 
 She was even importuned to lecture in Exeter Hall 
 paying* the expenses of the building herself and 
 guaranteeing that the furniture should not be de- 
 molished by the audience. This proposition she 
 refused. But she consented to read an essay in 
 private, upon the points of similarity between the 
 Christian deities and heathen gods ; the essay was
 
 ST. TWEL'MO. 171 
 
 spoken of by those who heard it as " a most exhaus- 
 tive one" — indeed, it must have been, for nearly all 
 who sat it through sank off to sleep. 
 
 Little Felix died. But Etna was somewhat con- 
 soled for the death of her charge by hearing of the 
 " new birth" of her lover. The first dispatch — the 
 Atlantic cable was not working very well then — spelt 
 it berth, and stated that St. Twel'mo had been 
 ordained as a circus rider. But a letter by the 
 Cunard corrected the canard, and Etna learnt, to her 
 great joy, that Circuit rider was meant, and her 
 beloved was a minister. 
 
 At first she could not believe the news, but re- 
 turning to Chattanooga, as soon as steam and rail 
 could carry her, she found it confirmed. He had 
 run through most of his property, people said, and 
 no other profession was open to him. 
 
 The war breaking out just then, Etna determined 
 that St. Twel'mo should not be at peace, and 
 married him. She knew that the cause of the South 
 was pure and just, and that they had a right to forts, 
 arsenals, territory, and things that they had not paid 
 for, and she was perfectly willing to sacrifice her 
 best beloved to establish the sincerity of her con- 
 victions. Partly by her influence, but chiefly for
 
 I7 2 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 lack of any other material, he was made Bishop by 
 brevet, and Brigadier-General by confirmation. Un- 
 fortunately, for the cause which she knew to be 
 pure and just, his sermons bored his soldiers sadly, 
 while his generalship did not at all harass the enemy. 
 Had the Northern forces been obliged to face his 
 sermons instead of taking his positions, in all human 
 probability, the contest would have terminated differ- 
 ently. 
 
 As it was, however, the victorious armies swept 
 over and around Lookout Mountain, and surrender, 
 on the part of its defenders, became a Pantheistic 
 Necessity — the bear-garden was stripped naked, the 
 elephants, rhinoceroses, etc., having been killed and 
 eaten by the half-starved soldiery, in the first stages 
 of the siege. The Herring safe was carried off and 
 did duty for memorable months of the campaign as 
 a meat-safe at the headquarters of the invading army. 
 In short, if any one can find a trace of Le Beaucage 
 in the vicinity of Lookout Mountain, point to its 
 locality, or even bring forward a reliable gentleman 
 or intelligent contraband who ever saw it, he will be 
 rewarded handsomely. St. Twel'mo is shelved. 
 
 My story is done. I am not aware that it has any
 
 ST. TWEVMO. 173 
 
 moral, nor did I design any in the outset, beyond 
 indicating the danger of leaving dictionaries in the 
 way of children, and pointing that peculiarity in 
 woman's nature which inspires them to love those 
 who beat and bite them. However, if any can 
 glean other morals from it, they are at perfect liberty 
 so to do. 
 
 JOHN PAUL.
 
 LESSONS IN BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 {An extract from the life of Dr. Pozz, in ten volumes, 
 folio, written by J 'antes Bozz, Esq., who flourished 
 with him near fifty years.) 
 
 By Rev. James Beresford. 
 
 E dined at die chop-house ; Dr. Pozz was 
 this day very instructive. Talking of 
 books, I mentioned the " History of Tommy 
 Trip, and said it was a great work." Pozz. 
 — " Yes, sir, it is great, relatively; it was a great work 
 to you when you were a little boy ; but now, sir, you 
 are a great man, and Tommy Trip is a little man." 
 
 Feeling somewhat hurt at this comparison, — I 
 believe he perceived it, for as he was squeezing a 
 lemon, he said, — "Never be affronted at a comparison ; 
 I have been compared to many things, yet I never 
 was affronted at a comparison. No, sir, if they were
 
 LESSONS IN BIOGRAPHY. 175 
 
 to call me a dog, and you a canister tied to my tail, 
 I should not be affronted." 
 
 Cheered by this kind mention of me, though in 
 such company, I asked him what he thought of a 
 friend of ours who was always making comparisons. 
 Pozz. — " Sir, that fellow has a simile for everything. 
 I knew him when he kept shop, — he then made 
 money, and now he makes comparisons ; he would 
 say, for instance, that you and I were two figs stuck 
 together, two figs in adhesion, and then he would 
 laugh." 
 
 To this vivid exertion of intellect, I observed in 
 reply, " Certain great writers have determined that 
 comparisons are odious." Pozz. " No, sir, not odious 
 as comparisons. The fellows who make them are 
 odious ; the whigs make comparisons." 
 
 We supped that evening at his house, when I took 
 an opportunity of showing him a copy of verses I 
 had made on a pair of breeches. Pozz. — " Sir, the 
 lines are good ; but where do you find such a subject 
 in Scotland? Bozz. — " The greater the proof of in- 
 vention, which is a characteristic of Poetry." Pozz. — 
 " Yes, sir, but it is an invention which few of your 
 countrymen can enjoy." I reflected afterwards on the 
 depth of this remark. It affords a proof of that
 
 176 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 profundity which he displays in every branch of 
 literature. 
 
 Having accidentally asked him if he approved of 
 green spectacles, he made answer : " As to green spec- 
 tacles, sir, the question seems to be this, — if I wore 
 green spectacles, it would be because they assisted 
 vision, or because I liked them ; but if a man were to 
 tell me he did not like green spectacles, and that they 
 hurt his eyes, I do not compel him to wear them. No, 
 sir, I would rather dissuade him from making use of 
 them." 
 
 A few months after, I consulted him again on 
 this subject, and he honored me with a letter, in 
 which he confirmed his former opinion : it may be 
 found in the proper place, vol vi. page 2789. 
 And having since that time maturely considered the 
 point myself, I must needs confess, that in all 
 such matters, a man ought to be a free moral agent. 
 
 The next day I left town for six weeks, three days 
 and seven hours, as I find by a memorandum in my 
 Journal. During this time I received only one letter 
 from him, which is as follows : 
 " To James Bozz, Esq. 
 " Dear Sir," 
 
 " My bowels have been very bad ; Pray buy for me
 
 LESSONS IN BIOGRAPHY. 177 
 
 some Turkey rhubarb, and bring with you a copy of 
 your tour. Write me soon, and write me often. 
 " I am, dear sir, 
 
 " Yours affectionately, 
 
 "Sam. Pozz." 
 
 It would have been unpardonable to have omitted 
 a letter in which we see so much of his great and illu- 
 minated mind. 
 
 On my return to town, we met again at the 
 chop-house, and had a long as well as a highly inter- 
 esting conversation ; indeed, there is not one hour 
 of my life in which I do not profit by some part of 
 his valuable communications. 
 
 On medical subjects his knowledge was immense. 
 He told me that one of our friends had just been 
 attacked by an alarming complaint. He had entire- 
 ly lost the use of his limbs, — he was speechless, — 
 his eyes swollen, and every vein distended ; yet his 
 face was pale, and .his extremities cold, at the same 
 time his pulse beat one hundred and sixty strokes 
 in a minute. 
 
 I said, with tenderness, that I would immediately 
 
 go and see him, and take Dr. Bolus with me. Pozz. — 
 
 " No, sir, don't go." I was startled at so unexpected 
 
 a reply, well knowing his compassionate heart, and 
 
 12
 
 1 7 8 TREA SURE- TRO VE. 
 
 earnestly demanded of him the reason why I should 
 not procure for the afflicted person instant relief. 
 Pozz. — " Sir, you do not know his disorder." Bozz. 
 — " Pray what is it ? " Pozz. — " Sir, the man is dead 
 drunk." 
 
 This explanation threw me into a violent fit of 
 laughter, in which he joined me, rolling about as he 
 used to do when he enjoyed a joke ; but he after- 
 wards checked me, by the following words : " Sir, 
 you ought not to laugh at what I said, for he who 
 laughs at what another man says, will soon laugh 
 at that other man. Sir, you ought to laugh but sel- 
 dom. You ought to laugh only at your own jokes." 
 
 Talking of a friend of ours, who was a very vio- 
 lent politician, I said " I did not like his company." 
 Pozz. — "No, sir, he is not healthy, he is sore. Sir, 
 his mind is ulcerated, — he has a political whitlow ; 
 you cannot touch him, sir, without giving him pain. 
 I would never venture to speak on political subjects 
 with that man ; I would talk of cabbage and of 
 peas. Sir, I would ask him how he got his corn in, 
 but I would not meddle with politics." Bozz. — " But 
 perhaps, sir, he would talk of nothing else." Pozz. 
 — " Then it is plain what he would do." On my ear- 
 nestly entreating him to tell me what that was, Dr
 
 LESSONS IN BIOGRA PHY. 1 7 9 
 
 Bozz replied : " Sir, he would let everything else 
 alone." 
 
 I mentioned a tradesman who had lately set up a 
 coach. Pozz. — " You are right, sir, a man who would 
 go on swimmingly cannot be too soon off his legs. 
 You tell me he keeps a coach ; now, sir, a coach is 
 better than a chaise ; sir, it is better than a chariot." 
 Bozz.—" Why, sir ?" Pozz.—" It will hold more." I 
 begged he would repeat this valuable observation, 
 in order to impress it on my memory, and he com- 
 plied with great good-humor. 
 
 Taking a hint from the subject of our present 
 conversation, I said : " Dr. Pozz, you ought to keep 
 a coach." Pozz. — " Yes, sir, I ought." Bozz. — " But 
 you do not, and this has often surprised me." Pozz. 
 — "Surprised you ! There, sir, is another prejudice of 
 absurdity. Sir, you ought to be surprised at noth- 
 ing ; a man who has lived half so long as you, ought 
 to be above surprise. It is a rule with me, sir, nev- 
 er to be surprised." 
 
 "This is an error," continued Dr. Pozz, "pro- 
 duced by ignorance ; you cannot guess why I do 
 not keep a coach, and you are surprised ! now sir, 
 if you did know, you would not be surprised." I said 
 tenderly, " I hope, my dear sir, you will let me
 
 180 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 know before I leave town." Pozz. — " Yes, sir, you 
 shall now know ; the reason why I do not keep a 
 coach is, because I can't afford it." 
 
 We talked of drinking ; I asked him whether, in 
 the course of his long and valuable life, he had not 
 known some men who drank more than they could 
 bear. Pozz. — "Yes, sir, and then nobody could bear 
 them ; a man who is drunk, sir, is a very foolish fel- 
 low. Pozz. — But, sir, as the poet says, he is devoid of 
 all care." Pozz. — " That is true, sir, he cares for no- 
 body ; he has none of the cares of life ; he cannot be 
 a merchant, sir, for he is unable to write his name ; 
 he cannot be a politician, sir, for he is almost 
 speechless ; he cannot be an artist, sir, for he is 
 nearly blind ; and yet, sir, there is a science in 
 drinking." Pozz. — "I suppose you mean that a man 
 ought to know what he drinks." Pozz. — No, sir, to 
 know what one drinks is nothing, but the science 
 consists of three parts ; in knowing when we have 
 had too little, when we have had too much, and 
 when we have had enough. For instance, there is 
 our friend * * * *, he can always tell when he 
 has too little, and when he has too much, but never 
 knows when he has enough." 
 
 We talked this clay on a variety of subjects, but I
 
 LESSONS IN BIOGRAPHY. 181 
 
 find few memorandums in my journal ; on small 
 beer, he said it was a flatulent liquor He disap- 
 proved of those who deny the utility of absolute pow- 
 er, and seemed to be offended with a friend of ours 
 who would always have his eggs poached. Sign 
 posts, he observed, had very much degenerated with- 
 in his memory, and he found great fault with the 
 moral of the Beggar's Opera. 
 
 I endeavored to defend a play which had afforded 
 me so much pleasure, but could not muster that 
 strength of mind with which he argued ; and it was 
 with great satisfaction that he afterwards communi- 
 cated to me a method of curing corns by the appli- 
 cation of a piece of oiled silk. In the early history 
 of the world he preferred Sir Isaac Newton to chro- 
 nology ; but as they gave employment to so many 
 hands, he did not dislike the large shoe-buckles then 
 in the fashion. 
 
 Next day we dined at the Mitre ; I mentioned 
 spirits. Pozz. — " Sir, there is as much evidence for 
 the existence of spirits as against it ; you may not 
 believe it ; but you cannot deny it." I told him that 
 my great grandmother once saw a spirit ; he desired 
 me to relate the circumstances, which I did very 
 minutely, while he listened with profound attention.
 
 182 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 When I mentioned that the spirit once appeared 
 in the shape of a shoulder of mutton, and another 
 time in that of a tea-pot, he interrupted me. Pozz. — 
 "There, sir, is the point, the evidence is good, but 
 the scheme is defective in consistency ; we cannot 
 deny that the spirits appeared in these shapes ; but 
 then we cannot reconcile them ; for what has a tea- 
 pot to do with a shoulder of mutton ? The objects, 
 sir, are neither terrific nor contemporaneous ; they 
 are never seen at the same time, nor in the same 
 place." Pozz. — " I think, sir, that ghosts are most 
 often seen by old women." Pozz. — " Yes, sir, and their 
 conversation is generally full of the subject; I would 
 prefer old women to record such circumstances, 
 their loquacity tends to minuteness." 
 
 A few days after this interesting and enlightened 
 conversation, we talked of a person who had a very 
 bad character. Pozz. — " Sir, he is a scoundrel." 
 Bozz. — " I hate a scoundrel." Pozz. — " There you are 
 wrong ; I would not have you hate scoundrels ; 
 scoundrels, sir, are useful ; there are many things 
 we cannot do without scoundrels. I should not 
 choose to keep company with scoundrels ; neither 
 would I introduce them to my wife and children ; 
 but something may begot from them." Bozz. — " Are
 
 LESSONS IN BIOGRAPHY. 183 
 
 not scoundrels for the most part fools ? " Pozz. — " No 
 sir, they are not. A scoundrel must be a clever fel- 
 low ; he must know many things of which a fool is 
 ignorant. Any man may be a fool, but to be a com- 
 plete rascal, requires considerable abilities. I think 
 a good book might be written on the subject of scoun- 
 drels : a Biographia Flagitiosa, or the lives of em- 
 inent scoundrels, from the earliest accounts to the 
 present time." 
 
 Hanging was mentioned in the course of the con- 
 versation, and I observed that it was a very awkward 
 situation. Pozz. — "No, sir, hanging is not an 
 awkward situation ; it is proper, sir, that a man whose 
 actions tend to flagitious obliquity should himself 
 be perpendicular." 
 
 I told Doctor Pozz, that I had lately been in 
 company with a number of gentlemen, all of whom 
 could recollect some friend or other who had been 
 hanged. Pozz. — " Yes, sir, we know those who have 
 been hanged, — that is a circumstance we can easily 
 recollect, and may safely mention, without fear of 
 offence, but we must not name those who deserve it — 
 such a proceeding would not be decorous in good 
 company ; it is one of those things we may think 
 but must not speak of.
 
 JOHN JENKINS ; 
 
 OR 
 
 THE SMOKER REFORMED. 
 
 By T. S. A— TH— R. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 NE cigar a day! " said Judge Boompointer. 
 " One cigar a day ! " repeated John 
 Jenkins, as with trepidation he dropped 
 his half consumed cigar under his work-bench. 
 
 " One cigar a day is three cents a day," remarked 
 Judge Boompointer, gravely ; " and do you know, 
 sir, what one cigar a day, or three cents a day, 
 amounts to in the course of four years? " 
 
 John Jenkins, in his boyhood, had attended the 
 village school, and possessed considerable arithmet-
 
 JOHN JENKINS. 185 
 
 ical ability. Taking up a shingle which lay upon 
 his work-bench, and producing a piece of chalk, 
 with a feeling of conscious pride he made an ex- 
 haustive calculation. 
 
 " Exactly forty-three dollars and eighty cents," he 
 replied, wiping the perspiration . from his heated 
 brow, while his face flushed with honest enthusiasm. 
 
 " Well, sir, if you saved three cents a day, instead 
 of wasting it, you would now be the possessor of a 
 new suit of clothes, an illustrated Family Bible, a 
 pew in the church, a complete set of Patent Office 
 Reports, a hymn-book, and a paid subscription to 
 Authitr's Home Magazine, which could be purchased 
 for exactly forty-three dollars and eighty cents ; 
 and," added the Judge, with increasing sternness, 
 " if you calculate leap-year, which you seem to have 
 strangely omitted, you have three cents more, sir • 
 three cents more ! What would that buy you, sir? " 
 
 " A cigar," suggested John Jenkins ; but, coloring 
 again deeply, he hid his- face. 
 
 " No, sir," said the Judge, with a sweet smile of 
 benevolence stealing over his stern features ; "prop- 
 erly invested, it would buy you that which passeth 
 all price. Dropped into the missionary-box, who 
 can tell what heathen, now idly and joyously wanton-
 
 186 TREA SURE-TRO VE. 
 
 ing in nakedness and sin, might be brought to a 
 sense of his miserable condition, and made, through 
 that three cents, to feel the torments of the wicked ?" 
 
 With these words the Judge retired, leaving John 
 Jenkins buried in profound thought. " Three cents 
 a day," he muttered. " In forty years I might be 
 worth four hundred and thirty-eight dollars and ten 
 cents, — and then I might marry Mary. Ah, Mary !" 
 The young carpenter sighed, and, drawing a twenty- 
 five cent daguerreotype from his vest-pocket, gazed 
 long and fervidly upon the features of a young girl 
 in book muslin and a coral necklace. Then, with 
 a resolute expression, he carefully locked the door 
 of his workshop and departed. 
 
 Alas ! his good resolutions were too late. We 
 trifle with the tide of fortune which too often nips 
 us in the bud and casts the dark shadow of misfor- 
 tune over the bright lexicon of youth ! That night 
 the half-consumed fragment of John Jenkins's cigar 
 set fire to his workshop and burned it up, together 
 with all his tools and materials. There was no 
 insurance.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE DOWNWARD PATH. 
 
 HEN you still persist in marrying John 
 Jenkins?" queried Judge Boompointer 
 as he playfully, with paternal familiarity, 
 lifted the golden curls of the village belle, Mary Jones. 
 
 "I do," replied the fair young girl, in a low voice, 
 that resembled rock candy in its saccharine firm- 
 ness, — " I do. He has promised to reform. Since 
 he lost all his property by fire — " 
 
 "The result of his pernicious habit, though he 
 illogically persists in charging it to me," interrupted 
 the Judge. 
 
 " Since then," continued the young girl, " he has 
 endeavored to break himself of the habit. He tells 
 me that he has substituted the stalks of the Indian 
 ratan, the outer part of a leguminous plant called
 
 188 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 the smoking-bean, and the fragmentary and uncon- 
 sumed remainder of cigars which occur at rare and 
 uncertain intervals along the road, which, as he in- 
 forms me, though deficient in quality and strength, 
 are comparatively inexpensive." And, blushing at 
 her own eloquence, the young girl hid her curls on 
 the Judge's arm. 
 
 " Poor thing ! " muttered "fudge Boompointer. 
 " Dare I tell her all ? Yet I must." * 
 
 " I shall cling to him," continued the young girl 
 rising with her theme, "as the young vine clings 
 to some hoary ruin. Nay, nay, chide me not, Judge 
 Boompointer. I will marry John Jenkins ! " 
 
 The Judge was evidently affected. Seating him- 
 self at the table, he wrote a few lines hurriedly upon 
 a piece of paper, which he folded and placed in the 
 fingers of the destined bride of John Jenkins. 
 
 "Mary Jones," said the Judge, with impressive 
 earnestness. " take this trifle as a wedding gift from 
 one who respects your fidelity and truthfulness. 
 At the altar let it be a reminder of me." And cov- 
 ering his face hastily with a handkerchief, the stern 
 and iron-willed man left the room. As the door 
 closed, Mary unfolded the paper. It was an order 
 on the corner grocery for three yards of flannel, a
 
 JOHN JENKINS. 189 
 
 paper of needles, four pounds of soap, one pound of 
 
 starch, and two boxes of matches ! 
 
 " Noble and thoughtful man ! " was all Mary Jones 
 
 could exclaim, as she hid her face in her hands and 
 
 burst into a flood of tears. 
 
 ***** 
 
 The bells of Cloverdale are ringing merrily. It is 
 a wedding. " How beautiful they look ! " is the 
 exclamation that passes from lip to lip, as Mary Jones, 
 leaning timidly on the arm of John Jenkins, enters 
 the church. But the bride is agitated, and the bride- 
 groom betrays a feverish nervousness. As they stand 
 in the vestibule, John Jenkins fumbles earnestly in his 
 vest-pocket. Can it be the ring he is anxious about ? 
 No. He draws a small brown substance from his 
 pocket, and biting off a piece, hastily replaces the 
 fragment and gazes furtively around. Surely no one 
 saw him ? Alas ! the eyes of two of that wedding party 
 saw the fatal act. Judge Boompointer shook his 
 head sternly. Mary Jones sighed "and breathed a 
 silent prayer. Her husband chewed !
 
 CHAPTER III. AND LAST. 
 
 HAT ! more bread? " said John Jenkins 
 gruffly. " You're always asking for 
 money for bread. D — nation ! Do you 
 want to ruin me by your extravagance ? " and as he 
 uttered these words he drew from his pocket a bottle 
 of whiskey, a pipe, and a paper of tobacco. Empty- 
 ing the first at a draught, he threw the empty bottle 
 at the head of his eldest boy, a youth of twelve sum- 
 mers. The missile stuck the child full in the temple, 
 and stretched him a lifeless corpse. Mrs. Jenkins, 
 whom the reader will hardly recognize as the once 
 gay and beautiful Mary Jones, raised the dead body 
 of her son in her arms, and carefully placing the un- 
 fortunate youth beside the pump in the back yard, 
 returned with saddened step to the house. At an- 
 other time, and in brighter days, she might have 
 wept at the occurrence. She was past tears now.
 
 JOHN JENKINS. 1 9 1 
 
 " Father, your conduct is reprehensible ! " said 
 little Harrison Jenkins, the youngest boy. " Where 
 do you expect to go when you die ? " 
 
 " Ah ! " said John Jenkins, fiercely ; " this comes 
 of giving children a liberal education ; this is the 
 result of Sabbath schools. Down, viper ! " 
 
 A tumbler thrown from the same parental fist laid 
 out the youthful Harrison cold. The four other 
 children had, in the mean time, gathered around the 
 table with anxious expectancy. With a chuckle, 
 the now changed and brutal John Jenkins produced 
 four pipes, and, filling them with tobacco, handed 
 one to each of his offspring and bade them smoke. 
 H It's better than bread ! " laughed the wretch, 
 hoarsely. 
 
 Mary Jenkins though of a patient nature, felt it 
 her duty now to speak. " I have borne much, John 
 Jenkins," she said. " But I prefer that the children 
 should not smoke. It is an unclean habit, and soils 
 their clothes. I ask this as a special favor ! " 
 
 John Jenkins hesitated, — the pangs of remorse 
 began to seize him. 
 
 " Promise me this, John ! " urged Mary upon her 
 knees. 
 
 " I promise I " reluctantly answered John.
 
 r 9 2 TREA SURE- TRO VE. 
 
 " And you will put the money in a savings-bank ?" 
 
 '■ I will," repeated her husband ; " and I'll give up 
 smoking, too." 
 
 " 'T is well, John Jenkins ! " said Judge Boom- 
 pointer, appearing suddenly from behind the door, 
 where he had been concealed during this interview. 
 " Nobly said ! my man. Cheer up! I will see that 
 the children are decently buried." The husband 
 and wife fell into each other's arms. And Judge 
 Boompointer, gazing upon the affecting spectacle, 
 burst into tears. 
 
 From that day John Jenkins was an altered man. v 
 
 BRET HARTK
 
 HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 
 
 Adapted from the Chinese of Hou-de-Kaw-Lim* 
 
 BY T. T. T. 
 
 ORE graceful than the bamboo, and fairer 
 than rice, was So-Sli, the daughter of the 
 philosopher Poo-Poo. Her foot was no 
 longer than her finger ; so that, when she walked, 
 she tottered in the most engaging manner, and was 
 obliged to seek the support of a reed or of a hand- 
 maiden. So light was her form, and so lovely was 
 her face, and so helpless was her air, that, when she 
 
 * A writer as prolific and various as our own Anon. He resembles 
 that writer, too, in the ill-fortune which has militated against his ob- 
 taining the fame due to his genius and industry, from the authorship 
 of all his most excellent works having been uniformly claimed by 
 unprincipled and shameless persons, who have succeeded in tearing 
 the bamboo-sprigs from his brows. He is still living, though arrived at 
 a patriarchal age. No library can be considered complete without a 
 collected edition of his works. — T. T. T.
 
 1 94 TREASURE- TRO VE. 
 
 appeared abroad, she attracted the notice of all, as 
 a straw which a juggler of Shanghai balances on 
 the tip of his nose. Her brows were arched like 
 the feathers in the tail of the domestic bird of the 
 river; her eyes were smaller than the kernels of the 
 almond, and were free from the disfigurement of 
 lashes ; her hair was like a cobweb of the black 
 spiders of Chensi ; her nose was small and beau- 
 tifully flat ; her lips were as two large pink cater- 
 pillars, which the cooks of Pecheli have prepared 
 in the banquet for the Son of Heaven. The fame 
 of her loveliness had spread through the province 
 Kiang-Si ; and many a manly spirit yearned towards 
 her, even upon the report of her beauty. 
 
 Many were the solicitations made to her father 
 for the hand of the lovely So-Sli ; and he might 
 have married her to mandarins, both civil and 
 military, as many as he. pleased. But old Poo-Poo 
 was a sage and a philanthropist, and hai devoted 
 himself much to the investigation of causes of 
 human happiness and misery, and had determined 
 that marriage might be highly conducive to one or 
 to the other, according as it should be, or should 
 not be, conducted upon scientific principles. Of 
 the scientific principles upon which marriage should
 
 HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 195 
 
 be conducted, he had formed a theory of his own ; 
 and it had been a source of the deepest regret to 
 him, that he had not devised his theory until after 
 his own marriage. 
 
 However, as his wife was now dead, that had 
 become a matter of comparatively little importance. 
 He determined that his daughter should have the 
 full benefit to be derived from his idea ; and, for a 
 Chinese, it must be conceded that his principles 
 exhibited much liberality of feeling. This was 
 particularly evinced in one of his theorems, — a 
 theorem which, however, appeared in the eyes of 
 his countrymen so extraordinary, that, but for some 
 charitable doubts which were entertained as to his 
 sanity, it would probably have brought down upon 
 him the heavy displeasure of the government. 
 
 He was the first of the Celestial people who had 
 ever questioned or doubted the propriety of a 
 marriage between persons who had had no previous 
 acquaintance with each other. He was rash enough 
 to start and maintain this opinion ; and, further- 
 more, he considered that a certain somewhat of 
 congeniality should subsist between, and be dis- 
 covered by, the parties, before they should proceed 
 to bind themselves indissolubly together. He
 
 196 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 determined, therefore, not only that his daughter 
 should see her future lord before she became a 
 wife, but such was the peculiar tenderness of his 
 paternal affection, and so far had the heresy oi 
 innovation possessed him, that she should not be 
 made over to any person towards whom she mani- 
 fested a decided dislike. 
 
 Two great mandarins, Hang-Yu and Yu-be- 
 Hung, and a certain rich merchant, Tin, had sent 
 costly presents to her father ; and the eloquent 
 Tung, a graduate of the college of Hanlan, had 
 composed ten volumes of moral sentences in praise 
 of the beauty of So-Sli : but though he perused the 
 books, and graciously accepted the presents, Poo- 
 Poo rejected these applicants, who lived too far off 
 to make their addresses in person. It fared no 
 better with many of various rank, — manufacturers, 
 and proprietors of rice-grounds, silk-feeders, barge- 
 owners, and officers, civil and military, who, dwell- 
 ing in the neighborhood, had opportunities of seeing, 
 and of being looked upon by, the lovely eyes of 
 So-Sli. She had expressed herself as being by no 
 means averse to Tung, or to Tin, to Hang-Yu, or 
 Yu-be-Hung ; but these she had never seen. Those 
 whom she saw found no favor in her sight. One
 
 HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 197 
 
 was too tall ; another was too short ; a third was too 
 fat ; a fourth too thin ; this too gay ; and that too 
 serious. Ting-a-Ting's voice was too gentle : Ding- 
 Dong's was too loud. One was too fond of sweet- 
 potato, and sweet-potato she disliked : another, not 
 sufficiently partial to dog, and dog was her favorite 
 dish. In fact, So-Sli was by no means easy to 
 please. 
 
 Here we may pause to remark, that the multi- 
 plicity of presents which for a long time poured in 
 upon Poo-Poo were well-nigh procuring converts to 
 his system among old gentlemen who had marriage- 
 able daughters ; but at last suitors grew chary of 
 their presents, and withheld them till an interview 
 with the young lady should have sealed their 
 fortune. 
 
 In the town in which dwelt Poo-Poo and his 
 lovely daughter So-Sli, there resided a young man 
 who boasted his relationship to the imperial family, 
 being, in fact, a descendant from an emperor who 
 had occupied the throne about a hundred and fifty 
 years before. 
 
 The Emperor of China looks with commendable 
 affection upon all his poor relations, of whom he 
 keeps an inventory of about ten thousand ; and,
 
 198 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 according to their several degrees of affinity, he 
 allots to all, by a graduated scale, certain annual 
 stipends, and permits them to wear some badge by 
 which they may be distinguished as being of his 
 kin. This badge, whether cloak, or shawl, or belt, 
 or cap, is of the imperial color, yellow ; and in the 
 particular instance of Ho-Fi, the young man of 
 whom we speak, was a silken girdle, whence he was 
 known throughout that neighborhood as Ho-Fi of 
 the Yellow Girdle. He furthermore enjoyed an 
 allowance of three dollars, and two sacks of rice 
 per month. 
 
 Being thus a cousin, though a distant one, of the 
 Son of Heaven, he would have considered it much 
 beneath his dignity to have followed for his liveli- 
 hood any profession or trade ; and, as he had 
 desires and ambition to which his means were quite 
 inadequate, he was driven to curious shifts, at times, 
 in the vulgar words of the west, to procure salt for 
 his porridge, or, indeed, porridge for his salt. 
 
 Ho-Fi heard all the tongues of the neighborhood 
 eloquent in praise of the beauty of So-Sli ; but he 
 heard them, likewise, no less voluble in condemna- 
 tion of her whimsicality and waywardness. Fresh 
 stories were every day told of her rejection of some
 
 HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 199 
 
 meritorious suitor; and, as none seemed likely to 
 prove altogether agreeable to her very fastidious 
 taste, those who would have been glad to obtain 
 such a prize became shy of advancing their claims. 
 But Ho-Fi, with less intrinsic worth than many, was 
 not of a character to be daunted by the fear of the 
 negotiation proving unsatisfactory ; and he resolved 
 to enlist himself as one of the competitors for the 
 hand of So-Sli. 
 
 Ho-Fi, though quite a young man, had already 
 been six times married, and on every occasion had 
 had the misfortune to lose his wife within a few 
 weeks after their union. As seven is accounted a 
 particularly fortunate number, it is not to be won- 
 dered at that he was desirous to adventure once 
 more. His six dear wives were all laid on the shelf 
 together ; and he wanted one other in order " to 
 make up a set." 
 
 Ho-Fi rejoiced in many advantages which had 
 already several times stood him in good stead in 
 circumstances somewhat similar to those in which he 
 was about to exert his tactics. He was possessed 
 of what his lovely countrywomen were prone to 
 consider a handsome person. His finger-nails, by 
 virtue of well-contrived splints, he managed to
 
 200 TREASURE-TROVE, 
 
 maintain an inch and a half in length; he was 
 quite free from whiskers or beard ; and his head was 
 always kept cleanly shaven, except the usual tuft at 
 the crown, which, of peculiar blackness and strength, 
 and neatly tied up with silk, depended down his 
 back almost to the bend of his knee. He was par- 
 ticular, moreover, in his dress ; and, as it was well 
 known that his funds were of the most limited, it 
 was a matter of surprise among his neighbors how 
 he became possessed of so very respectable a ward- 
 robe. And, if this was a mystery to them, what 
 wonder that I, a stranger and barbarian, am quite 
 unable to explain it ? I leave it to your conjectures, 
 and I feel sure that there are some among my 
 countrymen to whom a solution will be intuitively 
 easy. Person and dress, it will be admitted, serve 
 as two powerful talismans in such adventures as that 
 upon which he was going to set forth ; but he was 
 possessed of other advantages incalculably more 
 important. These were a limitless assurance, and 
 that determined perseverance, which, disregarding 
 repulses, returns again and again to the charge ; 
 or which in simpler phrase, will not take no for an 
 answer. To these may be added an adaptability of 
 disposition, which could fall in with the humors of
 
 HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 20 1 
 
 all parties, and a readiness in discovering the weak 
 points of the enemy, and directing an attack accord- 
 ingly. 
 
 " 'Tis but venturing," said Ho-Fi ; " and, if I fail, 
 I will not hang myself up by my pig-tail, like a Boo- 
 Bee, nor run myself through with a thumb-nail, like 
 a Ni-Ni." Boo-Bee and Ni-Ni were two celebrated 
 Werters of China. 
 
 His design thus formed, he set systematically to 
 work to carry it into effect, and began by picking 
 acquaintance with the philosopher Poo-Poo. Ob- 
 serving that venerable person cheapening the hind- 
 quarter of a prize pole-cat in the meat-market, with 
 his usual ease and address he managed to fall into 
 conversation with him ; and by a little banter, from 
 time to time, agreeably directed to the butcher, soon 
 obtained for the philosopher that abatement in the 
 price of the tempting morsel, for which Poo-Poo 
 himself might, probably, in vain have striven. Hav- 
 ing declared his own predilection for pole-cat, and 
 particularly for the hind-quarter, he led the dis- 
 course by easy gradations from pole-cats to weasels, 
 from weasels to rats, from rats to dogs, from dogs to 
 pigs, from pigs to his fair countrywomen, and so to 
 the celebrated beauty So-Sli, the daughter of the
 
 202 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 sage Poo-Poo. Of the philosopher himself he ex- 
 pressed great admiration, and regretted that he was 
 not so fortunate as to enjoy his acquaintance, nay, 
 that he did not even so much as know him by sight. 
 Poo-Poo was a lover of wisdom ; but what philoso- 
 pher was ever yet proof against adulation ? or would 
 not feel gratified at overhearing his own praises in 
 cases like the present, where they could not be in- 
 tended as flattery? Ho-Fi had already secured 
 himself a high place in the philosophical estimation 
 of Poo-Poo. 
 
 It will readily be supposed that Poo-Poo was not 
 anxious to turn the conversation out of the channel 
 into which it had thus accidentally flowed ; and he 
 sounded his new friend's opinions on the subject of 
 his pet matrimonial theory. This Ho-Fi of course 
 applauded " to the very echo," by which expression 
 is intended that his words were mere mockery, vox 
 et pretcrea nihil. 
 
 " Were you to ask me," said he, " who is the 
 greatest of ancient or modern sages, I should 
 answer, Poo-Poo. Were you to ask me, who, of all, 
 has advanced a theory most likly to be extensively 
 beneficial to the human race, I should answer, Poo- 
 Poo. Nor do I doubt but that the day will come
 
 HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 203 
 
 when the wisdom of Poo-Poo will be universally 
 admitted, and his name be adduced as a conclusive 
 settlement of all disputed questions ; when, if any 
 one shall be asked his reason, he will answer, Poo- 
 Poo ; if he be asked his authority, he will answer, 
 Poo-Poo ; when criticism will be condensed in those 
 two syllables, Poo-Poo ; and when those same two 
 syllables, Poo-Poo, will suffice to upset criticism ; in 
 short, when he that speaks Poo-Poo the loudest will 
 be the best logician, and when all discussion will be 
 but a matter of Poo-Poo." 
 
 That day Ho-Fi dined with Poo-Poo on the hind- 
 quarter of the prize pole-cat. 
 
 The morsel was small, but it was choice. 
 
 Having so soon and so easily insinuated himself 
 into the good graces of the father, he next sought 
 an opportunity of winning his way into those of the 
 daughter. He boldly expressed his desire to Poo- 
 Poo ; and a day was settled upon which he should 
 be formally introduced to her, — a ceremony not to 
 be conducted with too great precipitation. In the 
 interval, he was careful to collect all information 
 regarding the whims and prejudices of the lovely 
 So-Sli. 
 
 He came, he saw. He conquered ; or, we should
 
 204 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 rather write, he came, she saw, he conquered. His 
 attire was studiously elegant ; and he had selected 
 such colors as he had found, from the report of some 
 of her acquaintance, were the most agreeable to her. 
 His beautifully-embroidered petticoat of crimson 
 silk was well calculated to take the feminine fancy ; 
 his shawl might have won the heart even of an Eng- 
 lish lady ; his cap he had procured from one of the 
 most eminent modistes of Pekin; and the tippet, 
 which formed part of out-door dress, was of the 
 most costly fur. His long black hair was carefully 
 plaited, and hung far down his back; he wore a 
 necklace of pearls, much coveted by his young com- 
 petitors in fashion ; his scent-bottle was replenished 
 with the choicest essence ; and he carried a valuable 
 fan, which he flourished with peculiar grace. 
 
 This attention to externals produced at once a 
 favorable impression upon So-Sli, who was herself 
 particular in her attire. She usually wore a long 
 frock-coat of blue or green cloth over a pink waist- 
 coat ; and her trousers were always of the newest cut. 
 She went to considerable expense to procure the 
 most elegant pipes, and piqued herself upon her nice 
 judgment in her choice of tobacco. 
 
 The town, like some other Chinese towns, was
 
 ffO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 205 
 
 upon the point of surrendering to the formidable 
 " demonstration " made by the enemy ; but when he 
 opened upon it simultaneously the light artillery of 
 flattery and the heavy artillery of gifts (the latter 
 consisting of two great guns, — the one a gold snuff- 
 box, and the other a Chinese poodle), the gates flew 
 open, and he marched in triumph into the citadel, — 
 his lady's heart. The vanquished So-Sli kept the 
 snuff-box, ate the poodle, and accepted the heart and 
 the hand of Ho-Fi. 
 
 They were married, and a fortnight flew by in two 
 days ; or, perhaps, the young pair made some miscal- 
 culation, as the almanacs had not predicted this. 
 
 The cranium, we would observe, is the dwelling- 
 house of the soul ; the organ of time is its time- 
 piece : but, when the soul sits all day in its back- 
 rooms, it sometimes forgets to wind up its clock. 
 
 Each was constantly devising means to gratify the 
 other; and the only occasions of strife that arose 
 between them were when each endeavored to force 
 upon the other the choicest morsels of fox, or ferret, 
 or frog, or whatever constituted their delicate little 
 meal for the day. 
 
 One morning Ho-Fi for a while absented himself 
 from his beloved So-Sli, and went into the ciry.
 
 206 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 When he returned, he took from his pouch, or reti- 
 cule, a small packet of tea. 
 
 " My dearest So-Sli," he said, " I have a friend 
 who is particular in the cultivation of plants. With 
 so much skill and care are his experiments con- 
 ducted, that he has succeeded in obtaining bananas 
 from his orange-trees, and in converting a pine-apple 
 into a gooseberry. He has lately directed his atten- 
 tion to the improvement of a young tea-tree. He 
 planted it with a silver spade, manured it with silk- 
 worms and doves' marrow, and he daily waters the 
 earth around it with roe's teeth and cinnamon-juice. 
 He has hitherto gathered but two ounces of the 
 leaves, one of which has been presented to the em- 
 peror ; and the other he has transmitted to me, as 
 being the oldest of his friends. So I have brought 
 it here for my darling So-Sli. As you love me, 
 make an infusion of its leaves, and drink." 
 
 " Nay," said So-Sli, " if it be so choice, you shall 
 drink it, not I. What exceedingly curious leaves ! 
 And what is most remarkable about them is, that 
 they are exactly like others. But what is this dust 
 upon them ? " 
 
 " That," answered Ho-Fi, " is a substance derived 
 from the silkworms, and is what, had they not been
 
 HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 207 
 
 buried, would have formed the down on the wings 
 when they became moths. But you must drink this 
 most dainty infusion : I have prepared it purposely 
 for you ; and to refuse it would be to show how little 
 you loved your tender Ho-Fi." 
 
 Whilst speaking, Ho-Fi had poured hot water on 
 the leaves ; and he offered to his beloved the cup 
 containing the fragrant infusion. She, however, 
 insisted that he should drink it ; and an affectionate 
 contest took place between them, each wishing to 
 give up > to the other all the enjoyment of so exquisite 
 a draught. So-Sli at first positively refused to taste 
 a drop ; then she would consent that he should leave 
 one sip for her ; and then, that, if he would take half, 
 she would drink the remainder. But Ho-Fi was ob- 
 stinately determined that she should have all, or at 
 least should take the first draught. At last their 
 affectionate entreaties began to change to tones of 
 anger and impatience ; when, to settle the matter at 
 once, So-Sli took the cup, and, proceeding to the 
 open window, emptied it in her husband's view, 
 declaring, that, as it had become a cause of quarrel, 
 it should not be tasted by either. 
 
 Their anger blew over, and several times since 
 they had taken tea together in perfect amity. One
 
 208 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 evening they were seated to that important occupa- 
 tion, and Ho-Fi had just finished his first cup, when 
 So-Sli observed she did not think the tea so good as 
 usual. Ho-Fi agreed with her in opinion, and, 
 using a common Chinese imprecation, wished a rot- 
 ten root to the tree that bore it. 
 
 " What ! " said So-Sli, bursting into a fit of uncon- 
 trollable laughter, " after all the pains your poor 
 friend has taken to nourish it with silkworms and 
 spice ? Oh ! now that is too cruel a desire ! " 
 
 Ho-Fi stared, and turned somewhat pale. 
 
 " Why do you revert to that subject ? " he said. 
 " Methinks it were better to let such a matter rest." 
 
 " Nay," said So-Sli, still laughing violently, " I 
 said you should drink the tea ; and, when I pretended 
 to pour it from the window, I poured it only into an 
 earthen pan which lay outside. I have had it 
 warmed for you now, but am sorry you like it so 
 little." 
 
 Ho-Fi turned very pale ; and his pigtail, with the 
 effect of fear, stood out horizontally and stiffly from 
 his head. For a few moments he was struck mo- 
 tionless ; but anon he started up, and called loudly 
 for warm water. 
 
 " Perfidious woman ! " he shrieked, " hast thou 
 poisoned thy husband ? "
 
 HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 209 
 
 " Poisoned ! " said So-Sli. " Was the tea then 
 poisoned ? I remember that white dust ; but can 
 moths' feathers poison ? " 
 
 " It burns ; it burns ! " cried Ho-Fi in a frantic 
 manner. " For Fo's sake bring me an emetic, a ' 
 stomach-pump — no, no, that is not yet invented — 
 but blisters, cataplasms, any thing ! " 
 
 He was put in bed ; physicians were sent for ; he 
 raved till he was exhausted, and then lay asleep, or 
 insensible, for some hours. When his sense re- 
 turned, he became aware of the expressions he had 
 used ; and, being calmer, he endeavored to explain 
 them away. He said that the tea was of such won- 
 derful potency as to have deprived him of reason 
 more rapidly than the strong spirit distilled from 
 rice could have done. He had fancied, in his delir- 
 ium, that his wife had put poison in his cup ; but he 
 now fully appreciated the absurdity of such a fear. 
 He should write to the friend from whom he had 
 received the leaves, a timely intimation, that, should 
 the emperor swallow the infusion intended for the 
 bodily solace of that Celestial person, he, the unfor- 
 tunate cultivator of this ardent tea, would unques- 
 tionably be put to death by all the ingenuities of 
 torture 
 
 1 
 
 14
 
 2io TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 Ho-Fi had a strong constitution to support him 
 against poisoned tea and three Chinese physicians- 
 He slowly recovered from their effects. 
 
 He was restored once more to his fond wife ; but, 
 fond as she had always shown herself, So-Sli could not 
 prevent the intrusion into her mind of an unpleasant 
 suspicion that her affectionate husband had offered 
 her poisoned tea from a too lively solicitude to put 
 her quite out of reach of those ugly customers, care 
 and sorrow. Long before her marriage, surmises 
 had been whispered, which had even reached her 
 ears, that at least a few of his former six wives had 
 been dealt with unfairly ; but no one, wife or other- 
 wise, volunteered any evidence against him ; and the 
 Chinese had not arrived at those refinements in 
 chemical science, which enable our western lumina- 
 ries, by distilling a bone, or making a fricassee of a 
 muscle, to detect the millionth part of the shadow of 
 nothing in one who is supposed to have died by 
 poison. 
 
 It could hardly have been hinted that a man was 
 such a Bluebeard, without strong reason assigned 
 for so supposing. Perhaps, to some minds, the mere 
 fact of his having been married six times, and hav- 
 ing, in every instance, become a widower within two
 
 HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 211 
 
 months, may suffice to justify a suspicion ; but, if 
 a motive should be sought that could render such 
 heinous villany probable, it might be mentioned, 
 that, on the marriage of a Yellow Girdle, he is 
 allowed by his cousin, the emperor, a sum of one 
 hundred taels (in addition to his usual stipend) to 
 assist in furnishing his house ; and, on the death of 
 his wife, one hundred and twenty more, to assist in 
 furnishing her sepulchre. And Ho-Fi was by no 
 means the first of whom it had been reported that 
 he had sought, by a succession of such profitable 
 marriages and deaths, to raise his very inconsidera- 
 ble income into a handsome competency. 
 
 So-Sli could not avoid a suspicion; but, as she 
 had really loved Ho-Fi, she tried to repress it, and 
 not to entertain such evil thoughts as must, if con- 
 firmed, have given a death-blow to her affection. 
 Still she was haunted by a fear that he might 
 endeavor by other devices to lay her on the shelf 
 with his former wives. The " shelf " whereupon his 
 former wives were laid was a shelf of rock at a 
 small distance from the city, — a place upon which 
 such persons as could not afford to purchase ground 
 for the burial of their deceased friends, availed 
 themselves of the common right of disposing coffins.
 
 212 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 He had, therefore, appropriated to himself a portion 
 of this ledge, where the six coffins of his wives were 
 ranged side by side, in the neatest order, like so 
 many volumes of one book, that might, not inappro- 
 priately, have been termed collectively, " The Works 
 of Ho-Fi." Upon each was inscribed the words, 
 "Wife of Ho-Fi," and the name, besides, of the 
 occupant as a brief table of contents. 
 
 I am sorry to say, that, had So-Sli been more sus- 
 picious than she was, she would therein have done 
 her husband no wrong. There was nothing he so 
 earnestly wished as to have his new volume firmly 
 put up in a camphor-wood binding, and neatly 
 lettered to match the others. 
 
 Ho-Fi remembered an incident in a famous Chi- 
 nese tragedy, an original device for disposing of an 
 obnoxious person, which he imagined he might turn 
 to felicitous account. He procured a savage dog, 
 and having purchased a lady's dress of peculiar 
 colors, and another of similar appearance, although 
 of inferior quality, he filled the latter with straw, 
 bones, and offal, and encouraged the fierce animal 
 to tear this effigy in pieces. The creature was well 
 pleased with the prize he discovered within ; and 
 Ho-Fi repeated his experiments on several succes
 
 HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 213 
 
 sive days. When he considered the dog to be suffi- 
 ciently familiarized with the figure, he tied him up, 
 and kept him for some time without food. The 
 insidious Yellow Girdle then made a present to his 
 lady of the other and choicer dress, expressing a 
 desire that she might immediately indue it. This, 
 not, however, until she had examined it with an 
 apprehensive eye, she did ; and he affected to be 
 much gratified at beholding her in her new garment. 
 He, however, pretended to have business which 
 would call him from home for an hour, and begged 
 that she would wait his return in a grotto in the 
 garden ; but he particularly requested that she 
 would allow no one to open a chest which he had 
 had placed in a court of the house, and of which 
 he said the fastening had been accidentally broken. 
 Excusing himself from explaining to her just then 
 what it contained, he promised that he would do 
 so by and by. 
 
 When So-Sli was left alone, she communed with 
 herself. "Who knows," she said, "what man-trap 
 or spring gun my beloved husband may have pre- 
 pared for me in the grotto ? " It will not, I fear, be 
 wise to enter thither. And what can be enclosed 
 within this chest, which he wishes to keep secret
 
 214 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 from me ? Now I would wager six pots of pickled 
 earth-worms that he has concealed in that the grave- 
 clothes which he intends for his affectionate So-Sli. 
 So-Sli, then, resolved to examine the chest forth- 
 with. But first she went to a cage, in which was 
 her husband's bird of good-luck, — a white-necked 
 crow. Ho-Fi valued this bird beyond all his 
 earthly possessions : he had made it tame, and had 
 attached it to him ; and he considered, that, whilst he 
 possessed it, no material ill-fortune could befall him. 
 So-Sli frequently fed it, and it had become fond of 
 her also, from which it was to be believed that its 
 kindly influence would extend to her. She took it 
 now from its cage, and placed it on her wrist, and 
 having tendered it a kiss, which was affectionately 
 received and reciprocated, she went into the yard to 
 discover the contents of the mysterious chest. She 
 unhesitatingly raised the lid, but let it fall again 
 with great precipitation, as, with a loud growl, a sav- 
 age dog attempted to spring from within. 
 
 So-Sli was off with greater expedition than is fre- 
 quently practised by the footless ladies of the 
 Flowery Land ; and the cover of the chest having 
 fallen on the back of Bou-Wou, — such was the 
 name of the fierce quadruped, — she was able to
 
 HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 215 
 
 gain a few paces before he had struggled from 
 beneath it. 
 
 It would soon, however, have been all over with 
 So-Sli, — for the dog had caught a glimpse of the 
 dress so familiar to him, and would, therefore, have 
 mistaken his mistress for his daily bread, — had she 
 not, with great presence of mind, seized Ho-Fi's 
 bird of good-luck by the neck, and, whisking it 
 rapidly three times round, thrown it to her hungry 
 pursuer. As he jumped aside to snap at this, So- 
 Sli reached the door, and, closing it against him, 
 secured it with several bolts. 
 
 When Ho-Fi returned, So-Sli told him that a 
 savage dog had got loose in the court, and that his 
 bird of good-luck had disappeared. 
 
 " As I looked in the cage," she said, " suddenly 
 I beheld him wax paler and paler, till, having be- 
 come thinner than mist, he passed between the bare ; 
 and what became of him after I cannot at all tell." 
 
 Ho-Fi was inconsolable for the loss of his bird. 
 " Better," said he, " to lose nine wives than to lose 
 a bird of good-luck." And inwardly he feared lest 
 the bird of good-luck having thus evaporated in 
 the presence of So-Sli might indicate the calamity 
 he most dreaded, — that he should lose no more 
 wives.
 
 216 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 In a few days, however, his invention was again 
 in active exercise. Perceiving that So-Sli's sus- 
 picions were awakened, he judged it best to send 
 his dog back to the place in which he had been 
 trained ; and he would not try a fresh experiment 
 with him. 
 
 Another week had passed : it was evening, and 
 the shadows of the western hills were gradually ex- 
 tending eastward over the richly-cultivated fields. 
 We mention this, not as necessary to the elucidation 
 of our story, but merely because an erroneous 
 opinion seems to have possessed the minds of many, 
 that shadows are unknown in China. The artists 
 of the Celestial Empire exhibit their hopeful charac- 
 ter by omitting the dark side of every picture. They 
 would make you believe that Peter Schlemihl's 
 friend had walked through the land, and bought 
 shadow and shade, every inch of the commodity. 
 Foreigners, however, have not discovered that 
 Nature, in this particular, has framed for China 
 laws different from those in operation over other 
 portions of the globe. But the Chinese seem really 
 unaware that shadow exists among them ; and in 
 their writings and discourse, as in their pictures, 
 always represent their country as an all-enlightened 
 land.
 
 HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 217 
 
 It was evening ; and the beautiful So-Sli was 
 sitting in a veranda, very diligently engaged in 
 embroidering a dress, and chewing betel, when Ho- 
 Fi approached, and, assuming an appearance of 
 sudden alarm and solicitude, exclaimed, — 
 
 " By the pig-tail and thumb-nails of Confuttsze, 
 explain to me what ails my ever sweetest So-Sli ! 
 What sudden and malevolent disease is endeavoring 
 to pick the lock of my casket of a thousand jewels ? 
 Your complexion, sweet mouse of my bosom, is like 
 silk ; your eyes are as dull as a stewed shark's fin ; 
 and I see well that you must be under the feeble 
 influence of the melancholic Saturn : thence cold 
 has gained a predominancy over heat in your tem- 
 perament, and dryness over moisture. Go, there- 
 fore, to your chamber ; avoid all yellow objects, and 
 also those of gloomy white ; you had better, indeed, 
 put out your lantern, and close your window, that 
 you may see nothing but a lively black about you. 
 I will go hence, lest the hue of my girdle exercise a 
 malignant effect upon you ; and, if you will betake 
 yourself to bed, I will send hither a physician of 
 great skill, who will feel your pulses, and determine 
 from the stars what medicines you should use." 
 
 The Chinese possess many secrets of physical
 
 % 18 TREASURE-TRO VE. 
 
 science quite unknown to the philosophers of Eu- 
 rope. Among others is the mysterious dependence 
 of particular colors upon particular planets ; yellow 
 upon Saturn, for example, and black upon Mercury. 
 White is their mourning color ; and black, as its 
 opposite, must needs, therefore, be regarded among 
 them as having a particularly gay and agreeable 
 character. 
 
 A Chinese physician is not content with feeling 
 one pulse of his patient : he must feel many. From 
 each he learns somewhat of the disease ; and he 
 needs no other indications to guide him. It is a 
 simple plan, and removes most of the difficulties 
 that beset the European doctor in the formation of 
 his diagnosis : pulse with him is every thing ; like 
 the Brahmin, he lives upon pulse. He consults, 
 indeed, the planets, as we did some centuries since ; 
 but in one thing he resembles our modern pharma- 
 copoeists, — that beyond all stars he believe in the 
 healing virtues of Mercury. 
 
 So-Sli wondered what the solicitude of her husband 
 might portend. Was Bou-Wou awaiting her in her 
 chamber, and preparing a dose of bark? "You 
 don't bite me so easily," thought So-Sli; and she 
 entreated Ho-Fi, that, if she should betake herself to
 
 HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 219 
 
 bed, he would retire to rest at the same time. He 
 excused himself on the ground that he must forth- 
 with call a physician ; and though for a while she 
 made some objections to this, — having ever enter- 
 tained a great dislike to doctor's stuff and doctor's 
 learning, which she classed together as stuff and 
 nonsense, she could not but give in at last, as he 
 insisted upon it with all the earnestness of affec- 
 tionate solicitude. 
 
 Ho-Fi accordingly went to seek the physician ; 
 and So-Sli taking a lantern, and having glanced in 
 a mirror to assure herself, of what all along she had 
 strongly suspected, that she was not so yellow as 
 silk, and that her eyes were not so dull as a stewed 
 shark's fin, proceeded to her chamber, and, very cau- 
 tiously opening the door, threw in a bone before she 
 would enter to find if the coast were clear. 
 
 As no dog snapped at the bone, So-Sli felt suffi- 
 ciently assured that her canine enemy was not in 
 the apartment. She ventured into it, therefore, but 
 moved about with great circumspection ; and she 
 examined the room with the utmost care, to discover 
 what danger might be concealed within it ; for she 
 had fully made up her mind that there was some. 
 
 She looked up the chimney ; she pryed in ever}
 
 220 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 corner ; she turned about the table and chairs ; she 
 looked in the oven under the bed. Yes, truly, the 
 oven was under the bed. So to place it is the com- 
 mon practice in the Chinese empire, and unquestion- 
 ably it is an acute plan. In one side of a chamber 
 is an arched recess, in which is placed the bed on a 
 raised platform, and beneath that the oven. What a 
 very cosey thing upon a winter's night ! The warm- 
 ing-pan as large as the mattress. You put your 
 bread in the oven, and have a hot roll in bed \ but 
 perhaps this practice may have done something 
 towards making the Chinese rather a crusty 
 people. 
 
 So-Sli was not yet satisfied. "What," said she, 
 " an' I find needles in my bed ? " and the mere idea 
 gave her a stitch in her side. She lifted the bed- 
 clothes, but let them fall again much more quickly. 
 She was frightened ; but she did not shriek. She 
 gave utterance only to a little gasping cry, such as 
 might proceed from a terrified " sucking dove ; " 
 and she did not run away, for, though she had 
 arrived at womanhood, her feet were as those of an 
 infant. However, she tottered back a few paces, 
 and then paused to consider what she should do. 
 
 But what had she seen in the bed ? Had any of
 
 HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 22 1 
 
 you seen it, my fair readers, the apparition of the 
 old gentleman's tail, to which it bore a very marked 
 resemblance, could not have frightened you more. 
 It was a huge black adder. You must not, however, 
 suppose, that, though startled, our little Celestial 
 lady was scared at all in the same degree that you 
 would have been ; by reason that she had been on 
 most familiar terms with many of his kin in the 
 kitchen. 
 
 So-Sli hobbled quietly out of the room. She 
 called a female servant, and sent her into the court 
 to bring a young rat from the coop ; to its leg they 
 tied a small stone, and put it in a large long earthen 
 pot with a small neck ; and, just peeping under the 
 clothes of the bed to see whereabouts the adder lay, 
 they thrust this in, with the mouth towards him. 
 They listened, and after a time fancied that they 
 heard him glide into it ; and this was confirmed by a 
 little squeak from the rat : so, cautiously lifting the 
 clothes, they suddenly raised the jar upon the end, 
 and put a stopper over its mouth. The adder could 
 not but perceive that he was rather awkwardly sit- 
 uated. " I shall ' go to pot,' " thought he ; but it was 
 of no use to make a coil about it. 
 
 So-Sli sat up to wait the return of her loving and
 
 222 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 liege lord. " I shall stay by him a little yet," she 
 said : " an adder shall not be our divider." 
 
 Two or three hours elapsed ere he came back : 
 he had forgotten the physician. 
 
 As he entered, he seemed startled at beholding 
 her. " My dearest So-Sli," he said, " how is it that 
 you have not retired to bed as I requested ? " 
 
 " While you were absent from me," she answered, 
 " how could I have rested ? I should have been 
 haunted by dragons and demons and cockatrices. 
 Besides, I expected to see the physician, and I was 
 not willing that he should visit me in my bed cham- 
 ber. How is it that he comes not with you ? " 
 
 " His own son," replied Ho-Fi, " is on the point 
 of death, and I could not induce him to leave his 
 bedside ; but he desired that you should not rise 
 from your couch whilst the cold influence was upon 
 you. He bade me spend the night in watching and 
 fasting, and at midnight to gather certain simples 
 on the hill without the city, from which, to-morrow, 
 he will prepare your medicines. I conjure you then, 
 as you love my yellow girdle, to go to bed without 
 more delay." 
 
 So-Sli at last assented to go to bed alone ; but she 
 would not do so until he should have partaken, with
 
 HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 223 
 
 her, of a soup, which she said she had prepared for 
 him with great care, believing that it would be 
 agreeable to him after being so long exposed to the 
 damp of the night. To this, so far as himself was 
 concerned, Ho-Fi had no reasonable objection to 
 urge ; but for her sake he wished that it had not 
 been made, and he earnestly advised her by no 
 means to take any part thereof. The night-air had 
 given Ho-Fi an appetite. 
 
 So-Sli promised ; and they sat down on either side 
 of a small bamboo table. A lantern was placed 
 upon it ; and the soup, introduced in a covered bowl, 
 was put before Ho-Fi, that he might help himself. 
 He had placed his hand upon the cover, when So- 
 Sli accidentally knocked the lantern from the table, 
 and the light was extinguished. She rose suddenly 
 from her chair in great alarm, and, in doing this, 
 upset the little table, so that the soup-bowl was 
 thrown into the lap of Ho-Fi. Ho-Fi had on a skin 
 apron, which he usually wore when he sat down to 
 meals ; and this he held up to catch his supper as it 
 fell. But alack for luckless Ho-Fi ! his supper 
 caught him by the wrist, and made him roar with 
 agony. So-Sli knew his partiality for viper-soup, but 
 had forgotten to have die reptile cooked.
 
 224 TREA S URE- TR O VE. 
 
 But So-Sli did not escape with impunity. Ho-Fi 
 chased her around the apartment, and, driving her 
 at last into a corner, beat her with his knotted pig- 
 tail in an unmerciful manner, until the pain of the 
 bite he had received in his wrist made him fall down 
 upon the floor, and grind his head against it. 
 Whilst he was so employed, his wife stepped upon 
 his shoulder, and, jumping over him, escaped from 
 the house. The fright she was in gave her power to 
 run as never before her legs had carried her, and 
 that, too, without crutches. Fright does not always 
 thus assist in getting us out of a hobble. 
 
 When the first impetus supplied by fear had 
 abated, she assumed somewhat more of her ordinary 
 walk. Several times she was hailed by the watch- 
 men as she passed through the streets, but they 
 allowed her to proceed ; and at last, sorely spent 
 with the fatigue of her long and unsupported totter- 
 ing, she arrived at her father's house. 
 
 The philosopher had already retired to rest. He 
 was angry at being thus aroused ; but his indignation 
 was beyond all bounds when he heard his daughter's 
 story. " I will appeal," he said, " to Pekin in this 
 matter; and we will hang Ho-Fi in his yellow 
 girdle."
 
 HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 22$ 
 
 Ho-Fi, meanwhile, when the first paroxysm of 
 pain had subsided, sent for a barber-surgeon, and 
 had his wrist, which was swollen to the size of the 
 calf of his leg, examined and dressed. Moreover, 
 having, no doubt, heard of that ancient practice in 
 chirurgery which cured the wound by anointing the 
 weapon, he had the viper dressed also ; and revenge 
 furnished an excellent sauce, and greatly improved 
 his supper. 
 
 Poo-Poo, according to promise, made his appeal 
 to the emperor. As Ho-Fi boasted his relationship 
 to the imperial family, this was the proper course, 
 though the local courts were not forbidden to exer- 
 cise jurisdiction in similar cases. Commissioners 
 were sent from Pekin to investigate the affair. 
 
 Ho-Fi and his wife, their domestics, Poo-Poo, and 
 a few other persons who were required as witnesses, 
 were summoned before the tribunal. Some of the 
 relatives, also, of the former wives of the Yellow 
 Girdle, took care to be present in the court. 
 
 The case was fully examined. Minute evidence 
 was entered into to prove that Ho-Fi had in various 
 ways attempted the life of his lady. All the circum- 
 stances connected with their marriage were set forth 
 by Poo-Poo. So-Sli gave her evidence with great 
 
 J 5
 
 226 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 perspicuity; and her statements respecting the poi- 
 soned tea and the fierce Bou-Wou, as well as con- 
 cerning the viper in the bed, were corroborated by 
 the testimony of the servants. Some amateur wit- 
 nesses made it pretty apparent that Ho-Fi's former 
 wives had all of them been Burked and Greenacred ; 
 and the judges and jury were fully satisfied of his 
 guilt. The defence did not shake their confidence, 
 though it showed that faults of less magnitude 
 existed in some other parties. The verdict of the 
 court having been submitted to Pekin, the following 
 proclamation was in a few days received from the 
 emperor, the Son of Heaven, and Father of the 
 Celestial Empire. It was addressed to all his sub- 
 jects ; that is to say, to his three hundred and sixty- 
 five millions of children. 
 
 " Pekin, the sixth month, the fourteenth day, the 
 fifty-eighth year of the Emperor Ho-Ho. 
 
 " Unless the laws be exercised, even on the 
 imperial kindred, they will not be obeyed. 
 
 "When the mulberry shall degenerate into the 
 thorn, it is time that it should be rooted out. 
 
 " Guilt shall not escape the penetrating ears ot 
 Ho-Ho. Ho-Ho hath long ears. 
 
 " Ho-Ho would emulate the virtues of his father,
 
 HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 227 
 
 Ha-Ha, and train up by good example, his son He- 
 He. 
 
 " It hath come to the knowledge of Ho-Ho, that 
 a certain yellow girdle, namee Ho-Fi, residing in 
 the city of Din-Din, not respecting the imperial 
 pleasure, so often proclaimed, that all shall live 
 peaceably together, without committing offences 
 against their neighbors, hath contumaciously pre- 
 sumed to put six wives to death by various devices, 
 and hath in like manner attempted the life of a 
 seventh. The modes of their deaths have been 
 these (for each he accounted falsely), — the first 
 fell from a rock; he ascribed it to female giddi- 
 ness : the second was drowned ; he said that she 
 died of drink : the third was hanged ; he spoke of 
 her tightness of breath: the fourth was poisoned; 
 he declared she was not careful in diet : the fifth 
 was starved ; he said that she lived too low : the 
 sixth was choked with her shoe ; he gave out that 
 she could not say herself how she died. By these 
 evasions he for a while eluded justice ; but the 
 truth hath become manifest; the chicken hath 
 pipped the shell ; the cat can no longer conceal the 
 kittens ; the parrot hath moulted, let him be 
 ashamed of his tail.
 
 228 TREASURE-TRO VE. 
 
 "But it is agreeable to the rules of justice that 
 the punishment should bear some reference to the 
 particular nature of the crime. This was the at- 
 tempted murder of the seventh wife, which he hath 
 essayed by poison, by a dog, and by a viper. It is 
 the will, then, of Ho-Ho, that Ho-Fi be punished in 
 this manner : that he be stung to death by adders, 
 and that his heart be filled with poison, and given 
 to the dog Bou-Wou. In consideration of his 
 former enormities, it is farther ordered, that his 
 body be cut into exceeding small pieces, one of 
 which shall be sent to every square ly * throughout 
 the empire, and stuck upon a thorn. That his ten 
 nearest relatives be put to death also ; but, as it is 
 well to temper justice with mercy, they shall be 
 merely strangled. His wife, So-Sli, shall be stran- 
 gled likewise. His servants shall submit each to 
 two hundred strokes of the bamboo. Poo-Poo, the 
 father of So-Sli, shall receive five hundred, and 
 shall wear the wooden collar for twelve calendar 
 months, a proper reward for his heretical doctrines. 
 The allowance of pay and rice to all yellow girdles 
 shall cease for three years ; and the principal man- 
 darin of Din-Din shall be hung up in his house." 
 
 * A ly is a measure of distance about equal to our furlong.
 
 ffO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 229 
 
 For " hung up in his house," some versions of 
 the proclamation read, " suspended in his office." 
 
 The wind-up of this enunciation of the Celestia' 
 will is too long for insertion here : it exhibits a fine 
 struggle between a proper humility, and conscious 
 wisdom. 
 
 The story of Ho-Fi is told. Chinese and poetical 
 justice go hand in hand. His name has long been 
 universally execrated throughout the Celestial 
 Empire. The Greeks borrowed it ; and among them 
 oqn was an expression equivalent to " Oh, thou ser- 
 pent 1 " Even among us barbarous inhabitants of 
 the isles of the Western Ocean, " Oh, fie 1 " is to 
 this day used to convey a reproach.
 
 WALTON REDIVIVUS. 
 
 A NEW RIVER ECLOGUE. 
 
 Bt Thomas Hood. 
 
 {PIS C A TOR is fishing, near the Sir Hugh Middle- 
 ton's Head, without either basket or can. VIA- 
 TOR cometh up to him, with an angling-rod and 
 a bottle?) 
 
 IA. Good-morrow, Master Piscator. Is 
 there any sport afloat ? 
 
 Pis. I have not been here time enough 
 to answer for it. It is barely two hours 
 agone since I put in. 
 
 Via. The fishes are shyer in this stream than in 
 any water that I know. 
 
 Pis. I have fished here a whole Whitsuntide 
 through without a nibble. But then the weather was 
 not so excellent as to-day. This nice shower will set 
 the gudgeons all agape. 
 
 Via. I am impatient to begin.
 
 WALTON REDIVIVUS. . 231 
 
 Pis. Do you fish with gut ? 
 Via. No — I bait with gentles. 
 
 Pis. It is a good taking bait : though my question 
 referred to the nature of your line. Let me see your 
 tackle. Why, this is no line, but a ship's cable. It is 
 a six-twist. There is nothing in this water but you 
 may pull out with a single hair. 
 
 Via. What ! are there no dace, nor perch ? — 
 
 Pis. I doubt not that there have been such fish 
 in former ages. But now-a-days there is nothing of 
 that size. They are gone extinct like the mammoths. 
 Via. There was always such a fishing at them. 
 Where there was one angler in former times, there 
 is now a hundred. 
 
 Pis. A murrain on them ! — A New River fish 
 now-a-days, cannot take his common swimming ex- 
 ercise, without hitching on a hook. 
 
 Via. It is a natural course of things, for man's 
 populousness to terminate other breeds. As the 
 proverb says, " The more Scotchmen, the fewer her- 
 rings." It is curious to consider the family of whales 
 growing thinner according to the propagation of par- 
 ish lamps. 
 
 Pis. Aye, and withal, how the race of man, who is 
 a terrestrial animal, should have been in the greatest
 
 a 3 2 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 jeopardy of extinction by the element of water; 
 whereas the whales, living in the ocean, are most 
 liable to be burnt out. 
 
 Via. It is a pleasant speculation. But how is 
 this ? — I thought to have brought my gentles com- 
 fortably in an old snuff-box, and they are all stark 
 dead! 
 
 Pis. The odor hath killed them, there is nothing 
 more mortal than tobacco, to all kinds of vermin. 
 Wherefore, a new box will be indispensable, though 
 for my own practice, I prefer my waistcoat pockets 
 for their carriage. Pray, mark this : — and in the 
 meantime I will lend you some worms. 
 
 Via. I am much beholden : and when you come 
 to Long Acre I will faithfully repay you. But, look 
 you, my tackle is still amiss. My float will not swim. 
 
 Pis. It is no miracle — for here is at least a good 
 ounce of swanshots upon your line. It is over- 
 charged with lead. 
 
 Via. I confess, I am only used to killing sparrows, 
 and such small fowls, out of the back-casement. But 
 my ignorance shall make me the more thankful for 
 your help and instruction. 
 
 Pis. There. The fault is amended. And now 
 observe, — you must watch your cork very narrowly,
 
 WALTON REDIVIVUS. 
 
 233 
 
 without even an eyewink the other way : — for other- 
 wise, you may overlook the only nibble throughout 
 the day. 
 
 Via. I have a bite already : — my float is going 
 up and down like a ship at sea. 
 
 Pis. No, it is only that housemaid dipping in her 
 bucket, which causes the agitation you perceive. 
 'Tis a shame so to interrupt the honest angler's 
 diversion. It would be but a judgment of God, now, 
 if the jade should fall in ! 
 
 Via. But I should have her drowned only for some 
 brief twenty minutes or so — and then restored again 
 by the Surgeons. And yet I have doubts, of the law- 
 fulness of that dragging of souls back again, that 
 have taken their formal leaves. In my conscience, 
 it seems like flying against the laws of predestination. 
 
 Pis. It is a doubtful point ; — for, on the other 
 hand, I have heard of some that were revived into 
 life by the Doctors, and came afterwards to be 
 hanged. 
 
 Via. Marry ! 'tis a pity such knaves' lungs were 
 ever puffed up again. It was good tobacco-smoke 
 ill-wasted. Oh ! how pleasant, now, is this angling, 
 which furnishes us with matter for such agreeable 
 discourse ! Surely it is well called a contemplative
 
 234 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 recreation, for I never had half so many thoughts 
 in my head before ! 
 
 Pis. I am glad you relish it so well. 
 
 Via. I will take a summer lodging hereabouts, to 
 be near the stream. How pleasant is this solitude 1 
 There are but fourteen a-fishing here — and of those 
 but few men. 
 
 Pis. And we shall be still more lonely on the other 
 
 side of the City Road. Come, let's across. Nay, we'll 
 
 put in our lines lower down. There was a butcher's 
 
 wife dragged for at this bridge in the last week. 
 
 Via. Have, you, indeed, any qualms of that kind ? 
 
 Pis. No, but hereabouts 'tis likely the gudgeons 
 will be gorged. Now, we are far enough. Yonder 
 is the row of Colebrook. What a balmy, wholesome 
 gust is blowing over to us from the cow-lair. 
 
 Via. For my part, I smell nothing but dead kit- 
 tens — for here lies a whole brood in soak. Would 
 you believe it, to my fantasy, the nine days' blind- 
 ness of these creatures smacks somewhat of the type 
 of the human pre-existence. Methinks, I have had 
 myself such a mysterious being before I beheld the 
 light — my dreams hint of it. A sort of world before 
 eye sight. 
 
 Pis. I have some dim sympathy with your mean-
 
 WALTON REDIVIVUS. 23$ 
 
 ing. At the creation, there was such a kind of blind- 
 man's-buff work. The atoms jostled together, be- 
 fore there was a revealing sun. But are we not fish- 
 ing too deep ? 
 
 Via. I am afraid on't ! Would we had a pkimmet. 
 We shall catch weeds. 
 
 Pis. It would be well to fish thus at the bottom, 
 if we were fishing for flounders in the sea. But 
 there you must have forty fathom, or so, of stout 
 line ; and then, with your fish at the end, it will be 
 the boy's old pastime carried into another element. 
 I assure you, 'tis like swimming a kite. 
 
 Via. It should be pretty sport — but hush ! My 
 cork has just made a bob. It is diving under the 
 water ! — Hallo ! — I have catched a fish 1 
 
 Pis. Is it a great one ? 
 
 Via. Purely, a large one ! Shall I put it into the 
 bottle ? 
 
 Pis. It will be well, — and let there' be a good 
 measure of water too, lest he scorch against the glass. 
 
 Via. How slippery and shiny it is ! Ah, he is gone ! 
 
 Pis. You are not used to the handling of a New 
 River fish ; and indeed very few be. But hath he 
 altogether escaped ? 
 
 Via. No, I have his chin here, which I was obliged 
 to tear off. to set awav mv hook.
 
 236 TREASURE-TROVE. 
 
 Pis. Well, let him go ; it would be labor wasted 
 to seek for him amongst this rank herbage. 'Tis 
 the commonest of anglers' crosses. 
 
 Via. I am comforted to consider he did not fall 
 into the water again, as he was without a mouth, and 
 might have pined for years. Do you think there is 
 any cruelty in our art ? 
 
 Pis. As to other methods of taking fish, I cannot 
 say : But I think none in the hooking of them. For, 
 to look at the gills of a' fish, with those manifold red 
 leaves — like a housewife's needle-book, — they are 
 admirably adapted to our purpose, and manifestly 
 intended by nature to stick our steel in. 
 
 Via. I am glad to have the question so comfortably 
 resolved — for, in truth, I have had some misgivings. 
 Now, look how dark the water grows ! There is 
 another shower towards. 
 
 Pis. Let it come down, and welcome, I have 
 only my working-day clothes on. Sunday coats 
 spoil holidays. Let everything hang loose, and time, 
 too, will sit easy. 
 
 Via. I like your philosophy. In this world we 
 are the fools of restraint. We starch our ruffs till 
 they cut us under the ear. 
 
 Pis. How pleasant it would be to discuss these
 
 WALTON REDIVIVUS. 437 
 
 sentiments over a tankard of ale ! I have a simple 
 bashfulness against going into a public tavern ; but I 
 think we could dodge into the Castle without being 
 much seen. 
 
 Via. And I have a sort of shuddering about me 
 that is willing to go more frankly in. Let us put up, 
 then. By my halidom ! here is a little dead fish 
 hanging at my hook, and yet I have never felt 
 him bite. 
 
 Pis. Tis only a little week-old gudgeon, and he 
 had not strength enough to stir the cork. However, 
 we may say boldly that we have caught a fish. 
 
 Via. Nay, I have another here in my bottle. He 
 was sleeping on his back at the top of the water, 
 and I got him out nimbly with the hollow of my 
 hand. 
 
 Pis. We have caught a brace, then, — besides the 
 great one that was lost among the grass. I am glad 
 on't, for we can bestow them on some poor hungry 
 person in our way home. It is passable good sport 
 for the place. 
 
 Via. I am satisfied it must be called so. But the 
 next time I come, I shall bring a reel with me, and 
 a newly-made minnow, for I am certain there must 
 be some marvellous huge pikes here ; they always
 
 2*S 
 
 IRE A SURE- TRO VE. 
 
 make a scarcity of other fish. However, I have 
 been bravely entertained, and at the first holiday. I 
 will come to it asrain. 
 
 KINTS.
 
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